Telling lies? An exploration of self-deception and bad faith

If self deception is a lie that one tells to oneself, then paradoxically the deceived is also simultaneously the deceiver. This paper considers two contrasting conceptualizations of self-deception: A.R. Mele's () account of cognitive functioning and J.P Sartre's () existential exploration of ‘bad faith’. Both writers seek to resolve the ‘paradox’ of self-deception or bad faith without recourse to the positing of mental partitioning or the Freudian unconscious. Mele uncovers and lays bare the underlying structure of self-deception, revealing it to consist in desire-driven perceptual and interpretational shortcomings. Sartre's analysis of bad faith emerges from his ontology and is bound up with his notions of ‘being-for’ and the tension between personal ‘transcendence’ and ‘facticity’. Finally, the implications for psychotherapy of Mele's and Sartre's accounts are considered.     

Leibniz and the English-Speaking World

The problem of self-deception lies at the heart of Nietzsche's account of the slave revolt in morality in the first essay of On the Genealogy of Morals. The viability of Nietzsche's genealogy of morality is thus crucially dependent on a successful explanation of the self-deception the slaves of the first essay are caught in. But the phenomenon of self-deception is notoriously puzzling. In this paper, after critically examining existing interpretations of the slaves’ self-deception, I provide, by drawing on Alfred Mele's work on self-deception, a deflationary account of the slaves’ self-deception; an account which explains the slaves’ self-deceived predicament but without either the attribution of contradictory mental states or an intention to produce or to facilitate the production of the belief the self-deceived subjects end up holding. In light of my account of self-deception, I interpret Nietzsche's intriguing claim that the slaves’ revaluation of ressentiment amounts to their ‘most mendacious artistic stroke’.     

Intergroup relations in action: Questions asked about lesbian,gay and bisexual issues in diversity training

This paper focuses on the questions which heterosexual trainees ask about lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) experience within diversity training about LGB issues. Drawing on a data corpus of 162 questions asked by trainees in 13 tape‐recorded training sessions, questions were coded into six categories: (1) general ‘understanding’ questions; (2) questions about the trainer's life, experience and practices; (3) professional practice questions; (4) questions about lesbian and gay related legislation, policies and procedures; (5) questions about specific people and projects and (6) questions about the meanings, derivations and correct use of terms and symbols. ‘Real’ questions are compared with the decontexualized questions (and answers to them) that are provided in training manuals and it is demonstrated that these questions differ markedly from how questions actually get asked and how they actually get answered. Recommendations are provided for improving training and the argument made for turning towards analyses of the real world in action, especially when considering intergroup relations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Religion as Anthropomorphism: A New Theory that Invites Definitional and Epistemic Scrutiny

This essay will focus briefly on (1) a definitional and (2) an epistemic analysis of Stewart Guthrie's cultural-anthropological theory of anthropomorphism in his bookFaces in the Clouds. In Part I of the essay, I will examine specific definitional claims about religion that Guthrie advances in chapter 1 (‘The Need for a Theory’) and chapter 3 (‘The Origin of Anthropomorphism’). In Part II, crucial statements in chapter 6 (‘Anthropomorphism in Philosophy and Science’) and chapter 7 (‘Religion as Anthropomorphism’) raise questions about Guthrie's epistemic assumptions that in philosophy and science the objects referred to as anthropomorphic have critically been known to be errors and have been wisely set aside in the margins of those enterprises, whereas the objects referred to as anthropomorphic in religion have always been at the centre of religion. Guthrie employs five theoretical criteria (of observability, simplicity, generality, fallibility, and probability) to explain why religion always anthropomorphizes. The essay concludes with a formal question about the epistemic status of Guthrie's observability and universality criteria.     

Becoming a philosopher: What Heidegger learned from Dilthey, 1919–25

Wilhelm Dilthey is, famously, an epistemological pioneer for a second, ‘human’ kind of science that ‘understands’ life as we live it, instead of ‘explaining’ things as we observe them. Even today, he is usually cited for his role in the Erklären–Verstehen debate. My article, however, follows Heidegger's suggestion that we make the existence of the debate itself the problem. Whether there are different sorts of entity, different reasons for studying them and different means for doing so – such issues raise questions about science itself, not just about how to do it better. Moreover, what sort of philosopher is competent to address such questions? Heidegger argues that Dilthey's later writings intimate that it must be one who thinks from the ‘standpoint of (historical) life itself.’ This issue, says Heidegger, is ‘alive’ in Dilthey but is continually short-circuited by his very traditional plan for a ‘Critique of Historical Reason.’ Dilthey's unsuccessful struggles to produce this Critique are his gift to us, however. They encourage us to explicitly reconsider, as Heidegger does not only in Being and Time but throughout his life, what Dilthey cannot: If philosophy, like all human practices, is historical to the core, what is it to ‘be’ philosophical, about science or anything else?     

Problems with paccekabuddhas—decoding early Buddhism

Steven Collins's review (Religion 2:3 (July 1992), pp. 271–8) of my publication Ascetic Figures before and in Early Buddhism: the Emergence of Gautama as the Buddha, Berlin, New York, Mouton de Gruyter 1990) warrants an extended response for a variety of reasons. In a circumstance where a four‐thousand word review has not one positive thing to say about a book, then the principle of natural justice particularly cries out for the author's right of reply. If Collins's review should have the effect of putting off prospective readers of my book then my reply is designed to recuperate their interest. Notwithstanding, it does not take an adept in the art of hermeneutic suspicion to realize the review actually tells us much more about the reviewer than the book. I cannot think that frenzied expressions like ‘academic hooligan’, ‘hearer‐bashing’, ‘fantasy’, ‘biting the hand that feeds you, with a vengeance’ could so easily have poured forth from the pen of normally so gracious a reviewer, had this particular book not hit an emotive nerve—if nothing else!—and sent Collins into an unparalleled fit of moral panic. Indeed, I shall be so bold as to suggest that Collins's reaction to the book has less to do with questions of its scholarly credibility (though his academic posturing would have us believe otherwise): ‘the thesis is presented as historical scholarship, and so it must be judged on academic grounds’ (p. 274) than with Collins's own narrow, pedantic conception, or preconception, of Buddhist Studies. This means my rejoinder to Collins's review inevitably draws me into a discussion of broader methodological questions of general interest to the wider academic community as well as particular issues pertaining to Buddhist scholarship.     

Big Gods in review: introducing Ara Norenzayan and his critics

This essay introduces a review symposium on Ara Norenzayan's book Big Gods (2013). The essay reviews Norenzayan's earlier publications on religion, sums up the main points of criticism that have been put forward by the contributors, and raises some concerns about the questions to be asked about ‘religion.’     

Better Dread (if Still Dead) than Red: High‐Brown Passing in John Hearne's Voices Under The Window

In his pioneering Caliban's Reason: Introducing Afro‐Caribbean Philosophy, Paget Henry points out that because of the region's colonial history, Caribbean philosophy is far more often found ‘embedded’ in other discourses, such as literature, than in explicit theorising. Following Henry's lead, I seek to find the philosophical ‘moral of the story’ of Voices Under the Window, the 1955 first novel of the late Jamaican writer John Hearne (1926–94), which some critics regard as his best work. In a novel with significant autobiographical elements, Hearne, a ‘high‐brown’ or ‘red’ Jamaican, recounts the story of Mark Lattimer, likewise a ‘red man’ positioned at the upper edge of the ‘brown’ stratum of the white/brown/black Jamaican social pyramid. Lattimer moves from a race‐denying attempt to ‘pass’ in World War II Britain to a Marxist social activism upon his later return to post‐war Jamaica, but is killed in a black protest riot. His tragic fate raises important philosophical questions about race, colour, class, and personal and social transformation that remain very relevant today, especially considering the failure of 1970s Anglo‐Caribbean radicalism to fulfil its revolutionary promise.     

Mother–Child Book‐Sharing and Children's Storytelling Skills in Ethnically Diverse,Low‐Income Families

The present study examined book‐sharing interactions between mothers and their 4‐year‐old children from African American (n = 62), Dominican (n = 67), Mexican (n = 59) and Chinese (n = 82) low‐income U.S. families, and children's independent storytelling skills one year later. Mothers' book‐sharing style was analysed in terms of how much storyline information they provided (story components), the extent to which they asked children about the story (dialogic emphasis) and which features of the story they highlighted (story content). African American mothers referred to more story components than did Dominican mothers, and Mexican mothers surpassed Dominican and Chinese mothers. Mothers of all groups were low in dialogic emphasis; they predominantly narrated rather than asked about the story, although Mexican mothers asked relatively more questions than did African American and Dominican mothers. In terms of content, compared with other groups, African American mothers were most likely to emphasize ‘individual goals’, and Chinese mothers were most likely to emphasize ‘negative consequences’. Latino mothers were more likely to emphasize ‘emotions’ than were Chinese mothers. Children's storytelling styles partially mirrored those seen in their mothers. Mothers' dialogic emphasis related to children's contributions to book‐sharing, which in turn predicted children's later independent storytelling skills. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Two cheers for Tanhā

The central character in Sartre's 1938 novel La Nausée, Antoine Roquentin, has lost his sense of things, and now the world appears to him as utterly unstable. Roquentin suffers from what he calls ‘nausea,’ a condition caused by an ontological intuition that the self, as well as the world through which that ‘self’ moves, lacks a substantial nature. The novel portrays Sartre's own philosophical account of the self in La transcendence de l'égo. Here Sartre argues that Husserl's account of consciousness is not radical enough; the ‘I’ or ego is a pseudo-source of activity (and Sartre thus draws very close to a particularly Buddhist account of personal identity). My essay questions Roquentin's response to his ontological insight: why is this the occasion for ‘nausea’? Why doesn't Roquentin (as King Milinda famously does) celebrate and embrace his ‘non-self’? I argue that Sartre's depiction of Roquentin's ailment, and the unsatisfactory solution he provides, misunderstands both the aggregate nature of things as well as authentically rendered consciousness-only (vijñaptimātra).     

Hume's Preference for the Enquiry: A Reply to Miller

Jon Charles Miller argues that the ‘New Humeans’ stress the primacy of An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding over A Treatise of Human Nature, and that this is indefensible because it relies on omitting and distorting negative aspects surrounding Hume's statements of this preference. Miller's argument is not successful: first, the battle lines between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Humeans are not reducible to the primacy of either text; nor are his specific objections to the letters convincing. Moreover, the Enquiry is not, as Miller supposes, softer than the Treatise on controversial religious questions. In fact, his particular focus on religious questions provides a plausible explanation for Hume's preference.     

GARRETT ON THE THEOLOGICAL OBJECTION TO HUME'S COMPATIBILISM

Between 1927 and 1936, Martin Heidegger devoted almost one thousand pages of close textual commentary to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. This article aims to shed new light on the relationship between Kant and Heidegger by providing a fresh analysis of two central texts: Heidegger's 1927/8 lecture course Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and his 1929 monograph Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. I argue that to make sense of Heidegger's reading of Kant, one must resolve two questions. First, how does Heidegger's Kant understand the concept of the transcendental? Second, what role does the concept of a horizon play in Heidegger's reconstruction of the Critique? I answer the first question by drawing on Cassam's model of a self-directed transcendental argument (‘The role of the transcendental within Heidegger's Kant’), and the second by examining the relationship between Kant's doctrine that ‘pure, general logic’ abstracts from all semantic content and Hume's attack on metaphysics (‘The role of the horizon within Heidegger's Kant’). I close by sketching the implications of my results for Heidegger's own thought (‘From Heidegger's Kant to Sein und Zeit’). Ultimately, I conclude that Heidegger's commentary on the Critical system is defined, above all, by a single issue: the nature of the ‘form’ of intentionality.     

Older (but not younger) preschoolers understand that knowledge differs between people and across time

We examined 3‐ to 5‐year‐olds' understanding of general knowledge (e.g., knowing that clocks tell time) by investigating whether (1) they recognize that their own general knowledge has changed over time (i.e., they knew less as babies than they know now), and (2) such intraindividual knowledge differences are easier/harder to understand than interindividual differences (i.e., Do preschoolers understand that a baby knows less than they do?). Forty‐eight 3‐ to 5‐year‐olds answered questions about their current general knowledge (‘self‐now’), the general knowledge of a 6‐month‐old (‘baby‐now’), and their own general knowledge at 6 months (‘self‐past’). All age groups were significantly above chance on the self‐now questions, but only 5‐year‐olds were significantly above chance on the self‐past and baby‐now questions. Moreover, children's performance on the baby‐now and self‐past questions did not differ. Our findings suggest that younger preschoolers do not fully appreciate that their past knowledge differs from their current knowledge, and that others may have less knowledge than they do. We situate these findings within the research on knowledge understanding, more specifically, and cognitive development, more broadly.     

Beyond ‘voice’, beyond ‘agency’, beyond ‘politics’? Hybrid childhoods and some critical reflections on children's emotional geographies

In this paper I argue that a significant proportion of research on children's emotional geographies has been deployed to reinforce the importance of children's ‘voices’, their (independent) ‘agency’, and the various ways in which voice/agency maybe deemed ‘political’. Without wishing to dismiss or dispense with such approaches, I explore potential ways to go ‘beyond’ concerns with voice/agency/politics. Initially, I review studies of children's participation (and participatory methods), activism and everyday lives that mobilise emotion and affect in productive ways. I contrast such studies with important questions raised by a reinvigoration of interest in the need for children to be able to represent themselves. I then explore the possibilities raised by so-called ‘hybrid’ conceptions of childhood – which go beyond biosocial dualisms – to enable further strides beyond voice/agency. Drawing on examples from alternative education and contemporary attachment theories, I explore some potential implications for children's emotional geographies and relational geographies of age of what I term ‘more-than-social’ emotional relations. Yet I do not offer an unequivocal endorsement of these hybrid emotions. Thus, I end the paper by issuing some words of caution – both in terms of the critical questions raised by more-than-social emotional relations, specifically, and in terms of engendering broader debate about how and why scholars do (children's) emotional geographies.     

Jenson,Hegel and the Spirit of Recognition

This article engages the pneumatology and account of divine freedom found in Robert Jenson's Systematic Theology. It raises a novel set of questions about Jenson's account of divine freedom, which bears on persistent questions regarding the nature of G.W.F. Hegel's influence upon Jenson. While most engagements with Jenson take for granted what it is to be ‘Hegelian’, this article foregrounds the diversity of contemporary Hegel interpretation. It argues that Jenson's account of divine freedom would profit from a stronger dose of Hegel's philosophy – specifically, Hegel's account of mutual recognition – provided that Hegel is interpreted along the lines of the non‐traditional school of Hegel interpretation. The article concludes with a brief constructive sketch of a Jensonian pneumatology conceived along these lines.     

Motivation-encompassing attitudes

Alfred R. Mele defends a broadly ‘Humean’ theory of motivation. One common dispute between Humeans and anti-Humeans has to do with whether or not a desire is required to motivate action. For the most part Mele avoids this dispute. He claims that there are reasons to think that beliefs cannot motivate action, but finally allows that it might be that it is a contingent fact that beliefs can motivate action in human beings. Instead Mele argues for the claim that certain kinds of desires – namely action-desires – are ‘paradigmatic motivational attitudes’, similar in an essential way to intentions, and that beliefs are not. Hence it is a necessary truth that action-desires encompass motivation to act; if beliefs encompass motivation to act, it is not a necessary truth that they do. In this way Mele preserves some of what is intuitively right about the Humean account, while admitting that the arguments normally offered in support of the standard Humean claims are open to objections. I argue that Mele's account is implausible. His argument against the claim that state-desires are essentially motivation-encompassing attitudes is convincing, but the same argument proves that action-desires are not essentially motivation-encompassing either. If this difference between desires and beliefs cannot be maintained, however, then Mele fails to defend any motivationally relevant difference between beliefs and desires.     

Cross,Contestation and Consummation: An Engagement with Ted Peters’ God – The World's Future

The third edition of Peters’ systematic theology provides an opportunity to assess his contextual theology, descended from Tillich's ‘method of correlation’, from the perspective of my own textual theology, descended from Karl Barth's revelation theology, on the common ground of a shared Trinitarianism and positive retrieval of the twentieth‐century's rediscovery of the New Testament eschatology. The article affirms Peters’ sharply focused cognitive claim to truth about God as the world's future, but asks a series of questions about how this claim is actually sustained in Peters’ capacious work. It concludes with the ‘apocalyptic’ judgement that Peters’ ‘progressive’ method is not fully adequate to the challenge of our present spiritual situation.