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ABSTRACT
AN INVESTIGATION OF

SELF-DECEPTION

By

Charles Bruce

The problem to which this dissertation addresses itself is
two—fold: (1) Why does the concept of self-deception seem so
frightfully paradoxical? (2) How can the concept be elucidated in
a way which is at once true to the concept and which dissipates the
aura of paradox? These questions presuppose a proposition which
is born out by an investigation of the concept of self-deception,
namely, that the concept of self-deception is a coherent one and
not genuinely paradoxical.

Self-deception seems paradoxical because we misconstrue it.
We think of it in ways appropriate only to the deception of others.
Thus we see the self-deceiyer's pretense as efforts to take himself
in; we even see the self-deceiver's effort to push thought of the
truth from his mind as part of an attempt to hide the truth from
himself. What we fail to realize clearly is that these descriptions
make little sense on other than a metaphorical plane. Taken
literally, they presuppose a contradiction, that the self-deceiver

knows the truth and does not know it. AS deceiver he must know the

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Charles Bruce

truth, but as victim he must not know it, for deception always
aims! even when it is not successful, at preventing someone who
does not know the truth from coming to know it. Similarly, if
we view the self-deceiver as having literally deceived himself,
this description entails the same contradiction, for, again, as
deceiver he must know the truth, and, having succeeded in his
aims, he must have prevented himself from coming to know the
truth. I call this contradiction, 'the first major paradox of
self-deception.‘

This contradiction does not seem to arise only because we
are misled by figurative expressions. It has its source deep in
a way of thinking about consciousness, a way of thinking which I
call, 'the vehicular theory of consciousness'. This theory holds
that all consciousness must have a 'vehicle', e.g., a mental image,
words, or a sensuous impression. Applied to self-deception this
theory yields the view that the self-deceiver is not conscious of
the truth. This lack of consciousness of the truth even while he
knows the truth cannot be explained, however, as due to his own
purposive efforts, for such efforts would entail that he is
conscious of the truth, and thus we would be confronted with a
second contradiction, that he is and is not conscious of the truth.
This contradiction is 'the second major paradox of self-deception'.
To avoid this paradox and explain the self-deceiver's lack of

consciousness, we view him as prevented from becoming conscious of

 

 

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a p
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once

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I

Charles Bruce

the truth by forces beyond his control: either forces directed by
a personal agency within his mind or impersonal, mechanical forces
within his mind. This way of viewing him in turn strengthens the
resemblance between the self-deceiver and someone who is genuinely
ignorant of the truth, we are taken in by this resemblance, and
once again land in the first major paradox of self-deception.

The way out is to deny the vehicular theory of consciousness.
Counter-examples abound, and they allow us to distinguish between
consciousness and explicit consciousness of the truth. The latter
corresponds roughly to consciousness with a 'vehicle'. Once we
have made this distinction, we can allow that the self-deceiver is
conscious of the truth even though, as a result of his own purposive
efforts, he is never explicitly conscious of the truth. The self-
deceiver's metaphorical 'hiding' and 'deception' is just this
purposeful avoidance of explicit consciousness. This answers our
second question, for the latter account of self-deception, while
true to the concept, does not entail either of the major paradoxes
of self-deception.

This dissertation is well within the analytic tradition in
philosophy. It begins with a consideration of the work of other
analytic philosophers on the concept of self-deception. This work,
which began with a paper entitled,'Lying to Oneself', by Raphael
lDemos, is found wanting primarily because Demos misconstrued other;

deception. He was followed in this by others in the tradition, and

 

 

 

that

firs

diss

Charles Bruce

thus the whole discussion went off in a wrong direction, failing
to provide satisfactory answers to the questions posed above. It

is not until we come to Herbert Fingarette's book, Self-Deception,

 

that we get back on the track. Fingarette clearly exposes the
first major paradox of self-deception. The view defended in this
dissertation, while critical of certain aspects of Fingarette's

work, is still greatly indebted to it.

AN INVESTIGATION OF
SELF-DECEPTION
by

Charles Dawson Bruce

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Philosophy

1975

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER

II
III

IV

NOTES --

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

CHAPTER PAGE
I. Demos' Analysis of Self-Deception -------------- 1

II. Self-Deception and Other-Deception ------------- 30

III. Self—Deception and Wishful Thinking ------------ 88

IV. Fingarette's New Model of Consciousness --------- 105

V. Over-Riding Reasons - — — - 177

NOTES --------------------- —- 198

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER (
Section 2

In
appeared
of self-
'the ana
analytic
PaPer re
much of
some to
1969, u

effort 1

philosc

CHAPTER ONE. Demos' Analysis of Self-Deception.
Section 1.

In 1960 a paper by Raphael Demos entitled, 'Lying to Oneself',
appeared. The paper sparked a series of interchanges and discussions
of self-deception which, together with Demos' paper, I shall call
'the analytic tradition before Fingarette', or, more briefly, 'the
analytic tradition'. Of the papers in this tradition, Demos'
paper remains the most important, for it set the limits within which
much of the ensuing discussion was confined. It is only when we

come to Herbert Fingarette's book, Self-Deception, published in

 

1969, that we find a criticism of these limits and a sustained
effort to pass beyond them.

Certain elements in the framework provided by Demos are
especially noteworthy. It is a consequence of Demos' analysis of
self-deception that the self-deceiver knows and believes some
proposition not-P while at the same time believing that P - that is,
the self-deceiver holds incompatible beliefs. Demos felt that this
seemed puzzling and called for special explanation. Later writers
in the tradition responded in two ways. Some of them found the idea
of a person holding incompatible beliefs to be downright paradoxical,
and they set about to provide analyses of self-deception which did
not entail that the self-deceiver holds incompatible beliefs. These

philosophers agreed with Demos that the self-deceiver believes a

 

 

 

falsehood
entails t;
writers 6
incompati
maintaini
while at
other por
includinvi;
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(1)

(2)

 

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Fingaret

falsehood, but they rejected that part of Demos' analysis which
entails that the self-deceiver knows and believes the truth. Other
writers did not find the suggestion that the self-deceiver holds.
incompatible beliefs quite so disturbing. They followed Demos in
maintaining that the self-deceiver knows and believes that not-P
while at the same time believing that P, though they did reject
other portions of Demos' account. No one, on the other hand,
including Fingarette, advanced the view that the self-deceiver
knows that not-P and does not hold the belief that P. It is this
latter view which will be advanced and defended in this dissertation.

The result of Demos' paper was that the discussion of self-
deception was sharply focused on two questions:

(1) Is it paradoxical, perhaps inconsistent, to
'maintain that a person holds incompatible beliefs?

(2) Does the self-deceiver know or believe the truth
concerning which he is deceiving himself?

This narrowing of the discussion also involved a loss. Demos

had recognized that self-deception often appears deeply paradoxical.
His paper contained not only an analysis of self-deception, but
implicitly, at least, an account of why self-deception seems
paradoxical. On his view self—deception seems to be paradoxical
because it involves the holding of two incompatible beliefs, and

the holding of incompatible beliefs seems to be logically impossible.
While every writer appearing later in the tradition rejected some
part of Demos' analysis of self-deception, absolutely no one until

Fingarette called into question Demos' explanation of why

1n Ul'flc'l“ in
4

 

 

 

 

decept
as par
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a“3le

parade:

self-deception seems to be deeply paradoxical. It was because they
accepted this explanation that they concentrated so sharply on
questions (1) and (2) above, and gave the analyses which they did
give.

The two accounts which Demos gives - his analysis of self-
deception, and his explanation of why self—deception strikes us
as paradoxical - are very closely linked. This is because the
analysis of self-deception which he expounds and defends entails
the proposition that the self-deceiver holds incompatible beliefs,
and it was the seeming impossibility of this proposition being
true which was taken to be at the root of the paradoxical air of
self-deception.

In our own dealings with Demos' paper, we shall sharply
distinguish between Demos' analysis of self-deception and his
explanation of why self-deception seems to be paradoxical. The
first account could very well be false and the second true, or

vice versa. In Section 2 of this chapter I shall give an exposition

 

of Demos' analysis of self-deception. In Section 3 I shall

evaluate this analysis. I shall argue that he is correct in holding
that in general the having of incompatible beliefs is non-paradoxical,
though I shall try to show that there are particular cases in which

it is paradoxical, and these cases include instances of self-
deception. Next I shall consider an argument to show that Demos'
analysis entails a particular inconsistency which I call 'the minor

paradox of self-deception'. Demos somewhat dimly perceived the

 

 

 

 

minor par
and it is
that it _s_
beliefs,
as deeply
Speaking,
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he does In

minor paradox of self—deception in connection with his analysis,

and it is, I believe, this paradox which lies behind his saying

that it segm§_logically impossible for a person to hold incompatible
beliefs, and which influenced later writers to view this suggestion
as deeply paradoxical. However, Demos' analysis does not, strictly
speaking, entail the minor paradox of self-deception, and it is

only when we read into his analysis certain things which he does

not explicitly include in it that we derive the minor paradox of
self-deception.

Consideration of the minor paradox of self-deception does,
none the less, reveal another respect in which Demos' analysis is
inadequate, for one of the propositions of which the minor paradox
of self-deception consists states a necessary condition of self-
deception, yet Demos' analysis does not contain or imply this
proposition, and, indeed, Demos tried to include its negation in
his analysis in order to ward off the minor paradox of self-
deception.

Hence Demos' analysis of self-deception is unacceptable.

This does not mean, however, that his explanation of why self-
deception seems to be paradoxical is unacceptable, and it is this
explanation which we shall consider next, in Chapter Two. I shall
argue that his explanation, while hinting at one of the paradoxes
of self-deception - the minor paradox of self-deception, is
radically defective. Not only does he not clearly bring out the
minor paradox, but there are two majgr_paradoxes as well which

he does not even hint at. The cause of this defect in his

 

 

 

 

 

explanation
on the dec»:
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major para:

 

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dict-pm

explanation lies in the fact that while Demos models self-deception
on the deception of others, and while this procedure is the correct
one for the purposes of drawing out and displaying the paradoxes

of self-deception, Demos misconstrues gthgrfdeception, and in
consequence, the modeling does not yield either the minor or the
major paradoxes of self-deception. This error diminishes greatly
the value of his explanation of why self-deception appears to be
paradoxical.

One of the earmarks of a philosophical paradox is that one
feels compelled or strongly inclined to accept an account which
implies something, e.g., a contradiction, which one feels equally
compelled to reject. I believe that when we reflect on self-
deception, we do feel compelled to model it on other-deception, and
this leads to intolerable - though rarely made explicit - results.
This is why I said above that for the purpose of explaining why
self-deception seems to be paradoxical, Demos was right to model
it on other-deception. But because he mis-construed other-deception,
one cannot, by modeling self-deception on other-deception as he
construes the latter, see what these results are.

This difficulty is removed when we correct Demos' treatment
of other-deception. Beginning with a corrected model of other-
deception and applying it to self-deception, we shall be able to
generate the paradoxical consequences which we often feel when we
reflect on self—deception. Moreover, once we have seen these

consequences, we shall then be able to make explicit those features

 

 

 

 

 

of self-dec
This shall
self-decept
adequate ac

of such an

connection
which bear
Befc
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of self-deception which incline us to model it on other-deception.
This shall be the first step in removing the inclination to view
self-deception on the model of other-deception and to provide an
adequate account of self-deception which is non-paradoxical. A sketch

of such an account will be given towards the end of Chapter Two in

connection with a discussion of certain aspects of Freud's theories
which bear directly on the topic of self-deception.

Before expanding this skeleton account and considering the diffi-
culties which confront it, we shall, in Chapter Three, consider a group

of analyses in the analytic tradition. All of these analyses arose in

reaction to Demos' claim that the self-deceiver holds incompatible
beliefs, all reject this claim and all hold that the self-deceiver does
‘not know or believe the truth though he does believe a falsehood
incompatible with the truth. I shall argue that these analyses can-
not be adequate precisely because they deny a necessary condition of
self-deception, namely, knowledge of the truth, and that their
plausibility depends on their having certain affinities with analyses
of certain hyperbolic uses of 'reflexive—deception' expressions and

of a phenomenon known as 'wishful thinking'.

In Chapter Four we shall consider Fingarette's analysis of
self-deception, and in the course of doing so we shall refine and
modify the account sketched out in Chapter Two. Not only did
Fingarette first recognize the limitations on the discussion of self-
deception imposed by Demos' paper and reject these limitations, but
he also clearly identified the major paradox of self-deception and set

about to give an analysis which would avoid this paradox. This led

.
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him to foo
knowledge ‘
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him to focus on the self-deceiver's consciousness rather than his

 

knowledge or beliefs, and he elaborated an account of explicit
consciousness which was then incorporated into his analysis of self-

deception.

Much of Fingarette's useful account will be assimilated into
our own. However, we shall reject certain aspects of Fingarette's
account. First, though he seems at times to be avoiding the question
altogether the question of whether or not the self-deceiver knows the
truth, but his real view is that the self-deceiver does not know the
truth except in a non-literal, idiomatic sense of 'know'. Not only
does this conflict with other parts of his account which entail that
the self-deceiver does know the truth, but, as I shall try to establish
in Chapter Two of this dissertation, knowledge of the truth is a
necessary condition of self-deception. So Fingarette's contention
that the self-deceiver does not know the truth must be rejected.

Secondly, we shall have to clarify Fingarette's account of
explicit consciousness. Fingarette's remarks suggest at times that
all consciousness is necessarily explicit consciousness. In connection
with other parts of his view, this contention leads us into another
of the prominent paradoxes of self-deception. We shall avoid this
paradox by re-defining, along lines suggested by Fingarette, the
notion of explicit consciousness. This definition will make it
clear that to be conscious is not necessarily to be explicitly .
conscious, though it is true that to be explicitly conscious is to
-be conscious. Once this is recognized and taken into account in the

analysis of self-deception, the paradox vanishes.

In Che;
reason a per:
falls within
since a nece:
have a reaso
of the other
to provide a

someone dece

 

 

breaking the

 

 

 

In Chapter Five I shall offer an account of the kind of
reason a person may have for deceiving himself. This account still
falls within the task of analyzing the concept of self-deception,
since a necessary condition of being a self—deceiver is that one
have a reason of this kind. Moreover, since one of the attractions
of the other-deception model for self-deception is that it seems
to provide an answer to the otherwise difficult question of why
someone deceives himself, this account shall be our final step in

breaking the hold of the other-deception model.

 

 

 

lie

 

 

Section 2.

As :
deception
a relatic
whether c

B a

in

(a
When 8 a
have a c
then it
between
latter 1
former ,

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them:

the 861

9
Section 2.

As noted earlier, Demos models self-deception on other-
deception. He begins his paper with a definition of deception as
a relation which may hold between any person B and any person C,
whether or not B is the same person as C.

I will say that 'B lies to (deceives) C' means:

B intends to induce a mistaken belief in C, B succeeds

in carrying out this intention, and finally B knows

(and believes) that what he tells c is false.2
When B and C are distinct persons, and B deceives C, then we
have a case of other-deception. When B and C are the same person,
then it is self-deception. ’In essence, then, there is no difference
between self-deception and other-deception except that in the
latter deceiver and deceived are different persons, while in the
former, deceiver and deceived are the same person.

It should be noted that in his definition Demos treats
lying and deceiving as equivalent. The reason is that Demos
intends the definition to assimilate lying to deceiving. He
recognizes that in "ordinary language" lying and deceiving are not
the same.

Thus, in 'deceiving', it is the effect that counts--

inducing an erroneous belief in C's mind. But in

'lying', the intention is part of the meaning. I

have lied to you although you have not believed me and
so have not been misled by me.3

But this difference has the - for Demos - "odd consequence" that
"B, in lying to C, may in fact induce a true belief in C's mind."4

I see nothing odd about this consequence nor any advantage to be

—--"-w-|

 

 

Al:

 

gained by
to redefir
is both a
new meanii
to explai;
A n
and the s
that B de
induce a
3 must '1:
know and
that he
to be fa
ElieVe
finally.
that p.

D

Wuld S.

m'nrrmr—ar-rm

In L4- a. "It

10

gained by removing it, but Demos does, and to avoid it, he proposes
to redefine 'lying' for his own usage. Thus the above definition
is both a stipulative definition of 'lies', intended to impart a
new meaning, and an explicative definition of 'deceives', intended
to explain an established meaning.

A number of consequences follow from the above definition
and the supposition that B deceives himself, i.e., the supposition
that B deceives C, where B = C. First, since B must intend to
induce a false belief in himself and succeed in this intention,

B must induce a false belief in himself. Further, since he must
know and believe that what he tells himself is false, it follows
that he induces a belief in himself which he knows and believes

to be false. Thus for some proposition that P, B must know and
believe that not-P and induce in himself the belief that P. Hence,
finally, B must know and believe that not-P, and also believe

that P.

Demos thought that this last consequence of his analysis
would seem to be paradoxical.

Self-deception exists, I will say, when a person lies

to himself, that is to say, persuades himself to be-

lieve what he knows is not so. In short, self-deception

entails that B believes both P and not-P at the same

time. Thus self-deception involves an inner conflict,

perhaps the existence of a contradiction. But this would

seem to be an impossibility...5
Later he says:

Believing and disbelieving are pro and con attitudes;

they are contraries and therefore it is logically

impossible for them to exist at the same time in the
same person in the same respect. When B lies to

 

 

 

 

himse
to ac
admit
The f
incompatibl
"would see!
is much no
to hold in
“descripti
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clearly t}
a person ‘
Yet
in the Se
again how

t0 put it

It
on:

ll

himself he comes to believe what he knows to be false;

to accept this as the description of a fact is to

admit a violation of the law of contradiction.6

The first passage above does not state that the holding of
incompatible beliefs is logically impossible. Demos says that it
"would seem" to be an impossibility. In the second passage he
is much more emphatic, and he states that it i§_logically impossible
to hold incompatible beliefs at the same time, and also that the
"description" that B comes to believe what he knows to be false is
a violation of the law of contradiction. This seems to show quite
clearly that Demos himself holds that it is logically impossible for
a person to hold incompatible beliefs at the same time.

Yet I do not think that Demos really held this. Apparently
in the second passage as well as the first, he was merely stating
again how things 'would seem' to be. And he immediately goes on
to put it in those tenms.

It would seem, then, that self-deception--lying to

oneself--is logically impossible in the way it has

been formulated.7
Moreover, if Demos did hold that it is logically impossible for
someone to have incompatible beliefs, one would expect him to
reject his own analysis of self-deception, for if an inconsistent
statement follows from the statements which make up an analysis,
then not all of the statements making up the analysis can be true.
Demos recognized this, but he did not give up his analysis of

self-deception, and one can only reasonably conclude from this that

he did not really think that the holding of incompatible beliefs

 

 

[I4

 

is a logic
he goes or
wrong wit}
analyses:
Per
(a)
sa:
del
di
m
0c
is
This pas
an anal'
YEt he

theh h,

12

is a logical impossibility. Immediately after the last statement,
he goes on to consider the possibility that there is something
wrong with the analysis, and he considers two alternative

analyses:

Perhaps, then, the description given of it is wrong.
(a) A redescription which would avoid violating the
sacred law might take the following form: In self-
deception, believing P and disbelieving P occur at
different and successive times...(b) A further view
would be that in self-deception the agreeable belief
occupies the conscious mind while the unpleasant one
is repressed into the unconscious.8

This passage suggests quite strongly that Demos recognized that
an analysis which entails an inconsistent statement must be rejected,

yet he did not do so, but instead rejected the two alternatives ‘

n9

mentioned above as not being "in accordance with the evidence , and

then he reasserts his own analysis.

I conclude that both of the suggested hypotheses
are false; the belief and disbelief are simultaneous
and both exist in the consciousness of the person.9

Evidently, then, it was not Demos' view that having two
incompatible beliefs is logically impossible. He did, however,
find the idea of someone holding incompatible beliefs puzzling,
and felt that it called fer special explanation. To provide that
explanation and remove the puzzle, Demos distinguishes between

two "levels of awareness".

...one is simple awareness, the other awareness to-
gether with attending or noticing...I may be aware of
something without, at the same time, noticing or focus-
ing my attention on it. This comes about because I

may be distracted by something else, or because I may
deliberately ignore it, or because I may not wish to
think about it. The not-noticing need not be something
that just happens to me.10

 

 

 

it’ll

do

13

What makes the holding of incompatible beliefs possible in self-
deception is that

...there is an impulse favoring one belief at the

expense of its contradictory; and the person who lies

to himself, because of yielding to impulse, fails to

notice or ignores what he knows to be the case...we

are saying that the person who lies to himself be-

lieves both P and not-P, and is capable of doing so

because he is distracted from the former.11

As we shall see later, there is something quite right about
Demos' idea of levels of awareness, the role that attention and
distraction play in relation to these levels of awareness, and
the part played by impulse. The self-deceiver, while knowing
the truth, tries desperately to avoid explicit consciousness of
the truth, though he may tolerate, and sometimes pursues, non-
explicit consciousness of the truth. To aid him in avoiding
explicit consciousness of the truth he tries to preoccupy and
distract himself, often going to great extremes to do so. Finally,
there is an impulse - fear of explicit consciousness of the truth -
which impels the self-deceiver to avoid explicit consciousness
of the truth. Demos is wrong, on the other hand, in suggesting
that these different levels of consciousness make it possible for
the self-deceiver to hold a belief incompatible with what he knows

to be true, for the self-deceiver holds no such belief which is

relevant to his self-deception.

 

 

 

Set

a l
par
ph.

of

th

14

Section 3.

It seems strange, at first sight, that anyone, but especially
a philosopher, should find the holding of incompatible beliefs
paradoxical or puzzling. After all, one of the tools of the
philosophical trade is picking out the inconsistencies in the views
of other philosophers. Nor are only philosophers subject to the
malady of inconsistency. Theories of nature and mathematical
theories are also affected by inconsistency from time to time.
For example, the intuitive set theory developed by the mathematician
Cantor was shown to be inconsistent. Sometimes we hold incompatible
beliefs as a result of our acceptance of two fundamental and
incompatible views of the world. For example, many people who
know that the earth is roughly spherical in shape persist in
thinking at times that travel on the surface of the earth proceeds
along straight lines. Sometimes a fundamental and central view
buried deeply within the way of life of a people is strikingly
incoherent to outsiders. The Azande of Northeastern Africa, for
example, hold beliefs in witchcraft which are incompatible. They
believe that a limited number of persons in their society are
witches. Yet they also believe that the powers of witchcraft can
be inherited, and their views as to how it is transmitted commit
them to holding that everyone in their society is a witch. Yet
almost every fact of their daily lives, both personal and social,

is ordered around these beliefs in witchcraft.

 

 

 

 

inco:

whic

such

appr

of a

one

prO}

pro;

the

bel

is

be:

15

At second sight the resistence to the idea of holding
incompatible beliefs is not so surprising. It matters very much
whigh_beliefs are involved. For there are pairs of propositions
such that one cannot believe (or know) either of them without
appreciating their incompatibility. Yet a necessary condition
of appreciating the incompatibility of two propositions is that
one 22E believe both of them. Hence one cannot believe b2£h_
propositions in an incompatible pair of propositions with the
property that one cannot believe either of them unless one appreciates
their incompatibility.

I shall say that a pair of propositions such that one can
believe neither of them unless one appreciates their incompatibility
is a flagrantly inconsistent pair. Examples of such pairs would
be:

Jones is sitting.

(a) '

Jones is not sitting.
Jones has a hand.

(b)

Jones has no hands.
The tree is burning.

(c)

The tree is not burning.

(d) The ground is damp.

The ground is dry.
Water is close by.

(e) .
No water is close by.

 

 

 

 

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16

If anyone were to utter both propositions in one of these pairs,
and we were convinced of his sincerity, we would not say that

he believed both propositions. Rather we should say that he
changed his mind, or that he mis-spoke, or that he did not under-
stand what he was saying and so did not appreciate the incompati-
bility in what he said.

The existence of flagrantly inconsistent pairs of propositions
poses a difficulty for Demos' analysis of self—deception because
self-deception frequently involves such pairs: what we want to
say that the self-deceiver knows and what we want to say he believes
are both members of such a pair. This difficulty explains in part,
- perhaps, Demos' saying that it seems logically impossible for
someone to hold incompatible beliefs. He had in mind beliefs
which are members of a flagrantly inconsistent pair of propositions.

It also helps to explain the resistance to his analysis
'by other philosophers. Frederick Siegler, for example, reacted
very strongly against Demos' claim that the self-deceiver holds
incompatible beliefs. In his paper, 'Self-Deception'lz, he asks
the reader to consider the hypothetical case of Jones, a man who
is to die within ten days of an incurable disease. What is in
question is whether it is possible for Jones to believe that he
is going to die within ten days and also to believe that he is not
going to die within ten days. As Siegler notes, a man's own death
is something about which he is quite likely to deceive himself.

Yet it is impossible, by manipulating the details of the example,

17

to turn it into a case in which we want to say that Jones holds
both beliefs. The reason for this is, I suggest, that both of
these propositions are members of a flagrantly incompatible

pair of propositions. If Jones holds either one of these beliefs,
then he cannot fail to appreciate their incompatibility, and so he
cannot believe both of them.

The existence of flagrantly incompatible pairs of propositions,
then, constitutes a solid objection to Demos' analysis of self-
deception. But it is not the only objection which can be made
along these lines. As Fingarette suggestsl3, Demos apparently
recognized that self-deception can only occur under circumstances
exceptional enough to allow that the self-deceiver does not
appreciate the incompatibility between his beliefsl4; and this is
why he felt that the self-deceiver's having incompatible beliefs
calls for special explanation. He added to his analysis the
statement that the self-deceiver fails to notice or attend to
what he knows while noticing and attending to his false belief in
order to make clear that the self—deceiver does not appreciate
the incompatibility between what he knows and what he falsely
believes, and to make clear why the self-deceiver fails to
appreciate this incompatibility. For, failing to notice or attend
to what he knows, the self-deceiver does not compare what he
knows and what he believes, and thus he fails to appreciate their

incompatibility.

18

Here is where the second objection to Demos' analysis comes
in. As Demos recognized, it is a consequence of his analysis that
the self-deceiver believes both P and not-P, and this entails
that he does not appreciate the incompatibility between P and not-P.
But it also segm§_to be a consequence of his analysis that the
self-deceiver does appreciate the incompatibility between P and
not-P. If this is right, Demos' analysis is inconsistent.

To see the argument for this, let us consider the kind of
other-deception on which Demos models self-deception. Necessarily,
when an other—deceiver of this sort sets out to deceive someone
through lying to them, the deceiver himself fully appreciates the
incompatibility between the false proposition that P and the
truth that not-P. He must appreciate this incompatibility if he
is to have the purpose of deceiving the other person. For, as
purposeful deceiver, his aim is to prevent his intended victim
from knowing or believing the truth that not-P by inducing the
false belief that P in the victim. The deceiver expects that
his victim also fully appreciates the incompatibility between P
and not-P, and he counts on this in order to succeed in his aim
of keeping the victim from knowing or believing the truth. For if
the victim does not appreciate the incompatibility, then there is
nothing to prevent him from knowing or believing the truth even
if the self-deceiver does induce the false belief that P in him,
and thus the deceiver will not have succeeded in his aim of keeping

the victim from knowing or believing the truth. On the other

19

hand, if the victim does appreciate the incompatibility and
the deceiver succeeds in inducing the false belief that P in
him, then he will also have succeeded in keeping him from knowing
or believing the truth, for so long as the victim appreciates
the incompatibility and believes that P, it will be logically
impossible for him to know or believe that not-P.

Thus, for the form of other-deception on which Demos models
self-deception, the other-deceiver cannot be truly described
as purposely inducing a false belief in his victim i2_9£dg£_to
deceive the victim unless the other-deceiver appreciates the
incompatibility between the truth and the false belief which he
induces in the victim. In addition, the other deceiver cannot
succeed in his aim, and so cannot be a deceiver, unless the
victim appreciates this incompatibility. And when we transpose
this feature of the model to self—deception, we get the result
that as both purposeful deceiver and as actually deceived, the
self-deceiver must appreciate the incompatibility between P and
not-P, and yet as deceiver he knows and believes the truth that
not-P while as deceived he believes that P, and this entails
that he does not appreciate the incompatibility between P and
not-P.

For reasons which will become clear later, I shall call
this inconsistent result 'the miggg paradox of self-deception'.
I believe that Demos sensed the minor paradox of self-deception

as being bound up with his analysis, and that this paradox lies

20

behind his saying that the self-deceiver's holding of incompatible
beliefs seems to be logically impossible. He tries to ward off
the paradox which he sensed by hypothesizing that the self-
deceiver does not notice or attend to the truth that not-P. But
if the foregoing argument is correct, this move cannot work. The
statement that the self-deceiver appreciates the incompatibility
is implied by the modeling of self-deception on a certain form
of other-deception, and the only way to eliminate this statement
is to reject that modeling. Demos, on the other hand, tries to
remove the statement by adding £2 the modeling, and so at best
he could only succeed in repeating one of the inconsistent
statements making up the paradox, without eliminating the other
statement.

At this point the claim that someone cannot hold two
incompatible beliefs and appreciate their incompatibility may
be met with more skepticism than before, since one way of getting
* Demos out of difficulty would be to deny this claim. First, it
might be asked that some argument be given to back up this claim,
since it was introduced without any backing.

Well, suppose that in the course of a discussion, X were
to sincerely assert that Q. Not only does he assert it, but he
argues convincingly for it. An hour later, without at all having
changed his mind, he sincerely affirms another statement that R
and defends it, again with a convincing argument. But Q and R are

incompatible. If we appreciate this incompatibility and have taken

21

the discussion all in, we are likely to be somewhat puzzled and
will want some explanation for X's inconsistent assertions.
In searching for this explanation, we rule out dishonesty on his
part, since he seemed to be sincere, he lacked any motive or
apparent reason for dishonesty, and he was in general scrupulously
honest. Thus we could not conclude, for example, that he had
affirmed and defended the proposition that R without caring that
it was incompatible with his earlier assertion, and solely for
the purposes of displaying his powers of argument, or to defeat
the argument of someone he disliked, or to ingratiate himself
with someone whose favor he sought and who would be offended if
he denied that R.

We also rule out the possibility that he mis-spoke when
he asserted that Q or when he affirmed that R. The fact that he
defended both propositions with arguments militates against
this possibility, and we confirm that he did not mis-speak by
asking him if he meant to stand by both propositions. Further,
we rule out the possibility that he did not understand what he
was asserting or what he was affirming. These propositions
are not flagrantly incompatible, and so even if he did not
appreciate their incompatibility, this would not show that he
does not understand them. Moreover, the fact that he argues
for both of them so well, knew what evidence counted in favor of
them and what evidence counted against them, knew how to meet

and defeat the objections offered against them, tends very strongly

22

to show that he understood what he was asserting and affirming.
Finally, the possibility that he changed his mind is ruled out
both by the fact that he did not remark on such a change, and by
the fact that when asked if he stood by both propositions, he
answered affirmatively.

What alternatives are left open to us now? It seems to
me that there are none. By ruling out all of the above possibilities,
we can only conclude that he believes both that Q and that R. But
once we have concluded this, then mustn't we also conclude that
he does not appreciate the incompatibility between Q and R? It
seems to me that we must. Suppose that we found out that he had
appreciated the incompatibility all along. Wouldn't this auto-
matically rule out that he believed both that Q and that R, and
throw us back on one of our earlier alternatives, say, that he
was being dishonest, or that he mis-spoke in the case of one of
these propositions, or that he had changed his mind?

The above argument seems very persuasive to me, but to
counter it, it might be objected that fully appreciating the
incompatibility between Q and R is simply knowing that Q and R are
incompatible. But one can certainly believe that P, believe
that not-P and know that S, where S is a proposition which does
not express any logical relation between P and not-P. So why
cannot one know or believe that not-P, believe that P, and know that
P and not-P are incompatible? Does the fact that the latter
proposition concerns a particular logical relation between P and

not-P count for so much?

23

I believe it does. We can gain a better understanding of
this if we go further into the other—deceiver's reliance on his
victim's appreciation of the incompatibility between P and not—P.
The other—deceiver does not just count on this to insure that his
victim will be kept ignorant once he believes that P. He also
relies on it during the course of inducing in the victim the
belief that P. If the victim initially believes that not-P,
the deceiver attempts to change his mind. And, because the
victim appreciates that P and not-P are incompatible, everything
which the deceiver does to make it more credible in the victim's
eyes that P simultaneously serves to make it less credible in his
eyes that not-P. Otherwise the victim could not be truly said
to appreciate the incompatibility between P and not-P. Similarly,
everything that the deceiver does to make it seem less credible
to the victim that not-P serves at the same time to make it more
credible that P. The victim's appreciation of the incompatibility
between P and not-P is like the hub of a wheel which, if the
deceiver is successful in his aims, he manages to turn 180 degrees.
If the victim neither believes that P nor believes that not-P
at the outset, then the deceiver does not have to turn the wheel
so far, say only 90 degrees. And if the victim already believes
that P, the deceiver does not have to turn the wheel at all - he
tries to lock it in place.

Thus one's appreciation of the incompatibility between

two propositions is not at all like one's knowledge that S, where

24

S is a non-logical proposition. If the propositions that P and
not-P turn in one's mind around one's knowledge that S' in the
way they turn in the victim's mind around his appreciation that P
and not-P are incompatible, this could only be because 3' i§_

the proposition that P and not-P are incompatible.

At this point someone might want to lodge a quite different
objection to the charge that Demos' analysis is inconsistent. For
I have claimed - a claim which I shall argue for at the beginning
of Chapter Two - that when one person aims to deceive another by
inducing a false belief in him, the would-be deceiver must
necessarily aim at keeping his victim from knowing or believing
the truth, and he only succeeds in deceiving the victim if he
does keep him from knowing or believing the truth. It was when
we transposed this claim onto self-deception that the inconsistency
arose. Yet one cannot find this claim mentioned in Demos'
analysis of deception, nor is it entailed by Demos' analysis.

He explicitly states that the deceiver aims only at inducing

a false belief in his victim and that he succeeds if this false
belief is induced in the victim. And one cannot get the
inconsistency which I have called the 'minor paradox' of self-
deception by applying this statement to self-deception. So, even
though my claim about the deceiver's aims and the conditions

of deception are perhaps correct, and even though Demos perhaps
implicitly recognized their correctness and saw dimly the minor

paradox which results from applying this claim to self-deception,

25

it seems unfair to charge his analysis of self-deception with
inconsistency when the inconsistency does not strictly follow
from his analysis.

I agree with this objection that the minor paradox of
self-deception, however keenly we feel it in connection with
his analysis, does not follow from his analysis, and we only
sense it there when we read into the analysis something of what
we know about the deceiver's essential aims or the conditions
necessary for someone's being deceived. But noting this only
reveals a quite different difficulty which confronts Demos'
analysis of self-deception. The concept of self-deception, quite
independently of the other-deception model, requires us to
suppose that the self-deceiver appreciates the incompatibility
throughout the entire period that he is deceiving himself. If a
person who believes that not-P also, failing to appreciate the
incompatibility, believes that P, then we would expect him to
assert, affirm, and defend both propositions, and certainly we
would not expect him to assert, affirm, or defend one of them
while refusing to assert, affirm, or defend the other. Yet the
latter is typical of the self-deceiver, and it is hard to see
how this could be if the self-deceiver does not appreciate the
incompatibility between P and not-P.

This particular problem is only symptomatic of a much
larger difficulty. Invariably the self-deceiver satisfies all

or most of the behavioral tests for appreciating the incompatibility

26

between P and not-P, including the strongest of such tests.
Just as he consistently affirms that P and refuses to affirm that
not-P, so he will assent to the proposition that P and not-P are
incompatible, he will take arguments in favor of P as arguments
against not-P, he will attack arguments in favor of not-P and
offer arguments to show that P, he will try to discount evidence
favoring not-P and attempt to muster evidence in favor of P.

In many cases of self-deception, the suggestion that the
self-deceiver does not appreciate the incompatibility between P
and not-P could only strike one as utterly incredible, and so
for those cases at least, Demos' analysis presents a false picture.
But my point here is not merely that in some cases of self-
deception, the self-deceiver appreciates the incompatibility. It
is much more important to note that the connection between a
person's being a self-deceiver and his appreciating the
incompatibility is not a contingent one. We would not be willing
to apply the concept of self-deception to someone who believes that
P and believes that not-P, and thus who behaves in the expected
way, affirming, asserting, and defending both P and not-P. Unless
someone refuses to assert, affirm, and defend one of these propositions
while asserting, affirming, and defending the other, or at least
gives us the impression that he would behave in this way under
appropriate circumstances, we would not be willing to describe
him as a self-deceiver. The only conclusion that we can reasonably

draw from all of this is that it is a part of the concept of

27

self-deception - as a necessary condition - that the self-
deceiver fully appreciates the incompatibility between P and
not-P.

Thus Demos' analysis of self-deception can never apply to
any case of self-deception since it contains the negation of a
necessary condition of self-deception. His statement that the
self-deceiver believes both P and not-P entails that the self-
~deceiver does not appreciate the incompatibility between P and
not-P, and his analysis can be made to apply to cases of self-
deception only at the price of inconsistency.

Moreover, this same objection will apply to any account
which, like Demos', holds that the self-deceiver knows or
believes that not-P while also believing that P. Such accounts
of self-deception may with propriety be called 'conflict theories'
of self-deception, because they all ascribe to the self-deceiver
a conflict between what he knows and what he believes. One
such conflict theory has been offered by David Pugmire in his
article, "Strong' Self—Deception'.15 Pugmire rejects much of
Demos' analysis of self-deception, including Demos' suggestion
that the self-deceiver purposely 'induces' a false belief in him-
self, and also Demos' view that the self—deceiver is able to
retain conflicting beliefs because he fails to notice or attend
to one of the beliefs.

Pugmire does retain that part of Demos account which

claims that the self-deceiver holds incompatible beliefs, and

he goes on to ask:

28

What is it, then, about one (grudging) belief
which precludes a contrary (cherished) belief? Logic
prevents them from both being true, but not from being
heid.16

His answer is that one makes the grudging belief "abstract" by

not attending to the details of the belief, and here by 'details'
he tells us that he does not mean the evidence for the belief, but
details of the content of the belief.17

The importance of this capacity to render a belief
abstract by keeping in abeyance many details of what
makes it true, is that attention to these is what annuls
any contrary belief. For, again, it is not absurd to
hold conflicting beliefs as such...

...a man who has lost his third government job for
alledged incompetence may nurse his self-respect by
occupying himself with thoughts of the unfair adversi-
ties and mitigating circumstances peculiar to each job
and thus keep alive the belief that incompetence was
never the reason. At the same time he is haunted by
the thought, or awareness (not, in this example, merely
the fear) that the charge is correct. At the back of
his mind he realizes all along that he is incompetent,
but while this may give him a sinking feeling even when
he reflects that his excuses are, after all, true, it is
remote and lacks the force to destroy altogether his.faith
in the excuses. 'Back of the mind' and 'remote' here
signify that he believes in, or accepts, his incompetence,
but without allowing the full weight of this belief to
come to bear. How does he manage this? By shrinking
from reminisence about the wrong things. By committing
to recall the particulars of the history of painful
episodes - tardiness, misplaced documents, grievously
mistaken briefs submitted, warnings, the dismissals -
which lurk, half obscure, in his memory. To delve into
these memories fully and thus grant equal attention to
all the acknowledged facts about his past, would be
finally to expel the stubborn belief in his past
competence, or else he would be mad.18

This passage is interesting, for, as we shall see later,
it contains a vivid account of how the self-deceiver controls his

thoughts and his consciousness in the face of his knowledge of the

29

truth. But it is confusing too, for it seems that what the
self-deceiver does ignore after all is the evidence favoring

the repugnant belief, and not only the details of the content

of the belief. Moreover, Pugmire tacitly assumes that the self-
deceiver appreciates the incompatibility between his beliefs,
else how could he expect that attending to the evidence in favor
of one of the beliefs would serve to expel the contrary belief?
Finally, the whole process of rendering a belief 'abstract'
seems to be directed, as with Demos' suggestion that the self—
deceiver does not attend to one of his beliefs, towards making
clear that the self-deceiver does not appreciate the incom-
patibility between his beliefs. And, since Pugmire claims that
the self-deceiver holds incompatible beliefs, this does follow
from his analysis. However, it only does so at the expense of
making his analysis inapplicable to any cases of self-deception,
since a necessary condition of self-deception is that the self-

deceiver appreciate the relevant incompatibilities.19

CHAPTER TWO. Self-Deception and Other Deception.
Section 1.

We noted earlier that the self-deceiver necessarily aims
at keeping the deceived from knowing or believing the truth, and
he is successful in deceiving his victim only if the victim is kept
from knowing or believing the truth. This does not mean, of course,
that deceivers achieve their aims only by means of inducing a false
belief in their victim, for there are many other ways of deceiving
someone than inducing a false belief in him: through various sorts
of concealment, through pretending, through failing to mention
something which one knows the deceived would take an interest in
and would want to know.

This view of deception contrasts strongly with Demos' own
view, which maintains that purposely inducing a false belief in
the deceived is essential to deception and which omits altogether
mention of purposely keeping the deceived from knowing of believing
the truth as a necessary condition of deception. This error in
Demos' analysis of deception does not directly affect his analysis
of self-deception, but it does greatly diminish the value of his
explanation of why self-deception strikes us as being paradoxical.
Before showing why this is so, however, I shall try to make good
the claim that Demos' analysis of other-deception is mistaken.

Suppose that Johnny has broken his mother's prized antique

vase. He hides the pieces, and stands between his mother and the

30

31

table on which the vase stood, thus blocking her view of the table.
As a consequence of his doing these things, Johnny's mother does
not know or believe that her vase has been broken. Moreover,
assuming that his mother appreciates the incompatibility between
her vase's being broken and its not being broken, the mother may
continue to believe that her vase has not been broken, and we can
say that she does so in consequence of Johnny's actions, since
had he not done these things she would have learned that her vase
was broken, and, appreciating the incompatibility, would cease to
believe that her vase was not broken. This is not, however, to
say that Johnny 'induced' the belief in her, because she already
had the belief prior to Johnny's effort to deceive her..

This is clearly a case of purposeful deception. The example
can be manipulated to show that the deceived believing a false-
hood is not a necessary condition of deception. Let us suppose
that Johnny is a clumsy and careless boy, prone to accidents.
Knowing this, his mother is afraid to leave him alone in the house
with her prized vase, but on this particular day she feels it is
necessary to go out of the house and leave him unattended in it.
‘She returns home full of apprehension, not at all sure that her
vase has survived her absence, and, indeed, suspecting the worst -
suspecting, that is, that misfortune in the guise of her awkward
and careless son has overtaken her dear vase.

Let us further add that Johnny broke the vase in his mother's

absence. He hid the pieces, and when his mother returned he

32

anticipated her concern and her intention of immediately checking
up on the vase. ‘He met his mother at the door, engaged her in
conversation and managed to unobtrusively precede her into the
room where the ill-fated vase had been kept. Moreover, fortune
was smiling on Johnny, for during his mother's absence, the new
set of curtains which she had ordered and long awaited had arrived.
Johnny mentioned the delivery, and this distracted her both from
her intention of checking on the vase and from noticing the obvious-
ness with which Johnny was positioning himself between her and the
table on which the vase had stood. She hurried to the new drapes
and spent the rest of the afternoon putting them up.

Again a case of deception. But certainly it would be wrong
to say that Johnny's mother believed that her vase was not broken,
for she had no such belief. Both before returning home and
afterwards, she neither believed that the vase was broken nor
believed that it was not broken. She wasn't sure one way or the
other, and this caused her concern. Johnny managed to remove
the concern by replacing it with a new and very different one,
but he obviously did not make her more certain than before that her
vase had not been broken. So Johnny's mother did not believe
that her vase was not broken, yet Johnny did deceive her, for he
aimed at and succeeded in keeping her from knowing or believing the
truth.

That keeping the deceived from knowing or believing the

truth is a necessary condition of deception can also be shown by

 

 

 

 

£3

33

manipulating the example. If we suppose that Johnny's mother
does, in spite of his efforts to prevent it, learn that her vase
has been broken upon returning home, then we cannot say that
Johnny deceived her, though it would be true that he attempted to
deceive her. Or, if we suppose that she does not know or believe

that her vase was broken, but that this is not a consequence of

 

Johnny's efforts - because, say, she was distracted from the first,
was not concerned about the vase, had no intention of checking up
on it, did not even look in the direction of the table on which it
had stood - then we cannot truly say that Johnny has deceived her,
though again he attempted to deceive her.

The errors in Demos' account of other-deception greatly
diminish the value of his explanation of why self-deception strikes
us as paradoxical. Had Demos not commited these errors, then he
might have been able to bring to light in a much clearer way the
minor paradox of self-deception. Demos was right in thinking that
we do tacitly model self-deception on other-deception. Once we
have done so, the minor paradox of self-deception follows, and
we often feel its bite. However, this is by no means the only nor
the most troublesome paradox we feel in connection with self-
deception, but because Demos had misconstrued other-deception, one
does not even find a hint in his explanation of these other
paradoxes. There are, in fact, two such paradoxes, which I shall
call, respectively, 'the first major paradox of self-deception',
and, 'the second major paradox of self-deception'.

We can clearly display the first major paradox of self-

deception if we transpose the corrected analysis of other-deception

34

onto self-deception, and then assume, as Demos does, that the self-
deceiver knows and continues to know the truth. It follows
immediately that the self-deceiver both knows and does not know
the truth, since as deceiver he knows the truth, and as deceived,
he is kept from knowing the truth. What I am suggesting is that
we tacitly model self-deception on other-deception, we feel compelled
to do so, and this leads us directly to the contradictory conclusion -
the first major paradox of self-deception - that the self-deceiver
knows and does not know the truth. We tacitly, and sometimes
explicitly, recognize this contradiction. Once we have done so,
,we have only two alternatives.

First, we can deny that self-deception ever does occur on
the grounds that it is logically impossible for anyone to deceive
himself. At most, a person could only attempt to deceive himself,
but he could never succeed since this would entail his knowing
and not knowing the truth. This alternative is closed off to us,
however, because we recognize that there are self-deceivers, that
people not only attempt to deceive themselves, but frequently
succeed in doing so.

The second alternative would be to deny the premises from
which the contradiction obtains, that is, to reject the modeling
of self-deception on other-deception. This alternative also seems
to be closed off to us, though, since we feel strongly compelled
to model self-deception on other-deception. Part of the difficulty

is that the modeling is tacit. We do not recognize that we are

35

modeling self-deception on other-deception. But this is not the
whole of it, for the construal of self—deception on the model
of other-deception seems to be demanded by certain features of the
self—deceiver's behavior, thought, and circumstances. These
features confirm both sides of the contradiction that the self?
deceiver knows and does not know the truth, and even confirm that
he purposely keeps himself from knowing the truth. This compels
us to model self-deception on other-deception, to think of it in
a certain way, and because we feel compelled to think of it in
this way, we view the contradiction as following from the nature of
selfrdeception by logical necessity. Then, because we do see
it as a matter of logical necessity, we do not recognize that we
are only thinking of it in a certain way, on the model of other-
deception, and we do not recognize alternatives to this way of
thinking, we do not recognize that the contradiction can be
eliminated by changing the way we think about self-deception., The
result is that we view the self-deceiver as someone with impossible
aims who achieves the impossible. We are left in a state of
tension, for we feel that self—deception cannot exist, and yet we
must also recognize that it does exist. It is when we are in this
state of tension that self-deception strikes us as deeply and
inherently paradoxical.

Freud displays this tension in one of his earliest psycho-

«analytic works, Studien fiber Hysterie, which he co—authored with

 

.Josef Breuer. In conjunction with several essays on hysteria, the

52’

(n

tn

36

book presents a number of case histories, all but one by Freud.

The remarks Freud makes in the course of one of these concern us
most here. As Freud tells us, Miss Lucy R was a governess for

the children of a factory superintendent whose wife had died and
left him a widow. She came to Freud complaining of mild depression,
lassitude, and being persistently tormented, by certain smells, most
noticeably the odor of burnt pudding. Freud took these 'subjective
sensations' of smell to be hallucinatory and diagnosed them to be
symptoms of hysteria. In trying to determine their origin, Freud
learned from Miss Lucy R that the smell of burnt pudding had an
objective basis, and had first occurred two months earlier, when she
was teaching the children to cook. A letter arrived from her mother,
but the children came running.out of the room and playfully snatched
it from her hand, refusing to give it back to her. While they

were playing, the pudding they were cooking began to burn, and

gave off an intense odor.

Freud also learned that at the same time, Miss Lucy R had

been planning to leave her position as governess. She had had
'some difficulties with the housekeeper, the maid, and the cook,

and when she complained to the father and to the grandfather of

the children, she did not receive the support she expected, so she
liad given them her resignation. The children's father reluctantly
éaccepted her resignation, asking her to reconsider it for two

vweeks before making a final decision. It was during this period

c>f time that the letter from her mother arrived, and as she intended

tun return to live with her mother, the letter reminded her of her

37

intention. At the same time she was touched by the affection
which the children were displaying towards her, and saddened at
the thought of leaving them.

Yet Freud did not think that this connection between her
feelings and the odor of burnt pudding could adequately explain
her hysterical symptoms. There was as yet nothing in this story
to explain why these contrary affects - her sorrow at leaving the
children, and the mortification she felt from her treatment by
members of the household - should be converted into hysterical
symptoms. Freud writes:

Now I already knew from the analysis of similar
cases that before hysteria can be acquired for the first
time one essential condition must be fulfilled: an idea
must intentionally bg_§epressed from consciousness and
excluded from associative modification.

In my view this intentional repression is also the
basis for the conversion, whether total or partial, of the
sum of excitement. The sum of excitation, being cut off
from psychical association, finds its way all the more
easily along the wrong path to somatic innervation. The
basis for the repression itself can only be a feeling of
unpleasure, the incompatibility between the single idea to
be repressed and the dominant mass of ideas constituting
the ego. The repressed idea takes its revenge, however,
by becoming pathogenic.

I accordingly inferred from Miss Lucie H's having
succombed to hysterical conversion at the moment in question
that among the determinants of the trauma there must have
been one which she had sought intentionally to leave in
obscurity and had made efforts to forget. If her fondness
for the children and her sensitiveness on the subject of
the other members of the household were taken together,
only one conclusion could be reached. I was bold enough
to inform my patient of this interpretation. I said to
herz'I cannot think that these are all the reasons for
your feelings about the children. I believe that you
are really in love with your employer, the Director,
though perhaps without being aware of it yourself, and that
you have a secret hope of taking their mother's place in
actual fact. And then we must remember your sensitiveness
towards the servants after having lived with them peacefully

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

th:

he

Se

38

for years. You're afraid of their having some inkling
of your hopes and making fun of you.‘

She answered in her usual laconic fashion: 'Yes,
I think that's true.‘ 'But if you knew you loved your
employer, why didn't you tell me?‘ - 'I didn't know -
or rather, I didn't want to know. I wanted to drive
it out of my head and not think of it again; and I be-
lieve latterly I have been successful.‘1

There are two things which are especially worthy of note at
this point. First, Miss Lucy R has apparently been deceiving
herself about her love for her employer and her hopes towards him.
Secondly, as Freud concludes, she apparently knew that she was in
love with her employer and that she harbored these hopes. Even
though she at first denies this - 'I didn't know' - she immediately
retracts this statement, saying, 'or rather, I didn't want to
know.‘

To the last paragraph quoted above, Freud indexes an
interesting footnote. The footnote indicates the extent to which
he himself had been thinking of self-deception on the model of
other-deception and the puzzlement which he felt as a result.

I have never managed to give a better description
than this of the strange state of mind in which one knows
and does not know a thing at the same time. It is clearly
impossible to understand it unless one has been in such a
state oneself. I myself have had a remarkable experience
of this sort, which is still clearly before me. If I
try to recollect what went on in my mind at the time I can
get hold of very little. What happened was that something
did not fit in at all with my expectation; yet I did not
allow what I saw to disturb my fixed plan in the least,
though the perception should have put a stop to it. I was
unconscious of any contradiction in this; nor was I aware
of my feelings of repulsion, which nevertheless must un-
doubtedly have been responsible for the perception
producing no psychical effect. I was afflicted with that
blindness g£_the seeing eye, which is so astonishing in
the attitude of mothers to their daughters, husbands to
their wives, and rulers to their favorites.2

 

39

This passage leaves little doubt that the "strange state of
mind" of which Freud speaks is self-deception,"that blindness of
the seeing eye," and it is clear that he regarded Miss Lucie R as
being in this state. What is remarkable about the passage is that
Freud chooses to describe this 'state' in a contradictory fashion,
as a state "in which one knows and does not know a thing at the
same time." I suggest that the reason he chose this contradictory
mode of description is because he had been thinking of self-
deception on the model of other-deception.

This hypothesis is born out by other parts of the passages

quoted above, and by the views that Freud elaborated in Studien

 

fiber Hysterie, In these passages we find Freud already appealing

to embryonic concepts of resistance and defence, and to the concept

 

of repression. These concepts were to mature and play a central
role in his later, more fully developed theory of the unconscious.
As Freud puts it in Studien fiber Hysteria, resistance comes
about because "a psychical force in the patients" has "opposed the
pathogenic idea from becoming conscious (being remembered)."3 This
psychic force had "driven the pathogenic idea out of association
[with the ideas united in the ego] and was not opposing its return
to memory."4 This psychic force Freud termed 'repression', and at
this point in the development of his ideas, Freud thought of the
repression of such an idea as intentional and conscious on the part
of the patient, as "a 'not wanting to know' - a not wanting which

:might be to a greater or less extent conscious."5

40

Moreover, repression has a motive, a purpose, and its purpose
is defence against an unbearable idea. Freud found that repressed
ideas "were all of a distressing nature, calculated to arouse
the affects of shame, of self-reproach, of psychical pain, and the
feeling of being harmed; they were all of a kind that one would
prefer not to have experienced, and that one would rather forget."6
These painful affects will be felt by the patient if he allows
the unbearable idea to become associated with the rest of the ideas
which constitute the ego. Freud speaks of an idea which evokes

such a "feeling of unpleasure"7 when united with the ego as

incompatible with the ego, and this is why he speaks of the dis-

 

agreeable feeling itself as an 'incompatibility' between the idea
and the ego.8 In order to prevent feeling the unpleasure, the
patient represses the idea, thus preventing it from becoming

united with the rest of the ideas in the ego, and thus preventing
the idea from becoming conscious. In short, repression is a defence
against feeling the painful affect which accompanies an idea.

But the patient must pay a price for this defence, In
hysteria the painful affect (which Freud thought of as containing
a quantitative element, a 'sum of excitation') does not simply
cease to exist even though it is stifled and prevented from
expression through speech or action - the normal roads to "somatic
innervation".9 Rather, on Freud's view, the sum of excitation is
squite literally converted into the hysterical symptoms, e.g., into

'hallucinatory smells of burnt pudding. Thus the sum of excitation

41

is quite literally the 'stuff' from which hysterical symptoms
are made, and in exchange for not feeling unpleasure, the patient
must put up with the symptoms.10

Thus hysteria is always bound up with self-deception. The
hysterical patient knows something, e.g., that she is in love with
her master, but consciousness of what is known is unbearable, i.e.,
is accompanied by unpleasure. To avoid this disagreeable feeling,
the patient represses the idea, crowds it out of his mind, and so
enters into that "peculiar state in which one knows something
and at the same time does not know it."

To be fair to Freud, I do not think he intended this statement
to be construed literally. There is implicit in his view a
solution to the first major paradox of self-deception, for repression
need not be construed as 'not knowing' in anything more than a'
metaphorical sense of 'not knowing'. Freud indicates that he has
such a solution in mind, for he tells us that "The not knowing‘
of the hysterics was really a 'not wanting to know' - a not wanting
which might be to a greater or less extent conscious."ll

My aim here has been to show that Freud was puzzled about
self-deception, that the source of his puzzlement was the first
major paradox of self-deception, that the paradox arose because he
‘was thinking of self-deception on the model of other-deception, and
thus that for him there was a problem for which the above remark
,provides a solution. That he was puzzled is shown by the fact that
‘he chose to describe self-deception in such seemingly self-

contradictory terms, that he speaks of it as a "strange state" -

 

I ..__

 

 

SUIT

soul

lies:
5 5

(1“

al

of

how

him

do

fo

re

ti.

"(j

42

surely an expression of perplexity - and by his saying that it
could only be "understood" if one had oneself been in such a state.
Apparently his conviction that this state even exists had been
difficult to obtain, and he anticipated that others would encounter
a like difficulty.

Clearly Freud's perplexity has nothing to do with the attribution
of incompatible beliefs to his hysterical patients. This illustrates
how far off the track were Demos and the philosophers who followed
him in locating the paradoxes of self-deception in the seeming
impossibility of holding incompatible beliefs. This could not help
but leave a deep mark on the discussion to follow. Philosophers
do not attempt to elucidate or analyze concepts aimlessly or simply
for the fun or interest of it. One, though only one,of their
reasons for analysis and elucidation is that a concept is perplexing,
that it seems to be bound up in paradox. The aim of elucidation
and analysis is to remove the perplexity and the paradox. But the
first step in doing this must always be to make explicit precisely
what is paradoxical about the concept, and the next step must be
to make clear what it is about the concept which invites a
paradoxical construal of it. Then, and only then, can the paradox
Jbe removed and an analysis of the concept be provided which does
justice to the misleading features of the concept without plunging
(one into perplexity.

Neither Demos nor, until Fingarette, any of the philosophers

Vvho followed him questioned the view that self-deception is

in!

of

('1‘

43

paradoxical because of the seeming impossibility of holding
incompatible beliefs. The consequence of this is that in much
of their work, paradox and analysis pass one another by. For the
most part these philosophers were oblivious to the features of
self-deception which invites one to construe it on the model of
other-deception. The result was predictable. Their analyses of
self-deception do not do justice to these features, and little
headway was made toward resolving the major paradoxes of self-
deception. Moreover, even when, as with Demos and Pugmire, their
attention was drawn to some of these features, they were misconstrued,
and seen, for example, as part of an effort which makes possible
the holding of incompatible beliefs.

Demos' misconstrual of other-deception contributed directly
to this state of affairs. Had he provided an adequate account of it,
the first major paradox of self-deception would have been glaringly
obvious to him and all concerned. Yet no one who followed Demos,
except John King-Farlow, questioned Demos' treatment of other-
deception, and King-Farlow does not raise the crucial objections

mentioned above.12

44
Section 2.

What is it about self-deception which so strongly inclines us
to view it on the model of other-deception? Or, to put the question
in another way, what are the features of self-deception which
compel us to view it within the Conceptual frame-work of other-
deception, and to describe and analyze it in the terminology
appropriate to other-deception? Indeed, why do we want to speak of
self~deception as 'deception' at all?

Part of the answer to these questions is given in the fact
that some of our criteria for saying that someone is deceiving him-
self are that he knows the truth, that he is feigning ignorance of
the truth, pretending not to know it, and, if he gives the impression
of believing the contradictory or contrary of what he knows to be
true, that he is only pretending to believe it and does not really
believe it.

To see this, consider the following example, the case of N
who has been deceiving himself in 'thinking' that his wife has been
faithful to him. Let us consider just what our grounds for the
saying that he is deceiving himself might be. First, we should
typically know that N is quite aware of a large body of evidence
which points strongly, perhaps overwhelmingly, to his wife's
unfaithfulness. Not only does this supply fuel for our suspicion
that N knows that his wife has been unfaithful, but it supports our

view that N is feigning ignorance of this, that he is only pretending

45

not to know that she has been unfaithful, and that he is pretending
to believe that she has remained faithful to him.

Note, however, that it is not merely a matter of fact,
perhaps coincidental, that these grounds support the claim that N
knows that his wife has been unfaithful as well as the claim that N
is deceiving himself. If for some reason these grounds ceased to
support the former claim, they would automatically cease to support
the latter claim as well. Thus, for example, if it became clear to
us that N does not appreciate the force of the evidence, as he would
have to if his knowledge of the evidence were to provide support for
the claim that he knows that his wife has been unfaithful to him,
then not only does his awareness of the evidence cease to support
the claim that he knows that she has been unfaithful, but it also
ceases to support the claim that he is deceiving himself.

This shows that these grounds are relevant to the attribution
of self-deception because they are relevant to the attribution of
knowledge. Moreover, this connection does not exist because we
know, as a matter of observation and experience, that all or most
self-deceivers know the truth. For unless there are some grounds
such as those mentioned above, or those to be mentioned below, which
do support the attribution of knowledge, there is no justification
at all for making an attribution of self-deception as opposed to
an attribution of simple ignorance and belief in a falsehood. This
can only mean that knowledge of the truth is a necessary condition

of self-deception.

46

In addition to the above grounds, we might also have
discovered that N consistently avoids or tries to avoid situations
in which he would or is likely to become aware of further evidence
that his wife has been unfaithful, e.g., he tries to avoid situations
in which he might surprise his wife and her lover alone together.
Few people would deny, I think, that this is relevant and supports
the attribution of self-deception. But here again, the question
is what makes his avoidance of these situations relevant. And the
answer is that it supports the contention that N is identifying
these situations as such, and avoids or tries to avoid them because
each fresh piece of evidence of which he becomes aware makes it
more difficult for him to maintain the pretense that he believes
his wife to have been faithful and does not know of her infidelity
to him. But if, for example, we found out that the only reason he
avoided these situations is because in each case he believed that
he would meet up with a woman whom he intensely despised, then his
avoidance of these situations would cease to support the claim
that he is deceiving himself.

The fellowing passage, pointed out by Martin Benjamin of
Michigan State University, aptly illustrates the self-deceiver's
avoidance of evidence situations. The passage is from Albert

Speer's memoirs, Inside the Third Reich.

 

One day, sometime in the summer of 1944, my friend
Karl Hanke, the Gauleiter of Lower Silesia, came to see me.
In earlier years he had told me a great deal about the
Polish and French campaigns, had spoken of the dead and
wounded, the pain and agonies, and in talking about these
things had shown himself a man of sympathy and directness.
This time, sitting in the green leather easy chair in my

47

office, he seemed confused and spoke falteringly,
with many breaks. He advised me never to accept an
invitation to inspect a concentration camp in Upper
Silesia. Never, under any circumstances. He had
seen something there which he was not permitted to
describe and moreover could not describe.

I did not query him, I did not query Himmler, I
did not query Hitler, I did not speak with personal
friends. I did not investigate--for I did not want to
know what was happening there. Hanke must have been
speaking of Auschwitz. During those few seconds, while
Hanke was warning me, the whole responsibility had become
a reality again. Those seconds were uppermost in my
mind when I stated to the international court at the
Nuremburg Trial that as an important member of the leader-
ship of the Reich, I had to share the total responsibility
for all that had happened. For from that moment on, I
was inescapably contaminated morally; from fear of dis-
covering something which might have made me turn from my
course, I had closed my eyes. This deliberate blindness
outweighs whatever good I may have done or tried to do
in the last period of the war. Those activities shrink
to nothing in the face of it. Because I failed at that
time, I still feel, to this day, responsible for Auschwitz
in a wholly personal sense.13

Speer's confidence also echoes the cryptic confession of self-
deception made by Freud in the footnote quoted on page 37.

If our example is a typical one, there will be a third form
of evidence which supports the attribution of self-deception to
N, which I shall call 'bad acting'. What ties this otherwise quite
heterogeneous form of evidence together and makes it supportive of
the claim that N is deceiving himself is that it represents a flaw
in N's portrayal of himself as a man who doesn't know of his wife's
infidelity and who believes that she has been faithful. N tries to
say and do only what he would say and do if he did not know that his
wife has been unfaithful to him, and if he believed her to be faithful.

But unlike a man who really acts in such ignorance and on the basis

48

of such a belief, N must guide his behavior in conformity to his
conception of how he would behave if he were such a man. If his
conception is flawed or unrealistic, or his ability to realize it
limited, or if he is prevented from exercising this ability or
forgets to do so, then this will be reflected in his behavior.

As I said above, such evidence is otherwise quite diverse.
It ranges from the ways in which he treats his wife to the things
which he says and the ways he says them, to aspects of his physical
bearing and composure. Thus, e.g., N may become intensely angered
at his wife over a very trifling matter. Because this not only
represents a departure from the way he treated her prior to her
infidelity, but represents a departure from the way we expect some-
one to respond to such a trifle, we may suspect that the trifle
is only being used as a pretext by N, that the real cause of his
anger is his wife's infidelity, and that he has seized this opportunity
to vent the anger and take some small measure of revenge. It is
true, of course, that this need not necessarily be the reason for
his angry outburst; he may, e.g., be taking out on his wife anger
at a fellow employee or his boss. But we must keep in mind that for
us at present it is not a question of whether the interpretation we
place on his anger is ultimately the correct one. What matters is
that it is because we can place such an interpretation on his anger
without its being ruled out by other considerations, that it supports
the claim that N is deceiving himself. If we believed otherwise,

if we believed, e.g., that N was just taking out on his wife anger

49

at his boss because she is a convenient target, then we should no
longer regard this episode as supporting the claim that N is

deceiving himself.

There are also aspects of N's behavior which might be dubbed
'overacting'. Here N resembles Sartre's waiter.

Let us consider this waiter in the cafe. His move-
ment is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little
too rapid. He comes forward toward the patrons with a step
a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly;
his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too
solicitous for the order of the customer.’ Finally there
he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible
stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his
tray with the recklessness of a tightrope walker by putting
it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium
which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of
the arm and hand. All his behavior seems to us a game. He
applies himself to chaining his movements as if they were
mechanisms, the one regulating the other; his gestures and
even his voice seem to be mechanisms; he gives himself
the quickness and pitiless rapidity of things. He is
playing, he is amusing himself. But what is he playing?

We need not watch long before we can explain it; he is
playing at being a waiter in a cafe.14

Thus, N, in contrast to his surliness described above, may at times
appear overly considerate of his wife, overly solicitous of her
feelings and comfort, and overly congenial toward her. Again this
conflicts both with how N has treated her in the past and with our
expectations concerning how men in general treat their wives. Insofar
as we can construe N's exaggerated behavior as an attempt to cover

up his real feelings towards his wife, and ultimately his knowledge

of her infidelity, we take it to support the claim that he is

deceiving himself.

50

In this category of overacting also belong those performances
which would lead us to characterize N as "trying too hard to be
convincing". In a discussion,for example, he might seize upon
an oblique reference to marital relationships to deliver a protracted
speech about the importance of trust in marriage, culminating in
an emotional declaration of hi§_wife's trustworthiness and fidelity.
Such a performance can be both astonishing and embarrassing. It supports
the attribution of self-deception just because it tends to show that
N does not believe what he is telling us, and that he knows or
believes that his wife has been unfaithful. Indeed, even if we had
no other evidence that N was deceiving himself, we might begin to
strongly suspect it as a result of this performance, for it tends to
show that N himself does not believe her to have been faithful, and
we would regard him as in a position to know about his wife.

Finally, we should note that certain aspects of N's demeanor
and bearing support the claim that he is deceiving himself when these
can be construed as indications that he is only pretending not to
know that his wife has been unfaithful and that he is only pretending
to believe that she has been faithful. All of these aspects are
either expressions of emotion, or indicate that N is trying to
inhibit the expression of some emotion, or are recognized behavioral
or physiological concommitments of concealment, and when they are
considered in conjunction with other features of N's circumstances
and behavior, they tend to support the claim that he is deceiving
himself. Here we may include such things as blushing, perspiration,

stammering, changes in the pitch or loudness of the voice, rapid or

51

labored breathing, tapping of the fingers or feet, fidgeting,
inability to look at others, sheepish glances, fixed smiles, and
defensive postures such as drawing in the neck and shoulders,
holding the arms close to the body, crossing of the legs or holding
them tightly together.

Suppose, for example, that a friend visits N at his house.
When the friend asks the whereabouts of N's wife, who is not present,
he evokes a curious reaction in N. N blushes slightly, looks away
from the friend, and haltingly answers, in a slightly strained, low-
pitched voice, that his wife is out shopping. At the same time,
he changes position in his chair, crosses his legs, and, slightly,
almost imperceptibly, hunches in his neck and shoulders. N may not
be specifically aware of any of these reactions - feeling mainly
tension and discomfort, but the friend, who knows of the wife's
infidelity, and who would probably have difficulty saying precisely
what it was about N's response which caught his attention, may
surmise that the question caught N by surprise, that it embarrassed
him, that it aroused his anger, and that he was concealing something,
not only his anger but the truth of his wife's whereabouts. He may
further surmise that N did not believe that his wife was out shopping,
but knew or suspected that she was with her lover, was angered by
this, and was concealing both the truth of her whereabouts and his

anger.

52

Section 3.

There are other sorts of evidence we might have fer saying
that N is deceiving himself, but enough has been said to show that
the evidence we have considered is evidence because it supports
the contentions that N knows his wife has been unfaithful to him,
that he is concealing this knowledge, and that he is feigning
ignorance of her infidelity in order to conceal his knowledge of
it. These contentions state necessary conditions of self-deception.

This explains in part why we want to use the words 'deceive'
and 'deception' in describing the self-deceiver. To conceal something
is to attempt to deceive, though it is not necessarily to succeed
in deception. Hence, necessarily, the self-deceiver attempts to
deceive concerning his knowledge of the truth.

Emphasizing this raises a further and more crucial question.
From whgm_is the self-deceiver concealing his knowledge of the truth?
Whgm_is he trying to deceive? Almost everything we have said so far
about the self-deceiver would support the claim that he is concealing
his knowledge of the truth from others and that he is trying to
deceive others. We must now look at those features of self-deception
which show or tend to show that he cannot be concealing the truth or
his knowledge of the truth from others, and that he can only be
concealing these things from himself. However, I should make clear
before going into this that whereas I accept the foregoing arguments

and their conclusions, I do not accept either the arguments to follow

or their conclusions. In every case they are either fallacious arguments

S3

or they contain false premises, and in some cases these defects

are hard to conceal when the argument is made explicit. This
obviousness of their defects does not, so far as I can see, diminish
my claim that we are often persuaded by these arguments or similar
ones, for these arguments are never made explicit. They are sometimes
alluded to in the sketchiest terms or one finds hints here and there
by means of which the arguments can be reconstructed, but they have
never been laid out fully. When they are in this shadowy state,
they can be most insidiously persuasive. In trying to resolve the
paradoxes of self—deception, our task will be to expose these
arguments, and so, to refute them.

First, we should note that the self-deceiver appears not only
to be concealing his knowledge of the truth, but the truth itself.
There are a number of considerations which contribute to this
appearance. If, for example, the self-deceiver is feigning belief
in the Opposite of the truth, he will deny the truth, assert its
opposite, rationalize away the evidence supporting the truth, provide
evidence and arguments in support of the opposite, and so on. Such
behavior is typical of someone who is concealing the truth. More-
over, even if he is not feigning belief in a falsehood, his very
reticence and apparent obliviousness to the truth seem to be an
effort not to provoke attention to it or an effort to draw attention
away from it. Furthermore, in otherfdeception concealing one's
knowledge of the truth is typically secondary to concealing the truth.
One conceals one’s knowledge of the truth in order to conceal the

truth. The reason for this is obvious enough, since if X is concealing

54

the truth that Q from Y, and Y discovers that X holds or believes
that Q, then Y may begin to suspect that it is true that Q and that
X is trying to conceal this from him. And, of course, if X is
concealing the truth that Q from Y, and Y discovers that X knows
that Q, then gg_ip§2_Y will have discovered that Q, since Y cannot
know that X knows that Q unless Y knows that Q. Finally, the self-
deceiver is actually concealing the truth as well as his knowledge
of the truth in certain circumstances.

We find, then, that we can construe the self-deceiver's
behavior as an attempt not only to conceal his knowledge of the
truth but the truth itself, and this construal is reinforced by
expectations derived from typical cases of other-deception. As a
result, we want to see the self-deceiver as concealing the truth,
and this becomes, as it were, a datum for us. But now we run into
a problem. A striking feature of many cases of self-deception is
that the truth is obvious to everyone, except, apparently the self-
deceiver. In N's case, for example, everyone else may be fully
aware that N's wife has been unfaithful to him. Only N presents
the appearance of being unaware of this. But under these conditions
N would know that he has little hope of concealing his wife's
infidelity from others. There would be no point to it. So from
whom is he trying to conceal the truth and his knowledge of it? It
can only be himself.

This is reinforced from a different direction, for we have a
pretty good idea of what the self-deceiver's purposes are. Often

self-deceivers themselves confess, as did Spear and Miss Lucy R,

55

that they did not want to know the truth, either because this
knowledge was painful to them, or because they feared that knowing

it would divert them from some pre-determined purposes, courses

of action, or even a way of living. And they they also report that
in order to escape the pain or continue on their courses they "blinded"
themselves to the truth. As with Speer, they have avoided becoming
acquainted with fresh evidence, they have not sought it out, and

they did not seek out details of the truth. As a result of his
friend's visit, even if he did not know it before, Speer knew that
atrocities were being committed in a certain concentration camp in
Upper Silesia. Yet Speer carefully avoided investigation of this,

he carefully avoided further substantiation, and he carefully avoided
learning any details about what was going on in this camp. Moreover,
like Pugmire's incompetent official, the self-deceiver avoids
dwelling on the evidence and details which he does possess. If he
thinks about the matter at all, he dwells on those pieces of evidence
which support the opposite of the truth. Finally, as did Miss Lucy
R, the self-deceiver tries to "crowd" thought of the truth from his
mind, never to think of it at all. In Freud's terminology, the
self-deceiver intentionally represses the idea of the truth from his
consciousness. Henceforth, however, I shall say that the self-

deceiver suppresses the idea of the truth from his consciousness

 

or that he suppresses his thought of the truth. The reason for this
different tenm is that Freud altered his concept of repression as
his views developed, and I do not want suppression to be confused

with repression as it was to be later understood.

56

The self-deceiver, then, does not want to know the truth,
and his avoidance of evidence and details, his suppression of his
thought of the truth seem to have only one object: to blind himself
to the truth, and thus to escape the pain accompanying this knowledge
or to allow him to continue in pursuit of certain aims, on a
certain course of action, or in a particular way of life. Thus his
purposes in concealing the truth have nothing to do with deceiving
others: they are aimed at deceiving himself.

This seems even more clear when we come to focus on certain
details of the self-deceiver's suppression of his thought, for
then we find apparently conclusive reasons for saying that the
self-deceiver cannot be concealing the truth or his knowledge of
the truth from others, but must be concealing these things from
himself. Suppression of thought is an essential component of
self-deception. As we have seen the self-deceiver's behavior and
circumstances indicate he is concealing something. But from whom?
We have already seen that there are strong reasons for saying that
he is not concealing something from others, but from himself. The
self-deceiver's suppression of his thought clinches this interpretation,
for thoughts are secret and private: others may have access to the
self-deceiver's speech and behavior, but not his thoughts - unless,
of course, he wishes them to have such access, and conveys his
thoughts to them. But he need not do so, he can withhold them if
he likes, and so his suppression of his own thoughts cannot be

directed towards concealing something from others. Yet, since he is

57

concealing something, surely he must be concealing it from someone.
And since his efforts extend to those private realms to which only

he has access, he must be concealing it from himself.

 

Take Pugmire's incompetent official, for example. We can well
understand why he would withhold evidence of his incompetence from
others if he wanted to conceal his incompetence from them. But if
his purpose is to conceal his incompetence from others, why should'
he refuse to dwell on this evidence in the privacy of his thoughts?
Others will not learn of this evidence or have their attention
re-directed to it in a revealing fashion if he only thinks about it.
Hence his suppression of this evidence seems to have only one object.
We seem forced to regard him as withholding this evidence from.
himself, in an attempt to keep himself from being reminded of it,
and so from seeing it in.a revealing way.

Once we have reached this conclusion, we pass almost
immediately over into the self-deceiver's willful ignorance. In
cases of other-deception there is a difference between concealing
the truth from someone and actually deceiving him. X may conceal
the truth from Y, but this concealment may not have its intended
effect, Y may not be taken in, and Y may learn the truth in spite of
~the fact that X is concealing it from him. But in self-deception
there seems to be no room for hitches of this kind at all: to
conceal the truth from oneself, to attempt to deceive oneself, seems

to carry with it a guarantee that one will succeed.

 

 

 

 

we are
others;
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58

One of the reasons that we see such a guarantee is because
we are struck by an analogy with the concealment of the truth from
others. Suppose a man has a gun which he conceals on his body
under his clothes. No one knows that he owns a gun. The gun is
small and it is placed in a light holster to keep it from shifting.
Once he has arranged the gun in place, one cannot tell by looking
or by touching him that he has it on his person. Finally, after he
has concealed it, he does nothing to give himself away. He tells
no one that he possesses a gun or that he has it on his person. He
does not allude to it in his speech. He does not grope at it to
see if it's still in place, nor does he furtively look down at the
place where it is hidden. Under these circumstances no one could
tell by any normal means that he is carrying a gun. True, he might
slip, or one could find it by thoroughly searching him, but this
does not contradict the point being made: the point is that,
providing he does not make a slip, providing he is not searched,
and providing he continues to conceal the gun, there is no way to
tell that he has the gun on him. Normally other people would be
unable to learn this.

The situation is similar for the self-deceiver, but, because
he has such a willing victim, his position is much stronger. Having
thoroughly concealed the truth from himself, he cannot see the
truth, cannot come to know it by any normal means. Moreover, even
if he should slip or if he should come to know the truth by some
extraordinary means, this does not mean disaster, for he need only

redouble his efforts, and once again the truth will be hidden from

 

 

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by con
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59

his view, he will not know it because he is unable to see it.

This picture of the self-deceiver is thoroughly reinforced
by considerations of his thought, speech, and behavior. His
denials, his intractability in the face of evidence and argument,
the great extremes to which he goes to discount the evidence and
rationalise it away, to defeat arguments favoring the truth, his
ignoring the evidence which he does possess and avoidance of new
evidence, and the evident emotion which he shows at these times -
fear, anger, anxiety, frustration - or the evident relief which
he shows when topics broaching on the truth are dropped: these
things make us want to say that he is unable to admit the truth,
to confirm it, state it, concede it, etc. The same picture is
repeated within the private confines of his mind. We want to say
that he is unable to think on the truth, to become conscious of it.
But surely anyone who is unable to admit the truth, who is not
able to think about it or become conscious of it, to being it into
his reflections, reasonings, deliberations, and so forth, does not_
kngw_the truth. For anyone who knows the truth is able to admit
it, concede it, state it, think on it, become conscious of it. So,
as a result of his own efforts, the self-deceiver blinds himself
to the truth, cannot see it, and so does not know it.

The picture is completed by a comparison of the self-deceiver's
thought, speech, and behavior with the thought, speech, and behavior
of someone who is unquestionably ignorant of the truth. We think we

know the self-deceiver and we expect him to behave in certain ways.

 

 

 

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behave

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nah

 

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01:

60

He does not do so; he behaves in the way we would expect him to
behave if he did not know the truth. Or we think we know how
any person would behave in his situation if they knew the truth,
but the self-deceiver does not behave in these ways. He seems,
as a result, to be oblivious to the truth, the evidence, its force,
and so on. Moreover, his speech is free from allusions, references,
hints of the truth. He does not admit, concede, state, affirm,
or allow the truth. In fact, he is more likely to deny it, and
he always resists efforts to get him to do these things. Finally,
because thought of the truth does not enter his mind, the blankness
of his mind rivals the blankness of the mind of someone who is
unquestionably ignorant of the truth.

The self-deceiver does not know the truth, he is ignorant
of it. This proposition now comes to the forefront and dominates
our view of him. Still, it is a shifting, troubled view. Traces
of the self—deceiver's knowledge still show through. Not only do
we catch glimmers of it in the self-deceiver's behavior, but it is
an essential part of our picture of him even though it now
hovers in the background. Not only is the supposition that he knows
the truth a premise in our argument to show that he does not know
it, but a necessary condition of his concealing the truth is that
he knows it. We cannot truly speak of him as concealing the truth
unless he does know it. As Sartre puts it,

...I must know in my capacity as deceiver the truth which
is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived.

61

Better yet I must know the truth very exactly in_

order to conceal it more carefully-~and this not at

two different moments, which at a pinch would allow us
to establish a semblance of duality--but in the unitary
structure of a single project.15

62
Section 4.

What we do now is a matter of our own relation to the picture
we have constructed. We can leave it as it is, not look at it too
closely, and, even though we cannot believe it, we can still use it.
It has a use: it explains the self-deceiver's behavior and mental
condition. Even though the picture is self-contradictory, even
though, for example, we must construe the same piece of behavior -
say, the self-deceiver's denial of the truth - as both a purposeful
bit of feigning and as a sincere expression of belief resting on
genuine ignorance, still we have no other way of explaining his
state which is readily available and easily understood.

If we have a more theoretical interest in the self-deceiver
and if we find it difficult to ignore the contradictoriness of the
,picture, then we are likely to look for a way out of the contradiction.
we may see, with Freud, two intelligences, two personalities at
‘work in one individual:

The first and most powerful impression made upon one
during such an analysis is certainly that the pathogenic
psychical material which has ostensibly been forgotten,
which is not at the ego's disposal and which plays no part
in association and memory, nevertheless in some fashion lies
ready to hand and in correct and proper order. It is only
a question of removing the resistances that bar the way to
the material. In other respects this material is known, in
the same way in which we are able to know anything; the
correct connections between the separate ideas and between
them and the non-pathogenic ones, which are frequently
remembered, are in existence; they have been completed at
some time and are stored up in the memory. The pathogenic
psychical material appears to be the property of an
intelligence which is not necessarily inferior to that of
the normal ego. The appearance of a second personality is

often presented in the most deceptive manner.1

Freud sometimes speaks as if he were giving serious consideration

63

to the idea of such a second person. However, the individual
subject/agent is not split up into two persons of roughly equal
standing. Rather, the individual subject/agent is the deceived,
but he carries another person, the deceiver, within him. The
deceiver does not share the deceived's mind or consciousness with
him; rather, the deceiver is a part of the deceived's mind. He
controls what thoughts or ideas shall enter into the deceived's
consciousness, and thereby controls indirectly the deceived's
behavior, for only conscious thoughts can be translated into
behavior. This control is exercised by determining what thoughts
or ideas shall be made available for consciousness. Thoughts thus
made available of which the deceived is pp£_conscious are said to

be preconscious, while they become conscious only if the individual

 

actually avails himself of them. Thoughts which continue to exist
but which are not preconscious, i.e., not available for consciousness,
are said to be repressed. Both repressed ideas and thoughts and
,preconscious ideas and thoughts are said to be unconscious, i.e.,
.not conscious, but only repressed unconscious ideas belong to that
.part of the mind called the Unconscious.

Freud called the deceiver the 'censor'. And here there is
*good reason for us to speak of the censor as a deceiver of the
.individual of whose mind the censor is a part, even though Freud
<ioes not explicitly do so. For unless the censor permits, the
‘individual is unable to bring to mind any thought of the truth, and
Soicannot be said to know the truth, for to know the truth entails

being able to bring it to consciousness.17

64

In Freud's earlier works the functions of censorship and
repression were associated with the Pcs (Preconscious mental system,
as opposed to the ch, Unconscious mental system, and the gg,
conscious mental system), and little mention is made of these
functions in connection with the ego. But as time went on the Pcs
and §§_were incorporated into the ego, which thus had the functions
of censorship and repression. Freud describes the ego and these
functions thus in 'The Ego and the Id':

...in each individual there is a coherent organization

of mental processes; and we call this his eg . It is to

this ego that consciousness is attached; the ego controls

the approaches to motility--that is, to the discharge

of excitations into the external world; it is the mental

'agency which supervises all of its own constituent processes,
and which goes to sleep at night, though even then it
exercises the censorship on dreams. From this ego proceed
the repressions, too, by means of which it is sought to
exclude certain trends in the mind not merely from
consciousness but also from other forms of effectiveness

and activity. In analysis, these trends which have been

shut out stand in opposition to the ego, and the analysis

is faced with the task of removing the resistances which

the ego displays against itself concerning the repressed.18

At first the ch was held to contain only the repressed
ideas and thoughts, which, in their struggles to become conscious
effected a compromise with the preconscious censorship, thus effecting
neurotic symptoms. The ego was conceived to be distinct from and
in opposition to the ch, and neurotic symptoms resulted from this
opposition. Freud came to realize, however, that this could not be
an accurate picture of the mind. He realized that not only were
repressed ideas in the ch, not only was resistance displayed to

bringing these ideas into consciousness, but this resistance and

the repression which it signaled were themselves unconscious, and

65

similar difficulties stood in the way of making them conscious as
stood in the way of making the repressed ideas conscious.

Now we find during analysis that when we put certain
tasks before the patient, he gets into difficulties;

his associations fail when they should be coming near
the repressed. We then tell him that he is dominated

by a resistance; but he is quite unaware of the fact,
and, even if he guesses from his unpleasurable feelings
that a resistance is now at work in him, he does not know
what it is nor how to describe it. Since, however,
there can be no question but that this resistance
emanates from the ego and belongs to it, we find our-
selves in an unforseen situation. We have come upon
something in the ego itself which is also unconscious,
which behaves exactly like the repressed, that is, which
produces powerful effects without itself being conscious
and which requires special work before it can be made
conscious.19

This realization led Freud to

...recognize that the Des does not coincide with what

is repressed; it is still true that all that is

repressed is ch, but not all that is ch is repressed.

A part of the ego too--and Heaven knows how important

a part—-may be ch, undoubtedly is ch. And this ch

belonging to the ego is not latent like the Pcs; for

if it were, it could not be activated without becoming

921 and the process of making it conscious would not

encounter such great difficulties.20

fl

Thus repression, which had in Studien uber Hysterie been conceived
as a more or less conscious not willing to know, was now relegated
by Freud to the Unconscious. It was in part this change in his
views which led Freud to posit a new tri-partite division of the
:mind into ego, id, and superego.

This new development need not affect our earlier attempt to
‘view the self-deceiver as containing a deceiver within him. Now,

instead of speaking of the censor as the deceiver within the

individual, we can speak of the ego itself as the deceiver, the

66

individual being the deceived. There is the same justification
for speaking of the ego as a deceiver, for unless the ego allows
it, the individual is unable to bring to consciousness any thought
of the truth, and so cannot be said to know it.

Our success in avoiding the contradiction of the first
major paradox of self-deception is, however, illusory. This move
will not work unless we can speak of only the ego - the deceiver -
as knowing the truth while the individual does not know it, and we
do not attribute knowledge to the individual. But whether we regard
the censor as deceiver or the ego as deceiver, thought of the truth
is still in the individual's mind, it is in his memory - as Freud
puts it - "in correct and proper order", even though it is barred
entry to consciousness. But how can it be in his mind at all, how
can it be in his memory, unless he kppg§_the truth? And how can it
be brought to consciousness through "special work" and the over—
coming of the ego's resistance, unless the individual knew§_the
truth? Knowledge of the truth is a necessary condition of
consciousness of it, and if the individual did not know the truth,
then he could not be made conscious of it under any circumstances,
however special. So we arrive once again at that "strange state of
mind in which one knows and does not know a thing at the same time."

I do not believe that Freud took his occasional personifications
of parts of the mind very seriously. Rather, he preferred to think
of the ego, for example, as "a coherent organization of mental

processes" which functions through the interplay of blind, mechanical

67

forces, and of repression as itself a combination of such forces.
Recognizing this does not, however, help us out of our difficulty,
for we still have the result that in consequence of the ego's
repression, the individual does not know the truth, but since it is in
his mind and memory and he is capable under special circumstances
of becoming conscious of it, he does know it.

Finally, the mental processes and forces which Freud recognizes
he continually speaks of as directed and pugposive. In spite of
the mechanical metaphors, it is a fair question to ask wh9§g_
purposes these are, and whg_is doing the directing. If we do not
resort to the fiction of personifying parts of the mind, then the
individual himself must be purposely repressing thought of the
truth from his own consciousness.

Thus we are back where we started. Rather than accepting
the arguments which lead to the conclusion that the self-deceiver
does not know the truth, and then looking for ways to avoid the
resulting contradiction, it is time to question those arguments. We
shall find that they can be arranged into two categories: (a)
those arguments which already presuppose that the self-deceiver knows
and does not know the truth, and (b) those arguments which lead to
the conclusion that the self-deceiver does not know the truth without
presupposing that he both knows and does not know the truth. Of the
arguments in these two categories, those in (a) are the least important
and the most easily dealt with. They all contain a self-contradictory

premise, and once this is seen, they totally collapse. The arguments

 

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68

in category (b) are not so easily dealt with, and for our purposes
they are much more important than those in (a). They are difficult
to deal with because they are not based on premises which are
inconsistent, either individually or as a set. They are more
important than those in (a) because they lead to the conclusion that
the self-deceiver does not know the truth independently of the claim
that he knows and does not know the truth. Thus these arguments,

in conjunction with the arguments given in Section 2 of this chapter,

seem to supply an independent confirmation of the claim that the

 

self—deceiver knows and does not know the truth. Since the modeling
of self-deception on other-deception implies this claim, which is
the first major paradox of self-deception, the arguments in (b)
help to supply an independent confirmation of its contradictory
and paradoxical implication, and so these arguments go a long way
towards explaining the compulsion to model self-deception on other-
deception. In this chapter we shall be able to deal with the
arguments in (b) in only a provisional way. Ultimately we shall
find, in Chapter Four, that what lies behind them is a certain theory
of consciousness, which I call The Vehicular Theory of Consciousness,
and an effort to avoid another paradox, the second major paradox
of self-deception. Since it will be much more convenient to dis-
cuss the Vehicular Theory and the second major paradox in conjunction
with a discussion of Fingarette's views, I shall postpone final
treatment of the arguments in (b) until that discussion.

I shall begin with the arguments in category (a), and first

let us consider the analogy with the man who is concealing the gun.

69

It breaks down at a crucial point. The man who conceals the gun
knows that he has the gun on him, and must know it in order to
conceal the gun. And no matter how carefully or thoroughly he
conceals it, no matter how lucky he is, there is at least one person
who is not taken in by the concealment and that is the concealer
himself. The reason for this is that other people can only be

taken in by the concealment because they do not already know that

 

the man has a gun on him. Because they do not know it, they must
learn it, come to know it, and in order to do this, they are to a
certain extent dependent on their observations of the man, on what
he says and does. But the concealer himself is not dependent on
such observations in order to come to know the truth, for he does
not need to come to know it - he already knows it.

So also with the self-deceiver. The analogy with the man
who is concealing a gun only has a point if from the outset we think
of the self-deceiver as knowing and not knowing the truth. As
concealer he knows the truth, but as the one from whom the truth
is being concealed, he does not know it, must come to know it, and
in accomplishing the latter is dependent on his own observations of
what he himself thinks, says, and does. Once we refuse to make
the contradictory assumption that the self-deceiver knows and does
not know the truth, the analogy collapses. For the self-deceiver,
already knowing the truth, does not need to learn it, and so he is
not dependent on an observation of his own thought, speech, and
behavior in order to know the truth. Hence, his concealment of the

truth cannot have the consequences that he does not know the truth.

70

The argument from analogy dovetails with another phase of the
argument to show that the self-deceiver does not know the truth.
That part of the argument construed the self-deceiver's suppression
of his own thought as part of his attempt to conceal the truth.
Because thoughts are private the argument concluded that the self-
deceiver could not be suppressing his thought in order to conceal
the truth from others, and so must be doing it in order to conceal
the truth from himself. But we must now ask what right or justifi-
cation there is for construing the self-deceiver's suppression of
his thought as an attempt or part of an attempt to conceal the truth.
If it cannot be part of an attempt to conceal the truth from others,
why speak of it at all as an attempt to conceal?

Here again this description only seems plausible because
we are already aesuming that the self-deceiver knows and does not
know the truth. As the one who is suppressing his thought in order
to conceal the truth he knows the truth, and as the one from whom
the truth is being concealed, he does not know it, must learn it,
come to know it, and is prevented from doing so by the suppression
of his own thought. Once we drop the assumption that the self-
deceiver knows and does not know the truth, describing his suppression
of his thought as part of his effort to conceal the truth from
himself seems absurd. Since he already knows the truth, he does not
thereafter need to learn it, and so he does not need to learn it
by attending to his own thought. And, in any event, since he already
knows the truth, the suppression of his own thought cannot have the

consequence that he does not know it.

71

Another of the arguments to show that the self-deceiver does
not know the truth can be dealt with in a similar fashion. We saw
that the self-deceiver often feigns ignorance of the truth, and
this was construed by the argument as part of an attempt to conceal
the truth. But once we admit that the self-deceiver feigns
ignorance in order to conceal the truth, it seems to follow at
once that he must be concealing the truth from himself, since in
many circumstances other people already know the truth, and there would
be no point in concealing it from them.

Yet it is by no means clear that we should admit that the
self-deceiver feigns ignorance of the truth in order to conceal
the truth from someone. There may seem to be a certain likelihood
for this contention based on the typical behavior of other-deceivers,
but once we have seen that he is not concealing the truth from
others, we should drop the contention altogether. For it makes
little sense to say that he is feigning ignorance of the truth in
order to conceal the truth from himself. Since he already knows the
truth, there is no way that he could prevent himself from knowing
it by feigning ignorance unless he also did not know the truth,
needed to learn it, and could be prevented from learning it by his
own feigning. Here, again, therefore, we find implicitly the
assumption that the self-deceiver knows and does not know the
truth.

We shall consider later the reasons why the self-deceiver
feigns ignorance of the truth. Suffice it here to say that one

reason he may do so is to conceal his knowledge of the truth from

72

others. It is not difficult to see why he would want to conceal
his knowledge from others. So long, for example, as the self-
deceiver seems to be intractably ignorant, possessed by an ignorance
which cannot be relieved by evidence or argument no matter how
strong or persuasive, other people will either refrain from trying
to get him to see the truth, or will eventually tire of trying to
get him to see it and will give up, thus ceasing to remind him

of the truth. To remind him is to make him conscious of the truth,
and it is this consciousness of the truth - rather than knowledge of
the truth - which he is trying to avoid, because consciousness of
the truth is painful to him.

The foregoing arguments all belong in category (a). Now we
shall consider the arguments which fall into category (b). Of the
latter, the most important and crucial argument draws on certain
aspects of the self-deceiver's thought, speech, and behavior, and,
while this argument was introduced into our exposition to support
and confirm the argument from analogy, it is entirely independent
of that argument and can stand on its own. Briefly put, this
argument concludes that the self-deceiver does not know the truth
from two premises:

P The self-deceiver is not able to admit, state,

1 concede, etc., the truth; he is not able to think
about it, to become conscious of it, to bring it
into his reflections, deliberations, reasonings,
and so on.

P2 Anyone who is not able to admit, etc., the truth,

who is not able to become conscious of it, not
think about it, nor being it into his reflections,
reasonings, deliberations, and so on, does 22E
know the truth.

73

The second of these premises is perhaps doubtful, but, as
we shall see, the first premise P1 is patently false. First, it
simply is not true that all self-deceivers are unable to become
conscious of the truth under any circumstances. Clearly there are
quite special circumstances under which some self-deceivers may
become conscious of the truth. For example, they may do so under
the influence of alcohol, drugs, hypnosis, or psychoanalysis. So
P1 is simply false if taken as a general statement about all self-
deceivers under every set of circumstances. Moreover, the same
facts show that the conclusion of this argument, that self-
deceivers do not know the truth, is false when cosntrued as a
general statement about all self~deceivers. A necessary condition
of becoming conscious of the truth is that one know the truth.
Hence some self-deceivers do know the truth, for if they did not
know it, they would not be able to become conscious of it at all,
under any circumstances. Hence, both P1 and the conclusion of the
argument are false.

Let us call the argument under consideration '(b)l'. I
doubt that anyone would wish to deny that premise P1 of (b)l is
false. Yet in showing this, I may be accused of arguing against a
straw man. Some people would insist, I think, that (b)l is only
approximately correct, and that for purposes of philosophical
argumentation, one must deal with its more slippery cousin, argument
(b)l':

Pl' Under normal circumstances the self-deceiver is not

able to admit, state, concede, etc., the truth, nor
is he able to think about it, to become conscious of

it, to being it into his reflections, deliberations,
reasonings, and so ob.

 

 

F“

74

P2' Anyone who under normal circumstances is not able to
admit, etc., the truth, nor to think about it, to
become conscious of it, to bring it into his
deliberations, reflections, reasonings, and so on,
does not know the truth.

 

C' The self-deceiver does not know the truth.

Here 'normal circumstances' exclude being under the influence of
drink, drugs, hypnotism, and psychoanalysis.

It may be objected against me that in showing that P1 is
false, I have not shown that P1' is false. Hence, while I have
defeated (b)l, this was really to no avail, for people who advance
(b)l really have (b)l in mind, and it is the latter argument which
must be defeated if I am to deprive the conclusion that the self-
deceiver does not know the truth of its support.

In reply to this objection I should like to point out that
we already have available conclusive grounds to show that at least
one of the premises of (b)l' is false. Since some self-deceivers
do become conscious of the truth under special circumstances, and
since a necessary condition of becoming conscious of the truth is
that one knows the truth, some self-deceivers do know the truth and
so the conclusion of (b)l' is false. But, since the premises of
(b)l' logically imply this false conclusion, at least one of them is
false.

The question now is: Which one? Or, are both of them false?
In Chapter Four I shall try to show that Pl. at least is false. Self-
deceivers are able to become conscious of the truth under all normal

circumstances, and so P1 is false. What is true is that

75

P " Under normal circumstances the self-deceiver is
not able to admit, etc., the truth nor is he
able to become explicitly conscious of the truth
during his deliberations, reflections, musings,

and so on.

But explicit consciousness - which will be defined in Chapter Four -
is not the same as consciousness. One may be conscious of the
truth without being explicitly conscious of it, though it is not

true that one may be explicitly conscious of the truth without

being conscious of it. Thus we cannot combine P1" with the following,

P2" Anyone who under normal circumstances is not able
to admit, etc., the truth, nor to become expliCitly
conscious of the truth, does not know the truth.
in order to derive the conclusion that the self-deceiver does not
know the truth. P2" is clearly false, since the self-deceiver
may be and often is conscious of the truth under normal circumstances,
thus knowing it, but without being explicitly conscious of it.
In Chapter Four we shall also trace the reasons why we feel
so strongly tempted to assent to premise P1' of Argument (b)l', and
it will be worth our while to outline those results here. What
lies behind P1' is, first of all, a theory of consciousness which I
shall call 'the vehicular theory of consciousness' (an adaptation of
the Rylean phrase, 'vehicular theory of thinking'). Put roughly,
'the vehicular theory holds that consciousness must have a 'vehicle'.
IIf X is conscious that P, then he must either be perceiving that P
tflnrough his senses, or he must be entertaining memory images which
depict the fact that P, or he must be expressing the thought that P

iJl words, either silently, to himself, or out loud to another person,

(It he must have some other, similar vehicle for his consciousness

that P .

76

Now, to be conscious of the truth entails, on the vehicular
theory, being explicitly conscious of the truth. Self-deceivers
-are often conscious of the truth, yet they are not explicitly
conscious of the truth, and so, on the vehicular theory they are
not conscious of the truth at all. This raises a new problem. The
self-deceiver is not explicitly conscious of the truth because he
has an over-riding reason for not making his consciousness of the
truth explicit. Here 'over-riding' means that even when he does have
some reason or reasons for making his consciousness explicit, his
reason for not doing this is perceived by him to be stronger and he
yields to it, i.e., his reason for not making his consciousness
explicit 'over-rides' his reasons for making it explicit.21 However,
the only way we can express this point in the terms of the vehicular
theory, which treats all consciousness as explicit consciousness,
is to say that the self-deceiver is not conscious of the truth
because he has an over-riding reason for not becoming conscious of
the truth. This lands us in a contradiction.

On the one hand, on the vehicular theory the self-deceiver is
not conscious of the truth. But on the other hand, we cannot
describe him as not conscious of the truth because he has an over-
riding reason for not becoming conscious of the truth unless he is
conscious of the truth. Such a description can be applied to the self-
deceiver only if there is some occasion on which he recognizes -
and so is conscious - that he has reasons for becoming conscious of
the truth, and he also recognizes - and so is conscious - that he has

a stronger reason for not becoming conscious of the truth, and he

77

conducts himself in accordance with the stronger reason. But to be
conscious of having either of these reasons entails being conscious
of the truth. Hence, if we hold that the self-deceiver is not
conscious of the truth because he has over-riding reasons for not
becoming conscious of the truth, then we are committed to saying
that be both is and is not conscious of the truth. I call this
contradiction 'the second major paradox of self—deception'.

Thus, on pain of the second major paradox of self-deception,
we must deny that the self-deceiver is not conscious of the truth
because he has an over-riding reason for not becoming conscious of
the truth. How, then, are we to explain the fact that the self-
deceiver, while knowing the truth, does not become conscious of the
truth under 'normal' circumstances, including circumstances where
we expect someone who knows the truth to become conscious of it?
And how are we to explain the fact that he does become conscious of
the truth under special circumstances - drink, drugs, hypnosis,
psychoanalysis. (Here, remember, we are stating the facts from the
point of view of vehicular theory of consciousness. In our terms,
the self-deceiver is not 'conscious' of the truth only in the sense
of being not explicitly conscious, and he becomes 'conscious' of
the truth under special circumstances in the sense of becoming
explicitly conscious.) The only explanation which will fit here is
that the self-deceiver, while knowing the truth, is not able to
become conscious of the truth because he is prevented from doing so
by forces beyond his control, either by blind, mechanical forces,

or by forces directed by a personal agency within him. The latter

78

variation, which explains the self-deceiver's inability to become
conscious of the truth as due to the imposition of forces directed
by a personal agency within him, is especially attractive because
it gives us something to do with the purposes which lie behind the
self-deceiver's not being conscious of the truth (in our terms,
his not being explicitly conscious of the truth). We cannot
attribute these purposes to the self-deceiver without landing in the
second major paradox of self-deception. But we can attribute them
to an agent within his mind without falling into this paradox.

Given this explanation, we can also explain why the self-
deceiver does not state, admit, concede, etc., the truth. Doing
any of these things - stating, admitting, conceding, etc., the truth -
would entail becoming conscious of the truth. But he is prevented
from becoming conscious of the truth by forces beyond his control,
and hence, he is also prevented from stating, admitting, etc.,
the truty by forces beyond his control.

By combining both of these explanations we can see how the
proponent of (b)l' takes the self-deceiver's 'inability' to state,
etc., the truth, and to become conscious of the truth. The

proponent of (b)l' takes premise P ' to be stating the same as the

1

following:
P1"' Under normal circumstances the self-deceiver is
prevented by forces beyond his control from

becoming conscious of the truth, and from stating,
admitting, conceding, etc., the truth.

And thus he takes argument (b)l' to be merely a variant rendering,

with no chance of meaning, of the following argument, which

 

L.___._ ._

79

I shall call (b)i"':

P "' Under normal circumstances the self-deceiver is
prevented by forces beyond his control from
becoming conscious of the truth, and from stating,
admitting, conceding, etc., the truth.

P "' Anyone who under normal circumstances is prevented

by forces beyond his control from becoming conscious
of the truth and from stating, etc., the truth, gpg§_
pg£_kpg! the truth.

C"': The self—deceiver does not know the truth.

In assenting to these arguments the proponent of (b)l' and
(b)l"' is struck by what he sees to be an analogy between the
self-deceiver and someone who is unquestionably ignorant of the truth.
If the latter is asked a question pertaining to the truth, he may
have every reason to answer the question if he can, he may strongly
desire to answer the question, and he may try to answer the question.
Yet when he tries to answer the question, he simply draws a blank.
The information simply is not available to him. So too, apparently,
with the self-deceiver. If, say, his analyst asks him a question,
he may want to answer the question and have every reason to do so if
he can. Yet when he tries to come up with the answer, he cannot do
so since he is prevented from doing so by forces beyond his control.
As with the unquestionably ignorant man, the information is simply
not available to him, and he draws a blank. Thus, on the strength
of premise Pl"', there seems to be a strong analogy between the
self-deceiver and the genuinely ignorant man. It is this analogy
which leads the proponent of (b)l'/(b)l"' to accept premise P2"',

which then leads him to the conclusion that the self-deceiver does

not know the truth.

80

However, even if we granted for the sake of argument that
this analogy holds, it still does not justify the inference that
the self-deceiver does not know the truth. For first, as we have
already seen, that conclusion is false. Since some self-deceivers
are conscious of the truth, and since knowledge of the truth is a
necessary condition of consciousness of it, some self-deceivers
know the truth. Hence, either Pl"' or P2"', or both, is false.
Secondly, if the proponent of (b)l"' were really being consistent,
then in view of his commitment to Pl"', he would reject P2"'. The
explanation in terms of forces beyond the self-deceiver's control

which is incorporated into P1"' was advanced in order to explain

how the self-deceiver, while knowing the truth, could fail to become

 

conscious of the truth in circumstances when we would expect someone
who knows the truth to be conscious of it. If, on the other hand,

the self-deceiver does not know the truth, then this explanation
would not apply at all, and we could explain the self-deceiver's

not becoming conscious of the truth as due simply to his not knowing
the truth. Thus anyone who advances Pl"' is committed to saying
that the self—deceiver knows the truth, and thus proponents of (b)l"'
are inconsistent.

However, the above does not really provide an adequate refuta-
tion of (b)l"'. The real villain in the piece is premise P1"'.
This premise is not true, since self-deceivers are conscious of the
truth or may become conscious of the truth under all normal
circumstances. Hence, there is no 'fact' for the explanation in

terms of forces beyond the self—deceiver's control to explain.

81

What leads to the conclusion that there is something to explain,
namely, the self-deceiver's not being conscious of the truth while
knowing the truth, is the vehicular theory of consciousness. This
theory is false, and, as indicated earlier, this will be shown
in Chapter Four.
To be fair to premise Pl"', the self-deceiver does have a
certain inability. In the terms of premise P1"(cf. p. 92, above),
Under normal circumstances the self-deceiver is not able

to admit, etc., the truth, nor is he able to become
explicitly conscious of the truth.

 

However, this inability is not due to the action of forces beyond
his control. Rather, the self-deceiver is 'unable' to admit, etc.,
the truth, and he is 'unable' to make his consciousness of the truth
explicit, in the sense that even when he has strong reason to do so,

he cannot bring himself to do these things.

 

Imagine, for example, that Johnny's mother catches his playing
'doctor' with little Susie. His mother is horrified; Johnny is
shamed, humiliated, and spanked. Then he is told to go to his
room and wait until his father comes home. When his father does
come home, Johnny is trotted out of his room, and as he stands
there in the presence of his father with head hung low and eyes
averted, he is ordered to tell his father what he did. Johnny knows
what he did, but, overwhelmed with shame and in the presence of his
father whom he fears almost to the point of dread, Johnny is unable

to say what he did. He cannot bring himself to say what he did.

 

Here the point of saying "he cannot bring himself to....." is to

82

indicate that while Johnny may have strong reasons to say what he
did, e.g., the threat of another spanking, he has far stronger
reasons not to say what he did, e.g., his fear of a violent reaction
from his father once he gets the words out of his mouth, his fear
of the disgust and anger his father will show once the words come
out, and even his fear of simply having his father know that he did
such a terrible, disgusting thing. Of course, through the cajoling
and threats of his parents, he may come to believe that the
consequences of not saying will be worse than the consequences of
saying, and so he may reluctantly tell his father what he did, but
this does not negate the point being made. Initially, he has far
stronger reasons for not saying than he has for saying, and because
of this, he cannot being himself to tell his father what he did.
His parents cajoling and threats simply reverse the relatives
strengths of these reasons, so that as a consequence, he perceives
himself to have stronger reasons for saying than for not saying.
Thus, he does eventually say what earlier he could not bring
himself to say.

The self-deceiver's inability is similar to little Johnny's.
He is unable to make his consciousness of the truth explicit, unable
to admit the truth in the sense that even though he may have very
strong reasons for becoming explicitly conscious of the truth and for
admitting, etc., the truth, he has far stronger reasons for not
doing these things: he fears the psychic 'pain', the mental
'suffering' or, - as we shall later put it - the crushing despair,

shame, remorse, grief, guilt or sorrow which explicit consciousness

of the truth will bring.

83

When we say that the self-deceiver cannot bring himself to
become explicitly conscious of the truth, that he cannot bring him-
self to admit, etc., the truth, and when we say that he does not
become explicitly conscious of the truth, does not admit it, and so
on, because he has over-riding reason for not doing so, we are
saying pretty much the same thing. In both cases we are indicating
that the self—deceiver has stronger reasons for pg; becoming
explicitly conscious, for not admitting, etc., the truth than he
has for doing these things. About the only difference I can see
between these two ways of speaking is that in the former mode, we
imply that some emotion is the motive for not becoming explicitly
conscious of the truth (in the self-deceiver's case it is fear),
while in the latter mode no such implication is made.

In category (b) there is one other argument besides argument
(b)l and its more specific relatives, (b)l' and (b)l". This
argument, which is set out on pp. 60-61, above, derives its force
from a simple comparison between the self-deceiver and the genuinely
ignorant man. The self-deceiver does not behave as we think he
would if he knew the truth. His speech is free from allusions and
references to the truth. His mind is 'blank' of all thought of
the truth. In these things he resembles the ignorant man, and so
the argument concludes that the self-deceiver is ignorant.

However, the premises of this argument are only partially
correct. First, while the self-deceiver's behavior and speech

resemble the speech and behavior of a genuinely ignorant man, the

84

resemblance is not as close as the argument makes it out to be.
There are, for example, all of those slips and mistakes which we have
put under the heading, 'bad acting'. Moreover, as we shall see in
Chapter Pour, the self-deceiver's speech is not necessarily free
from allusions to the truth, though these allusions are in a certain
sense 'veiled'. Secondly, the self-deceiver's mind is not so 'blank'
as the argument makes it out to be. For the most part it lacks only
those 'vehicles' which the vehicular theory of consciousness holds
to be necessary for all consciousness; otherwise, the self-deceiver
may be fully conscious of the truth. Thus once again we see the
hand of the vehicular theory of concsiousness at work.

Thus, both the arguments in category (a) and the arguments
in category (b) are unacceptable. Of these two classes of arguments,
those in (b) are far more important, since they supply the assumption
on which the arguments in category (a) feed. The vehicular theory
of consciousness leads to the conclusion that the self-deceiver is not
conscious of the truth.v This at once strengthens the resemblance
between the self-deceiver and the ignorant man, but it also leads
to a difficulty. The self-deceiver's not being conscious of the truth
cannot be explained as being due to his own purposive efforts,
for this leads to the second paradox of self-deception - that the
self-deceiver island is not conscious of the truth. So it is denied
that the self-deceiver is not conscious of the truth because he has an
over-riding reason for not becoming conscious of the truth. Instead,

in an effort to explain why the self-deceiver is not conscious of

85

the truth except in special circumstances even while knowing the
truth, it is asserted that the self-deceiver is prevented from
becoming conscious of the truth by forces operating beyond his
control and independently of his own aims, desires, and wishes.
This explanation presupposes that the self-deceiver does know the
truth, and the presupposition is established by considerations of
the sort set out in Section 2. If the reasons which led to this
explanation were made explicit, set out in an organized way, and
kept clearly in mind, the next step in the evolution of the first
major paradox of self-deception would not be taken. Unfortunately,
they are not so treated, and as a result, the resemblance between the
self-deceiver and the truly ignorant man seems to be greatly
strengthened. This leads to the acceptance of argument (b)l"' and
its ruder cousins, (b)l and (b)l', all of which conclude that the
self-deceiver does not know the truth. So we are now in the grips
of the first major paradox of self-deception. We are committed to
viewing the self-deceiver as knowing and not knowing the truth.

It is only at this point that the arguments in category (a)
enter the scene. The argument has established a proposition whose
truth they all presuppose, that the self-deceiver knows and does
not know the truth, and they seek to establish that he prevents
himself from learning the truth - from coming to know it - by
concealing the truth from himself. These arguments have a particular
attraction because they restore what was earlier left out, namely
the essential purposiveness of self-deception. However, they do

so only at the cost of re-introducing into self-deception what was

86

earlier avoided: the second major paradox of self-deception. By
the vehicular theory of consciousness, the self-decw ver's suppression

of his thought of the truth is the suppression of his consciousness

of the truth, done with the aim of concealing the .-v'n from him-
self. So he is not conscious of the truth becausg bu has an over-
riding reason for not becoming conscious of the trufh. and, hence,

he i§_and i§_ggg_conscious of the truth.

-Again we should note that were the reasoning made explicit,
were the reasons clearly sorted out and organized, and kept clearly
in mind, the arguments in (a) would never be accepted, and so the
second major paradox would not be re-inserted after having been
once removed. But we think about it in a fog. The reasons
remain implicit, and we grope around in the haze and the dark,
bumping into the paradoxes, turning around in the opposite
direction only to stumble back onto a paradox again. A factor
contributing to the haze is the use which we make of the terms and
expressions with which we commonly talk about self~ceception. These
are metaphorical uses. We use the expression 'willrul ignorance',
'deliberate blindness', 'not knowing', 'concealing', 'hiding' to
refer metaphorically to the self-deceiver's purposeful avoidance of
explicit consciousness of the truth, and to his feigning ignorance

of the truth. These are frozen metaphors, but metaphors none the

less. And the term 'self-deception' is metaphorical as well. In
literally knowing the truth while metaphorically keeping himself
'ignorant' of it by metaphorically 'concealing' the truth, he
resembles £!g_persons, one of whom is deceiving the other. The

phrase 'self-deception' highlights this resemblance.

 

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87

However, precisely because these metaphors are frozen and
have a long and established use, we do not clearly recognize the
metaphorical element in their use. We are prone to construe
them literally, and the fallacious reasoning embodied in the
arguments in category (b), the felt need of a purposive element
in self-deception, and the vehicular theory of consciousness are
enough, as it were, to send us over the edge. From that point
on, the literal construal of these terms and expressions seems
entirely natural. The arguments in (a) seem only to be drawing
out the logical implications of the correct use of these terms.

Once the arguments in (a) are accepted, the conclusion that
the self-deceiver literally deceives himself is established. This
conclusion entails that the self-deceiver knows and does not know
the truth. However, noticing that the first major paradox of
self-deception is entailed by the conclusion that the self-deceiver
literally deceives himself is a bit anti-climactic. The paradox
has already entered into the scene twice; first, as a result of
the reasoning in (b), where its introduction was necessary as a
premise for the arguments in (a) - one can only prevent people who
do not already know the truth from learning it, and, secondly, as
the conclusion of the arguments in (a), which was necessary to
establish that the self-deceiver literally deceives himself. One
can deceive someone only if they did not know the truth and have

been prevented from knowing it.

CHAPTER THREE. Self-Deception and Wishful Thinking.
Section 1.

One of the first analytic philosophers to react to Demos'
analysis of self-deception was F. A. Siegler in a paper entitled,
'Demos on Lying to Oneself', hereafter DLO.1 This paper was soon
followed by another which expanded on some of the argument in DLO,
and was entitled, 'Self-Deception', hereafter SD.2 In both DLO
and SD, while accepting Demos' analysis of other-deception, Siegler
argues against applying this analysis to self-deception.3 In
particular, he rejects the claim that the self-deceiver knows and
believes the truth while at the same time believing a proposition
incompatible with the truth. In effect, he goes on to charge
Demos with neglecting to consider how we actually do use 'reflexive
deception expressions', and he proposes that we "remind ourselves
how some reflexive deception expressions do function."4

Sometimes when we use such expressions, as in 'I am deceiving
myself if I think I will win the race' or 'I am deceiving myself
when I talk about traveling to China', this is like giving oneself
a "self—reprimand" for something one has said or done. At other
times, as when one says, 'I am deceiving myself if I think gifts
will make her like me', this is like a resolve not to give them any
more. But in none of these cases are we making a claim to have
misled ourselves into believing what we knew to be false, or even

a claim that we actually did believe what we knew to be false.5

88

89

Siegler is correct, I think, in claiming that first person
uses of reflexive deception expressions function as self-
rcprimands, resolves, and the like. Yet noting this does not
explain what makes it Eggg_to say, "I was deceiving myself when
I thought..." Apparently Siegler's view is that to say such a
thing is not to claim that one did know the truth, but rather to

claim that one should have known the truth even though one did

 

not - one should have known better than one did.

'I deceived myself...‘ is often accompanied by a
reference to a time when I did something which I now
regard as silly, wrong, or unreasonable. But it is
not a claim that I intended to mislead myself into
believing what I knew to be false, or that I actually
did believe what I knew to be false. It is more like
a reference to an attitude or action about which I
now feel I should have known better, but didn't.6

It is not clear from the above quotation whether Siegler
thinks that in addition to being ignorant of the truth when one
should have known it, one is also making a "reference" to believing
a falsehood when one ought not to have believed it. I think
this is his View so far as first person uses of reflexive
deception expressions are concerned, and it is certainly his view
so far as second and third person uses of these expressions are
concerned.

Consider the following: It is widely known that
Brown's wife has been unfaithful to him. It is per-
fectly obvious to everybody--but Brown. Brown tells
his friend that he is beginning to get worried about the
relationship between his wife and her friend. He says
that unless she breaks off that relationship she may be
led to acts of infidelity. White is puzzled by what
he considers either naivete or stubborn pride in
Brown. 'Look Brown,‘ he says, 'you are deceiving your-
self if you think that your wife has been faithful to
you all this time.‘

...White is neither suggesting that Brown intends
to mislead himself into believing what he knows to be
false, nor is White claiming that Brown does in fact

90

believe what he knows to be false. Rather White is
telling Brown that he has an erroneous belief, and he
is implying that it is unreasonable for Brown to have
such a belief. White's point is to urge Brown to
reconsider the evidence regarding his wife's relation-
ship with her friend.

Notice the plural use of reflexive deception
expressions. A politician might say to his constituency:
'You are deceiving yourselves when you think that my
opponent would carry out his election platform' or
'You deceived yourselves when you thought that the
opposition party would present a program for your
benefit.’ He is not claiming that his constituents
intended to mislead themselves into believing what
they knew to be false, nor in the second case that
they actually accomplished their intentions. These
plural uses of reflexive deception expressions are
more like attributions of unwarranted beliefs,
accompanied by ascriptions of responsibility for hold-
ing such beliefs. It is not that the 'deceived'
knows that his belief is (or was) unwarranted; the
point indicated is that he ought to know (have known)
better.8

In spite of an apparent diversity of functions which
reflexive deception expressions may serve in different circumstances,
it seems to be Siegler's view that throughout all of these uses
there is to be found a common core of meaning. To say that X
is deceiving himself in thinking that P is to say:

(1) X erroneously believes that P,

(2) X ought not to believe that P,

(3) X does not know or believe that not-P, and

(4) X ought to know that not-P.

In their jointly authored paper, 'Self-Deception'g, John
V. Canfield and Don F. Gustavson offer an analysis of self-

deception which is quite similar to Siegler's. In order to obtain

91

a non-paradoxical analysis of self-deception, they propose that

it should be treated like the notion of making oneself do something.
In a typical case of making someone else to something, as when
Jones makes Smith do E, it is true that:

(a) Jones intends to make Smith do E,

(b) Jones asks (commands, tells, etc.) Smith to do E,

(c) Smith takes Jones' request (etc.) as a request

(etc.) to do E, and

(d) Smith complies.

But when Jones makes himself study all night it is ng_true that
intends to make himself do this, that he asks (etc.) himself to do
it, that he takes this as a request (etc.), and that he then
complies. All that is necessary is that he does study all night
and that he does so in the face of certain obstacles (fatigue,
illness, disinclination, etc.).

Similarly with self-deception. When Jones deceives himself
about P, we need not suppose that Jones knows that P is false,
that Jones intends to make himself believe that P, and that Jones
succeeds in making himself believe that P. All we need suppose
is that "Jones believes that P under belief adverse circumstances,
e.g., circumstances such that the evidence Jones has does not
warrant belief in P."10

‘Canfield and Gustavson acknowledge that there are cases in
which the self-deceiver "knows" in some sense what he asserts
and believes to be false. But this sense of 'know' is not the same
one in which the other—deceiver knows the truth which he conceals

from the deceived.

92

Suppose, for example, that a person believes
and asserts that he is a great artist, but at the
same time, we have reason to believe, knows that he
is not a great artist. This is a case of self-
deception. What is odd about this case, and all
similar cases, is that although the person knows a
proposition P, it would take drugs or drink, or
hypnotism, or psychoanalysis to get him to admit it--
even to get him to admit it to himself. The information
is simply not readily available to him. And this is
one of the reasons why we say that he deceived himself,
rather than saying that he is trying to deceive us.
He is deceiving himself because the sense in which he
knows he is not a great artist is quite different from
the sense in which he would be said to know this if he
were trying-~deliberately--to deceive us into thinking
that he is a great artist.

Terence Penelhum, writing after Gustavson and Canfield,
offers a refined version of the positions sketched out by Siegler
and by Canfield and Gustavson. In his paper, 'Pleasure and Falsity'lz,
he argues that belief in the face of strong evidence is a necessary
condition of self-deception, but it is not a sufficient one. The
self-deceiver must also know the evidence, or else there would
only be ignorance, and in addition, he must see where the evidence
points and appreciate its import or else there would simply be
naivete or stupidity. However, these additions seem to take us
back to the view that the self-deceiver holds incompatible beliefs,
and thus, to land us back in paradox.

But if he has, knows, and sees the import of, strong

evidence, what is there left for him to do to believe

what it points to? The notion of acceptance seems to

add nothing in such a context; for the criteria for

saying that he really does see where the evidence points

and the criteria for saying that he accepts the conclusion

to which it points are the same.13

Penelhum's answer to this difficulty is quite puzzling.

93

The only way of avoiding the reinstatement of
paradox here is to accept the fact which paradoxical
renderings feed upon: that self-deception is a conflict
state. This way we can settle for a consistent des-

.cription of inconsistent behavior. Someone in this
state does partially satisfy the criteria for belief
and also those for disbelief--in particular he will
tend to declare his disbelief in that to which he sees
the evidence points...14

What makes this answer puzzling is that in the first passage above

Penelhum seems to be saying that the self-deceiver completely_

 

satisfies the criteria for believing the conclusion to which the
evidence points, but in the second passage he seems to be saying
that the self-deceiver only partially satisfies these criteria.
I believe that the latter is really his view. The self-deceiver,
because he knows the evidence, sees where it points, and appreciates
its import, partially satisfies the criteria for believing the
conclusion to which the evidence points. He also partially
satisfies the criteria for not believing the conclusion (not
believing that P # believing that not-P). Finally, he does
believe the negation of the conclusion. Hence, Penelhum writes:
So I would suggest as severally necessary and

jointly sufficient criteria for self-deception over

matters other than one's own inner states (i) belief

in the face of strong evidence, (ii) the subject's

knowledge of the evidence, (iii) the subject's recogni-

tion of the evidence. These add up to a conflict-state

in which there is partial satisfaction of the opposed

criteria for belief and for disbelief, with the subject's

declarations likely to be against the evidence...15

Finally, Penelhum suggests that a motive, while not
necessary, is usually present in self—deception. The self-deceiver

usually has a reason to wish that the conclusion to which the

evidence points were not so, or a reason to wish that the

94

proposition he believes in the face of evidence were so, and

moreover, he knows he has this reason.16

95
Section 2.

All of these analyses of self—deception have a certain
persuasiveness about them, and we shall investigate the source of
this persuasiveness in the next section. In the present section I
want to point out that these analyses are open to two fatal
objections. First, we may note that these views do not even
plausibly apply to cases of self-deception, such as that of Freud's
Miss Lucy R, where the question of holding a false belief in the
face of contrary evidence does not arise at all. Even though Miss
Lucy R was willfully 'ignorant' of the truth, the question of her
holding a false belief, i.e., the belief that she was pg£_in love
with her employer, does not and need not arise at all, any more than
it need arise in cases of non-paradoxical ignorance. We by no
means always believe the contradictory or contrary of what we are
ignorant of. For example, there may, at this very moment, be 7,001,359
bald male Chinese. If there are, I am totally ignorant of this
fact. But that does not mean that I believe that there are pg£_
7,001,359 bald, male Chinese. Similarly in self-deception. Jones
may be in love with his wife's sister, and he may be willfully
'ignorant' of this fact, completely 'blind' to it; but that does
not mean that Jones 'believes' that he is not in love with his
wife's sister. Of course, there are many cases of self-deception
where the self-deceiver does give the impression of believing the
contradictory or contrary of that of which he is willfully 'ignorant',

but by no means all cases of self-deception are like this.

96

The second objection lies in the fact that a necessary
condition of self-deception is that the self-deceiver kpgg_the
truth concerning which he is deceiving himself. And this objection
destroys, I think, any plausibility which these analysis might hold
even for a restricted set of cases of self-deception, i.e., those in
which the self-deceiver appears to believe a falsehood. And indeed,
in considering the progressive elaboration of the role of evidence
and warrantability in self-deception in the views from Siegler to
Penelhum, we see a movement towards recognizing this fact, only
this role is never quite clearly understood and it is always
related to the self-deceiver's false belief rather than to the
question of whether he knows the truth. In Siegler's view, the
self-deceiver does not know the truth, though he should know it
because he has evidence at his disposal such that if he reconsidered
it, he could know it. In the view of Canfield and Gustavson, the
self-deceiver believes a falsehood, and he does so in circumstances
where the evidence does not warrant his belief. But this is only
to believe in "belief-adverse circumstances". What Siegler and
Canfield and Gustavson should have asked is why it is so important
to establish that there is such adverse evidence. They did not, of
course, because they shared the conviction, inherited from Demos,
that the self-deceiver believes a falsehood, and any attempt to use
the existence of adverse evidence in a proof that the self-deceiver
knows the truth would have carried them right back to the view that
the self—deceiver believes what he knows to be false - a view against

which they were all reacting.

97

Penelhum came the closest to recognizing the role of adverse
evidence in self-deception. For him, not only must there be strong
evidence pointing to the truth, but the self-deceiver must know
this evidence, he must see where it points, and he must appreciate
its import. Further, Penelhum came close to stating that the
self-deceiver's relation to the evidence supports the claim that
the self-deceiver knows the truth - at least he points out that it
supports the claim that the self-deceiver believes the truth. But
he shies away from exploring the implications of this because it
would lead to the "reinstatement of paradox".

Canfield and Gustavson came close to recognizing that know-
ledge of the truth is a necessary condition of self-deception from
an entirely different direction as well as the one already mentioned.
They recognize that in sgmg_cases of self-deception the self-deceiver
knows the truth, only it is their view that this is not the sense
of 'know' in which the other-deceiver knows the truth. The reason
they give for claiming that such a self-deceiver only 'knows' the
‘truth in a weaker sense of 'know' is that "The information is simply
Inot readily available to him." This sounds like an argument with

vihich we were confronted earlier, in Chapter Two. By saying that
tfluetruth is not "readily available" to the self-deceiver, they
seem to mean that he is prevented from bringing it to mind by forces
beYond his control except in very special circumstances: "it would
takla drugs or drink, or hypnotism, or psychoanalysis to get him

to éidhfit.it--even to get it to admit it to himself." What they fail

98

to see is that such an explanation of the self-deceiver's not

being conscious of the truth presupposes that he does 5293 the
truth in the sense of 'know' in which the other—deceiver knows the-
truth. If he did not know it in this sense, then there would be

no need for a special explanation of why he is not conscious of the
truth except in special circumstances. We could explain his lack
of consciousness simply by noting that he does not know the truth.

Thus their claim that the self-deceiver (in some cases) only

knows the truth in a weaker sense of 'know' conflicts with the
reason which they advance for making this claim. Moreover, it also
conflicts with their implied recognition that the self-deceiver

may become conscious of the truth under quite special circumstances.
But if he did not know the truth in the sense in which the other-
deceiver knows the truth, then he could not become conscious of it
at all, under any circumstances, so long as he does not know it.17

Hence their own views commit Canfield and Gustavson to saying

'that in some cases of self-deception, the self-deceiver kpgg§_the
1:ruth. Why they did not see this is a long story, one which we
Plave already gone into in Chapter Two. Here we might note in
E>axticular the fine hand of the vehicular theory of consciousness,
ajad the careless and cursory manner in which their argument is set
curt. Moreover, we should note that this recognition of the self-
decneiver's knowledge would have been inconsistent with the analysis
Of Eself-deception to which they had been led by their acceptance
0f [Memos' analysis of gphggfdeception, and by the seeming paradox

in l1c>lding incompatible beliefs.

99

Section 3.

I noted earlier that the analyses of self-deception provided
by Siegler, Canfield and Gustavson, and Penelhum all have a certain
plausibility about them, and in this section I want to investigate
the sources of this plausibility. In connection with Siegler's
analysis, one source of this plausibility is quite easily ascertained:
Siegler provides what are, in the main, perfectly acceptable accounts
of ggmg_uses of "reflexive deception expressions", uses which are
extraordinarily common and familiar to all of us. What he fails
to appreciate fully is that at account of these uses have no bearing
whatsoever upon the analysis and elucidation of the concept of
self-deception. Indeed, for the latter purpose, an account of
these uses is entirely superfluous.

To see this, let us suppose that we have become quite
perplexed about the concept of insanity. Along comes Siegler, and
he points out the following uses of 'insanity expressions':

(a) I am insane if I think I will win the race.

(b) I am talking crazy when I talk about traveling to
China.

(c) I am insane if I think gifts will make her like me.

(d) Look Brown, you are insane if you think that your wife
has been faithful to you all this time.

(e) You are insane when you think that my opponent would
carry out his election platform.

(f) You were insane when you thought that the opposition
party would present a program for your benefit.

In Gaach case, Siegler provides an account which parallels the
aCC=<>unts which he gave for the corresponding sentences containing

reflexive deception expressions.

100

Thus, we are told that uttering (a) or (b) is like giving

oneself a very stropgyself-reprimand. Uttering (c) is like a vegy

 

strong resolve not to give them any more. And in each of these
cases, we are told, our utterance is accompanied by a reference
to a time when we did something which we now regard as terribly
silly, wrong, or highly unreasonable. In each case, it is like a
reference to an attitude or action about which we certainly should E1
have known better but didn't.

In connection with (d), we are told that White is telling é

 

Brown that he has a severely erroneous belief and he is implying E;
that it is highly unreasonable for Brown to have this belief.
White's point is to strongly urge Brown to reconsider the evidence
regarding his wife's relationship with her friend. In connection
with (e) and (f), we are told that these uses of insanity expressions
are like attributions of totally unwarranted beliefs, accompanied by
ascriptions of responsibility for holding such beliefs.

Now, I do not believe that we should find much fault with
these accounts as accounts of certain uses of insanity expressions.
These are familiar and established uses of these expressions, and the
accounts given do a pretty good job of elucidating these uses. But
we would certainly not find these accounts at all germane to our
task of analyzing and elucidating the concept of insanity. Indeed,
if they were put forward for that purpose, we should find them highly
misleading. The reason for this is quite clear. Even though
these are common and established uses of insanity expressions, they

are figurative, hyperbolic uses of them. Brown would be

lOl

misunderstanding White if he thought that White meant that he
was actually insane.

The same thing holds true for the uses of reflexive deception
expressions which Siegler explores. These are figurative, hyperbolic
uses of such expressions. Indeed, these uses of reflexive deception

expressions are just about identical to the uses of insanity

 

expressions noted above. The most salient difference is that the
pejorative force involved in the latter uses is somewhat stronger

than that involved in the former. And in the same way that the above

 

uses of insanity expressions shed no light on the concept of insanity ii

and would be positively misleading if brought in for that purpose,

so also the uses of reflexive deception expressions on which Siegler

fixes shed no light on the concept of self-deception and are

misleading when he introduces accounts of them for that purpose.
Finally, we should note that the existence of the above uses

of insanity expressions provide no grounds whatever for saying that

there are two different senses of 'insane' or for saying that there

are two distinct concepts of insanity. In the same way, the

existence of the above uses of reflexive deception expressions in

no way provides grounds for saying that there are two distinct senses

of 'is deceiving himself(herself)' or for distinguishing two

different concepts of self-deception. And so far as I can see,

there are not two (or more) different senses of 'is deceiving himself

(herself)' and there is only a single concept of self-deception.
Another source of the plausibility of these analyses is that

they seem, at first sight, to apply to a certain form of self-deception

102

called 'wishful thinking'. The reason they seem to apply to such
cases is that if X is deceiving himself in thinking that P and this
is a case of wishful thinking, then X strongly gives the impression

of believing that P, and, moreover, it is not necessary that X know

 

that not-P, though it is necessary that there be strong evidence
pointing to not—P, that x know this evidence, see where it points,
and appreciate its import.

Thus the analyses of self-deception provided by Siegler,
Canfield and Gustavson, and especially by Penelhum seem to fit cases
of wishful thinking perfectly. Yet this 'fit' is illusory. In
a case of wishful thinking where X is deceiving himself in thinking
that P, the phrase 'in thinking that P' is misleading. Though it
seems to do so, it does pg£_identify what X is deceiving himself
about. What X is deceiving himself about in a case of wishful
thinking is either the evidence or the fpggg_of the evidence. If
the proposition that E states a piece of evidence, then X may be
deceiving himself about the fact that E. Thus, while he knows
that E, he feigns ignorance of it, suppresses all thought of it,
ignores or tries to rationalize away the evidence favoring E,
avoids situations in which he might become acquainted with fresh
evidence favoring E. Or, if E is a body of evidence strongly
supporting the proposition that not-P, then X may deceive himself
about the force of E} either about the direction in which it points
or its strength, or, usually, both. He knows that the evidence
is strong, perhaps he knows it is conclusive, he knows where it

points, yet he feigns ignorance of this, he suppresses all thought

 

103

of it, ignores or tries to rationalize away all arguments and
reasons - though, I think, not 'evidence' - which support this,
and avoids situations in which he might become acquainted with
fresh arguments or reasons.

Thus it is X's relationship to the evidence supporting the
proposition not—P and not his relationship to the propositions
that P and that not—P which makes it true that he is deceiving Ea
himself. Even in cases of wishful thinking the self-deceiver must U
know what he is deceiving himself about, and so the analyses of

Siegler, Canfield and Gustavson, and Penelhum do not really apply

 

Fr “1..
‘t‘. D‘

to such cases. There is another reason as well why they do not
apply. In many cases of wishful thinking, though not all, the
self-deceiver does pgp_really believe that P; rather, he feigns
belief that P for reasons quite similar to those which other self-
deceivers have for feigning ignorance of the truth. In such

cases of self—deception/wishful—thinking, the evidence is usually
strong enough that one could not appreciate its force and continue
to believe that P. Appreciating its force entails 92222 that P,
and, hence, that one not believe that P, even though it need not
entail that one believe that not-P. Here we should note that
appreciating the force of evidence is quite similar in its implica-
tions to appreciating incompatibilities, and, in particular, it has
implications for our beliefs. In other cases of wishful thinking
the evidence is not so strong that appreciating its force entails
not believing. However, even in many of these cases the evidence
is strong enough that, as a matter of fact, the wishful thinker does

not believe that P.

104

Therefore, there are many cases of wishful thinking to which
the formula endorsed by Siegler, Canfield and Gustavson, and
Penelhum cannot be applied; the formula, namely, or 'belief in the
face of evidence'.

Before leaving this chapter I would like to point out that the
connection between self-deception and wishful thinking helps to
explain how one can have a 'motive' for believing in cases of
wishful thinking. Believing is not something we do, even though
we do assert our beliefs and act upon them, and so it is hard to
see how one can have a motive for believing, how one can believe
that P because one wants to or because one hopes or wishes that P.
The answer is, I think, that even though believing is not something
one can do, and so not something one can have a motive for doing
or a purpose for doing, deceiving oneself is something one does,
can have motives and purposes for doing. The same reasons one has
for wishing or hoping that P or for wanting it to be the case that
P may also be reasons for deceiving oneself about the evidence
favoring not-P and going against P. It would be very interesting
to explore this suggestion further, but I am afraid that there just

is not space in this work.

 

CHAPTER FOUR. Fingarette's New Model of Consciousness.

Section 1.

In the preceding chapters we have discussed at some length
how Demos' statement of the source of paradox in Self-deception
influenced and channeled the subsequent discussion of self-deception
in the analytic tradition. The first analytic philosopher to
appreciate that the discussion had gone far off in the wrong

direction was Herbert Fingarette. In his book, Self-Deception,1

 

we ..,__.__ 2...}!

Fingarette attacks the preoccupation with the question whether or
not the self-deceiver holds incompatible beliefs. He argues that
...in their anxiety to resolve the supposed paradox
in maintaining that a person holds two incompatible
beliefs, Demos, Siegler, Canfield and Gustavson, and
Penelhum all fail to appreciate that the deep paradox
of self-deception lies not in this at most mildly

odd condition, but in the element of knowing, ipten-
tional ignorance.

Moreover, as the above passage clearly indicates, Fingarette
put his finger squarely on the first major paradox of self-deception:
the self-deceiver's "knowing, intentional ignorance", and he
justifiably criticizes Demos and the others for failing to see it.
Fingarette then goes on in his own analysis of self-deception to
give this crucial element of willful, purposeful ignorance its full
cine, and he attempts to give what is, in effect, an account of how
someone can make himself willfully ignorant of the truth. To
acccmmflish this, he gives an explication of what it is to become

lexplicitly conscious of something. Specifically, he proposes a new

 

105

100

"model" of explicit consciousness, "one in which we are doers,
active rather than passive."3 Traditionally, both in philosophy
and in everyday life, becoming conscious of something has not been
thought of as something one can purposely do or purposely avoid
doing, but this is because we have portrayed explicit consciousness
in terms of the metaphor and idiom of "seeing--the essentially
passive registration and reflection to the 'mind' of what the
world presents to our eyes."4 Fingarette challenges this portrayal
of explicit consciousness in terms of "passive, visual imagery."
He argues that this is not necessarily the only way of portraying
explicit consciousness, nor is it the best way of portraying it
for the purposes of philosophical analysis.

Just as we can characterize the 'feeling' of depression

in terms of the imagery of heavy weight, or dark

shadows, or degradedness and guilt, and yet be por-

traying the 'feel' of the very same feeling, so too

we can portray our consciousness, as consciousness,

in more than one way. And just as the portrayal of

depression in terms of the language and imagery of

guilt is far more fertile, when we reflect analytic-

ally on the matter, than is the imagery of weight,

so too, I believe, the model of consciousness which

I propose will prove far more fertile for philosophical

analysis than is vision as a model of consciousness.5

The attractiveness of this move is immediately apparent.
If becoming explicitly conscious of something is something one can
‘purposely do, for good reason or bad, then one can also purposely
avoid becoming explicitly conscious of something, even refuse to
become explicitly conscious, and also do so for good or bad

reasons. The self-deceiver can then be described as someone who

purposely avoids becoming explicitly conscious of the truth, and

 

107

his willful ignorance will consist, partially or wholly, in his
successful avoidance of the truth.

This is just the tact that Fingarette takes. The new
model of becoming explicitly conscious of something which he.
proposes is the exercise of a skill.

To become explicitly conscious of something is to
be exercising a certain skill...The specific skill I
have particularly in mind as a model for becoming
explicitly conscious of something is the skill of say -
ing what we are doing or experiencing. I propose,
then, that we do not characterize consciousness as a
kind of mental mirror, but as the exercise of the
(learned) skill of 'spelling-out' some feature of the
world as we are engaged in it...

I have purposefully chosen as the name of this skill
a phrase, 'spelling-out', which could not in the
context be taken literally but must be taken in something
like its colloquial use...

Colloquially, to spell something out is to make it
explicit, to say it in a clearly and fully elaborated
way, to make it perfectly apparent. Typical uses which
I have in mind are: 'He is so stupid you have to spell
everything out for him'; 'He let me know without actually
spelling it out'; and 'you know perfectly well what I
mean--do I have to spell it out for you?’

Applied to 'becoming conscious of something'. the
phrase 'spelling-out' may refer, but need not, to the
actual and elaborate saying out loud, or writing down,
of that which one is conscious of. However, the phrase
'spell-out' is intended to suggest strongly an activity
which has a close relation and analogy to linguistic
activity. Sometimes-~but by no means always--the 'model'
activity (literally making something explicit in language)
is also an instance of the skill (becoming conscious) for
which it serves as model. However it is clear that one
often becomes explicitly conscious of something, or, to
use the phrase which I now propose to use synonymously,
one often spells-out something, without any evident
utterance, even to oneself, or with only allusive or
cryptic ones.

What the exact connection is between spelling-out
and perfectly straightforward examples of linguistic
activity, I do not know. I think there is always a
close relation. The point of my speaking of a 'model'
here is that I wish to avoid even attempting a definitive
account.6

108

After having made this connection between spelling-out and
becoming explicitly conscious, Fingarette states what he calls his
"first thesis concerning spelling-out":

The thesis is that, generally speaking, the
particular features of an individual's engagement in
the world need not be, and usually are not spelled-out

by him.7

The explanation for this lies in the fact that

With exceptions (such as the performatives), there
is always some special reason, over and above the simple
fact of being engaged in some specific way, for taking
the additional step of spelling-out this engagement. To
refer to our model; we are not always saying all we are
doing; we could not. Therefore we are selective in what
we say, but not arbitrarily so. The same holds true,
mutatis mutandis, for spelling—out.

Once this is seen, it is then easy to appreciate that there
can be situations "in which there is over-riding reason 223 to
spell-out some engagement, where we skillfully take account of this
and systematically avoid spelling-out the engagement, and where,
in turn, we refrain from spelling—out this exercise in our skill

in spelling-out.“9 This further realization takes us into the

"region of self-deception"lo;

In general, the person in self-deception is a
person of whom it is a patent characteristic that even
when normally appropriate he persistently avoids spelling-
out some features of his engagement in the world...11

Moreover, once the self-deceiver has assessed a situation and

committed himself to avoid spelling-out the engagement,

...the original reasons for refusing to spell-out the
truth will also serve as reasons against spelling-out
the prior assessment and commitment not to spell-out
the truth. For to spell-out the assessment and the
policy adopted would, of course, require spelling-out

109

the engagement at issue, the very engagement the
self-deceiver has committed himself not to spell-
out.12

In other words, it is logically impossible for the self-deceiver

to avoid spelling-out his engagement and to at the same time spell-
out his policy of avoiding spelling-out the engagement. Thus the
reasons for not spelling-out the engagement will also serve as
reasons for not spelling-out the policy of not spelling-out the

engagement.

 

110

Section 2.

The foregoing represents only a part of Fingarette's analysis
of self-deception. He goes on to try to develop his account in a
way which will at once explain ghy_the self-deceiver avoids spelling-
out his engagement as well as some of the deeper aspects of self-
deception. Briefly put, his view is that for the self-deceiver to
spell-out his engagement would be to acknowledge his personal
identity in a way that would be destructive of his unity as a
person. However, this part of Fingarette's account, while stimulating
and suggestive, is fraught with obscurity, and since it is not
directly germane to our present purposes, we shall leave it out of
consideration except for a few occasional asides.

For our purposes, it is far more important to determine how
successful Fingarette is in providing an account of self—deception
which is free from paradox and which adequately accounts for the
more prominent features of self-deception. His account is of
special interest to us because it seems to coincide with the tentative
sketch of self-deception which we gave at the end of Chapter Two.
Saying that the self-deceiver purposely avoids becoming explicitly
conscious of the truth does not involve us in the first major
paradox of self-deception, while it does provide adequate recognition
of the essential purposefulness of self-deception: we can explain
the self-deceiver's lack of explicit consciousness as due to his

lgurposeful avoidance, for over-riding reasons, of becoming explicitly

111

conscious of the truth. Moreover, this fits in well with our
suggestion that we treat all talk of the self-deceiver's blindness,
willful ignorance, and self-deception as metaphorical or idiomatic
references to his purposeful avoidance of explicit consciousness of
the truth together with his feigning ignorance of it.

Before we can assimilate Fingarette's account to our own
in the above fashion, however, we must deal with certain difficulties
which it poses. The first of these concerns Fingarette's use of
the term 'explicitly conscious'. Fingarette often speaks as though
this phrase can be used interchangeably with the word 'conscious'.
On the other hand, the adverb 'explicitly' would suggest that it
cannot be so used, that to be conscious of something is not
necessarily to be explicitly conscious of it. It makes a big
difference to our account of self-deception in which of these two
ways we construe the phrase.

Let us suppose first that 'explicitly conscious' is to be
taken as equivalent to 'conscious'. Then in accordance with
Fingarette's other views, we can say that to become conscious of the
truth is to do something, to be exercising a certain skill, that of
'spelling-out', and that the self-deceiver is someone who has an
over-riding reason not to become conscious of the truth, who assesses
his situation and determines that he has such a reason, who takes
this into account in adopting a policy of not becoming conscious of
the truth, and who then does not become conscious of the truth

because to do so would violate this policy.

112

Unfortunately, we are now committed to a contradiction, that
the self—deceiver is at times both conscious of the truth and not
conscious of it. It is this contradiction, of course, which I
call 'the second major paradox of self-deception'. The derivation
of the second half of this contradiction is quite trivial. Since
the self-deceiver is not conscious of the truth because to do so
would violate his policy, it follows that he is not conscious of
the truth during his self—deception.

On the other hand, we cannot explain the self-deceiver's
not being conscious of the truth as due to the fact that becoming
conscious of the truth would violate his policy of not becoming
conscious of the truth unless he is at times conscious of the truth.
For such an explanation to hold, it is not enough that he has the
policy and simply does not become conscious of the truth.

To see this, let us note first that a person may have a
policy of never lying, and he may in fact not lie during a period
of time. But it does not follow from this that he did not lie
because to do so would violate his policy. In order for us to
explain his not lying in this way, there must have been some

occasion during this period of time in which he recognized that he

 

had or thought that he had some reason to lie, and so was tempted

to lie, but did not do so out of recognition that this would violate

 

his policy of not lying. But for him to recognize that he had a
reason to lie would be for him to be conscious that he had a reason

to lie. Sometimes we use the term 'recognize' in a dispositional way.

 

To say that X recognizes that P is to say that X knows that P and

113

would acknowledge it under appropriate circumstances. At other

 

times, we use the term 'recognize' in a way in which it designates
an ESE and is equivalent to 'acknowledge': e.g., we say he will

not recognize him in his will. But in the above we are using the
term 'recognize' in neither of these ways. We are using it in an
episodic sense in which it is close to "He recognized Brown at his
door", "He recognized the smell of garlic", "He recognized the work
of his old enemy, Fu Manchu, in this hideous murder."

I do not want to put too much stress on the term 'recognize'
here. We could also use the term 'see', 'realize', 'be aware',
'know' to say the same thing. Thus instead of the above, we could
say of the man with the policy of not lying that during this period
of time there must of been some occasion on which he g3! that he
had reason to lie (or "realized he had reason to lie", “was ag§£g_
that he had reason to lie", "kpgg_that he had reason to lie") if
we are to explain his not lying as due to his adherence to his
policy of not lying. But also, and this is the point I have been
trying to make, we could equally well say that there must have been
some occasion on which he was conscious that he had reason to lie.
In this context all of these terms - 'recognize', 'see', 'aware',
'know', 'realize', apg_'conscious' - are equivalent.

Hence, if we are to say of this man that he did not lie because
doing so would violate his policy of not lying, then the man must
have been conscious that he had a reason to lie, and also conscious
that to do so would violate his policy of not lying. Suppose, for

example, that Smith asks Jones to loan him a large sum of money. Jones

114

tells him that he may be able to loan him the money, though if he
does, he will need it back within two weeks. Jones then asks Smith
if he can repay the loan by that time. Smith has a policy of not
lying, and he doesn't lie. He tells Jones that he cannot repay

the money within two weeks. But we cannot say that Smith did not
lie to Jones because to do so would violate his policy of not lying
unless Smith was conscious (recognized, realized, knew, saw, was
aware) that Jones would probably not loan him the money unless he
lied, and so was conscious that he had reason to lie. If it did
not even occur to him that he would probably not get the loan from
Jones unless he lied, then — I am assuming that Smith was not
conscious of any other reason to lie - it would be false that he
did not lie because lying to Jones would violate his policy of

not lying.

Similarly, it must also be the case that Smith recognized -
was conscious - that lying to Jones would violate his policy of
never lying. Even though Smith was conscious of a reason for
lying to Jones, had a policy of not lying, and did not lie, it still
does not follow that he did not lie to Jones because lying to him
was inconsistent with his policy, Jones, for example, may be a
violent man, particularly hard on people who lie to him. Smith,
while recognizing that he had reason to lie to Jones, may have
refrained from lying out of regard for the regularity of his
own features and a concern for his teeth, without its even having

occurred to him that lying to Jones would violate his policy. If

115

so, we could not say that Smith did not lie because of his policy
of not lying.

Here I should like to make two points. First, nothing I have
said commits me to saying that when, e.g., someone who has a policy
of not lying does not lie, but is conscious neither of a reason
to lie nor of the fact that lying would violate his policy, then
there is no way of explaining his not lying. What explains it has
already been noted: he did not lie because he was not aware of
any reason for lying, even though, perhaps, there was a reason for
him to lie which he did not see. Thus we are not forced back in
such a situation to an explanation in terms of adherence to a
policy.

The second point is that nothing I have said about adhering
to a policy conflicts with the fact that adherence to a policy
may become habitual, 'second nature', as it were. There may seem
to be such a conflict because we often say of someone for whom
adherence to a policy has become second nature, e.g., of someone
who rigidly adheres to a policy of honesty, that "it wouldn't
even occur to him to lie", and this may seem to mean that the person
is never conscious of reasons to lie. However, this is hyperbole.
(The expression means that when he is conscious of such reasons, he
(ices not give them serious consideration, does not hesitate for a
Dmoment, but straight away adheres to his policy. The expression
applies to people who are not moved nor inclined by such reasons; it

Cicxes not apply to people who are not conscious of them.

116

Let us now consider a person, Brown, who has a policy of
never becoming conscious that S. Again, in order for us to truly
say that Brown does not become conscious that S because doing so
would violate his policy, there must be some occasion on which he
is conscious of some reason to become conscious that S, and on
which he is also conscious that becoming conscious that 8 would
violate his policy. There is, however, an important difference
between this case and preceding ones. Providing that Brown knows
that S (as opposed to simply believing that S), Brown could not
be conscious of some reason to become conscious that S unless he
were conscious that S, and he could not be conscious that becoming
conscious that S would violate his policy of not becoming conscious
that 8 unless he were conscious that S.

A parallel example will be of some help in seeing this.
Suppose that Smith knows that his son's birthday is on July 22d.
He promises his son that he will be home early from work in order
to attend his birthday party, but because such things have often
slipped his mind in the past, he asks his wife to remind him on
the morning of the 22d of the birthday party. Here we can say
that Smith is conscious of some reason for becoming conscious (by
being reminded by his wife) on the morning of the 22d that his
:son's birthday party will be given later in the day. It does not
.follow directly from this that Smith is conscious that his son's
lbirthday party will be given on the 22d. Smith may be mistaken
aflmout the date, and so only believe that his son's birthday party

143 on the 22d. But assuming that he is not mistaken, that he knows

117

that the birthday party is on the 22d, he could not be conscious
of some reason for becoming conscious (by being reminded) on the
morning of the 22d that his son's birthday party will be given
later in the day without its being the case that he is conscious
that his son's birthday party will be on the 22d.

Now let us suppose that Thompson, vain and aging, and anxious
about his declining virility, has adopted a policy of not allowing
himself to become conscious of his own age wherever possible.

He realizes that he ought to face up to the fact that he is 47 and
growing older, and so he is conscious from time to time that he

has good reason to become conscious that he is 47. But at the

same time he is conscious that becoming conscious that he is 47
would violate his policy of not allowing himself to become conscious
that he is 47 wherever it is possible to do so. And, assuming

that he knows that he is 47, then he could neither be conscious

that he has good reason to become conscious that he is 47 (during
the course of facing up to his age) nor conscious that doing so
would violate his policy of not allowing himself to become conscious
that he is 47 unless he were conscious that he is 47. Brown's

case is similar. Providing he knows that S, Brown could neither

lae conscious of some reason for becoming conscious that S nor
(:onscious that doing so would violate his policy unless he were
conscious that S .

Now, the self—deceiver is someone who knows the truth, but

<3?! the view we are considering, he is not conscious of the truth

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118

of never becoming conscious of the truth. But the latter could

not hold unless he were conscious of the truth. So, on the view

we are considering, the self-deceiver would have to be both conscious
and not conscious of the truth at the same time. Thus, the view

we are considering leads directly into the second major paradox

of self—deception.

In recognition of this, we might try to alter this view so
that it no longer includes the notion of adhering to a policy of
never becoming conscious of the truth. Instead, we might say that
while the self-deceiver knows the truth, he is not conscious of
the truth because on any occasion for which he has some reason to
become conscious of the truth, he always has an over-riding
reason for not becoming conscious of the truth.

This way of putting things is, I believe, closer to the real
state of affairs, but it does not get us out of the second major
paradox of self—deception. If on some occasion the self-deceiver
has a reason to become conscious of the truth, we still cannot
say that he did not become conscious of the truth because he had
an over-riding reason for not doing so unless he were conscious
of some reason for becoming conscious of the truth and conscious
of some over-riding reason for not becoming conscious of the truth,
and in both of these cases he would have to be conscious of the truth.
So this modified view also leads to the second major paradox
of self-deception.

Hence, while we may retain the view that the self-deceiver

11&5 a policy of not becoming conscious of the truth and that he has

119

strong reasons for not becoming conscious of the truth, we must
reject the claims that he does not become conscious of the truth
because to do so would violate his policy, and that he does not
become conscious of the truth because he has an over—riding reason
for not doing so. This does not mean that we must reject the claim
that the self—deceiver is not conscious of the truth. To avoid
the paradox we need only reject the explanation of his not being
conscious of the truth in terms of a policy or over-riding reason.
Though of course, if we did reject the claim that the self-deceiver
is not conscious of the truth, then, since there would be nothing
for these explanations to explain, they would be rejected as well,
and hence, the paradox could also be avoided in this way.
Traditionally, however, the claim that the self-deceiver is
not conscious of the truth except in special circumstances has not
been rejected, and only the explanation of his not being conscious
in terms of his own purposes, policies, etc., has been rejected
in order to avoid the second major paradox of self—deception. This
left open the question why the self—deceiver, while knowing the
truth, only became conscious of it in quite exceptional circumstances,
and did not become conscious of it in circumstances in which we
would normally expect someone who knows the truth to become conscious
of it. The only explanation for this would seem to be that the
self-deceiver does not become conscious of the truth because he is
.prevented from doing so by forces operating beyond his control,
.either by another person within him, or by impersonal forces operating

blindly within him.

120

I indicated in Chapter Two that it is the claim that the
self—deceiver is not conscious of the truth in normal circumstances
together with the above explanation of this alledged fact which
leass, yi§_argument (b)l"', to the conclusion that he does not
know the truth. However, we need not take this step, and, indeed,
if we wish to be consistent, we will not take it. For the explana-
tion presupposes that the self-deceiver does know the truth, and
without this presupposition, the explanation simply would not apply;
we could explain his lack of consciousness in terms of his lack
of knowledge.

Still, the view that the self-deceiver, while knowing the
truth, is not normally conscious of it because he is prevented
from becoming so by forces operating independently of his own aim,
wishes, desires, policies, etc., is not a very happy one. The
reason for this is that this contention negates what Fingarette
calls "the crucial element of purposefulness in the whole manoeuvre."l3
The only way of restoring this essential element is by denying what
this view takes for granted, namely, that the self-deceiver is not
conscious of the truth under normal circumstances. However, before
we can convincingly rid ourselves of this assumption, we shall have
to refute the view of consciousness on which it rests, i.e., we

shall have to refute the vehicular theory of consciousness.

121
Section 3.

The phrase, 'vehicular theory of consciousness', is in a
certain respect misleading, for what it refers to is more often a
way of thinking about consciousness than an explicitly held and
reasoned theory about consciousness. Even people who explicitly
reject the theory as a theory about consciousness - I suspect, for
example, that Canfield and Gustavson fit into this category - still
fall into the trap of thinking about consciousness as though it
required a 'vehicle'. This way of thinking often gives very
misleading results, as in the case of self-deception. The self-
deceiver is often conscious of the truth, but his consciousness
never has a vehicle. And if we hold the vehicular theory of
consciousness, or think about consciouensss on its terms, then we
are led to deny that the self-deceiver is ever conscious of the
truth under normal circumstances.

According to the vehicular theory, if X is conscious that P,
he must either be perceiving that P through the senses, or entertaining
memory images depicting that P, or expressing that P linguistically
to himself or another, or have some other similar vehicle for his
consciousness. For example, Jones may be conscious that a child
is running in front of his car, when he sees the child in front of
it. Later, images of the child running in front of his car may pass
through his mind, and then we can say that he is conscious that a
child ran in front of his car. Or, he may simply say, either to

1himself or another person, that a child ran in front of his car,

122

and again we can say that X is conscious that a child ran in front
of his car.

Freud held such a vehicular theory of consciousness. Freud
recognized that consciousness is episodic and that to be conscious
of something is to have it on one's mind or present to consciousness.
In 'A Note on the Unconscious in Psychoanalysis' he writes:

A conception--or any other mental element--which is

now present to my consciousness may become absent the

next moment,and may become present again, after an

interval, unchanged, and as we say, from memory, not as

a result of a fresh perception of our senses. It is

this fact which we are accustomed to account for by

the supposition that during the interval the conception

has been present in our mind, although latent in
consciousness.14

However, Freud tended to take the notion of 'present to consciousness'

quite literally. In The Interpretation 9£_Dreams he likens

 

consciousness to "a sense organ for the apprehension of psychical
qualities."15 Initially consciousness "can receive excitations
from the periphery of the whole apparatus, the perceptual system;
and in addition to this, it can receive excitations of pleasure
and unpleasure".15 But excitations other than those from the
perceptual system, which here includes the systems of memory, can
only be objects of consciousness insofar as they carry with them
.pleasure or unpleasure. So,

...in Order to make more delicately adjusted performances

possible, it later became necessary to make the course

of ideas less dependent upon the presence or absence of

unpleasure. For this purpose the Pcs. system needed

to have qualities of its own which could attract conscious-
ness; and it seems highly probable that it obtained them

by linking the preconscious processes with the mnemic
system of linguistic symbols, a system which was not without

123

quality. By means of the qualities of that system,
consciousness, which had hitherto been a sense organ
for perceptions alone, also became a sense organ for a
portion of our thought processes.15

In his later works Freud does not mention the suggestion
that consciousness be viewed as a sense organ for the detection of
psychic qualities. However, the contention that conscious thought
must have a vehicle is reaffirmed. In "The Ego and the Id' Freud
appeals to this distinction in distinguishing between Ug§_ideas

and Pcs or Cs ideas.

...the real difference between a Egg and a Pg§_idea
(thought) consists in this: that the former is carried
out upon some sort of material which remains unrecognized,
whereas the latter (the Egg) is in addition brought into
connection with word presentations. This is the first
attempt to indicate distinguishing marks for the two
systems, the Pg§_and Egg, other than their relation to
consciousness. The question, "How does a thing become
conscious?" would thus be more advantageously stated:
"How does a thing become preconscious?" And the answer
would be: "Through becoming connected with the word
presentations corresponding to it."16

This last passage suggests an even more stringent version of
the vehicular theory of consciousness than that held in The

Interpretation 9: Dreams: X is conscious that P only if the thought

 

or idea that P has become "connected with the word presentations
corresponding to it." This later view sounds quite close to
Fingarette's view that to become explicitly conscious of something
is to spell it out. However, Fingarette realized, as Freud did
not, that the vehicular theory so narrowly construed is false,

for "one often becomes explicitly conscious of something...without
émny evident utterance, even to oneself, or with only allusive or

(Zryptic ones."17

124

Moreover, not only is this narrow version of the vehicular
theory false, all versions, wide or narrow, are false. To see
this, let us suppose that M is home alone sitting in front of
his fireplace watching the fire. As he sits there, he stares deeply
into the flames. He says nothing to himself or anyone else. No
images, neither auditory nor mnemic images, nor images of any
other kind pass through his mind. Yet it is not inconsistent, odd,
or nonsensical to say that M is brooding about his wife's infidelity
during this time.

One way in which we might find out that M has been brooding
about his wife‘s infidelity is through what he says. We see him
staring morosely into the flames and we ask him what he is thinking
about. He replies that his 'loving' (sarcastic tone) wife is out
again for the third time that week, probably shacking up in some
motel with her boyfriend, that he was thinking about this and
feeling lonely and bitter. Providing we do not question the
sincerity of his reply, we shall accept at least the part about his
thinking without hesitation. Moreover, if we found out that he
had said nothing to himself or to another person during this time,
and that no images had passed through his mind, this would certainly
provide no good reason to doubt his sincerity.

The priviledged status of M's reply to our inquiry is
indicative of the special authority which is possessed by what a
;person says about his own thinking and consciousness. This
aauthority provides, I believe, the main impetus to vehicular theories

<3f'consciousness, for they are all primarily aimed at explaining how

 

125

a person know§_what he is thinking about or what he is conscious
of. On their view, he knows what he is thinking about or what he
is conscious of because of the connection between these things and
his images and internal speech. The latter provides the grounds
upon which his knowledge of the former are based. Thus Freud was
inclined to view consciousness as a kind of sense organ for the
detection of psychic qualities, in particular the auditory images
of internal speech, and it was only through the use of this 'sense
organ' that the individual himself learned what he is thinking
about. If thoughts were not connected with these auditory images,
then the individual would not know what he is thinking about,
since thoughts are pg£_§g_without 'psychic quality'.

What these theories all fail to take into account is that if
there were a problemxvith how an individual knows what he is thinking
about and what he is conscious of, then there would also be a
problem with the individual's knowledge about his own images and
internal speech. A person exercises the same kind of authority
with regard to his images and internal speech as he does with
respect to his thinking and consciousness. He may lie about his
images and internal speech, but he cannot be mistaken about them,
and what he sincerely says about them is true. Once this is
realized the vehicular theory loses much of its persuasiveness,
since the 'problem' - if there is one - has not been solved but merely
moved to a different level.

I am not maintaining here that the above example concerning M's

lDrooding about his wife's infidelity fits in very well with our

126

earlier supposition that he is deceiving himself about her
infidelity. I have introduced the example only for the purpose
of showing that vehicular theories of consciousness are false, and
not for the purpose of showing that self-deceivers are at times
conscious of the truth. On the other hand, it is not difficult
to come up with an example which is at once a counter-example to
vehicular theories of consciousness and also a counter-example
to the claim that self—deceivers are never conscious of the truth
except under very special circumstances (drugs, drink, hypnosis,
psychoanalysis).

Suppose, for example, that contrary to his usual habit, M is
on his way home from work early in the afternoon. As he drives
up to his house, he sees a gold '74 Buick parked a few yards down
the street from his house. His reaction to this sight is immediate.
With the first glimpse of the car, a flush of heat passes over
his body, beginning with his scalp and face, radiating downwards
through his limbs, and outwards, covering his flesh with a rush of
prickliness. Simultaneously, his body grows numb and heavy, he
feels paralyzed, and he cannot bring himself to look at his house -
it seems alien, hostile, and he feels as though there were a force
pushing his face away from his house. His stomach churns, sinks,
and a wave of nausea rises up from his bowels through his stomach
into his throat.

All of these feelings seem.to merge and float outwards from

him, swirling around the gold Buick. It is as if he had no body, as

127

if he were a pinpoint of feelings, sights, and sounds. The flush
of heat, the prickliness, the heaviness, the sinking sensation,

the nausea, the pressure of the seat against his back and legs,

all mingle with the dense afternoon neighborhood, with the thick,
viscuous sunlight, with the repellent brilliance of the green grass
and the blue sky, with the shade and suffocating heat of the inside
of the car, with the smell of exhaust fumes, with the remote sound
of honking horns, with the backyard voices and cries of playing
children, with the chimes of a far away ice—cream vendor. Every-
thing bends and merges towards the gold Buick, forming a whirling
tunnel around it. The car has now become solid, dense, immovable,
indestructible - a monument which draws everything to it but is
touched by nothing. Time stops around it.

As the spell subsides, as the universe extricates itself from
its swirl around the gold Buick, a cool breeze flickers past M's
face. The thought enters his head of driving down to a nearby
lake and relaxing within the dark confines of a bar on its shore.
M drives off, the whole monstrous experience fading behind him,
attached to the gold '74 Buick.

M recognized the Buick as belonging to his wife's lover, and
when he saw it, he was struck by the thought that his wife and her
lover were using his house for a rendezvous. Thus when he saw the
lover's car M was conscious of his wife's infidelity, and his
experience was a reaction to seeing the-car-of-his-wife's-lover-
Parked-near-his-house rather than simply to seeing a gold '74 Buick

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128

above, no images, no internal speech passed through M's mind
and he said nothing aloud. Thus we again have a counter-example
to the vehicular theory of consciousness.
We must now decide whether we also have a counter-example
to the claim that the self-deceiver is never conscious of the truth
except in quite special circumstances. The example as so far stated
is in a rather neutral status. It is not clearly inconsistent
with the claim that M is deceiving himself about his wife's
infidelity, but neither does it clearly show that M is conscious
of his wife's infidelity while he is deceiving himself about it.
What we must do now in order to get a counter-example to the
claim that self-deceivers are not conscious of the truth is to
sharpen the example by adding further details to it. We might
begin by noting that one reason the example does not clearly conflict
with the claim_that M is deceiving himself about his wife's infidelity
is because it does provide a counter-example to the vehicular
theory of consciousness. If it did not provide such a counter-
example, if we supposed, for instance, that M imagined his wife
and her lover coupling in his bed or that he said to himself, "The
slut! Now she's even using my_house for her dirty affairl", then
the example would sharply conflict with the supposition that M is
deceiving himself about his wife's infidelity.
This brings us to the second way of construing Fingarette's
phrase, "explicitly conscious'. The first way of construing it was
.to take it as equivalent to 'conscious', and, as we have seen, in

connection with Fingarette's analysis of self-deception this leads to

129

the second major paradox of self—deception. The second way of
construing 'explicitly conscious' would be to take it in a much
more limited way in which it is not co-extensive with 'conscious'.
Fingarette's model of explicit consciousness - spelling-out in the
colloquial sense - suggests that we can take explicit consciousness
to be consciousness which is accompanied by spelling-out in the
colloquial sense, and, consistently with Fingarette's own
directions, the notion can be expected to include consciousness

of the truth which is accompanied by cryptic or allusive reference
to the truth.

We could go on extending the notion of explicit consciousness
in this way, listing kinds of instances of explicit consciousness.
We might, for example, further extend the notion by adding that
‘explicit consciousness is to include consciousness which is
accompanied by some form of pictorial representation of the truth,
whether that representation be given in mental imagery or in some
external form, e.g., a drawing. But no such listing could ever
be complete. For example, suppose that, after learning of his wife's
infidelity, M refuses to sleep with his wife, offering no explana-
tions for this to anyone, including his wife. Providing that his
refusal is a reaction to what he has learned, i.e., that his wife
has been unfaithful to him, we shall want to say that he is
explicitly conscious of her infidelity when,e.g., he comes home,
grabs his pillows, blankets, and belongings, and moves them into the
guest room. Yet he may neither spell-out her infidelity, nor make
Cryptic or allusive references to it, nor picture it in mental images

or in any other way.

130

Such examples can be multiplied indefinitely, and thus any
listing of kinds of instances of explicit consciousness must
necessarily be incomplete, and, hence, vague. Vagueness is not
necessarily a bad thing, but for our purposes, the particular
vagueness of the notion of explicit consciousness which would result
from such a listing would be intolerable; moreover, this vagueness
is not necessary. What all of these instances of explicit conscious-
ness have in common is that they contain an acknowledgment of the
truth. To spell-out the truth, to refer to it cryptically or
allusively, to picture it in mental imagery or a drawing is normally
to acknowledge it. Likewise, M's refusal to sleep with his wife
amounts to an acknowledgment of her infidelity. Hence, we can
(define explicit consciousness as consciousness which is accompanied
Iby an acknowledgment of the truth.

Now, in order to make the above example concerning M a clear
counter-example to the claim that self-deceivers are not conscious
<3f the truth except in very special circumstances, we must suppose
that M, while conscious of his wife's infidelity when seeing the
gold '74 Buick, is ngt_explicitly conscious of it. And, to make
clear what this supposition involves, several points need to be
made .

First, the definition of explicit consciousness as conscioun-
Jness which is accompanied by an acknowledgment of the truth is
Inisleading, for explicit consciousness is not merely consciousness

Vflhich is concommitant with an acknowledgment of the truth. A

 

131

necessary condition of acknowledging the truth is that one can be
conscious of the truth while one is acknowledging it. This means
that if, for example, M were to say that his wife was being
unfaithful to him (perhaps as a lie), or if he were to (jokingly)
allude to infidelity on her part, or if he were to image her and
another man having sexual intercourse (perhaps in a voyeuristic
phantasy), then the saying or alluding or imaging would not count
as an acknowledgment of the truth if he were not at the same time
conscious of the truth. It is consciousness of the truth which
constitutes such sayings, allusions, and imagings as acknowledg-
ments of the truth. And it is only consciousness of the truth,
which does constitute an acknowledgment of the truth as an acknowledg-
ment of the truth which counts as explicit consciousness. So,
when we suppose that M is conscious of his wife's infidelity upon
seeing the car but it not explicitly conscious of her infidelity,
we are supposing that he does nothing which is constituted by his
consciousness of her infidelity as an acknowledgment of her
infidelity. And this means that the example is automatically a
counter-example to the vehicular theory of consciousness, for it
entails that he does not spell-out, image, or picture his wife's
infidelity, though it precludes as well other forms of acknowledgment
which are not incorporated into the vehicular theory of consciousness.
Secondly, Fingarette is correct — in a sense - in treating
becoming explicitly conscious as something one does, for acknowledging
Nthe truth is something one does. However, this only means that the

<:onsciousness is already given and that making it explicit is

132

something one does. One imparts a quality to an already existing
consciousness. It does 22t_mean that becoming conscious is
something one does. Consciousness, whether it be the kind which
constitutes an acknowledgment or the kind which does not, is
something that befalls one. When M became conscious of his wife's
infidelity upon seeing the gold Buick parked near his house, he
did not make himself conscious of her infidelity. His becoming
conscious of her infidelity was a reaction to what he saw over
which he had no control. This does not mean that in general one
never has control in any form over one's consciousness. One can,
for example, avoid becoming conscious of the truth by avoiding
situations in which one is likely to be reminded of it or by
preoccupying one's mind in some form of distraction, just as one
can avoid automobile accidents by being careful and taking certain
precautions. And one can arrange things so that one will become
conscious of something at such and such a time or under certain
circumstances. A person may, e.g., ask someone to remind him of
something at a particular time. But this sort of control does
not justify saying that becoming conscious is something one does.

Indeed, if, per impossible, anything were to count as "purposely

 

Jbecoming conscious of the truth for some reason" or as "making
coneself conscious of the truth for some reason", these descriptions
‘would presuppose that one was already conscious of the truth, and
so it would be incorrect to apply them.

Thirdly, in the definition of explicit consciousness as

«consciousness which is accompanied by an acknowledgment of the truth -

133

which definition might now be better rendered by saying that
explicit consciousness is consciousness which constitutes an
acknowledgment of the truth as an acknowledgment of the truth - we
are using the term 'acknowledgment' in a way which stretches its
sense in two different directions. First, we are stretching it

in a way that covers not only straight-forward verbal acknoeledgments
of the truth given in reply to inquiries or challenges, but also

in a way in which it covers 'in effect', figurative acknowledgments
of the truth to others, e.g., M's refusal to sleep with his wife

in response to her infidelity. Secondly, we are using the term
'acknowledgment' to cover acknowledgments tg_oneself, where the term
is being used in a secondary way, with the straight-forward and
figurative acknowledgments to others providing the primary uses.
Thus if, upon seeing the gold Buick parked near his house, M were

to exclaim to himself, "The slut! Now she's even meeting him in

my housel", or if he were to image his wife and her lover coupling
in his bed, then this would under normal circumstances count as an
acknowledgment to himself of his wife's infidelity.

There is no need to apologize for this stretched use of the

‘term 'acknowledgment'. It is an established use, one with which we
Eire familiar, and this is even true of 'acknowledgments to oneself'.
TPhe latter use is as familiar as 'saying to oneself', 'telling one-
sself', 'admitting to oneself'. Thus its occurrence in the definition
(bf 'explicit consciousness' provides a basis for applying the term
"exp1icit consciousness', for talking about explicit consciousness

:in a general way or for deciding in a given case whether or not

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someone is explicitly conscious, and so on. Granted, the use of
the term 'acknowledgment' in the definition still allows for some
vagueness in the term 'explicit consciousness', but this is not the
pervasive vagueness which results when the term is defined through
a list of instances.

The fourth point I wish to make about explicit consciousness
connects the avoidance of explicit consciousness in a particularly
close way with feigning or pretending to be ignorant of the truth.18
It is often the case that one is conscious of the truth and that one
does something such that special steps are necessary if what one
does is ggt_to be constituted by one's consciousness of the truth
as an acknowledgment of the truth. What one must do is feign or
pretend ignorance of the truth. In still other cases where one is
conscious of the truth, if one fails to indicate in some way that
one does not accept what is in fact the truth, then one's conscious-
ness of the truth constitutes one's failure as an acknowledgment
of the truth.

I shall divide examples to illustrate this point according
to whether feigning or pretending ignorance of the truth is necessary
in order to avoid acknowledgment of the truth to others or in order
to avoid acknowledgment of the truth to oneself. Thus, to begin
xwith the former, M's refusal to sleep with his wife would normally
involve an acknowledgment of her infidelity, and so would involve
explicit consciousness of her infidelity. M cannot avoid this
acknowledgment by allowing that his wife has been unfaithful but

Iby denying that he is refusing to sleep with her in response to

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her infidelity, for even though this would prevent his refusal to
sleep with her from being constituted as an acknowledgment of
his wife's infidelity, it would only do so at the expense of making
another acknowledgment of her infidelity. The only way that he
can prevent his consciousness of her infidelity from constituting
something or other as an acknowledgment of her infidelity is by
feigning ignorance of her infidelity. Thus, he may, for example,
avoid acknowledging her infidelity to others by becoming terribly
'annoyed' at his wife's frequent tossing and turning at night, and
by explaining to others that he does not sleep with her because
his tossing and turning keeps him awake, when really his 'annoyance'
is disguised anger at her for her infidelity, and his refusal to
sleep with her is both punishment of her for her transgressions and
an effort to disassociate himself from her and her behavior.

Or, for another example, M may confide to a friend that he
does not believe that his wife could be sexually "satisfied by
any man." Normally the friend could take this as a rather facile
and self-serving attempt by M to explain his wife's infidelity,
and thus as an acknowledgment to him (the friend) of her infidelity.
JBut if M adds, "None the less, she has remained completely faithful
‘to mel", while the friend may still treat M's remark as an attempt
‘to explain his wife's infidelity, the friend can no longer treat
'the remark as an acknowledgment of the wife's infidelity. M's
éadditional assertion, which marks him as pretending ignorance of his
-\vife's infidelity, has removed the remark from the status of an

acknowledgment of his wife's infidelity.

136

To turn now to our second set of examples, Pugmire's
incompetent official provides an excellent example of a person who
is pretending tg_himself to be ignorant of the truth in order to
avoid acknowledging the truth to himself. Even while he is telling
himself that on the jobs from which he was dismissed there were
unfair adversities and mitigating circumstances, the official as
Pugmire describes him is conscious that he performed incompetently
on these jobs. Pugmire describes him as having the "thought" or
"awareness" that the charge of incompetence is correct, and his
consciousness that he did perform incompetently is further revealed
through the sinking feeling or sensation which he experiences while
giving himself these excuses.

The official's telling himself that there were unfair
adversities and mitigating circumstances amounts to a denial to
himself that he had performed incompetently on the jobs from which
he was dismissed. Pugmire does not give us enough in the way of
details to say why the official feels it is necessary to deny his
incompetent performances, but we can supply these details ourselves.
We might suppose that the official has just been fired a few hours
earlier on grounds of incompetence, that he is still severely
:smarting from this, and that the charge of incompetency is still,
615 it were, ringing in his ears. He cannot get the dismissal nor
‘the charge of incompetence off of his mind. He feels compelled to
(Swell on it, and in the course of doing so, memories of earlier

-<3ismissals are revived, adding to his despair and misery.

137

His position here parallels one in which someone else has
leveled the charge of incompetence against the official. If the
official were to allow the charge to stand, if he did not deny it,
this would be to acknowledge the truth of the charge to the person.
Similarly, when it is the official himself who has the charge on
his mind, and who is conscious of its truth, if the official were to
allow the charge to stand without denying it, this would be to
acknowledge the truth of the charge to himself, and thus it would
be to make his consciousness of the truth of the charge explicit.
His denial is a defense against explicit consciousness of the
truth.

The denial is not the only element in this defenSe. The official
probably despairs - the sinking sensation - of ever being able to
perform competently. He may turn this into 'despair of ever being
treated fairly'. Indeed, the particular form which his denial
takes suggests that something like this is at work. They - "those
bastards" - put unfair obstacles in his way. They got rid of him
because he is not a 'Yes-man', and was not afraid to tell them the
truth. Perhaps, just because of his competence, his hard work, and
his integrity, they felt he was a threat to their own jobs, and
fired him before he could show them up. He tells himself things like
‘this, and as he does so, he chokes up with 'anger' at the unfairness
<3f it all. He resolves to go the following day and speak to the
superior of the official who fired him. He will not let this pass

‘Vwithout a fight - no more Mr. Nice Guy. The next day his 'anger'

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has subsided. He decides that it would do no good to fight his
dismissal. He does not go.

One cannot help notice the strength which is mustered for
the defense against explicit consciousness of the truth. One
wonders why in such a case it would not be sufficient for the official
simply to refuse to accept the charge of incompetence, to tell him-
self, for example, that while the charge may be true, it is not
clear that it is true — there were these unfair adversities and
mitigating circumstances, and so on. Wouldn't that be enough to
defend against an acknowledgment of his incompetence, and, thus,
against making his consciousness of the charge explicit? If so,
then why does the official go to such extremes? Why does he dggy_
to himself that he was incompetent, and concoct this elaborate
explanation of his dismissals? .

In answer to these questions, first, it is true that the
official could avoid an acknowledgment of his incompetence — and
thus avoid explicit consciousness of his incompetence - simply by
refusing to accept the charge leaving the question of his
incompetence open. He need not go so far as to deny the charge
and provide himself with this elaborate rationalization. However,
ileaving the question open in this way itself poses a threat, one
Vvhich can be appreciated by again turning to a parallel case. If
:someone else were to charge the official with incompetence to his
:face, the official could avoid an acknowledgment to this person of

-t:he truth of the charge by indicating to the person that while the

139

charge may be true, he did not accept it, and here is why: there
were these mitigating circumstances, unfair adversities, etc.
However, by avoiding the acknowledgment in this way, the official
leaves himself open to further efforts on the part of the person

who has levied the charge to get him (the official) to acknowledge
his own incompetence. By leaving the question open, the official
does acknowledge that the question is not settled, that further
evidence concerning his own behavior, his job performance, and his
circumstances can be advanced to settle the question. Moreover, in
making this acknowledgment, he commits himself to a fair consideration
of the evidence and to abiding by its decision. This leaves him

open to efforts by the other person to advance evidence and arguments
to show that he had performed incompetently. His position is now

a very anxious one. As he knows, the evidence is overwhelmingly
strong in favor of the charge that he had performed incompetently.

If he allows it to be advanced, then, particularly if the other
person is articulate and forceful, he risks being compelled into an
acknowledgment of his incompetence. First, it will be difficult,

if not impossible, for him to deny the force of the evidence. Unless
lie is particularly clever and quick, and in good control of all of
liis faculties, he may be backed into a corner where it would seem
liopeless to him to do anything else but acknowledge his incompetence.
'Phis would be a situation in which his anxiety would be so great,
éand the effort of defending himself against the evidence so difficult
~£ind painful, that the burden of defending himself would seem to him

‘to outweigh the suffering which would result from acknowledging the

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truth - better to acknowledge the truth than to go through this

hell any longer. Yet from the very outset, the official would be
anxious, tense, and not in good control of his faculties. Hence,

the risk of being forced into an acknowledgment of his incompetence
is great if he allows the other person to advance the evidence

which favors the charge. Secondly, even if he does not collapse
under the burden of defending himself against the evidence, he still
risks, in his anxious and tense state, the possibility of
inadvertently acknowledging the truth, of allowing such an acknowledg-
ment to slip from him. His position would not be very different

from that of someone who, in his very anxiety to avoid making a
certain error, makes the error in spite of all of his efforts to
prevent it. Third, there may be other reasons why the official
would feel that he might acknowledge the truth. For example, he

may have a desire to be punished for something, or a self-destructive
desire, and he may feel that he will succomb to such an urge once

he gets drawn into a discussion of the evidence in favor of the
charge of incompetence.

Of course, the official may refuse to honor the commitment
which he made when he left the question open. He may, for example,
simply refuse to discuss the matter with the other person, or he may
‘walk off. But any such effort, disguised or not, to evade honoring
the commitment to consider the evidence, will almost certainly be
interpreted as a flight from a discussion of the evidence: why did
he refuse to discuss the matter (walk off, change the subject, say

that he was late for an appointment)? Because he knew that the

141

charge is correct, he knew that the evidence is overwhelmingly
strong in its favor, and that he would not be able to deny it.

Such an effort to evade a consideration of the evidence would be
tantamount to - and would be treated by the other person as — an
acknowledgment of the truth. In the broad sense of 'acknowledgement'
that we are using, it would be an acknowledgment of the truth.

By vigorously denying the charge of incompetence, the official
avoids the risk of acknowledging the truth, and he avoids the
painful anxiety and hardship which would be involved in defending
himself against the evidence in favor of the charge of incompetence.
By denying the charge he implies that the matter is settled, that
it is not open to further discussion. There is nothing left to be
said - or listened to.

To return now to Pugmire's example, a similar threat is posed
to the official if he does not deny to himself the charge of
incompetence. If he leaves the question open, but then does not
go on to consider the evidence, this evasion would be an acknowledg-
ment of the truth of the charge of incompetence tg_himself. On the
other hand, if he does consider the evidence, if he allows himself,
that is, to become explicitly conscious of it, he may back himself
into a corner where it would seem hopeless to do anything else but
acknowledge his incompetence to himself. The burden of defending
himself against the evidence may simply become so great, that it no
longer seems worthwhile to maintain the defense. Moreover, even if
'he does not collapse under such a burden, he still risks inadvertently

acknowledging the truth to himself. Finally, he may have a desire

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to punish himself, or to destroy himself, and he may feel that he
will succomb to this urge once he begins to make the evidence
explicit.

The official denies the truth of the charge of incompetence
to himself in order to avoid putting himself in this position, and
thus to avoid the risk of acknowledgment, the anxiety which this
risk would produce, and the painful difficulties of trying to
defend himself against the evidence. By denying the charge he
settles the matter in his own mind. He does not need to consider
the evidence in favor of the charge, and, as Pugmire tells us,
he shrinks "from reminiscence about the wrong things", he omits
"to recall the particulars of the history of painful episodes -
tardiness, misplaced documents, grievously mistaken briefs submitted,
warnings, the dismissals - which lurk, half obscure, in his
memory."

In Chapter Two I distinguished between the self-deceiver's
feigning or pretending ignorance of the truth, and his pretending
to believe a falsehood. The latter corresponds to the sort of
'strong defense' against explicit consciousness which we have
taken Pugmire's official to be making. The former may include
either only a 'weak' defense, or a 'weak' and 'strong' defense
together.

However, in speaking of 'pretending' we must be careful, for
we are treading again close to the edge of paradox. The aim of
pretending is not always to deceive, to prevent someone from knowing

the truth. In play, a child may pretend to be a 'mommy, she may

143

to do the things that mommies do, to say the words that mommies
say, and she may even pretend to think the thoughts that mommies
think. But the aim of this is not to take anyone in, to keep them
from knowing that she is not a mommy or to get them to believe
that she is a mommy.

Similarly in self-deception. The primary reason the self-

 

deceiver pretends not to know or believe the truth, whether he is
pretending to others or only to himself, has nothing to do with
concealing his knowledge of the truth or the truth from others or
from himself. Rather, the primary reason the self-deceiver pretends
not to know or believe the truth is to avoid acknowledging the truth
to himself and to others. And the reason he wants to avoid acknowledg-
ing the truth to himself and to others is because he fears that
were he to acknowledge the truth, whether to himself or to others,
this would cause him great mental suffering; he would be crushed

by despair, grief, guilt, shame, remorse, or sorrow. That
acknowledgment of the truth or, what comes to the same thing,
explicit consciousness of the truth is dreaded by the self-deceiver
because he believes that it would cause him great mental suffering
is part of our concept of self-deception. If someone avoided
acknowledging the truth but did so for reasons other than this,

then he would not be deceiving himself. I shall try to show that
this is so in Chapter Five. What we need to note at present is

that this is the self-deceiver's primary reason and that it

, explains his pretending without the slightest recourse to the

concepts of deception or concealment.

144

That the self—deceiver's primary reason for feigning or
pretending ignorance of the truth has nothing to do with concealing
either the truth or his knowledge of the truth is often vividly
illustrated in examples of self-deception. Thus, when M refuses
to sleep with his wife out of anger at her for her infidelity, then
even though he does not acknowledge her infidelity, does not become
explicitly conscious of it, he may still want her to know that he
knows that she has been unfaithful, and that his refusal to sleep
with her is a response to her infidelity. He may want her to know
that he is angry at her for her infidelity to make her smart with
shame and guilt at the realization, and he may choose this
particular way of expressing his anger to her - refusing to sleep
in the same bed - in order to express to her how loathsome he
considers her - so loathsome, in fact, that he cannot stand to be
near her, particularly not in such intimate contact - and thereby
increase her feelings of loneliness, guilt, and isolation. If
this is in fact the case, then he may be strongly depending on the
fact that his wife does not want to bring their conflict out in the
open, that for reasons of her own she strongly prefers to keep it
submerged. By the same token, M risks bringing the conflict out
in the open by these tactics, both because his particular wayof
expressing his anger may force his wife closer to her lover in order
to diminish her isolation, and because she may not want strongly
enough to avoid open conflict that she is willing to endure such

.punishment.

145

Similarly, when M confides to his friend that his wife
cannot be sexually satisfied by any man but disavows any infidelity
on her part, thus avoiding an acknowledgment of her infidelity,

M may know that his friend knows of his wife's infidelity and of
his (M's) knowledge of her infidelity, and M may make this remark
concerning his wife in order to get his friend to believe that

he bears no responsibility for her infidelity. In effect, M is
saying, "Don't blame me. I had nothing to do with it. She is
over-sexed. She could not remain faithful to any man, no matter
how virile he is or how good a husband he is." But he manages to
communicate this without acknowledging his wife's infidelity.

And here M may be depending on his friend's tact and kindness

to keep the issue submerged, to keep it from coming out in the
open.

An even more striking group of examples of this sort is

provided in Eugene O'Neill's play, The Iceman Cometh. The characters

 

in the play are crowded together at Harry Hope's, a combination

of cheap gin-mill and sleazy hotel. Each of the nineteen characters
is deceiving himself about something which is central in the way

he lives his life, and each person maintains a facade of pretenses.
Yet these pretenses cannot be aimed at taking the others in, for
each character knows that the other characters are aware of his
self-deception, and is constantly teased by the others about it.

For the most part, this teasing is accepted in a good-humoured

. way, or is met with mock 'anger', and it is only when a character

is pressed too closely to acknowledge the truth that he begins to

146

show real anger and resentment. Episodes of the latter sort are
few and are not vigorously pressed until Hickey, a salesman who
periodically stops by the bar, returns. Hickey stubbornly tries

to get each of the characters to acknowledge the truth, He does

so by challenging their pretenses, by pointing out to each one

of them how inconsistent their lives are with their facade of
pretenses. Rather than acknowledge the truth, each of them attempts
to live up to the facade he has created, a fact which causes much
unhappiness, dissention, and bitter resentment towards Hickey . It
is only when Hickey inadvertently reveals that he too is deceiving
himself about a painful truth, and thus reveals a similar weakness
that the others can exploit, that Hickey drops his efforts to get
the others to acknowledge the truth. Hickey becomes one of them,
tied to them by indissoluble bonds of kinship.

This new realization of the role of feigning ignorance in
self-deception must force us to revise somewhat our earlier account
of the self-deceiver's feigning. Earlier we said that a necessary
condition of someone's deceiving himself is that he feigns ignorance
of the truth. Now, however, we shall have to drop this claim and
say instead that a necessary condition of anyone's deceiving himself
is that he feigns ignorance of the truth whgg this is necessary
or is perceived by him to be necessary in order to avoid acknowledging
the truth. This means that it is possible - though I suspect that
such cases are quite rare - for someone to deceive himself without
.ever feigning ignorance of the truth. Such a case will exist when

someone is deceiving himself and never finds it necessary to feign

147

ignorance in order to avoid acknowledging the truth and has no
other reason as well to feign ignorance.

We need not, however, revise everything we said earlier
about the self—deceiver's feigning. Even though the self-deceiver's
primary reason for feigning ignorance is to avoid acknowledging
the truth, this is not his 921y_reason in most cases. Here we can
divide these further reasons into two categories. First, there are
reasons which relate to the purpose of avoiding consciousness of
the truth in any form, whether explicit or non-explicit. Some
self-deceivers wish not only to avoid explicit consciousness of the
truth but all consciousness of the truth, and most self-deceivers
at least part of the time try to avoid consciousness of the truth
other than explicit consciousness. These wishes give rise to
reasons for the self-deceiver to conceal his knowledge of the truth
from others. Given that the self-deceiver wants to avoid conscious-
ness of the truth, he will not want to be reminded by others of
the truth, and by concealing his knowledge of the truth from people
who do not know that he knows, he manages to reduce the likelihood
that they will remind him of it. Many people, especially if they
realize that making him aware of the truth is likely to be quite
painful for him, will not want to be the person who informs him
of it, and thus will refrain from trying to get him to recognize
the truth. Other people, even though they are not deterred by the
knowledge that they are likely to cause him pain, are likely to
give up trying to get him to realize the truth if he is persistent

enough and his ignorance appears intractable enough.

148

Moreover, the self-deceiver who wishes to avoid more than
just explicit consciousness of the truth has reason to feign
ignorance even in the presence of persons who know that he knows
the truth. Some of these people, when they see the self-deceiver
feigning ignorance, will realize that he does not want to be
reminded of the truth, that consciousness of it is painful to him,
and then, whether out of motives of kindness, pity, fear, or a
wish to remain in the self-deceiver's good graces, will carefully
refrain from mentioning it to him. Even those persons who are not
disposed to leave him unreminded may, if he is persistent and
intractable enough, eventually give up trying to remind him of the
truth. Moreover, in dealing with both kinds of people, the self-
deceiver will have behaved in a way which does not conflict with
his concealing his knowledge from people who do not know that he
knows the truth. He will not, for example, have acknowledged the truth
and asked or begged not to be reminded of it, thus risking the
chance that word of his acknowledgment will get back to people from
whom he is trying to conceal his knowledge of the truth.

The first category of reasons apply to self-deceivers only
in so far as they are trying to avoid consciousness of the truth
other than just explicit consciousness. The following reasons, all
in the second category, may apply to any self-deceiver, even one
'who wishes to avoid only explicit consciousness of the truth. First,
the self-deceiver may feign ignorance of the truth in order to

. conceal his knowledge of the truth from others who do not know that

149

he knows the truth. And he may want to conceal his knowledge

of it from them because he fears that if they knew that he knew
the truth, then they would press him to acknowledge it, as, e.g.,
Hickey tries to force the residents of Harry Hope's to acknowledge
the truth, thus at the very least unpleasantly complicating his
life and making it more anxious, and at the worst, forcing him
into the unhappy and depressing position of trying to live up to
his pretenses or even trapping him or tricking him into acknowledging
the truth. Secondly, he may feign ignorance of the truth in order
to deal with the people who know that he knows the truth. By
doing so, they will see that he does not want to acknowledge the
truth, and so may either refrain from doing anything which draws
him close to acknowledging it, or, providing he is persistent
enough, will eventually tire of trying to get him to acknowledge
the truth.

Certain other frequent, though non-essential components of

 

self-deception dove—tail very closely with the self-deceiver's
efforts to avoid explicit consciousness, to avoid (sometimes and in
some cases) consciousness of the truth, and his feigning ignorance.
of the truth, so it is just as well that we mention them here. First,
as we have already noted, self-deceivers frequently try to avoid
learning new evidence which points to the truth or new details which
contribute to their knowledge of the truth. One reason that the
self-deceiver does this is because the more evidence he has at his
disposal, the more difficult it is for him to convincingly feign

ignorance of the truth, and hence the more difficult it is for him

150

to avoid acknowledging the truth and to conceal his knowledge
of the truth from others. In addition, each time the self-deceiver
becomes aware of a fresh piece of evidence or a fresh detail, the
self-deceiver becomes conscious of the truth, often painfully so,
and this provides another reason for avoiding the acquisition of
new details and evidence. Finally, the more evidence and details
the self—deceiver acquires, the more difficult it is for him to
avoid consciousness and explicit consciousness of the truth in the
future. For example, even though he knows his wife's lover and
the lover's car on sight, M may try to avoid learning the name of
his wife's lover because, if he learns the name, then each time he
hears it, he will be reminded of his wife's infidelity.

The second frequent, though non-essential component of self-

deception is the device of distraction. By preoccupying his mind

 

in some activity or group of activities, the self-deceiver lessens
the chance that he will be reminded of the truth, and so lessens
the chance that a painful consciousness of the truth will be
thrust on him or that he will be tempted, tricked, trapped, or
compelled to become explicitly conscious of the truth. When he
is painfully reminded of the truth or threatened with explicit
consciousness of it, the self-deceiver will often throw himself
into some activity in order to occupy his mind and so crowd out
consciousness of the truth.

In order for any activity to be useful for these purposes,
it must be absorbing, exciting, and interesting enough, or dulling

enough, that the self-deceiver can engage himself in it without pause

151

or rest, and in spite of fatigue, and so that it leaves him no
room to think of anything else. Drinking, sex, eating, drugs,
smoking, work, certain forms of entertainment and play, and sleep
often fit this bill admirably so that self-deceivers frequently
get hung up on these things, often to the point of obsession. The
more he dreads consciousness of the truth, and the more difficult
it is to prevent consciousness of the truth, the more desperately
and energetically he will throw himself into distracting activities
until he seems totally obsessed, driven by forces beyond his
control. But the 'driving force' of the obsession is the self-
deceiver's fear of consciousness of the truth.

In connection with the counter-example we are building, we
do not need to suppose that M feigns ignorance of his wife's
infidelity in order to avoid acknowledging the truth to another

person, though we do need to suppose that he would have feigned

 

ignorance of the truth h3§_circumstances developed in such a way

that he believed it to be necessary in order to avoid acknowledging
the truth to another person. On the other hand, we gg_need to

suppose that M pretends not to know or believe that his wife has

been unfaithful to him in order to avoid acknowledging her

infidelity tg_himself, for under the circumstances, a failure on his
part to make this pretense would constitute, I think, an acknowledg-
ment of the truth. Thus we might suppose, for example, that when -
upon seeing his wife's lover's car - M suffers feelings of suffocating

warmth, heaviness, nausea, and all the rest, he exclaims to himself,

"My God! What's happening to me?", as though he were being stricken
down by some physical affliction and did not know what was happening
to him. At the same time he 'plays' at being afraid in the way he
would be afraid if his experience were caused by some physical
affliction beyond his ken. He opens his eyes wide in 'horror',

his mouth drops in 'shock' and 'surprise', his hands and arms stiffen
at the wheel until his knuckles are white, as though he were
desperately trying to 'hold on' until the spell subsides. The whole
time this exaggeration is helped along by the fact that he is
somewhat shocked and surprised at seeing his wife's lover's car
parked near his house and it feeds on the sensations which he is
experiencing and which are a reaction to what he sees. As the spell
subsides, M gasps in 'relief', he tells himself that he has been
working too hard and is exhausted, and it is then that the thought
strikes him to go to the bar on the lake. As he leaves for the

bar, he maintains the posture of a man who has been stricken by an
'attack', who is reacting in fear and shock, and who is seeking

out a drink and a quiet place in order to settle his nerves and
compose himself.

This additional supposition requires that we amend the earlier
statement of our example. We can no longer suppose that no images,
no internal speech passes through M's mind, and that M says nothing
to himself, for we have supposed above that he does say something
to himself. But clearly this additional supposition in no way
commits us to conceding that M has a vehicle for his consciousness

of his wife's infidelity, and so it does not threaten the status of

153

the example as a counter-example to the vehicular theory of
consciousness.

With this, our task of building a counter-example to the claim
that self-deceivers are never conscious of the truth except in quite
special circumstances (drink, drugs, hypnotism, psychoanalysis) is
finished. When M has this experience he is conscious of his wife's
infidelity, though non-explicitly so, and the example is clearly
consistent with the supposition that M is deceiving himself about
his wife's infidelity. Moreover, not only do we have this counter-
example to the above claim, in the course of building our counter-
example we have uncovered a number of other such counter-examples.
Pugmire's incompetent official is conscious of his incompetent
performances, yet he may very well be deceiving himself about his
imcompetence, and Pugmire supposes that he is. M is non-explicitly
conscious of his wife's infidelity when he refuses to sleep with
her in reaction to her infidelity, pretending 'annoyance' at her
tossing and turning and an inability to get sleep with her, yet
clearly we may also suppose that he is deceiving himself about her
infidelity. Likewise when M confides to a friend that his wife is
'over-sexed', but disavows infidelity on her part, he is non-
explicitly conscious of her infidelity, yet he may very well be
deceiving himself about it. The patrons of Harry Hope's bar are
often non-explicitly conscious of some central feature in their
lives, yet they are also deceiving themselves about their lives.

The claim that the self-deceiver is not conscious of the truth

154

except in quite special circumstances is not only false, it misses
the mark widely. For not only are self-deceivers sometimes

conscious of the truth in ordinary circumstances, they are frequently
conscious of the truth in all sorts of everyday, non-special

circumstances.

155

Section 4.

The self-deceiver is essentially a person who is not

explicitly conscious of the truth during the period of his self-

 

deception; who has over-riding reasons for not becoming explicitly
conscious of the truth during this period of time; who, when he is
conscious of the truth, does whatever he deems necessary to prevent
his consciousness from becoming explicit in accordance with these
over-riding reasons; and who, when he is not conscious of the truth,
wogld, in accordance with his over-riding reasons, do what he deemed
necessary to avoid explicit consciousness of the truth wgrg he to
become conscious of the truth. It is possible to be a self-deceiver
and never be conscious of the truth or feign or pretend ignorance

of the truth. On the other hand, such cases can never be detected
with any certainty, for it is the occasion on which the self—deceiver
is conscious of the truth and is feigning ignorance of it which
provides the most telling grounds for attributing self-deception to
him. Without the evidence provided by his consciousness of the truth
and his feigning ignorance, the best one could do is to accumulate
evidence tending to show that he knows the truth and has strong reasons
to avoid becoming explicitly conscious of it, and this would tend

to supply some support for the speculation that if he were to become
conscious of the truth, then he would avoid making his consciousness
explicit in accordance with those reasons. However, the only way to
confirm such a speculative hypothesis with any degree of certainty

- or reliability would be if he did become conscious of the truth and

avoided making his consciousness explicit in accordance with those

156

reasons, and one determined that he did this. Thus the cases of
self—deception which we detect, and thus, on which our attention
focuses, are those in which the self-deceiver is conscious of the
truth, feigns or pretends ignorance of it, and, to a lesser extent,
avoids learning new evidence and details, and attempts to distract
himself in some absorbing activity.

The second major paradox of self-deception does not arise in
the above account of self-deception, nor, hopefully, does any
paradox. We recognize that the self-deceiver is often conscious
of the truth, and also that our description of him as purposely
avoiding making his consciousness of the truth explicit entails that
he is conscious of the truth. But because being conscious of the
truth is not the same thing as being explicitly conscious of it,
we do not land in the contradiction that the self-deceiver is and
is not conscious of the truth. He may often be conscious of the truth,
but he never willingly makes his consciousness of the truth explicit.

Moreover, this account recognizes that self-deception is
essentially purposive, thus according with our intuitions. Accounts
such as Freud's, which construe self-deception as essentially
independent of the self-deceiver's purposes and as being imposed
on him by forces beyond his control, receive their primary support
from the vehicular theory of consciousness, according to which all
consciousness necessarily requires a vehicle, and thus is explicit
consciousness. Since the self-deceiver is not explicitly conscious
of the truth, they conclude that he is not conscious of the truth

at all, and then, in order to avoid the second major paradox of

157

self-deception, they conclude that it is false that he is not
conscious of the truth because he has an over-riding reason for not
becoming conscious of the truth. Instead, they explain his not
being conscious as due to forces operating beyond the self-deceiver's
control.

The development of this view in Freud's work is interesting
and deserves special comment. Even when stating his mature views,
Freud hints at counter—examples both to the vehicular theory of

consciousness and to the claim that the self-deceiver never becomes

 

conscious of the truth except in special circumstances. Thus, w
for example, in speaking of patients who were showing resistance as
they approached closer to the truth, Freud says, "We then tell him
that he is dominated by a resistance; but he is quite unaware
of the fact, and, even if he guesses from his unpleasurable feeling
that a resistance is now at work in him, he does not know what it
is nor how to describe it."19

One is tempted to explain such feelings of discomfort as due
to the fact that the patient is conscious that he is being drawn
closer and closer to acknowledging the truth, that he has grown
fearful, and that his feelings of discomfort are a part of his fear.
But though Freud might have tried such an explanation at the time of

3

Studien fiber Hysteria (where, as we have seen, he treats repression

 

as intentional on the patient's part), in his later works he was
prevented from doing so by his recognition that his patients were not

explicitly conscious of repressing the truth. Holding as he did a

 

158

vehicular theory of consciousness, he concluded that his patients

were not conscious of repressing the truth. But, if the patient

 

were himself purposely repressing the truth and purposely putting
up a resistance, then he would be conscious of doing so. Freud
takes the patient to be not conscious of doing this, and so he treats
the patient as though he were not purposely repressing the truth.

r;
This leads him directly to the view that the repression emanates i
from forces beyond the patient's control. This leaves the purposes i

for the resistance and the repression hanging up in the air, without

 

an agent. In Freud's works this difficulty is obscured by Freud's

Pel-

frequent personifications of parts of the mind which seem to give
an agent to which these purposes can be attributed.

The role of the vehicular theory of consciousness in this
deve10pment is very clear and very important. Had Freud rejected
this theory, he would have seen that the fact that the patient is
not explicitly conscious of repressing the truth does not mean that
he is not conscious of repressing the truth, and thus he could have
retained an explanation in terms of the patient's purposes. This
would, of course, have bfought him face to face with the second
inajor paradox of self-deception. But, with the vehicular theory
(of consciousness out of the way, this paradox would have dissolved,
for without the vehicular theory of consciousness, there would have
lbeen no bar to recognizing that patients are conscious of the truth,
'though non-explicitly so, and without the claim that the self-
.«ieceiver is not conscious of the truth except in special

<1irtumstances,there is no paradox.

159

The course of development of Freud's views suggest that what

he regarded as the dynamic unconscious, the ch, could more appropriate-

 

ly and correctly be considered the mass of ideas which can become

conscious but which cannot become explicitly conscious because of

 

the patient's over—riding reasons for preventing them from becoming
explicitly conscious. Rather than speaking of these ideas as

belonging to the Unconscious, it would then be better to describe F
them as belonging to the Repressed. The Repressed, in turn, would 3
be part of the Egg, the Preconscious, though it would have to be

sharply distinguished from another part of the Pcs, the Pecs, Pre— .

 

Explicitly Conscious, which would include those ideas in the Egg_
which can become explicitly conscious. The gg_in turn would have
to be divided into the Eggg, Non-Explicitly Conscious, and the Egg,
Explicitly Conscious. How well this suggestion fares will depend,
of course, on the extent to which Freud fashioned his categories
in order to accomodate self—deception. This is a question whose
answer at the present time is not clear to me, though clearly
some revision of these categories is necessary if the foregoing
arguments are correct.20

While we are on the topic of Freud, it is worthwhile noting
that Fingarette develops a reinterpretation of Freud, based on his
(Fingarette's) own analysis of self-deception, in order to resolve
a problem which arises through Freud's recognition that resistance,
repression, and other defensive manoeuvres are 'unconscious', i.e.,
in our terms, 'non-explicitly conscious‘. Fingarette states the

problem thus:

160

If it is the ego which regulates defense, which, fer
example, represses an id derivative, gg!_does it keep
itself unconscious of what it is doing? Is its defensive
activity gynamically_unconscious, i.e., itself the
object of defencs? But then how shall we account for
this latter defensive manoeuvre, i.e., the 'second-level'
manoeuvre of keeping from consciousness the initial
defensive manoeuvre? Is this 'second-level' defensive
manoeuvre available to consciousness, or is it in turn
dynamically unconscious because, for example, repressed
by still a third level of repressive defence? Then
somewhere, finally, we must come to grips with the problem
of the last term in this hierarchy. Is the last defence
in the hierarchy conscious (or readily available to
consciousness)? The only alternative to an infinite
regress would seem to be to suppose that the defence--
or at least the last defence in such a hierarchy--is ESE.
dynamically unconscious. How, then, shall we account for
that resistance to the uncovering of defence which is
actually found in therapy?21

 

 

Fingarette notes that:

...there is no theoretical problem about how the repressed
impulse is kept from consciousness. According to standard
doctrine, the ego withholds a hypercathexis (i.e., the
specific attention-cathexis which establishes a mental
content as explicitly conscious), In addition, the ego
directs a counter-cathexis onto the ideational derivatives
of the impulse, thus removing them from status as
preconscious (i.e., from the status of being available

for attention hypercathexis). The impulse is now
dynamically unconscious.22

But the problem at hand is not how an impulse is kept unconscious,
but how the defensive activity is itself kept unconscious.

To resolve this problem, Fingarette offers a reinterpretation
of Freud's theory which assimilates the theory to his own.

The answer to this question lies in turning our question

upside down. Instead of asking how the defensive

activity is kept unconscious, we need to ask how it--

or any mental content--ever is made to be conscious.

Psychoanalysts have tended to overlook the significance

of the fact that mere absence of counter-cathexis is
not enough to make something explicitly conscious,

161

though it allows it to be preconscious. The ego has a
further task if it is to make an ego activity (or indeed
any mental activity) explicitly conscious. As we have
already noted, psychoanalytic theory postulates an
additional cathexis, an 'attention hypercathexis', if
anything is to be made explicitly conscious. To say a
mental element is pggconscious is to say, among other
things, that it satisfies all the conditions for being
conscious except one--it is not hypercathected.

...whatever the other changes in his views over the years,

Freud always was convinced that language was the essence, r-
or very intimately related to the essence of preconscious-
ness and consciousness. This strongly suggests, though
.Freud never put it in this way, that the 'mental act'
denoted by 'hypercathexis' is essentially a kind of
linguistic or paralinguistic act. It is, I suggest, much
the same as what I have called 'spelling-out'. I think

it is reasonable to say that preconsciousness is the state I
of being available for spelling-out on particular appropriate l
occasions, and that Freud means by 'conscious' what I

have called 'explicit consciousness'.

The ego does not hypercathect at random or in some
automatic way; it hypercathects when there is reason to do
so--and of course it will not hypercathect when (a) there
is no teason not to do so, or (b) there is overeriding
reason not to do so. The latter consideration is relevant
in the case of defence. For a defensive counter-cathexis
(which corresponds, as we shall see, with what I shall
disavowal) amounts to a removal, as a matter of 'policy',
of some mental content from the status of being available
to hypercathexis, i.e., spelling-out.

 

Fingarette's sympathetic reinterpretation of Freud is, I
believe, too generous.) It does not take into account the fact of
Freud's allegiance to a vehicular theory of consciousness, and the
consequent treatment of self-deceivers as though they were prevented
from becoming conscious of the truth by forces beyond their control.
Fingarette's suggestion that Freud was using the term 'conscious'
as equivalent to his own term 'explicitly conscious' is false. While

it is true that Freud tended to apply the term 'conscious' only to

explicit consciousness, this was not because he used the term with the

162

same meaning, but rather because he held a vehicular theory of
consciousness.

There is another respect, too, in which we differ from
Fingarette. Fingarette feels that it is necessary to introduce
the notion of a 'policy' of not becoming explicitly conscious in
order to account for the self-deceiver's not becoming explicitly
conscious of the truth or, what comes to the same thing, for the r-
non-availability of a mental content to explicit consciousness.

I can see no justification for the introduction of this notion.

-.|o"l

The existence of an over-riding reason for not-spelling out the

 

\ . I

truth is sufficient in itself to explain why the self-deceiver does
not become conscious of the truth in an explicit way. So long as

the self-deceiver has such a r eason, he will not willingly make

his consciousness explicit. Thus, if we are going to engage in a
reinterpretation of Freud, it would be better to explain the non-
availability of a mental content to explicit consciousness in terms

of the possession of an over-riding reason for not becoming explicitly
conscious of the truth.

Moreover, not only is the introduction of a 'policy' not
necessary, but it seems to be out of place in a context of self-
deception. It would seem that one cannot be said to have a policy
unless it is explicitly adopted, and that would require a formula-
tion of the policy in words. If this is correct, then self-deceivers
could not have a policy of not becoming explicitly conscious of the
truth, To have such a policy, he would have to spell it out, and
that would require spellingeout the truth. Thus, in the very act

of adopting the policy, the self-deceiver would violate it.

163

Having made his reinterpretation of Freud, Fingarette goes
on to give his solution to the problem of avoiding an infinite
regress of defensive activities. In essence, his solution is that
once an impulse, e.g., an aggressive impulse, is counter-cathected,
no separate defence is required at all to keep the defence against
the impulse 'unconscious'. To hypercathect the defence would
entail hypercathecting the impulse, and so a counter-cathexis of
the impulse is itself a counter cathexis of the defence.

The aim of inhibiting the expression of an aggressive
impulse is the kind of think which in general can become
conscious. When this is the aim of defence, there is a
peculiar difficulty; to hypercathect the aim would be to
hypercathect the aggressive impulse as well, for the
aggressive impulse is an essential constituent of the
context of the aim. But if we assume there is defence, we
are assuming the aggressive impulse has been counter-cathected:
thus it now is in a status which precludes hypercathexis.
Thus, in turn the aim of inhibiting the impulse is perforce
excluded from hypercathexis too. Much the same kind of
argument holds with regard to the motive of defence [anxiety];
to hypercathect the anxiety gg_§gg.gg_the aggressive impulse
is of course to hypercathect the impulse. But this, as
already remarked, is excluded. At most the ego may hyper-
cathect the anxiety pg£_gg, But of course the anxiety will
then be perceived either as free-floating anxiety or as
attached (displaced) to some other datum of consciousness.

Thus, to summarize, given a counter-cathexis of the
impulse, the entire dynamic complex is excluded from
consciousness--a theoretical conclusion which exactly con-
forms with clinical fact. This conclusion also is parallel
to the account I have given of the automatically self-covering
aspect of the policy not to spell something out.24

Avoiding an infinite regress of defensive activities is not
the only problem which Fingarette finds in Freud's theories and
tries to resolve. Fingarette takes it to be a "fundamental problem

at the core of psychoanalytic theory" to provide an adequate answer

to the question, "why should the ego aim to keep anything at all

 

164

unconscious, whether it be defence or impulse?"25 He charges
psychoanalysts, including Freud, with assuming "some kind of
hiding of the impulse from oneself, some kind of ignorance due to
successful 'disguise'."26 If this is true, it would mean that
Freud's theory was more deeply enmired in the first major paradox
of self-deception than I have indicated in my treatment of his
views. But the charge is erroneous, at least in Freud's case. ?
As we have seen, repression does not in any literal sense aim
at concealing the truth. The direct aim of repression is the

avoidance of 'unpleasure', or, in Freud's later works, of anxiety

 

“In

which would be induced in the ego by the superego. Nowhere can I
find the suggestion that the immediate purpose of repression is
hiding or concealing something, and that avoiding 'unpleasure' or
anxiety is contingent upon such hiding. Keeping oneself ignorant
of the truth is not a link in the chain of avoiding unpleasure

or anxiety; the avoidance is assumed simply by repressing the

idea. It is true that Freud often speaks of ideas being 'disguised'
in order to evade the ego's repression, but this is a totally
different matter and does not involve the contention that repression
is a kind of concealment or disguising. It is also true that while
repression is not a form of concealment for Freud and does not aim
at ignorance, still Freud's construal of repression seems to have
the implication that the effect of repression is a kind of ignorance.
Again, however, this is quite different from saying that the aim

of repression is to induce or maintain ignorance. Moreover, his

view of repression seems to have this implication because of the

165

invalid reasoning set out in argument b(l)"'. Whether or not

Freud fell into such reasoning, we would still not be justified
in saying that for him the aim of repression is a kind of hiding
of the impulse from oneself. Thus Fingarette's charge that "the
main outcome of defence was thought to be a form of self-induced

ignorance" is false.27

 

166
Section 5.

We have not yet resolved all of the difficulties in
Fingarette's analysis. It seems to be Fingarette's view that in
philosophical analysis of the concept of self-deception we should
not try to answer the question of whether the self-deceiver knows
the truth, and for the most part, his analysis of self-deception r‘
in terms of spelling-out characterizes self-deception in a way which
avoids this question. Fingarette's reasons for taking this position

are not clear. In one place he says:

 

‘w—
|"_.. -'-.I -'l-

Paradoxes arise in connection with self-deception

when we characterize it primarily in terms of belief and

knowledge, or in terms of 'perception' language such as

'appear' and 'see'.28
But it is not clear what he means by this. He may only mean what
we noted earlier, namely, that "the deep paradox of self-deception
lies...in the element of knowing, intentional ignorance." But if
this is so, the remark does not justify him in avoiding altogether
the question of whether or not the self-deceiver knows the truth.
To the contrary, it points up the urgency of settling this question.
It is true, of course, that so long as we do not try to answer
this question in our own analysis, that analysis will not fall prey
to the paradox. But this is not to resolve the paradox, it is
simply to ignore it.

Moreover, if Fingarette does hold that we ought not try to
answer the question of whether the self-deceiver knows the truth,

then he did not scrupulously follow his own dictum. Speaking of

the self-deceiver, he tells us that:

167

The purposefulness and the often remarkable ingenuity

with which he carries through his engagement lead us

to insist that 'He must know what he's doing; he must

know the truth.‘29

In everyday speech we use the word 'know' to

capture the complex purposefulness of the actual

engagement: 'Really', 'at bottom', 'in the last

analysis', 'deep in his heart'--he knows.29
He then goes on to characterize this way of speaking as "idiomatic
language", and then, on the same page, he delivers his dictum
against "persisting in such questions as, 'Does he really know?‘
or 'How can he do all this and not know?'"29

It is hard not to see an inconsistency in all of this, for
Fingarette seems to be suggesting that the self-deceiver 'knows'
the truth only in an idiomatic sense, and thus, that he does not
know the truth in any straight-forward sense of 'know'. Apparently
he has answered the forbidden question, though this is not certain
since his position on these matters is far from clear.

Things become more confused when he tries to explain why we

use this 'idiom', as opposed to an idiom such as he has proposed.

The reasons are:

Because the crux of the affair up to this point lies

in the area demarcated by the phrase 'becoming explicitly
conscious', and because consciousness has traditionally
been characterized in the language and imagery of knowing,
believing, and perceiving.3O

I do not have the slightest idea of what the first 'reason' given
amounts to. As for the second reason, while it is true that

consciousness has traditionally been characterized in the language

 

of perceiving, especially vision, it is absolutely false that

 

168

consciousness has been portrayed in terms of knowledge and belief.
Quite the reverse, for knowledge and belief have for centuries been
characterized in terms of perception, again especially vision, and

in terms of consciousness. Moreover, even the characterization of

 

consciousness in terms of vision has been harmful to the analysis
of self-deception primarily because it contributed to the vehicular
theory of consciousness. By itself, the characterization need not
lead to any paradoxical consequences for self-deception.

The earlier parts of Fingarette's argument fair no better.

He argues that we want to say that the self-deceiver 'knows' the
truth because of "the purposefulness and the often remarkable
ingenuity with which he carries through his engagement." But this
is wrong on at least two counts. First, people deceive themselves
about things other than their own engagements, i.e., their own
purposeful doings, acts, actions, and activities. M, for example,
deceives himself about his wife's infidelity, and yet we still want
to say that he knows the truth. We can, of course, speak of his wife's
infidelity as a purposeful engagement, but they are his wife's
purposes, not his, and they do not point to his knowledge in the way
they point to his wife's knowledge.

Secondly, and more importantly, even if we restrict
consideration to those cases in which someone deceives himself about
(his own purposeful doings, acts, actions, and activities, Fingarette's
contention is still wrong. For it is not only or even primarily

the purposefulness of his engagement which provides the impetus to

 

169

saying that he knows the truth. A number of things contribute

to this, e.g., the slips discussed in Chapter Two, but of equal

or greater importance is a feature of self-deception which
Fingarette builds into his own analysis of self-deception, and
which we have not yet discussed in this connection. I am
referring to the purposefulness with which the self-deceiver avoids
becoming explicitly conscious of the truth.

It is Fingarette's view that the self-deceiver persistently
avoids spelling-out his engagement, i.e., that he persistently
avoids becoming explicitly conscious of his engagement. But this
avoidance is not accidental or coincidental, it is purposive: he
does not become explicitly conscious of the truth because he has
an over-riding reason not to do so. I shall show that it follows
from this that the self-deceiver Egggg_the truth.

First, it is clear that a necessary condition of someone's
being conscious that S is that he knows that S. Just as one cannot
be conscious that S if it is not true that S, so one cannot be
conscious that S if one only believes that S - though, instead,
«one can be thinking that S. Nor is it an objection to this claim
'that, for example, one can be conscious that one is in pain, but
«one cannot know that one is in pain. One can be conscious g£.a
‘pain, e.g., in one's arm, But this is not to say that one is
conscious t_ha_t'; one is in pain. And if it is true that one cannot
know that one is in pain, then it is also true that one cannot be
conscious that one is in pain, even though it may be true that one

feels pain in one's arm, and so is conscious of it.

 

170

So, someone who does not know that S cannot become conscious
that S. Moreover, since a necessary condition of being explicitly
conscious that S is that one is conscious that S, if someone does
not know that S, then it is impossible for him to become explicitly
conscious that S. Suppose now that someone does not know that S,
and so cannot become explicitly conscious that S. Then it would
be fglgg_to say of this person that "he does not become explicitly
conscious that S because he has an over-riding for not doing so."
The fact that such a person does not become explicitly conscious
that S would have to be explained in terms of his not knowing that
S. So long as it is impossible for him to become explicitly
conscious that S, an explanation in terms of his reasons simply
cannot be applied.

Notice that this issue turns solely on the force of the
'because' in such explanations. Someone might not know that S,
and thus could not become explicitly conscious that 8, even when
he had a strong reason for not becoming explicitly conscious that S,
and even knew that he had such a reason. However, so long as he
does not know that S, that reason cannot be invoked to explain
the fact that he has not become explicitly conscious that S. The
reason is, so to speak, 'inoperative'.

Suppose, for example, that Brown does not know that S. He
may know that if he did know that S and were to become explicitly
conscious that S, then he would be weighed down with shame and
:remorse. Clearly, Brown has a strong reason for not becoming

explicitly conscious that S, and he knows that he has this reason.

 

171

But his having this reason does not explain, and cannot be appealed
to in order to explain, the fact that he is not conscious that S.
In order to explain this, we would have to refer to his lack of
knowledge that S.

It is Fingarette's view that the self-deceiver does not
become explicitly conscious that S because he has an over-riding
reason for not becoming explicitly conscious. His position entails
that the self-deceiver Egggg the truth, and thus he is committed
by his own account to saying that the self-deceiver knows the
truth. While in our own account (cf. pages 155-156, above) we
have allowed that in some cases of self-deception it is not true
that the self-deceiver is not explicitly conscious of the truth
because he has an over-riding reason for not becoming explicitly
conscious of the truth, still we have maintained that in those
cases which we detect with any certainty, it is true that the
self-deceiver is not explicitly conscious of the truth because he
has an over-riding reason for not becoming so. But in order to
establish the latter with any certainty, and doing so is our best
proof that he is deceiving himself, we must first establish with
certainty that he knows the truth, since knowledge of the truth
is a necessary condition for such an explanation to hold. To
show this we may draw on many aspects of the self-deceiver's
circumstances, speech, and behavior. Where the truth concerns the
self-deceiver's own engagement, then the apparent purposefulness
and ingenuity of it will be one, but only one, factor in our

determination.

172

The foregoing argument does not show that all self-deceivers
know the truth. But it is a telling argument. First, it under-
mines Fingarette's arguments to show that the self-deceiver only
knows the truth in an idiomatic sense - if that was the aim of
those arguments. Secondly, again providing that Fingarette held,
as he seems to have done, that self-deceivers know the truth only
in an idiomatic sense, the argument shows that he was being
inconsistent. Third, the argument can be expanded to show that
all self-deceivers know the truth. It leaves only one kind of
case in doubt; those cases in which the self-deceiver is not
conscious of the truth during the period of his self-deception.

We cannot explain the fact that such self-deceivers are not
explicitly conscious of the truth in terms of over-riding reasons,
because not only is knowledge of the truth necessary for such an
explanation to hold, but consciousness of the truth is also.

Since such self-deceivers are not conscious of the truth,

it is the latter which explains their not being explicitly cons cious
-of the truth, and not their over-riding reasons.

Suppose that X is a person who does ggg_know the truth, but
who has over-riding reasons for not making his consciousness of
the truth explicit if he were to become conscious of the truth. If
he knew the truth and were to become conscious of it, then he
would avoid making his consciousness explicit in accordance with
his over-riding reasons. One must admit, I think, that even if
X knew the truth, but were not conscious of it, etc., his case would

be a border-line one. The expression 'is deceiving himself' is

 

173

a metaphorical one, based on a likening of the self-deceiver to
two persons, one of whom knows the truth and who in some way
prevents the other, who does not know the truth, from learning it.
In paradigm cases of self-deception there is something which
corresponds to the other-deceiver's preventing the deceived from
learning the truth, namely the self-deceiver's purposeful avoidance
of explicit consciousness of the truth. But in X's case, even

if he knew the truth, there would not be this important point of
similarity since X is not conscious of the truth, and so never
purposely avoids making his consciousness explicit. Saying that X
is a self-deceiver in such circumstances may strive one as being
the same as saying that Y has deceived Z, where Y has done nothing
to prevent Z from learning the truth, but would try to do so if

Z seemed to be on the verge of learning the truth and Y had the
opportunity to interfere. It would be incorrect to say that Y
had deceived or is deceiving Z in such circumstances. Similarly,
if X never avoids making his consciousness of the truth explicit,
there would seem to be no 'deception', and so it would seem to be
incorrect to say that he is deceiving himself.

This argument is, I believe, correct, and its acceptance
will entail a modification of our earlier statement of self-
deception. It is false that someone is deceiving himself if he
Iggygg, throughout the period of his self-deception, conscious of
the truth, and so never avoids making his consciousness explicit.

What misled us is that self-deception is continuous.~ A person may

 

174

be said to be deceiving himself throughout a stretch of time,
perhaps a very long stretch of time, during which he is not
conscious of the truth, and so, during which he does not purposely
avoid making his consciousness explicit. This may lead us to think
that self-deception is a state or a disposition, and we may then
look at conscious on which the self-deceiver is conscious of the
truth and does avoid making his consciousness explicit as simply
actualizations of that state or disposition. This is, in fact,
precisely how we treated the matter earlier, on pages 155-156.
However, this view is not entirely correct. While self-
deception is continuous, and does involve a state such as we
have described - such a state is essential to it - it does not
coincide with this state. What marks the beginning of a period of
self-deception is an occasion on which the self-deceiver, for the
first time, is conscious of the truth and purposely avoids making
his consciousness explicit. Usually, though perhaps not always,
this will be the occasion on which the self-deceiver first learns
the truth, when he realizes it for the first time, or, so to speak,
it dawns on him for the first time. Thereafter, he continues
to deceive himself until he becomes explicitly conscious of the
truth willingly; he does not, e.g., slip or is not tricked into
becoming explicitly conscious of the truth. Throughout the
intervening period he need not be conscious of the truth, he need
simply have the disposition we have described. But possession
of this disposition is not by itself sufficient for him to be

deceiving himself.

 

175

Here there is an exact analogy with other-deception. The
other—deceiver must know the truth, and he must be disposed to
prevent someone from learning the truth. But this is not
sufficient for us to say that he is deceiving the other person. In
order for that to be the case, there must be at least one occasion
on which he does prevent the other person from learning the truth.
Then, there is a sense of 'deceive', what we might call the
continuous sense in which we can say that he is deceiving this
other person from this first occasion on which he prevents the
other person from learning the truth and for so long as he has the
disposition to prevent him from learning it. Given such a first
occasion, if the other person learns the truth and also realizes
that he has been taken in, then he might say to the deceiver,

"You have been deceiving me all this time", i.e., continuously.
The expression 'is deceiving himself' is used in an analogous
way.

Thus there cannot be a case of self-deception in which
the self-deceiver does not know the truth. For X to be deceiving
himself, he must from the start know the truth because his self-
deception does not begin until he is conscious of the truth and
purposely avoids making his consciousness explicit. X is not a
self-deceiver.

In one way, this alteration in our account brings it closer
to Fingarette's analysis. He was right in suggesting that the

self-deceiver is someone who purposely avoids becoming explicitly

 

176

conscious. On the other hand, this contention entails that the
self-deceiver knows the truth. If he held, as he appears to
have done, that self—deceivers do not know the truth, then he
was wrong, and the latter contention contradicts a central and

correct feature of his own analysis of self-deception.

 

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CHAPTER FIVE. Over-Riding Reasons.

Section 1.

We have characterized the self-deceiver as someone who avoids
making his consciousness of the truth explicit for reasons which
'over-ride' any he may have for making his consciousness explicit.
We have further stated that foremost among these over-riding
reasons is the desire to avoid psychic 'pain'. In this chapter
we shall consider the self-deceiver's desire to avoid psychic
'pain' in a more specific and less vague manner.

This part of our investigation still lies within the province
of an analysis of self-deception, and it is not primarily an
empirical psychological investigation. Self-deceivers necessarily
avoid explicit consciousness of the truth for a reason of a
particular kind. If someone were to persistently avoid explicit
consciousness of something which he knew, but did not do so for
such a reason, then he would not be deceiving himself. This does
not mean, however, that our investigation is not a psychological
one. Imbedded, as it were, within the concept of self-deception
is a psychological explanatory structure. So long as we do not
construe the term 'theory' too narrowly, we can say that the
expression, 'is deceiving himself (herself)' is a 'theory-laden'
one, and our task in this chapter will be to uncover the general
ourline of that theory.

However, in spite of the fact that our investigation is

primarily analytical, in practice it is very difficult to separate

 

178

this analytical task from the empirical one of determining that
people do avoid explicit consciousness of the truth in order to
avoid psychic 'pain' of the relevant sort. This is because with the
exception of the rarified atmosphere of mathematics and some of the
more highly developed sciences, our concepts do not come ready-made
prior to any possible application of them. In a sense, they owe
their existance to the fact that they are applied, that they are
part of an interdependent structure of concepts in terms of which
we perceive and explain our world even at the most basic and
'empirical' level. This does not mean that we cannot deny, e.g.,
that people avoid explicit consciousness of the truth in order to
avoid psychic 'pain' or that when they do avoid explicit conscious-
ness, they do in fact prevent 'psychic pain'. It does mean, on the
other hand, that we cannot deny these things without abandoning a
large part of the structure by means of which we explain human
behavior.

So far I have characterized the self-deceiver's reason as
simply "the avoidance of psychic 'pain'". This phrase is quite
vague, however, and our first task shall be to flesh it out in a
way which makes it clear. To accomplish this, let us return to
Pugmire's official and ask, "What would happen if he were to
acknowledge the truth to himself? What would this do to him?"

We have expressions which would cover the probable outcome of
such an acknowledgment. Thus we might say, "He would be crushed"

or "He would be destroyed". But these ways of speaking, along with

 

179

Fingarette's more artificial, "The acknowledgment would be
destructive of his self", while perhaps more meaningful in a
human way, are still not clear. What would it be for him to be
crushed? What must happen to him in order for us to say that the
acknowledgment crushed or destroyed him?

In answer to this latter pair of questions we can first note
that to be crushed in this sense is always to be overwhelmed in
a certain way by any of a number of emotions. Thus one can be
crushed by grief, crushed by despair, crushed by remorse, crushed
by guilt, crushed by shame, crushed by sorrow. On the other hand,
not all emotions can be overwhelming in this way. It makes no
sense to speak of someone being crushed by joy, crushed by anger,
crushed by compassion, crushed by envy, crushed by jealousy, even
if the person is overwhelmed by one of these emotions.

Secondly, we should note that to be crushed by grief,
despair, remorse,guilt, shame, or sorrow is not the same thing as
having or feeling grief, despair, remorse, guilt, shame, or sorrow.
One can, for example, feel ashamed for something one has done or
felt or thought without being crushed by shame. Similarly, one can
grieve over the loss of someone without being crushed by grief.

Third, the difference between, say, feeling grief and being
crushed by grief is not simply a matter of intensity or degree.

To say that a person has been crushed by grief is to say, among
other things, that his life has ceased to have any significance,
any meaning for him. It is to say that there is no longer any-

thing which makes his life worth living, that he no longer has any

 

180

reason to live. Usually when we think of "The Meaning of Life"
we think of those large and enduring projects, goals, and activities
which occupy the center of a person's life and which tie the various
parts of his life together. However, to really appreciate what it
means for someone's life to have lost its meaning, and thus to
appreciate what it means to be crushed, it is better to focus on
those little details of life which we all take for granted. Consider
the simple act of eating. Where before a man who is now crushed
by guilt (or grief, shame, etc.) could look forward to eating,
could engage in it eagerly and with enjoyment, eating is now of
no interest to man. It is not that food has lost its taste. The
man has not lost his ability to see, to hear, to feel warmth and
cold, textures, hardness, etc., nor has he lost his ability to
feel pain or bodily sensations or to taste things, to tell the
difference between flavors, and so on. But in his mouth these
tastes have become dead, lifeless things. They have lost
altogether their power to interest him, to delight and entice,
to spark his desires.

It is not simply eating which has lost its significance
for this man. Eating and its pleasures may have been relatively
unimportant to him. His life has lost its meaning because virtually
everything which before would have interested him, which would
have delighted him or would have been the source of joy or pleasure,
which would have been an object of his desires, is now a matter

of indifference to him. To say that his life has lost its meaning

 

181

means, among other things, that he has no reason to go on living
because of his indifference to the things which used to fill his
life or which could fill his life.

The man's indifference is not, however, total. Often, rather
than being merely indifferent to something, he will take a kind
of negative interest in it, and be repulsed by the thing in question.
Thus if the taste of food moves him at all, it does so only in a
negative way, b ecoming downright repugnant, clinging to his mouth
like a bad odor clinging to his nostrils. This repulsion extends
to people, even people whom he has deeply loved, and he will often
find their presence distressing and yearn to be left along. Because
of this negative interest which he often takes in things, this
man will most likely be irritable and quick to anger.

Even this lack of positive interest and the frequent negative
interest is not enough, however, to mark a person as having no
reason to go on living, nor, therefore, as having been crushed.
Essential to both of these things is a certain pessimistic attitude.
A person may, for example, grieve deeply over the death of a loved
one, refuse to eat, with to be alone, and so on, without it's
being the case that the meaning has gone out of this person's life
or that the person has been crushed by grief. What marks the
difference here is that the person in question knows or believes
that the lack of positive interest and the frequent negative interest
associated with his or her grief is temporary, that these things

will pass, and that sooner or later a renewed interest in life will

 

182

be possible. After a period of time such a person will make an
effort to once again take an active interest in life. But a person
who is crushed by grief takes the opposite attitude: he or she
believes that the condition will not pass, that it will never again
be possible to have positive interests, and that he or she will
continue to take only a negative interest in things. Thus having
no reason to go on living and being crushed always and necessarily
contains an element of despair. In despair one views it is inevitable
that one will lost something whose loss one dreads or that one
will continue to be plagued by the presence of something which one
dreads. The person who has been crushed by some emotion and whose
life has ceased to have meaning always and necessarily despairs
of ever again taking a positive interest in life or of being free
of the repulsion which constitutes his negative interest in life.
This essential component of despair in turn tends to make
the person's condition a self-perpetuating one, whether he has been
crushed by grief, despair, remorse, guilt, shame, or sorrow. The
reason for this is that despair over anything involves a reaction
of the sort described above, it involves, that is, losing a positive
interest in life and taking on a negative interest in it. And so
long as a person believes that he will never again be able to take
a positive interest in life and that he is doomed to take only a
negative interest in it, the despair which rests on this belief
will continue to generate this reaction long after the emotion which

originally generated the reaction has passed. What happens here is

 

183

that the person in question mistakenly attributes the continuance
of this reaction to the original emotion, and thus while his

belief is mistaken, the despair which the belief supports continues
to generate the effort which confirms and reinforces the belief.

On the other hand, were the person to realize that his belief

were mistaken, his despair would cease, and his belief would cease
to be confirmed. And had he had a more realistic attitude from
this very beginning, had he realized, that is, that his emotion would
pass, he would never have been crushed by it in the first place.

We implicitly recognize this, I believe, in our dealings with
people who seem to be taking things "too hard". One of the first
things we do in such a case is try to reassure the person that his
grief, despair, sorrow, shame, etc., will pass. Moreover, we

often speak of someone who has been crushed by some emotion and
who despairs of ever picking up his life again as "feeling sorry
for himself". This is, I take it, a reference to the despair which
is perpetuating his pain.

What I have said above should not be taken to imply, however,
that whenever someone is crushed by a certain emotion, say grief,
then his despair over picking up his life again necessarily endures
beyond his grief and perpetuates his lack of positive interest in
life and his negative interest in life after his grief has passed.
What I am saying is that when a person is crushed by an emotion
like grief, despair necessarily contributes to this crushing effect,
and sometimes the despair outlives the original emotion and

perpetuates his condition long after the original emotion has passed.

 

184

In the latter sort of case, a mistaken belief is involved. However,
it is not necessarily true that in all cases of someone's being
crushed by an emotion the person mistakenly attributes his continued
lack of interest in life and his repulsion to his emotion. He
might be right.

To return to Pugmire's official, then, were he to acknowledge
the truth to himself, we would expect him to be crushed by certain
emotions: for example, shame over having been dismissed for
incompetence, grief over the loss of his position and the loss of
the respect of other people - acquaintances, friends, family - and
despair over ever being able to perform competently, have security,
and to have the respect of others. And we may surmise that Pugmire's
official avoids acknowledging the truth ip'ggggg to avoid being
crushed by shame, grief and despair. In refusing to acknowledge
the truth and doing what is necessary to avoid an acknowledgment
of the truth, the official gipg_at saving himself from being crushed
by shame, grief, and despair, and thus at insuring that he will
have reason to go on living and that his life will not become a
dark and empty pit.

Notice now that even if the official is successful in avoiding
an acknowledgment of the truth and this in turn prevents him from
being crushed by shame, grief, and despair over the above mentioned
things, this does not.mean that he never feels shame, grief, or
despair over these things. Indeed, the latter is quite unlikely
and when we meet with the official in Pugmire's example these feelings

are apparently already welling up in him. Moreover, it is quite

 

185

possible that the official has these feelings quite frequently,
and that intermittently he loses his positive interests in life
or finds them diminished, and that similarly he finds himself
repulsed by many things which otherwise would attract him. But
this is not to say that he has been crushed by shame, grief, and
despair. First, even though these things happen freguently or

intermittently, this is not the same as his continuously feeling

 

despair, grief and shame, continuously lacking positive interests,

and continually taking a negative interest in life. But the latter

 

is what would have to occur for us to say that he had been crushed.
Secondly, there is a question of intensity. Even though he feels
despair, shame, and grief, it does not follow that he feels these
things as intensely as he would if he were crushed by them. Similarly,
to say that his positive interests in life have diminished is not
the same as saying that he takes no positive interest in life
whatsoever, and the latter is what would occur if he were to be
crushed. Finally, there is the qualitative difference mentioned
earlier. For him to be crushed, not only would he have to believe
that at present he had no positive interests and only negative ones,
but he would have to believe that never again would it be possible
for him to have positive interests and that he was doomed to having
only strong negative interests in life. And in addition, this would
have to cause him despair. But it does not follow that he has

this belief or the despair which rests upon it, even though it does
follow from what was said above that he believes that Eg£g_he to

acknowledge the truth, then it would never again be possible for him

 

186

to take a positive interest in life or to be free of strong
negative interests. The latter follows, of course, from the
supposition that his aim in not acknowledging the truth is to
prevent himself from being crushed.

The foregoing makes it plausible, I hope, that at least in
some cases of self-deception, the self-deceiver avoids acknowledg-
ing the truth in order to avoid being crushed by grief, despair,
guilt, shame, remorse or sorrow. But it is, I believe, a necessary
condition of self-deception that one avoid explicit consciousness
of the truth in order to avoid being crushed by such emotions,
and thus, that if someone were to avoid explicit consciousness of
the truth for reasons other than this, he would not be deceiving
himself. I have no knock-down arguments to prove this contention,
but a number of considerations can be brought to bear which strongly
support it.

First, there is our reaction to someone whom we know to be
deceiving himself. We tend to view the self-deceiver with a mixture
of pity and scorn. I suggest that the reason we do pity the
self-deceiver is because we realize that his desperate flight from
the truth is an attempt to avoid being crushed. Having been tormented
by such feelings ourselves, we sympathize with his position. At
the same time we view his flight from the truth as due to a flaw
in his character, as due to a lack of courage, and we feel that he
would better eeal with the truth were he to face his grief, despair,

etc., openly and overcome it.

 

187

Secondly, most of those cases which we would regard as typical
examples of self-deception display this feature. The mother who
refuses to acknowledge her son's wrong—doing - why does she do
so? We are quite prepared to think that she does so in order to
avoid being crushed with sorrow for her son, and with guilt and
remorse over not having done a better job of raising him. And
we tend to view in a similar way, the husband who refuses to acknow-
ledge that his wife has been unfaithful, the homosexual who refuses
to acknowledge his desires, the excessively 'mild' person who
refuses to acknowledge his anger and aggressive activities, the
aggressive person who refuses to acknowledge his tender feelings
and kindly activities, Robinson Crusoe on his island who refuses
to acknowledge that there is no hope for rescue, the man who refuses
to acknowledge that he hates his job, his family, and his way of
life, Hickey who refuses to acknowledge that he killed his wife
out of hatred and bitter resentment. In so far as we view any
of these as cases of self-deception, we tend to view the aim in
each case as preventing being crushed by grief, despair, shame,
guilt, remorse, or sorrow.

Third, when we entertain examples which are ambiguous with
respect to this feature, which neither clearly display it or exclude
it, we do not know whether to attribute self-deception or not, even
though all of the other features of self-deception are clearly
present. On the other hand, we can turn such examples into clear-

cut cases of self-deception by supposing them to have this feature.

 

claim:

188

One example - from Sartre - should suffice to illustrate this

Take the example of a woman who has consented to go
out with a particular man for the first time. She knows
very well the intentions which the who who is speaking
to her cherishes regarding her. She knows also that it
will be necessary for her to make a decision.‘ But she
does not want to realize the urgency; she concerns her-
self only with what is respectful and discrete in the
attitude of her companion. She does not apprehend this
conduct as an attempt to achieve what we call "the
first approach;" that is, she does not want to see
possibilities of temporal development which his conduct
presents. She restricts this behavior to what it is in
the present; she does not wish to read in the phrases
which he addresses to her anything other than their explicit
meaning. If he says to her, "I find you so attractive!"
she disarms this phrase of its sexual background; the
man who is speaking to her appears to her sincere and
respectful as the table is round or square, as the wall
coloring is blue or gray.....This is because she does not
quite know what she wants. She is profoundly aware of
the desire which she inspires, but the desire cruel and
naked would humiliate and terrify her. Yet she would find
no charm in a respect which would be only respect. In
order to satisfy her, there must be a feeling which is
addressed wholly to her personality--i.e., to her full
freedom--and which would be a recognition of her freedom.
But at the same time this feeling must be wholly desire;
that is, it must address itself to her body as object.
This time then she refuses to apprehend the desire for what
it is; she does not even give it a name; she recognizes
it only to the extent that it transcends itself toward
admiration, esteem, respect and that it is wholly absorbed
in the more refined forms which it produces, to the extent
of no longer figuring any more as a sort of warmth and
density. But then suppose he takes her hand. This act of
her companion risks changing the situation by calling
for an immediate decision. To leave the hand there is
to consent in herself to flirt, to engage herself. To
withdraw it is to break the troubled and unstable harmony
which gives the hour its charm. The aim is to postpone
the moment of decision as long as possible. We know
what happens next; the young woman leaves her hand there,
but she does not notice that she is leaving it. She does
not notice it because it happens by chance that she is
at this moment all intellect. She draws her companion up
to the most lofty regions of sentimental speculation; she
speaks of Life, of her life, she shows herself in her

 

189

essential aspect-~a personality, a consciousness. And

during this time the divorce of the body from the soul

is accomplished, the hand rests inert between the warm

hands of her companion--neither consenting nor resist-

ing--a thing.1

Sartre's example is a highly complicated one as we shall see.
The point I wish to make at present is that even if we discount
the possibility that the young woman is simply being coy, and we
agree that she is refusing to acknowledge her companion's sexual
desire even to herself because - as Sartre seems to suggest - "the
desire cruel and naked would humiliate and horrify her," it is
still not clear that the young woman is deceiving herself. It is
entirely consistent with the example as Sartre describes it to
suppose that eventually she gives up trying "to postpone the moment
of decision as long as possible", that she clearly though perhaps
discretely acknowledges her companion's desire for her, and that
she even enthusisatically engages in love making with him. If
this were to happen, then we should reject, I think, the claim
that the young woman was deceiving herself, and the reason we should
do so, I submit, is that it would show that she was not refusing
to acknowledge her companion's desire because doing so would cause
her to be crushed with grief or despair.

0n the other hand, by bringing out explicitly certain things
which Sartre's description suggests, and by adding further details
to the example, it is possible to turn it into a case of self-
deception. Sartre focuses on the young woman's refusal to acknowledge

her companion's desire. But if he intended the example to be taken

190

as an example of self-deception, this is misleading. There is
much in much in the example which suggests that she is herself
sexually aroused, and it is on her own aroused sexual desire which
we should concentrate if we are to plausibly construe the example
as an example of self-deception.

The primary reason for inferring from Sartre's description
that the young woman is herself sexually aroused is that it is her
consciousness of her companion's aroused sexual desire for her
which gives the evening its charm for her. To see why this is a
reason for holding that she is sexually aroused, it is important
to concentrate on certain features of aroused sexual desire.

First, when one person, X, is in an initial stage of aroused
sexual desire for another person, Y, X desires physical contact
of some sort with Y, usually including sexual intercourse in
heterosexual relationships. But this desire is by no means the
whole of X's aroused state. In order to characterize X's desire
for Y as sexual desire in the erotic sense of 'sexual', it is
necessary that X also desire that Y has a certain desire, namely,
the desire for physical contact of the same sort with X. If X
becomes aware that Y does have this desire, then typically this
will have the effect that X becomes further aroused sexually, not
only because X thereby knows that one of his desires has been
satisfied, and this satisfaction, pleasurably experienced, sparks
his desire for more, but also because it increases X's expectations
that his other components desires will be satisfied. 0n the other

hand, if x becomes conscious that Y does not have aroused sexual

191

desire dor him/herself, X, then this will tend to dampen X's

own desire, and especially so, if X takes this as an indication
that Y will not in the future become sexually aroused with desire
for X.

The second feature about aroused sexual desire we need to
notice is this. The initial stage of sexual arousal is marked by
certain physiological characteristics - dilation of the pupils,
drooping of the eyelids, slightly labored breathing, increase in
the beating of the heart and pulse, slight perspiration, tumescence
and erection of the nipples, penis, elitoris, and secretion of
fluids from the penis and the vagina, muscular contractions in the
anus, vagina, and around the penis. Moreover, and more importantly
for our purposes, there are subjective changes which correspond
to these physical ones; slight haziness of vision, a feeling of
heaviness in the eyelids, palpitations in one's chest, a feeling
of slight tightness in one's chest, stirrings in one's stomach
and bowels, stirring and itching in one's loins, and a greatly
increased sensitivity to touch, to pressure, to colors and bright-
ness, to smells and tastes, and to sounds. This increased sensitivity
extends over the whole body and encompasses all of the sense organs,
but it is perhaps most marked on the surface of the skin and in
‘particular areas of the body: the tongue and mouth, the breasts
and.nipples, the buttocks, the anus and genitals, the hands and feet.

Now, what we need to note about these subjective changes is

that when one is sexually aroused, this increased sensitivity

192

contributes to a modification of one's perception of the world,
including one's own body. The world takes on what might be called
'an erotic structure.‘ Along with this modified sensibility,

one's interests in the world changes, and it is now seen in terms

of the sensuous possibilities which it offers. Thus, a slight

touch against the penis or clitoris is intensely felt and perceived
pleasurably; colors, sights, sounds, tastes, smells take on a

new meaning. The low, yellow flame of a candle burning between

two sexually aroused people, which earlier was casually ignored,

an appointment of a familiar and expected kind, like the silverware,
the chairs, the rug, the table-cloth, is now a thing of indescribable
beauty for both people. The smell of the melting wax, which earlier
went unnoticed or was annoying, might now become deliciously
pungent. The brush of the aroused person's clothing against his
body, so familiar and uninteresting, now becomes for him a caress,
sending a thrill down his back. Even the defects in the other
person, which earlier were regarded as repugnant, may now become
attractive. Pores which were earlier regarded as too large may

now become fascinating and attractive. The nasal whine in the
other's voice, annoying before, may now become seductive. Indeed,
it is a common experience among both men and women to awake on the
morning after making love with someone, and finding the other's naked
body next to one, to become disgusted and to wonder how one could

ever had come into such intimate contact with them.

.193

Let us now return to Sartre's young woman. A plausible
explanation of the "charm" which she finds in the evening and its
dependence on her awareness of her companion's desire and
intentions is that the young woman herself is sexually aroused,
that her awareness of his desire has intensified her own, and that
in consequence, she is perceiving the world erotically, the world
has taken on an erotic structure for her.

If we suppose that this explanation is correct, and explicitly
add it to the description of the example, then it is possible to'
turn the example into a clear case of self-deception. In addition,
we must suppose that the young woman cannot acknowledge her own
aroused sexual desire, not even to herself, for fear that if she does
so, she will be crushed by guilt and remorse. I might note here that
such a supposition is by no means implausible. Since her companion
is trying to make "the first approach", this is apparently their
first social contact, and obviously they are not married to one
another, nor do they have any serious interest in one another as
prospective spouses or as lovers. Thus the young woman's desire
for her companion is entirely casual - it is, if you will, lust.
Most of us have known people for whom such a casual sexual desire
is a hideous and obnoxious thing, one which they cannot acknowledge
even to themselves for fear of being overwhelmed by guilt and re-
morse.

Hence, there is nothing surprising or awkward about the

supposition that Sartre's young woman avoids acknowledging her own

194

sexual desire out of fear that were she to acknowledge it, she
would be crushed by guilt and remorse. Once we have made this
supposition, it then becomes clear that she is deceiving herself,
and, moreover, we can still readily account for other features
of the example.

First, it is clear that the young woman cannot respond to
her companion's overtures in any way which could be construed
as an acknowledgment of her own aroused desire. Thus, when he
says, "I find you so attractive,” she cannot respond with, "I find
you very attractive too," since this would be to acknowledge her
desire for him. Similarly, when he takes her hand, she cannot
respond by squeezing his hand warmly, since this would again be
to acknowledge her own desire.

On the other hand, if she were to respond to his expression
of desire with the words, "I am sorry, but I am not attracted
to you in the same way", or the like, or if, when he takes her hand,
she were to quickly withdraw it, then this would risk extinguishing
his desire, and indirectly destroying the erotic atmosphere which
she finds in his presence. The latter would result not only because
the intensity of her own desire is dependent on her perception
of his desire, but also because if his desire were extinguished,
then for her this would remove any Egg$_possibility of her own
desire being satisfied. And while it is logically possible, I
suppose, for her to remain sexually aroused even after she realizes

that there is no real possibility of her desire being satisfied,

195

this is not very likely. Normally when one realizes that one's
sexual desire cannot be satisfied, this realization has the effect
of killing one's desire.

It should be noted here that the above implies that the
young woman is aware that there is a real possibility of her and her
companion's desires being satisfied. And this awareness forms
the kernel for a second self-deception. She could no more acknowledge
this real possibility than she could acknowledge her desire, for
to acknowledge this possibility would be to acknowledge that she
Egy_engage in sexual intercourse with her companion, and this
acknowledgment is quite as likely to have a crushing effect on her
as the first. This is why, I suspect, Sartre says, "she does not
want to see possibilities of temporal development which his
conduct presents." For these possibilities are her possibilities,
and can exist only with her consent.

The young woman is therefore in a dilemma. She finds a way
out of this dilemma by not acknowledging Eifi.’ her companion's -
desire. When he says, ”I find you so attractive," she treats this
as if it were an expression of his admiration and respect, and not
as an expression of his desire, calculated to elicit a positive
or negative response from her. Similarly, when he takes her hand,
she 'doesn't notice' that he has done so, because "it happens by
chance that she is at this moment all intellect." By behaving in
this way, she avoids acknowledging her own desire while at the same

time doing nothing which her companion can interpret as a rejection.

196

Hence she avoids being crushed with guilt and remorse through an
acknowledgment of her desire (or an acknowledgment of the possibility
that she will satisfy her desire and her companion's), and at the
same time she preserves the erotically charming structure of her
evening.

We expect, of course, that eventually the young woman will
have to make a decision, for it is likely that sooner or later her
companion will manoeuvre her into a position where she will have
no practical alternatives between either acknowledging her own
desire or rejecting his overtures. It does not automatically follow,
however, that she will choose to reject her companion. Her companion
may "get" her drunk and "take advantage" of her, or he may
"convince" her that he loves her and wants to marry her while she
at the same time "falls in love" with him, or he may use some similar
ruse calculated to provide her with some excuse.

I want to conclude this chapter with some comments about the
place of anxiety in self-deception. Anxiety may play quite a
prominent role in self-deception, though Freud himself misunderstood
this role. It is not primarily to avoid the 'pain' or 'unpleasure'
of anxiety that the self-deceiver avoids explicit consciousness of
the truth. Rather, as Fingarette correctly sees, anxiety is often
the motive for avoiding explicit consciousness of the truth. When
the self-deceiver is conscious of the truth and he feels threatened
with an acknowledgment of the truth, and thus with the crushing
despair, grief, etc., that such an acknowledgment would bring, and
acting pp; g£_anxiety, he does what is necessary to reduce the
threat and to avoid acknowledging the truth. Here his primary

aim is to avoid being crushed. Granted, anxiety may itself be in

197

some sense painful, and he may also act to avoid anxiety, but
the latter can only be a secondary aim. Unless there were some-
thing else which he dreaded and desperately wanted to avoid - being

crushed - there would be no reason to speak of him as being

anxious.

198

NOTES
Chapter One.
1. This train of argument owes a great deal to Fingarette's

criticism of Demos' analysis.

2. Demos' 'Lying to Oneself', Journal ngPhilosophy, Vol. 57
(1960). p. 588.

3. Ibid., p. 588.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., p. 591.

7. Ibid., my emphasis.
8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., p. 592.

10. Ibid., p. 593.

11. Ibid., p. 594.

12. Frederick Siegler, 'Self-Deception'. Australasian Journal
p§_Philosqphy, Vol. 41, (1963). PP. 29-43. Cf. esp. pp.
36-39.

13. Herbert Fingarette, Self-Deception (London, 1969), p. 14.

14. Demos implicitly recognized, that is, that self-deception
gg_pg construed £E_could only occur if the self-deceiver

does not appreciate the incompatibility in his beliefs.

15. David Pugmire, 'Strong Self-Deception', Inguiry, Vol. 12,
(1969). pp. 339-361.

16. Ibid., p. 344.
17. Cf., ibid., p. 344.

18 0 Ibid. I PP. 344-345 0

19.

199

Conflict theories are also espoused in the following:
Canfield and McNally, 'Paradoxes of Self-Deception',
Analysis, Vol. 21, (1960) Pp. 140—144.

A. O. Rorty, 'Belief & Self-Deception', Inguigy, Vol.

15 (1972) pp. 387-410.

D. W. Hamlyn, 'Self-Deception', Aristotelian Society,
Supplementary Volume, No. 45 (1971), pp. 45-72.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being_and Nothingness, trans. by Hazel
Barnes (New York, 1966), paper. Cf. esp. Ch. Two, 'Bad
Faith'.

Chapter Two.

10.

11.

12.

S. Freud and J. Breuer, Studies ngHysteria, pp. 116-117 of
Vol. II, The Standard Edition g£_The Cogplgte Psychological
works g£_Sigmund Freud (hereafter 'SE'), translated from
the German under the general editorship of James Starchey
in collaboration with Anna Freud, assisted by Alix Starchey
and Alan Tyson (London, 1966).

 

 

 

 

Ibid., p. 117.

Ibid., p. 268.

Ibid., p. 269.

Ibid., p. 270.

Ibid., p. 269.

Ibid., p. 116.

Cf. above, p. 45.

Cf. above, p. 45. The central parts of Freud's views concerning
the conversion of a quantity of affect into hysterical symptoms
’is sketched in Parts I and IV of Studies gp_Hysteria.

Ibid., p. 122.

Ibid., p. 270.

John King-Farlow, 'Self-Deceivers and Sartrian Seducers',

Speer, Inside The Third Reich, trans. by Richard and Clara
Winston (New York, 1970, paper.), 99- 480-481.

 

 

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

200

Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. by Hazel
Barnes (New York, 1966, paper.). PP. 101-102.

 

Ibid., p. 89.
Ibid., p. 287.
The part played by the censor is extensively marked out in

The Interpretation pf Dreams, trans. by James Starchey
New York, 1965, paper.).

 

Freud, The Ego and The IQ, SE, Vol. XIX, p. 17.

 

Ibid., p. 17.
Ibid., p. 18.

I owe much of this point to Fingarette. Cf. Self-Deception,
Chapter Three, esp. pp. 47-48.

Chapter Three.

1.

10.

11.

Frederich C. Siegler, 'Demos on Lying to Oneself',
Journal g£_Philosophy, Vol. S9,(1962),pp. 469-475.

Siegler, 'Self-Deception', Australasian Journal g§_Philosophy,

V61. 42 (1963). PP. 29-43.
Cf. DLO, p. 470.

DID, p. 473.

Cf. DLO, p. 474; SD, p. 33.
OLD, p. 474; SD, p. 33.
DLO, p. 473; SD, p. 32.
OLD, p. 474; Cf. SD, p. 33.

John V. Canfield and Don F. Gustavson, 'Self-Deception',
Analysis, Vol. 23 (1962), pp. 32-36.

Ibid., p. 34.

Ibid., pp. 35-36.

 

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

201

Terence Penelham, 'Pleasure and Falsity', American
Philosophical anrterly, Vol. 1 (1964). Reprinted in Stuart
Hampshire, ed., Philosophy pf Mind (New York, 1966), pp.
242-266. All page references are to Philosophy g£_Mind.

 

 

Ibid., p. 258.
Ibid.: PP. 258-259.
Ibid., p. 259.

Cf. ibid., pp. 259-260.

 

Cf. Stanley Paluch, 'Self-Deception', Inguigy, Vol. 10 (1967),
pp. 268—278, Paluch also suggests an argument to show that
the self-deceiver does not know the truth except in a "non-

 

standard" sense of 'know', and again this conclusion is
based upon the self-deceiver's 'inability'. The same i
reply works against this argument that was made against ;,

Canfield and Gustavson. Other authors who have introduced
"weak" or "idiomatic" or "non-standard" uses of 'know'

into the analysis are H. O. Mounce ('Self-Deception',

Arist. Soc., Supp. Vol. 45 (1971), pp. 61-72) and Fingarette.

 

Chapter Four.

10.

11.

Herbert Fingarette, Self-Deception, London, 1969.
Ibid., p. 29, my emphasis.

Ibid., p. 38.

Ibid., p. 35.

Ibid., p. 37.

Ibid., pp. 38-40.

Ibid., p. 40.

Ibid., p. 41.

Ibid., p. 43.

Ibid., p. 43.

Ibid., p. 43.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

202

Ibid., p. 48.

Ibid., p. 28.

Freud, SE, Vol. XII, p. 260.

Freud, SE, Vol. V, p. 574.

Freud, SE, Vol. XIX, p. 20.

Cf. p. 131 above.

I believe this observation lies behind Fingarette's

claim that "A self-covering policy of this kind [a policy
of not spelling-out the truth] tends to generate a more or
less elaborate 'cover story'. For a natural consequence
is the protective attempt on the part of the person to use
elements of the skill he has developed in spelling-out as
inventively as possible in order to fill in plausibly the
gaps created by his self-covering policy." Ibid., p. 50.
Cf. above, p. 80.

Fingarette draws a similar conclusion about Freud.
Cf. Ibid., p. 121.

Ibid., p. 114.

Ibid., pp. 119-120. In Freudian terminology, a 'cathexis'
is a 'charge of psychic energy' attaching to an ideational
content. The notion is obscure at best, and, as we shall
see, Fingarette reinterprets both 'hypercathexis' and
'counter-cathexis' in an effort to clarify these notions.
For Freud's own treatment of these notions consult his
essay, 'Repression', SE, V01. XIV.

Ibid., pp. 120-121.

Ibid., p. 124.

Ibid., p. 115.

Ibid., pp. 115-116.

Ibid., p. 116.

Ibid., p. 34.

Ibid., p. 63.

Ibid., p. 64.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

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Demos, Raphael, 'Lying to Oneself,‘ Journal g£_Philosophy, Vol.
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de Sousa, R., 'Review of Self-Deception,' Ingpigy, Vol. 13 (1970),
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