PERSONS AND SELF-DECEPTION.
Item
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Title
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PERSONS AND SELF-DECEPTION.
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Identifier
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AAI8014970
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identifier
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8014970
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Creator
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KARP, BARRIE.
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Contributor
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David Rosenthal
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Date
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1980
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Philosophy
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Abstract
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What are persons' attitudes towards psychic conflict as manifested in the phenomenon of self-deception? Self-deception is a phenomenon that grows out of conflict. It arises in response to persons' having beliefs or feelings that they do not want to have. A result of self-deception is that another kind of conflict is created or perpetuated. Self-deception involves persons' sincerely and purposefully denying what they believe or feel. It is argued that what they claim in this denial is true of them. But they continue to have the denied attitudes.;Since self-deception grows out of conflict and results in perpetuating and creating it, it should illuminate our attitude toward conflict. Is it an attempt to avoid conflict, or an attempt to cultivate it?;Two apparently different theories of the self are described vis a vis the problem of conflict. The integrated theory is the view that persons constantly strive to eliminate conflict. The fragmentary theory holds that persons can accept, create, and cultivate conflict. The integrated theory seems to explain self-deception as a denial of and aversion to conflict. But since conflict is a result of self-deception too, it may be that it is purposefully created.;The fragmentary theory is distinguished from a multiple self view, and possible accounts it might give for unity in the self and policy-making are considered. The theories of the self of George Herbert Mead and William James are described. They emphasize different roles or "selves" and they do not posit a constant consistency impulse. James's notion of the "I" is suggestive of a way of seeing unity in the fragmentary self. But after reasons for adopting the fragmentary theory are described and after possible solutions for the multiple self and policy-making problems are explored, it still seems that any kind of self requires a consistency impulse to explain conflict.;A final consideration of the motivation for self-deception shows that it can be adequately explained as being based upon an aversion to conflict. Self-deceivers mask from themselves beliefs or feelings that they continue to have. The integrated view could claim, plausibly, that it is discomfort about being in conflict (persons have feelings or beliefs that they do not want to have, and they are not comfortable about tolerating this conflict) that leads to self-deceptive masking. The conflict that is perpetuated or created by self-deception is, then, created or perpetuated inadvertantly, as a side-effect of basic impulses against conflict. If persons are unable to eliminate conflict and if they have a basic aversion to it (as the integrated theory claims), self-deception is a manoeuver in which they might engage. Other attitudes towards conflict, such as acceptance and apparent creation or cultivation of it, might also be seen as aborted attempts at integration or resigned responses to the inability to become consistent.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Philosophy
