The association between self-deception and moral self-concept as functions of self-consciousness

Regulated by self-consciousness, self-deception is a part of the self-system that suppresses negative aspects of the self and maintains a positive moral self-concept. We tested this evolutionary hypothesis on 166 college students by measuring self-deception using both a questionnaire and a series of hypothetical helping scenarios. The results showed a positive correlation between self-deception and moral self-concept, which was moderated by private self-consciousness. Among participants with high, but not low, self-consciousness, high moral self-concept individuals were more willing to help when potential self-benefits were present than low moral self-concept individuals, whereas there was no difference between the two groups concerning helping without self-benefit. These results support the evolutionary view that self-deception serves to maintain optimal moral self-concept, especially for individuals with high self-consciousness.     

Fairness,self-deception and political obligation

I offer a new account of fair-play obligations for non-excludable benefits received from the state. Firstly, I argue that non-acceptance of these benefits frees recipients of fairness obligations only when a counterfactual condition is met; i.e. when non-acceptance would hold up in the closest possible world in which recipients do not hold motivationally-biased beliefs triggered by a desire to free-ride. Secondly, I argue that because of common mechanisms of self-deception there will be recipients who reject these benefits without meeting the counterfactual condition. For this reason, I suggest that those who reject non-excludable benefits provided by the state have a duty to support their rejection with adequate reasons. Failing that, they can be permissibly treated as if they had fair-play obligations (although in fact they might not have them). Thus, I claim that there is a distinction, largely unappreciated, between the question of whether we have a duty of fairness to obey the law and the question of whether we can be permissibly treated as if we had one.     

无知、自由与法律

哈耶克从对无知的顿悟中洞见了自由特别是个人自由对于个人和社会发展与进步的必要性。而法律则构成了实现和保证这种自由的充要条件。因此,法律与自由具有同等价值。哈耶克对自由与法治的价值的注重和执着,既推动了人类认识的发展与进步,同时也给那些正在实践或追求自由与法治的社会留下警省和启示。     

Vulnerability,Ignorance, and Oppression

This paper aims to understand the relationship between ignorance and vulnerability by drawing on recent work on the epistemology of ignorance. After elaborating how we might understand the importance of human vulnerability, I develop the claim that ignorance of vulnerability is produced through the pursuit of an ideal of invulnerability that involves both ethical and epistemological closure. The ignorance of vulnerability that is a prerequisite for such invulnerability is, I contend, a pervasive form of ignorance that underlies and grounds other oppressive forms of ignorance. Thus, undoing such forms of ignorance requires working toward a particular form of vulnerability: epistemic vulnerability.     

Real self-deception

Self-deception is made unnecessarily puzzling by the assumption that it is an intrapersonal analog of ordinary interpersonal deception. In paradigmatic cases, interpersonal deception is intentional and involves some time at which the deceiver disbelieves what the deceived believes. The assumption that self-deception is intentional and that the self-deceiver believes that some proposition is true while also believing that it is false produces interesting conceptual puzzles, but it also produces a fundamentally mistaken view of the dynamics of self-deception. This target article challenges the assumption and presents an alternative view of the nature and etiology of self-deception. Drawing upon empirical studies of cognitive biases, it resolves familiar "paradoxes" about the dynamics of self-deception and the condition of being self-deceived. Conceptually sufficient conditions for self-deception are offered and putative empirical demonstrations of a kind of self-deception in which a subject believes that a proposition is true while also believing that it is false are criticized. Self-deception is neither irresolvably paradoxical nor mysterious, and it is explicable without the assistance of mental exotica. The key to understanding its dynamics is a proper appreciation of our capacity for acquiring and retaining motivationally biased beliefs.     

Ignorance,Information and Autonomy

People have a powerful interest in geneticprivacy and its associated claim to ignorance,and some equally powerful desires to beshielded from disturbing information are oftenvoiced. We argue, however, that there is nosuch thing as a right to remain in ignorance,where a right is understood as an entitlementthat trumps competing claims. This doesnot of course mean that information must alwaysbe forced upon unwilling recipients, only thatthere is no prima facie entitlement to beprotected from true or honest information aboutoneself. Any claims to be shielded frominformation about the self must compete onequal terms with claims based in the rights andinterests of others. In balancing the weightand importance of rival considerations aboutgiving or withholding information, if rightsclaims have any place, rights are more likelyto be defensible on the side of honestcommunication of information rather than indefence of ignorance. The right to free speechand the right to decline to acceptresponsibility to take decisions for othersimposed by those others seem to us moreplausible candidates for fully fledged rightsin this field than any purported right toignorance. Finally, and most importantly, ifthe right to autonomy is invoked, a properunderstanding of the distinction between claimsto liberty and claims to autonomy show that theprinciple of autonomy, as it is understood incontemporary social ethics and English law,supports the giving rather than the withholdingof information in most circumstances.     

Willful ignorance and self-deception

Willful ignorance is an important concept in criminal law and jurisprudence, though it has not received much discussion in philosophy. When it is mentioned, however, it is regularly assumed to be a kind of self-deception. In this article I will argue that self-deception and willful ignorance are distinct psychological kinds. First, some examples of willful ignorance are presented and discussed, and an analysis of the phenomenon is developed. Then it is shown that current theories of self-deception give no support to the idea that willful ignorance is a kind of self-deception. Afterwards an independent argument is adduced for excluding willful ignorance from this category. The crucial differences between the two phenomena are explored, as are the reasons why they are so easily conflated.     

以崇尚科学为荣以愚昧无知为耻

在胡锦涛总书记关于“八荣八耻”社会主义荣辱观的重要论述中,“以崇尚科学为荣,以愚昧无知为耻”被赫然摆在第三位。由此可见,教育和引导广大公众特别是青少年用科学战胜愚昧、以科学破除迷信、靠理智战胜盲从是多么的刻不容缓。科学是人类赖以告别茹毛饮血的蛮荒时代而走     

Ignorance,Knowledge, and Two Epistemic Intuitions

Philosophia - One of the most venerable and enduring intuitions in epistemology concerns the relationship between true belief and knowledge. Famously articulated by Socrates, it holds that true...     

Relationships between conscientiousness,self-efficacy,self-deception,and learning over time

The present study examined the dual mediating effects of self-efficacy and self-deception on the relationship between conscientiousness and learning over time. Data from 134 college students were used to investigate the relative impact of self-efficacy and self-deception. Consistent with the hypothesized model, conscientiousness was significantly and positively related to both early training self-efficacy and self-deception, and both self-efficacy and self-deception had significant effects on learning but in opposite directions. Furthermore, the relative impact of self-efficacy and self-deception on learning changed over time as expected. The negative effect of self-deception in early stages of training disappeared at later stages of training but the positive effects of self-efficacy remained. Support was not found for self-efficacy and self-deception as mediators of the conscientiousness-learning relationship.     

Effort denial in self-deception

We propose a mixed belief model of self-deception. According to the theory, people distribute belief over two possible causal paths to an action, one where the action is freely chosen and one where it is due to factors outside of conscious control. Self-deceivers take advantage of uncertainty about the influence of each path on their behavior, and shift weight between them in a self-serving way. This allows them to change their behavior to provide positive evidence and deny doing so, enabling diagnostic inference to a desired trait. In Experiment 1, women changed their pain tolerance to provide positive evidence about the future quality of their skin, but judgments of effort claimed the opposite. This “effort denial” suggests that participants’ mental representation of their behavior was dissociated from their actual behavior, facilitating self-deception. Experiment 2 replicated the pattern in a hidden picture task where search performance was purportedly linked to self-control.     

Social strategies in self-deception

How do people deceive themselves? I argue that although self-deception tends to be conceptualized as something that happens ‘within an individual’, it can also be a process that is distributed across the social context of a self-deceiver. In this paper I will, first, conceptually distinguish different strategies of such ‘social self-deception’. Second, I will incorporate these into the two main conceptualizations of self-deception: intentionalism and deflationism. Finally, I will show how the proposed re-conceptualization of self-deception can be beneficial to conceptual, moral and empirical research.