Abstracts

Self-Deception: Can Dual Process Theory Help?

Shane Ryan Soochow University

Brian P. McLaughlin and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (1988) in their early philosophical treatment of the topic question whether people are ever self-deceived. Selfdeception is associated with two apparent paradoxes that arise from self-deception being modelled on interpersonal deception. To be self-deceived seems to require a person to both believe –p and p to be true simultaneously. The second paradox associated with selfdeception is how a person can intentionally deceive herself to believe p when she already believes –p. My paper attempts to show that self-deception is possible. I undertake a close examination of what deception entails so as to improve our understanding of selfdeception and, in particular, highlight the necessary relationship between deception and truth. I also distinguish between explicit occurrent beliefs and other kinds of beliefs. I argue that self-deception, being unique to imperfectly self-conscious beings, can be explained as a failure of our ascriptions of beliefs to accurately represent embedded or subpersonal beliefs that are in principle discoverable. In other words, self-deception on my account involves two different sets of beliefs. One set of beliefs are explicit occurrant beliefs. Some such beliefs may, or may not, be at odds with some subpersonal beliefs. That this can happen is unsurprising given imperfect human self-knowledge. I further argue that dual process theory can help us explain why such sets of beliefs might conflict with one another. On the account offered, inconsistency in beliefs present in paradigm cases of self-deception arises from the affective and associative nature of beliefs either generated at or subsumed by subpersonal cognitive processes. The case is made that the affective and associative nature of such beliefs is such that these beliefs can not easily be untangled from a web of beliefs that contribute to subpersonal functioning. I consider how my explanation of self-deception deals with the two apparent paradoxes. I argue that a self-deceived subject really can have two conflicting beliefs simultaneously. I also, argue, however that the interpersonal model of deception misleads in so far as there needn't be a conscious intention by one part of the self to deceive another part of the self in cases of selfdeception. Here we can accept a motivational bias account of self-deception. Finally, I contrast my dual-process explanation of self-deception with Mele’s (2003) own motivational bias account of self-deception. Mele rejects the view that the self-deceived person even need have the relevant true belief. I show how my account, with reference to two cases, seems to better capture our every day conception of self-deception than Mele's account, while rejecting his claim that the self-deceived needn't have both the relevant true belief and the false belief.