Self-Deception Unmasked (Princeton Monographs in Philosophy)

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Self-Deception Unmasked

Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Self-Deception Unmasked by Alfred R. Self-deception raises complex questions about the nature of belief and the structure of the human mind. In this book, Alfred Mele addresses four of the most critical of these questions: What is it to deceive oneself?

How do we deceive ourselves? Why do we deceive ourselves? Is self-deception really possible? Drawing on cutting-edge empirical research on everyday reasoning a Self-deception raises complex questions about the nature of belief and the structure of the human mind.

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Drawing on cutting-edge empirical research on everyday reasoning and biases, Mele takes issue with commonplace attempts to equate the processes of self-deception with those of stereotypical interpersonal deception. Such attempts, he demonstrates, are fundamentally misguided, particularly in the assumption that self-deception is intentional. In their place, Mele proposes a compelling, empirically informed account of the motivational causes of biased beliefs. At the heart of this theory is an appreciation of how emotion and motivation may, without our knowing it, bias our assessment of evidence for beliefs.

Highlighting motivation and emotion, Mele develops a pair of approaches for explaining the two forms of self-deception: Underlying Mele's work is an abiding interest in understanding and explaining the behavior of real human beings. The result is a comprehensive, elegant, empirically grounded theory of everyday self-deception that should engage philosophers and social scientists alike.

Paperback , pages. Published December 3rd by Princeton University Press first published To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Self-Deception Unmasked , please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about Self-Deception Unmasked. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Sep 02, Tim rated it really liked it Shelves: Short but interesting philosophical investigation into the possibility as to whether people can willingly pull the wool down over their eyes as opposed to merely being mistaken in their beliefs. The author breaks self-deception down into two types which he refers to as the straight version and the twisted version. The straight form occurs when we believe something because we want it to be true and the twisted version occurs when we believe something even though we want it to be false.

The first Short but interesting philosophical investigation into the possibility as to whether people can willingly pull the wool down over their eyes as opposed to merely being mistaken in their beliefs. The first part of the book examines the way that a desired conclusion has the potential to alter the way we evaluate information.

The role of emotions in introducing bias into our thinking is also considered.

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One of the factors the author examines is something he calls the confidence threshold. One might assume that when evaluating the pros and cons of any particular position, we start with the assumption that there is a fifty percent chance that it is true and a fifty percent chance that it is false. We inhabit a neutral middle ground where we can dispassionately look at all the information available to us.

If we were machines this might be the case.

The author argues for the position that people do not knowingly deceive themselves, what he refers to a nonagency as opposed to an agency view. Though he spends an entire chapter dismantling arguments that people do willingly and consciously deceive themselves, at the end of the book I still found myself less than convinced. It seems to me if you are heavily invested in something — a relationship, for example — you might intentionally overlook things that an impartial observer would not.

All of the examples the author uses in this book deal with interpersonal relationships but one could apply the concepts and explanations outlined here in any situation where opposing points of view have to be assessed. It's a good idea to hold our assumptions, inclinations, and beliefs up to the light every now and then to turn them this way and that and see how they hold up. After all, none of us were born with a perfect understanding of life and none of us have a perfect understanding of it now.

As Muhammad Ali once said: Kc rated it liked it Apr 14, Lana De Gasperis rated it it was amazing Apr 14, Steve rated it really liked it Jul 21, Nathan rated it it was amazing May 21, It's also very clearly and engagingly written. If you're interested in philosophical accounts of self-deception which of course not everyone is!

Mele's strategy is to argue that we'll only get confused about self-deception if we try to make sense of it on the model of interpersonal deception, where one person knows something and then lies about it to another. Mele argues that is an implausible way to make sense of what happens when we deceive ourselves, for it requires positing that an agent somehow both "know" something and not "know" it at the same time, and that one part of us lies to the other part.

Rather, he suggests, we can account for self-deception by explaining the biasing effects motivations and desires have on the way we acquire beliefs. So, for instance, he points out that we tend to lower the standards of evidence when we want something to be true, and raise them when we want something to be false: The advantage here is that you don't have to imagine all sorts of "unconscious" areas of the brain; rather, you can explain self-deception as simply an aspect of the way a given belief was acquired.

The disadvantage is, well, if you're sympathetic to a Freudian line, the advantage won't seem worth that much. And--as Mele notes at the end of the book--it's not clear you can explain all self-deception this way; in particular, emotional self-deception doesn't fit very well into Mele's schema.

Still, it's a short, clearly written, and powerfully argued book. Apparently when she didn't believe in God, she became depressed.

This gave her insight as to how her mind worked and convinced her that it was 'best' to believe in God. So, her reasoning went, "I believe in God. The human mind consists of many modules which contribute to logic, reason, intuition, imagination and various emotions. Some of these human modules are similar to parts of reptile brains, other modules are more evolved and the neo-cortex in humans is the most advanced of any animal. Certainly a human may believe in something from one viewpoint while disbelieving in the same thing from another viewpoint.

His method of trying to convincing us of his theory is to focus on the logical part of our brain. Since we are logical, we cannot believe in both proposition p and not p. One part of my brain asks whether Alfred Mele is like a salesman trying to sell his 'product' and as such is willing to bias the arguments toward his product by getting us to focus only on the logical parts of the brain. Simultaneously another part of my brain indicates that he is not only trying to deceive the reader but that he has also thoroughly deceived himself.

I do not have one consistent conclusion about what Mele is trying to do or why. As a result, I believe multiple ideas simultaneously and to different degrees sourced in different parts of my mind. Not all of my emotional feelings and intellectual theories are consistent. In my opinion, this indicates that I have a normal mind. Perhaps his method of attempting to deceive us simply evolved as he attempted to argue his point of view with different people. People do sometimes become obsessed with wrong ideas and try to defend them.

Self-Deception Unmasked

Perhaps he is trying to prove that he is smarter than all of the other professors. In any case, his resultant argument attempts to fool us by focusing only on the logical and conscious parts of our minds. Herbert Fingarette, "Self-Deception", page The error consists of assuming, in effect, that everything of which we are currently taking account and to which we are responding intelligently must be within the field of our attention.

The language usually used obscures this assumption.

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For example, the proposition that intentional behaviour is necessarily conscious implicitly contains, as usually used, the affirmation of this false and highly misleading assumption. We even make attempts to deceive ourselves. When we watch a movie, we know "in the back of our minds" that when our hero leaps from one buiding to another that the actor is actually a stunt double.

But we intentionally suppress such knowledge so that we may "enjoy the film". A poor film is one in which we are constantly aware that we are watching a film. A good film is one which is sufficiently realistically presented that we may allow our brains to be deceived into believing that we are actually 'inside the movie' to the point that we grab our armrests with emotion. If you cannot thus deceive yourself, why bother going to the movies? The very foundation of society is that people have 'free will'.

If we, as ethical beings do not believe in free will, then how are we to govern our society? A criminal may be punished only if he has the ability to choose and he chooses to do the wrong thing. Picture a college student taking a course in ethics. Certainly such a student would answer any question from the ethics teacher with an ethical frame of mind.

As such, the student would declare honestly that she believed in free will. Let's say that the same student is also be taking a course in scientific or critical thinking. This second teacher might ask her to explain how humans can logically believe that a machine created from a DNA genetic blueprint to specific parents and a specific environment with various chaotic inputs can have any 'free will' at all.

The same student could be in a scientific frame of mind and honestly answer that the concept of free will makes no logical scientific sense. Where is this will located? It would have to be a source of control which is free of control.

Some body of 'will' that is located somewhere in the human body and is currently making decisions 'on its own'. It would have to be independent of human genes, past experience, neurotransmitters, psychology, etc. This makes absolutely no sense scientifically. We know that everything that happens is caused by natural forces. From a scientific point of view, 'free will' is simply an illusion or self-deception which evolved "because of societal survival" and must be accepted ethically in order for society to function smoothly.

People who lack the mental mechanism for such self-deception may end up as sociopaths. Kindle location Alfred Mele states: I myself would like to see convincing evidence that this dual-belief condition is satisfied in some cases of self-deception. Such evidence would settle one significant question about self-deception, and it might even provide indirect support for my own belief that if there is self-deception of the dual-belief variety, it is remote from garden-variety instances. As I argue, however, the alleged evidence I have seen is unconvincing. You don't have the backing of logical scientific critical thinking.

The only way a normal intelligent human can view the world is ethically to believe in free will and simultaneously scientifically to believe that free will is impossible. This is not the only self-deception humans engage in. For a longer discussion of the subject of free will, see Steven Pinker's book, How the Mind Works, pp.

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