Nicomachean Ethics -- Aristotle

Meditations -- Marcus Aurelius

Not as direct as those two, but this website (surprisingly named epicurus.net !) offers a selection of works from Epicurus -- in that same vein, if you want a complete text, there is On the Nature of Things by Lucretius, a later Epicurean.


They don't all agree with one another, but their main interest lies in living a good life.

Then you have rejected the notion of gender identity as Rebecca sets it out, and we are pretty much in agreement. That's fine — Banno

I suppose I take it that she draws a lot more from said rejection than I do, though. The details of the rejection seem important to me, which is why I felt like I needed to say more than just that.

Though for you this is just an illustrative example, I think.

Hmm. At one stage Rebecca points out that it would be far simpler to refer to one's genitals than a brain scan to determine one's gender. I have to agree with her that gender is not completely performative. It's not just a social construct, because there are observable physical differences between men and women. But the social superstructure built on the basis of these differences is absurd. One's genitals ought play no part in one's income, for example - yet the evidence shows that it does. — Banno

Even more simple would be to ask, and determine if the person is trustworthy or not. Gender, so I'd put it, is a possible aspect of identity. Identity has both a personal and social side -- so the radical feminist distinction between sex and gender points out that the physical facts determine sex, whereas the social performance, expectations, rules, and roles create gender. So the physical facts and differences between men and women don't have a bearing on gender. I think I could go along with that. The part I'd say is more complicated is on the side of identity. Where I certainly agree is that sex, and gender, should not result in income disparity or generally speaking in discrimination or violence -- which evidence shows sex and gender to result in both.

The part I disagree on is with respect to personal identification.

Now I could say, "I am irascible" -- I am talking about a part of my identity in so doing. The sentence "I am irascible" is truth-apt. You can determine whether I am or not irascible not really from my stating so, checking a part of my body, doing a brain scan, or anything like that -- far better to simply take is as true and see where it goes. If you find that my disposition in action doesn't match up, you might start to question the statement. But if I find me becoming angry at many slights you'd say that I know something about myself.

There is that internal part, where I have a deep feeling about my personality, and there are outward expressions of what I feel deeply about myself. And however that plays out, within our relationship with one another, will allow you to determine whether such is true or false.

So we might have a person who says "I am femme" -- expressing her gender identity. She responds to feminine pronouns, associates parts of her identity with feminity, and even bonds with other femme persons over said identity. There are feelings associated with the identity that are shared, as well as other aspects. But how they know such is the case is simply by being such. How we might know such is the case is if we have a relationship with them, they are trustworthy, and their outward expressions confirm what they say about themself through time. It is an assymetric relationship -- we might have reason to call such into question, but our reasons for justification are based upon what someone else tells us, feels, and is. They have priority in marking that boundary.

Attempting to find out what would be a bit more congenial to your taste's @creativesoul --

I think awareness through time is doing most of the work in making the concept of lying to oneself coherent, for me. Just as I can flip my awareness in a moment from the thoughts I am having to my fingers, to my memories, to my feelings it seems to me that a flip in awareness could happen from two halves of myself. So where I do agree with you is that the part of myself that is lying could not misrepresent their own thoughts and trick themselves -- there is a need for some kind of a division for trickery to be successful on this model, because you have to be aware of the trick if you're setting out to trick someone. Like a three card monte player knows how to replace a card without someone observing, they couldn't do so to themselves.

So I'm tracking with you on that. For me the flip in awareness is what's important -- so at one point we are aware of the trick, and at the other point we are not. For something like three card monte, where we have concrete points of reference in our literal hands this would be pretty extreme, though maybe possible. But for something a bit more abstract, like knowledge of myself, it doesn't seem so extreme to me because we aren't perfectly transparent to ourselves.

Since we aren't perfectly transparent to ourselves it actually becomes rather easy to lie to ourselves because the trick lies in what is actually a very plausible belief: "I am not transparent to myself" -- so if I come across something that I'd term inconvenient for myself, all I need do is remind myself that I am not transparent to myself and suddenly what was inconvenient becomes questionable.


That's why it makes sense for me, at least. Where in this line of reasoning does something just balk as unnacceptable to you? My guess is you'd just say this is not lying. But if I both believe P and ~P -- because I did, after all, come across something inconvenient -- then that seems to fit perfectly with the notion of lying, or tricking myself. In fact it seems like in order for me to intentional trick myself I would have to believe both, since to be intentional about the lie I'd have to believe P and want myself to believe ~P, then convince myself of ~P -- without changing the original belief.

Whereas to be mistaken would just be to believe something that is false, or to believe something that is true but for bad reasons.

Also to note -- I think that the politics of gender abolition are simpler. But they are too simple -- I think the facts forced me to reconsider another way. My intuitions are more in alignment with the notion that there is nothing it is like to be a man or woman, that gender is performative. But I think I was wrong.

So she has three things that she thinks gender identity must have:

Universality: It needs to be a phenomena that all persons have.
Stability: It needs to be a relatively fixed or essential property.
Independence: It must be independent of both sex-body, and upbringing.

And she argues how these cannot all hold. So the original claim is something that cannot be true, on pain of incoherence.


She does offer some mid-way concessions. She even seems to believe that we all have individual access to ourselves -- I cannot know what it is like to be someone else, but I can know what it is like to be me. On that basis I cannot know what it is like to be a man, because I do not share experiences with other men. She also seems fine with the notion of preference for artifacts associated with words. She's mostly concerned with the claim she introduces.

But why would interiority need any of these things to make sense? There is the fact that people do bond over identities -- so men bond over man-like experiences, and women do the same. Rebecca can very well be a woman and not feel like there is some bond there. There is nothing contradictory in this. Experience is very particular. But we can know what someone is talking about, and know what they mean, and know they have experienced such-and-such when they give an outward expression of such. This is especially so over time. So one claim all by itself is just one claim. But sharing an experience comes down to a relationship -- it comes down to what a person is like over time.

We can come to know another through a relationship, through sharing. We do so by listening, which can only happen if we trust them.

I don't think it works quite like that, in most cases. One needs a bit of psychology here.There is 'what I am', and there is 'what I think I am' (my self image), and the latter is an aspect of the former. But inevitably, I think that what I am is what I think I am. So self- preservation becomes a matter of preserving the image. — unenlightened

That's fair. I can get along with that -- I haven't really been thinking in terms of plausibility, psychology, or facts as much as just getting a basic and easy to recognize theory of lying-to-oneself across to @creativesoul

Suppose I look at myself from a position of ignorance. It comes naturally, from this realisation that I am not who I think I am. Then I see there is the self-image I have, but I give it less importance, because it is incomplete at best. So I am ready to discover myself anew. Perhaps, after all I am not the wise philosopher I think I am; perhaps I am not the nice balanced social being I think I am. I will find out as I go - I will learn about myself in my relationship to the world, but it will always be learning, never knowing. This is too frightening for me as long as I still think I am what I think I am, and it seems that to change my image is to die.

So for yourself 'lying to yourself' is much more subtle, really. It's almost like an approach to the world and the self -- whereas in one case we must be something we are not, or we believe we are this exact thing and it's a hill to die on, and in the other case we recognize that we are not this set of beliefs about ourself and are open to learning more -- it is exciting to change the image in the face of new information, rather than a death-threat.

Yes, one can be wrong about one's gender identity.

Further, I'd say Rebecca does not necessarily have a gender identity. Why go so far as to call it a universal phenomena? For her the only reason to do so is for political purposes -- that without the three main characteristics she is arguing against then there is no reason to give gender identity legal or political weight, that doing so undermines what trans activists are asking for.

That's why it seems to me that her aim is mainly political.

Being wrong is not equivalent to lying. Being wrong about oneself is not equivalent to lying to oneself.

The notion of 'self'-deception is nonsense. I've already adequately argued for that without subsequent valid criticism. — creativesoul

Have you? It seems to me that you've just declared it nonsense. (EDIT: I should note here I believe you're sincere, I'm just telling you my impression is all) You do so on the basis of saying that we can classify any intentional act of misrepresenting belief to oneself as something other than lying, because we haven't given the necessary and sufficient conditions that are up to your standard.

But is that an argument? We have given criteria that marks simple error from self-deception. You've just said "OK, sure that's necessary, but not good enough" -- but then we do in fact have a means for distinguishing the two, and so what exactly is nonsensical here?

Yeah, I kind of felt like that, though she does address that too. If you modify the claim then she's just not talking to people like that, and believes that in so modifying the claim you undermine any reason why to offer said protections. So to her the claim is necessary in order to justify legal protections.

That's what I'm not so sure about. We do, after all, offer legal protections to religious identities.

Because you can intentionally tell yourself a lie, and then become unaware of said action. I'd say I agree with @unenlightened's examples above -- we can have an image we want to conform to, realize we are not like the image, and then tell ourselves "But really, deep down inside, I am like that image" and then have our awareness flip such that we are no longer aware that we intentionally deceived ourselves.

Alright, finished it. I don't exactly agree with what she's saying. But to answer her question of "Why" it seems enough to me -- from the strictly legal perspective -- that discrimination occurs.

So, for instance, if one is Muslim -- meaning they have a deeply held feeling of being Muslim, and they outwardly express such sentiments -- then we can tell well enough what a Muslim is for legal purposes. And if violence or workplace discrimination takes place based on said identity then we have a reason why to offer legal protections for said identity.

I change to Muslim here because she likens transgender identity to religious identity.


To me it seems less that she is interested in interiority as much as she is interested in the legal protections afforded to personal claims on identity. It's a question of political philosophy more than it is a question of mind or metaphysics or epistemology. yes?

Still listening to it. 25 minutes in.

Sure. Listening now.

All individuals possess an innate essential gender that is independent of both their biological sex and the gender they were raised as, and this innate essential gender is the sole definition of gender that should be recognized for social, political, and legal purposes.

Seems at odds with anything I'm saying, but I'm listening.

Sure. I can go with that. That's why I thought a dimension of time was necessary, as well as some way of explaining how we shift from one part of the mind to another -- like having an awareness that shifts.

But if we can be in self-contradiction, then we can also be in self-contradiction about our beliefs. So we might just ignore it, which is something like what I believe @jkg20 is saying. But we can also form a further belief, a belief that the two are not in self-contradiction. So we can believe that "A and B do not contradict" as well as believe that "A and B do contradict" -- since we can believe contradictory things.

Do you?

Is there a thing that it is like to be Molie?

How would you tell? Since you can't know what it is like to be a bat, how can you differentiate what it is like to be Molie? — Banno

Have you ever felt like you were not yourself? Or perhaps you felt you were not true to yourself. Surely if you know yourself, then you do know what it is like to be yourself.

I'm not sure there is a thing that it is like to be myself. But there is a what it is like to by myself. The "it" is a little more generic, and needn't be an actual thing. It's not like there is a chair which it is like to be myself.

It seems to me that you can tell what something is like by two means -- being it, or feeling it.

That is, the whole what it is like to be... is logically fraught.

I'm not so sure here. But it's not necessarily the greatest thing ever, either. It's just a common frame of reference, a decent enough way of talking about interiority.

Your feeling of what it is like to be you changes without your noticing. Then it cannot be part of what it is to be you; and not what makes you who you are...

Because how you feel might change continually. — Banno

Not to me, but worth noting for myself at least. I don't think I'm arguing for essence in the above. That's a side issue. That we change doesn't bother me -- of course we do. We aren't static beings, after all.

One cannot be tricked into believing something if they know both how they're being tricked, and that they're being tricked.

One who is performing the trickery knows both how and that they're doing it.

One cannot know how and that one is tricking him/herself and not know how and that one is tricking oneself(how and that it's being done).

The same applies to deliberately misrepresenting one's own thought and belief to oneself. It's just plain common sense. It's not at all difficult to grasp. — creativesoul

If you know that they are in conflict, then you cannot believe that they are not. — creativesoul

The mind is divided. However, it is still one mind. It is divided in terms of having/holding conflicting beliefs. Your example is one of cognitive dissonance being ignored. Very common practice hereabouts and everywhere I've ever been. — creativesoul

So if we can have or hold conflicting beliefs -- ignore cognitive dissonance, as you put it -- then we can both know that two beliefs are in conflict, and believe they are not in conflict. Because both of those beliefs, too, are in conflict, yet we can hold conflicting beliefs, so.... what's the problem?

It goes against common sense. But here it seems you're admitting that common sense is wrong?

Removing truth from the notion of thought and belief? Cannot be done. — creativesoul

I feel that's irritating.

"I feel that's irritating" is true. But is the feeling of irritation true? No. But it is a part of the mind. So if the entire mind is belief, then surely there are non-cognitive beliefs.

@numberjohnny5

so are you really asking how to lie to yourself and believe it? — Uniquorn

Bingo. Well, not exactly how I, personally, might do so -- I'm not after a step-by-step guide to lying to myself. But rather what would necessarily be true if it were possible to lie to yourself. So I'm not really assuming that it is possible to lie to yourself, even. I'm more interested in a conceptual analysis of lying to yourself -- exploring what is necessary under the assumption that it is true.

The benefit being that by so doing it might lead to a way of determining whether it is or is not true, but without simply assuming one way or the other.

There certainly are more differences between bats and humans than there are between boys and girls, but they're still different. The differences are physical as well as social. There certainly is a "girl role" that is "imposed" on girls, but that role is part of their identity. A boy who'd like to live in that role will not have had the same experiences as the girl. — Relativist

Eh, I'm pretty much limiting myself to the more general question rather than digging into the specifics of gender theory, here. How this might work at with regards to specifics would be up to those people who identify as such and such, according to my theory. Not being transgender I'm fairly hesitant to begin generalizing in that area.

Sorry for the time delay on not tending the thread. I'm glad to see the discussion continue, though. There was the weekend, and family, and other things besides philosophy. But I'm back now.

Without introducing meaning, truth, and belief into the mix whatever theory of mind discussed will be utterly incomplete, wouldn't you agree? — creativesoul

Belief, sure. I'm not so certain about meaning or truth, though.

What is the difference between being mistaken and self-deception? — creativesoul

I'm still waiting on a criterion which when met by a candidate counts as self-deception. — creativesoul

I don't even know what "ruling it our a priori" is supposed to mean. If it is impossible for one to deliberately misrepresent their own thought and belief to oneself, then any and all arguments which assume or validly conclude that are themselves based upon at least one false premiss. — creativesoul

I'd say that "ruling it out a priori" means that you are ruling out the possibility that our minds are divided by means of some conceptual analysis of the concept of lying, or by declaring it to be impossible. Maybe you're not, but I'm not sure why it is impossible to deliberately misrepresent one's own belief to oneself.

I am fine with your notion of lying. So lying, rather than merely being mistaken, is when you deliberately misrepresent your own belief to yourself. Merely being mistaken is holding a false belief. Since falsity isn't in the notion of lying the two don't even have to relate. We may deliberately misrepresent some true or false belief to ourselves, just depending upon what we believe. By removing truth, in fact, there is a lot more wiggle room here -- the beliefs need not even have a factual component (EDIT: Or even be truth-apt). They merely need to be misrepresented to ourselves.

And such a thing would be possible -- conceptually speaking, here -- if the mind were in some sense divided. So let's just stick with @unenlightened's notion of commitment. I am committed to some belief. I come to believe something that is in conflict with this other belief. Here I can be honest with myself, realize that these two beliefs are not compatible, and try and think through that conflict and resolve it in some way. Or I can be dishonest with myself, act out of fear, and tell myself that the beliefs are not in conflict. However I might accomplish this -- it seems that this dishonesty is really what lying to yourself is all about. You aren't coming to terms with a conflict in beliefs, but rather accepting both beliefs in spite of having the niggling realization that they are in conflict. So you misrepresent your beliefs -- or meta-beliefs? -- by saying they can get along fine. Your commitment and your new belief that said commitment is somehow erroneous (not necessarily false) and your belief that they are not in conflict are all somehow simultaneously preserved. It seems a mental feat which would result in conflict of the self, and indeed I'd say that this is the case -- which really only makes sense if different parts of the self can actually be in conflict, which is easily understood if the mind is divided.

I would say the reason I don't know what it is like to be a bat is because I am not a bat. I know bats use echolocation, and I can imagine what that might be like. But I don't know what it is like simply by the fact that I am not that.

I know what it is like to be poor because I have been poor. I am not currently poor, and I know that because I know the exact pressures and feelings of poorness, having been so myself at one point.

I'd basically just leave talk of hard-wiring out of it.

I do not know what it is like to be a bat. But I do know what it is like to be myself. I do not know what it is like to be you or he or she or them. But we may know what it is like to be poor.

What's the problem?

Gotcha.

Then my answer is yes -- one can know what it is like to be such and such. How do I claim this? Well, people make these sorts of claims frequently. They are believable to me because I have such feelings too. The claims are about their own experiences, but also highlight similarities in experience. And even though such descriptions change between time, place, and person they also have similarities that allow people who feel like such and such to bond over such identifiers, and even theorize about their identities.

Now, that doesn't exactly answer how it is possible to be able to do such. It only justifies that one can do so. I'd also point out that even though it can be done that this isn't exhaustive of identity. In some ways the theories, the descriptors, the names are products of what is more basic -- individual experience. So you can disagree over the meaning of a name, the descriptor, the theory to explain what it is you're feeling based upon individual experience, even if it doesn't quite match the general trend.

Gender identity in transgender folk is described as a conflict between one's internal sense of being male or female, and one's physical characteristics — Banno

It is. But not always.

I'm not sure exactly the aspect of identity you're interested in. Is your focus on sex and gender, or is it on interiority -- feeling like such and such -- and exteriority?

Hrm! I missed that thread. It was a good read.

I think it's worth noting evil for what it is. In this case, war. I agree that this is a view somewhat distended from immediate decision making or even decisions we'll make. (After all, as I said earlier, war isn't even really a decision for the majority of us) -- but it's also something of a no-brainer. The evils of war are great, and so acknowledging this influences our attitude towards war, which in turn does influence how we react to war -- something which we do have control over.

I'd also say that the decision to defend your city from an invasion is a no-brainer, though. I think cases of revolution are justifiable to participate in. I'm not fully against all war, in the sense that it can be the right choice to be a part of a war, in my view. But it is also a sort of participation in evil, and that tone changes how we make that decision I'd say.

For most of us it is something beyond our control. How we react to war is something else. But it's not something we really have a choice in, and so isn't much of a moral deliberation.

Still, it's worth noting that war is an evil, so I don't know if I'd say it's moot. People certainly talk about war like it's a good often enough that it's worth saying that there isn't such a thing as a good war, even if we happen to need to go to war.

Is it? If it is necessary to have a split mind in order for it to be possible for one to lie to oneself, then it seems pretty relevant to me. At least it's a logical next step, under the assumption that this is the only way to parse that phrase into something which is actually lying to oneself, as opposed to it just being a turn of phrase that, in a strict sense, means something else.

Another thought on "splitting" --

Something that @VagabondSpectre's approach does make me think of, explicitly at least, is that there could also be a difference between a self and a mind. So the self has a seemingly singular quality to it -- we always feel like we're the same person and can entertain, at least in a clear and distinct way as philosophers tend to like to do, about one thought at a time. But the mind can be much wider than the self, and it may not just be the self that lies but the mind.

I think what you describe is plausible. I don't think I'd call it lying in the strict sense.

But what makes this plausible description something which actually annuls the act of lying to oneself?

By "splitting of selves" I just mean it generically -- like, I can see multiple ways you or others might parse what that means. Partitioning, or having a tripartite division of mind such as Plato's or Freud's, or as I've been saying just having an awareness which can move from different parts of the mind, or as un has been saying between the image, the self, and the speaker of the sentence making the division. I'm sure there are other ways it could be parsed.

In some sense there is a factual aspect that would need to be investigated ,and it could even be case-by-case. But investigating the facts of a mind is something of a tricky business, and deserving of some philosophical scrutiny to understand how a fact might be significant one way or another. And in a sense I think it's worthy to note that it may not be just the facts -- as un points out, there could also be commitments of one kind or another in making an identity, which are over and above the facts.


And then even more generally speaking -- what would make this singular self picture a better picture than a split self picture? It must be more than the facts because we could probably reconcile facts either way.

I think I can agree that war is basically an evil. I don't know if I'd say immoral, because morality tends to refer to either acts or character and war is neither of those. What it is depends upon one's position in a society. For some it is almost like a natural disaster -- a regrettable context that causes suffering but which we have no control over. For others they have a direct say in whether or not to pursue war, and it is closer to moral deliberation in that context. But even then it is somewhat out of one's control, because it's not something a person does all on their own.

And even though war is basically evil, there can be greater evils than fighting a war. I don't believe that there is such a thing as a just war. It is evil. But sometimes a choice between evils is all you get.

p4 One cannot do both, know s/he is tricking him/herself, and not know that s/he is being tricked. — creativesoul

Why not?

The reason I say that lying being based on knowledge or belief is a minor disagreement is because I'm willing to go along with your theory of lying. I'm not so interested in justification, meaning, truth, or belief as much as I am in a theory of mind. So sure, it's a disagreement, but I'm fine with setting the stage as you say -- that lying is the intentional misrepresentation of one's own belief. That fits well enough for me.

It seems to me that if we are of a split mind that we could still accomplish this -- adding a dimension of time and some notion of awareness would resolve any sort of conflict. And if this could be demonstrated to be non-pathological, it would even be a possible normal event ("possible" just because that seems more empirical question that I do not have an answer to)

EDIT: (Relates to the above)

If it takes talking about one person as though they were a plurality of different selves in order to make sense of lying to oneself, it seems to me that it makes better sense to abandon the notion altogether and learn to talk about the same situations in better ways. — creativesoul

I don't see what makes a singular self better than a divided self. For that matter I'm not sure what would make a divided self better than a singular self, at this point.

One wouldn't need to be a literal two selves within a single mind. I think merely having a divided mind -- of whatever kind -- is enough to count as lying as you define lying. Some part of the mind can deliberately misrepresent a belief to another part of the mind, and our awareness can shift from the one to the other through time.

But what would make either notion a better notion?

Self-deception - which I presume is the focus of this thread - — jkg20

Yup! :D

is perhaps best not modelled on the binary relation of A deceiving B (even where A and B are the same person). After all, I could deceive myself without engaging in self-deception - an example, suppose I am in the army on a shooting range, and I am charged with camoflaging targets. I do the job so well that even I cannot tell the targets from the bushes. I've deceived myself, but it's not a case of self-deception. Someone earlier in this thread mentioned the idea that self-deception (lying to oneself) is more akin to giving yourself bad reasons for not pushing yourself to the end of a chain of reasoning that will definitively reach a conclusion you do not like.

So it's something, in your view, that happens along a chain of reasoning. So you might have the notion that this is going somewhere bad, and then come up with some reasons that you don't scrutinize too deeply to make it go somewhere good.

That seems right to me and doesn't involve too much metaphysical nonsense about split selves etc.

What's nonsensical about a split self? Is it any more nonsensical than a singular self?

That's a pretty good example of what lying to oneself would be like in action.

Knowing that 'X' is false makes it impossible to believe 'X'. I believe 'X' about myself. I cannot do both, know that 'X' is false(about myself) and believe that 'X' is true(about myself).

As soon as we become aware that 'X' is false, we cannot possibly believe otherwise. That holds good in cases where 'X' is true, but we believe 'X' is false. If we believe 'X', then we believe 'X' is true; is the case; corresponds to fact/reality; is the way things are; etc. We cannot do both, believe 'X' and know that 'X' is not true; is not the case; does not correspond to fact/reality; is not the way things are; etc. — creativesoul

I'd say that given a dimension of time that this could be overcome. So right now if I believe "X", then I know "~X", I could then choose to believe "X" and forget or ignore "~X"

With a dimension of time we also have changes of awareness. So at different moments we can come to be aware of different things.

Well, strictly speaking 'one' who has two minds is two... not one. We cannot be of two minds, strictly speaking... aside from having some sort of multiple personality disorder. These are common is cases of tremendous childhood trama. It's a coping mechanism. Since the facts are too much for the one individual to bear, the one 'creates' an alternative persona as a means to 'split up' the burdens...

I see nothing wrong with saying that people of one mind can hold contradictory beliefs. I would wager that everyone does, at least during some period of their life. Some become aware of this and choose. Others become aware and suspend judgment. Others become aware and struggle to grasp what's going on, and thus chalk it up to being normal, or some other ad hoc explanation. Others never become aware.

There is some tremendous difficulty involved in becoming aware of one's own false belief, assuming one wants to correct the situation.

It is also quite common to be uncertain about something or other. These latest situations I've mentioned are often spoken of in terms of "being of two minds", and that makes perfect sense in everyday parlance. — creativesoul

I think we're basically in agreement on lying. At least I'm most interested in this more robust theory of lying, as opposed to delusion, just because it's the more difficult case -- and you seem to agree that delusion is possible, just not lying

So your main point of disagreement is really that being of two minds is not normal -- it would have to be a pathology of some kind at play in order for someone to lie to themselves.

I think you mean to say that lying is -- to tell someone a falsehood while knowing it is false. — creativesoul

I had in mind saying "I do not have the money" when "I have the money" is true -- but yeah, I was flipping the signs in my head. The former would be a falsehood, the later a truth, and you'd be saying the falsehood and not the truth.

Lying has less to do with truth, and more to do with thought and belief. That is, lies themselves consist of statements that can be either true or false, but the lie is always told by someone deliberately misrepresenting what they think and/or believe. — creativesoul

I think this is a minor disagreement between us. I see what you mean, but I'd say that you'd have to know something to be true and then say its opposite, whereas you'd say that it comes down to belief -- so you believe "X" is true, but you say "~X".

Good enough for me. I think the split-mind disagreement is the stronger of the two. Yeah?

Bearing in mind that you're asking me, unenlightened (surely a foolish move?), I think it is a matter of identification. — unenlightened

Heh. Well, I'm not exactly the wisest so I don't mind. :D

I suppose I'm trying to understand the notion of a split mind -- so I'm looking for something to contrast it with to make sense of it.

So, for example, there are facts about where I was born and what kind of passport I have, and then there is the identity of 'Englishman'. Or there are facts about what I have read and studied and thought over, and then there is the identity of 'philosopher'.

Identity is somehow more than the facts; it is a commitment to the facts; an investment in the significance of the facts. And this creates a separation, of a central self in the mind - I am an English philosopher. Something to protect against, well everything, including whatever else might be the facts of what I am. — unenlightened

So a whole mind would be one without an identity, without a commitment to certain facts. It would accept all the facts about itself as relevant to itself, or would be committed to no facts about itself at all. A person with a whole mind would not have an identity to protect or project.

Some more things about lying:

In order for a lie to be successful, and not just count as a lie, it seems to me we have to rely upon some guesses as to how the person we are lying to will take the information. We have to imagine what it would be like to be them. So we have to have some sort of beliefs (model? Possibly if we make an art of lying) about the other person's mind, how they react to different sorts of information, presentation, and their general mood. That way we can craft something that sounds believable to the person we're talking to, even though we know it to be false.

Lying, as simple as it seems and as young as we learn how to do it, is actually a really complicated behavior.

Sure we don't feel like an amalgam of streaming information exchanges among and between learning neural networks, but there's too much evidence to ignore that it is so. — VagabondSpectre

What evidence persuades you that you are a neural network?


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I sort of feel like the computational approach has to abandon "belief" -- there is no belief formation, there are algorithms which optimize. There is nothing that a belief is about, there are models of math problems through logical switches. And the stream of electrons move in accord with physical facts.

Similarly, a few levels up, we have algorithms optimizing and modifying themselves in light of some goal set for them. But do the algorithms lie to one another? Do they avoid dissonance? Or are they simply following instructions and giving us a good model for understanding (some of our) learning? It seems the latter to me.

We often choose to believe things despite an absence of rational support. Is that only a lie if for virtuous purposes? Is it never a lie?

What is a lie? I tend to consider it the deliberate telling of a known falsehood. — Relativist

I think we're in agreement here. We tell someone a falsehood we know to be true. Maybe there's a motivational component to this but that seems to be the bare minimum of what a lie is.

I don't think I'd say that believing such and such without rational justification counts as a lie. It may be irrational, but without justification we do not know, and if we do not know then we couldn't be telling ourselves a known falsehood.

Part of the difficulty in determining a lie is in being able to tell if someone really knew something or if they were just mistaken, delusional, or something along those lines. Usually we mean that the person lying both knows the truth and tells the opposite. With two people this is easy enough to understand -- one person knows, the other does not, and the person who knows believes that the falsehood is better to say than the truth (for whatever reason -- could be white lies, or nefarious. Could be to preserve feelings, or manipulative to get what one wants)

But with one person it seems strange to say. But it is a common turn of phrase to claim someone is lying to themselves. Hence the line of questioning -- perhaps it is just a turn of phrase, but what would it take for someone to lie to themself, to where it was more than just a turn of phrase?

Since lying is deliberately misrepresenting one's own thought and belief, and it is always done in situations when the speaker believes that they ought not allow others to know what they think and believe, it seems to me that one cannot lie to oneself — creativesoul

What if we are of two thoughts?

I believe something good about myself. I know that it is false. These are in conflict with one another. So let's say we become aware of different beliefs at different times. I tell myself the good thing and I want to believe it, so I do. There's the part of me who lies, and the part of me who listens. And I stop being aware of the part of me who lies right after telling myself the lie. I know that I have to deceive to achieve the desired belief.

If we are of one mind then I don't think we could lie to ourselves. I agree with that -- that's why I thought @unenlightened made a good point in saying we'd have to have a divided mind in order for us to lie successfully, and not just be delusional or some such.

That is, when one holds that lies are always false. — creativesoul

At least in a general sense I'd say that's what lying is -- to tell someone a falsehood while knowing it is true in order to deceive them. So I'd say that in the case of telling someone about my own thoughts then I'd be lying if I told them something I do not really think -- that this is a particular case of lying, but that lying doesn't have to be about my own thoughts. It could also be about whether I have the money for the bill.

We may also be engaged in deceiving other people. Effective deception requires the appearance of conviction, and in projecting conviction we may, as the saying goes, come to believe our own bullshit. (5) Successful con artists know they are deceiving others and manage their act. Most of us aren't that good at it. We believe it ourselves. — Bitter Crank

We want the lie to be so successful that we begin to believe it ourselves? :D Sounds like a good premise for a play.

I'm noticing that your examples seem to be of delusions of one sort or another. There is something inconvenient so we ignore it and come up with alternate beliefs to shield our awareness -- give it something else to fixate on -- and in a way are thus deluded. But is that lying, exactly?

Other people do not always wish us well and say unkind things about us--some of which may be true, or may be false. True or false, we defend ourselves by denying what they say. (Believing all the negative things one hears about one's self might be quite self-destructive.) Rejecting negative feedback becomes a protective habit. (6) — Bitter Crank

I'd say this is just a way of coming to a false belief about ourselves through habits. What's going on is we hear something negative from a source we don't trust, so we just sort of tune it out on the basis that we've had negative things said about ourselves many times before and they weren't exactly true as much as expressions of how the other person felt.