Mar 192002
 

The phenomenon of self-deception has received a great deal of attention in recent years from philosophers and psychologists. The general account of self-deception that has emerged is, as one might expect, strikingly similar to the Objectivist understanding of evasion.

In The Varnished Truth, David Nyberg describes self-deception as “voluntary blindness, numbness, dull-mindedness, and ignorance” (81). According to Nyberg self-deception is an active purposeful process, for “remaining ignorant on purpose requires effort” (82). The centrality of purposefulness to self-deception appears earlier in Herbert Fingarette’s book Self-Deception (16). Fingarette notes that “this element of internal purposefulness is reflected in such phrases as ‘persuades himself to believe’, ‘makes it appear to himself’, ‘lies to himself’” (28). Mike Martin’s Self-Deception and Morality describes self-deception as “the purposeful or intentional evasion of fully acknowledging something to oneself” (7).

Such characterizations of self-deception do sound fairly similar to the Objectivist account of evasion as the refusal to think. (However, it cannot be emphasized strongly enough that self-deception is commonly regarded as unavoidable and morally acceptable by philosophers and psychologists.) In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand presents the basics of evasion in Galt’s Speech:

[Man's] basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think–not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment–on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict ‘It is.’ (944)

Despite the similarities between evasion and self-deception, I do not think the concepts of self-deception and evasion are quite identical. Rather each concept emphasizes a slightly different aspect of a single mental phenomena.

Both evasion and self-deception involve attempting to fake the facts to ourselves. Evasion specifically refers to the process of avoiding and suppressing knowledge or reasonable suspicions. This emphasis fits well with the other meanings of evasion as avoidance of something. Thus, a criminal might evade capture by a policeman by running away physically, just he evades awareness by running away mentally. Self-deception, in contrast, focuses on what that person is running towards, on the false (or suspected to be false) belief that he convinces himself of instead. Self-deception is like the friend’s apartment in which the criminal hides while the police are looking for him.

So, let’s separate out self-deception from evasion using the example of the father of the drug addict from Sabini and Silver’s Emotion, Character, and Responsibility:

A loving father notices that his normally ebullient daughter is becoming more and more withdrawn, listless, and grouchy. She loses her appetite. She gets calls at odd hours and then leaves abruptly, yet her old friends don’t stop by anymore. She starts wearing long-sleeved blouses even though it’s summer and refuses to go to beach, once her favorite spot. She begins to lock her room, something she rarely used to do. He occasionally asks if she’s feeling all right, but she dismisses him with a laconic “yeah.” One day she is discovered dead with a needle in her arm. When the police tell him the news, he says that he can’t believe that his daughter was a junkie, that he is dumbfounded, that it’s all impossible (106).

The father’s evasion consists of refusing to consider the implications of his daughter’s changed behavior. Any thought that she might have a drug problem is immediately pushed out of his mind. He refuses to follow up on any suspicions to confirm or deny them. He won’t connect the dots, no matter how numerous they become. He is avoiding truth.

The father’s self-deception consists of the alternative theories and explanations that he concocts for himself to explain his daughter’s behavior. Her long sleeves are just the latest fashion. Her emotional withdrawal is just the usual teenage angst. She locks her door because she doesn’t want anyone to walk in on her while she’s undressed. He is pursuing fiction.

Whatever conceptual distinctions we might make between self-deception and evasion, the fact is that usually these processes are usually tightly intertwined like a Gordian Knot. The self-deception supports the evasion and the evasion supports the self-deception. So, for example, to make the self-deception that long sleeves are just the latest fashion, the father has to evade the fact that other fashionable teens don’t seem to be wearing long sleeves. To avoid the obvious implications of her strange behavior, the father needs to self-deceive with alternate explanations. It does seem, however, that evasion might be possible without self-deception. A person might push something out of her mind, but not latch on to some other false or dubious idea in its stead.

So evasion is faking reality by refusing to accept what you know or suspect to be true. And self-deception is faking reality by persuading yourself of what you know or suspect to be false. They are, as Ayn Rand might say, two sides of the same coin.

So the question to my readers, particularly those familiar with the Objectivist theory of evasion, is: Does this sound plausible? Would you describe the differences and similarities between self-deception and evasion differently?

The Varnished Truth

 Posted by on 12 March 2002 at 1:15 am  Ethics, Favorites, Honesty, Philosophy, Reviews, Self-Deception
Mar 122002
 

A few days ago, I finished David Nyberg’s book The Varnished Truth. I’m going to offer a brief review here, as well as a few offhand comments.

In recent years, defending dishonesty has become rather fashionable in the philosophical and psychological literature. Within the crowd of these defenders of dishonesty, The Varnished Truth stands out as perhaps the most interesting, savvy, and sophisticated work. Nyberg’s goal is to challenge the assumption that dishonesty is always wrong and to show how deception is often a critical aspect of moral decency. In making his case, Nyberg clearly demonstrates a grasp of much of the subtlety and complexity of honesty in daily life. His style of writing is also clear and engaging, with plenty of examples. And he often lays bare his philosophical presumptions for all his readers to see, if they care to notice.

The book also presents some interesting challenges to the conventional view of honesty, such as that honesty goes hand in hand with trust in relationships (140-6). Altruism is certainly no good foundation for the virtue of honesty, as Nyberg so successfully demonstrates.

The most frustrating aspect of the book is Nyberg’s cavalier attitude, his utter lack of appreciation for the seriousness demanded by the subject. He claims that his book is “serious but not scholarly,” but the book is not nearly serious enough. Mere footnotes do not make a book serious.

In many places, it seemed as if Nyberg’s intent was to create confusion in the minds of his readers. Generating such confusion by highlighting the complexity of an ethical issue is all well and good, so long as the goal is to present a theory which helps make sense of all of that complexity. But Nyberg offers no such theory; he even seems to think it foolish to attempt one. This focus on complexity was not all bad, for it motivated me to develop my basic theory that we ought to be telling the contextually relevant truth rather than the whole truth or the technical truth. (I’ll have to write about that later.)

Those familiar with the Objectivist theory of evasion ought to be particularly interested in the chapter on self-deception. Nyberg clearly understands self-deception as evasion in the Objectivist sense. But his metaphysical subjectivism and malevolent universe premise lead him to the conclusion that such self-deception is both necessary and proper. If I ever write a mainstream academic paper on the Objectivist theory of evasion, that chapter will certainly provide many quotes.

For those of you interested in the virtue of honesty, I would recommend The Varnished Truth as part of a “know thy enemy” and “understand the complexity” strategy. But be sure to also read the discussion of honesty in Tara Smith’s Viable Values (164-174). It’s absolutely the best analysis of the virtue of honesty from an egoistic perspective available.

 

One of the ideas I’ve been working on for my various lectures and papers on honesty is that deception of others promotes deception of the self. Here are some thoughts:

Most habitual liars are also habitual self-deceivers. People usually believe their own lies. (Some people enjoy the thrill of lying, but I suspect those are a minority.) Is this connection between other-deception and self-deception merely the result of self-deceivers repeating their lies to others? Or does deception of others somehow pave the way for deception of the self?

Certainly, self-deception makes lies to others more plausible and consistent. Believing your own lies immerses you into the networks of details and logical implications of the lie. So you have answers (although perhaps transparently pathetic ones to outsiders) for the likely questions and objections. You don’t stammer and stutter when your friend says, “But how could you have known about the hole in the roof if you didn’t see Mary before I saw Jim?” You also are much less likely to act like a liar by looking at your feet, hesitating, and so forth. But I seriously doubt that these purely practical considerations could motivate self-deception. They are merely reasons to spend more time and effort planning and scheming deceptions.

So what might motivate self-deception?

Guilt. A person might feel guilty about lying, about the harm their lie caused, or about the facts concealed by the lie. By falsely convincing himself that he actually told the truth, the liar’s acute feelings of guilt and shame may dissipate. A woman who feels terrible for having said some nasty things about a co-worker might deny ever having said those things or having meant what people took her to mean.

A person might also self-deceive by rationalizing the lie as justified for some bogus reason. She might deny having said these terrible things to others, while telling herself that the false denial was necessary to preserve her well-deserved reputation. People don’t want to feel bad, so they deceive themselves about what they have done. (This is a bad but common strategy.)

How might we convince ourselves of our own lies?

The process of constructing and maintaining plausible lies requires us to focus upon the facts which seem to support the lie, while ignoring or explaining away the facts which contradict the lie. So a student who mostly copied his math homework from his roommate might pay attention to only the problems that he did solve, glossing over those he merely copied in explaining the similarity between the homeworks to the professor. Over time, the student might convince himself of this lie, because he is presenting the same skewed evidence to himself that he is presenting to others. By being lax, by passively allowing himself to accept that skewed data, the lie to others paves the way for the lie to the self.

Also, a person with a impoverished sense of the standards of proof may regard other people’s acceptance of the lie as evidence of its validity. So a teenage boy might be helped in his own self-deceptions about whether he beat up the new kid at school or just shoved him around a bit if his mother believes his explanation. The delusion of others serves “social proof” in one’s own self-deceptions.

Whatever the process to meld other-deception into self-deception, the motivation must be something very strong, like powerful negative emotions or a threatened sense of self-image. The people who are in the most danger, interestingly enough, are people who are generally committed to the principle of honesty. They have so much more reason to self-deceive because of their moral failure to be honest. Self-deception placates that cognitive dissonance of “I am an honest person” and “I just lied.” But of course, self-deception is the most dangerous and least fruitful method of coping with moral failure.

Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha