It is humanly impossible to knowingly believe a falsehood. — creativesoul
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother. — George Orwell
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
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 you mean to say that lying is -- to tell someone a falsehood while knowing it is false. — creativesoul
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
Self-deception - which I presume is the focus of this thread - — jkg20
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.
That seems right to me and doesn't involve too much metaphysical nonsense about split selves etc.
It is humanly impossible to knowingly believe a falsehood. Deception - in and of itself - comes in many forms. One of which is lying to another. One cannot deceive oneself. That's pure unadulterated nonsense — creativesoul
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. — Moliere
I remember hearing years ago that it's common for emergency rooms to have a spike in admissions just before dawn. The explanation was people lying awake all night telling themselves "It's nothing" and eventually accepting that something was terribly wrong. — Srap Tasmaner
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... — Moliere
What's wrong with saying that they believed nothing was wrong, but after all night passing without change in their condition, they began to believe that something was wrong. That is, they changed their belief, as compared/contrasted to misrepresenting it to themselves. — creativesoul
Because that happens too, and it's a different phenomenon. — Srap Tasmaner
What you're missing is that self-deception is usually strongly motivated and irrational... — Srap Tasmaner
...Here's a salient example: relationships. Self-deception often involves manipulation of evidence, but when it comes to figuring out what are other people think and feel, a lot of that evidence is subtle and ephemeral. We're good at picking up on these tiny tells, almost unnoticeable variations in inflection, expression, eye movement and focus, tone of voice -- all of that stuff we process without usually being consciously aware of it. We just know.(emphasis mine) — Srap Tasmaner
My point is this: it's particularly easy to get away with fooling yourself in this context because your "judgment" was arrived at automatically based on "evidence" you probably couldn't articulate. And that makes it all too easy to dismiss. You don't want to believe something's bothering your spouse? No problem: there's not much you could really point to as evidence anyway. (It was just a feeling you had.) But anyone who's ever done this knows they were fooling themselves.
Or, from the other side, want to believe that cute girl in your homeroom, or at work, or making your coffee, is into you? You can probably find something to count as "evidence". For most of us, enough contrary evidence arrives and quickly enough that a restraining order is unnecessary.
A strong case for the intentional deception of our future selves exists in the case of intentional mood altering practices (though they do not necessarily come with specific belief changes, mood changes can easily cause changes in belief). It may not be "lying" to instigate a general mood change but it's definitely intentional self-manipulation to purposefully alter one's mood by pro/prescribing substances, physical activities, or other means. Mood changes would most directly affect emotionally contingent opinions, but they can and do also impact actual beliefs. For instance, someone who lacks confidence might try to consciously project confident body language (i.e: smile more) in hopes that it will impact on how confident they actually feel, and in turn change their beliefs which are in part dependent upon their confidence (i.e: what they can accomplish, the moral nature of the average person, etc...). — VagabondSpectre
How is that deception? — creativesoul
I think if one ( it ought to be two, really) could completely grasp that the image can do nothing to help in this situation, that one is completely helpless, then one simply does stop. One gives up. — unenlightened
If there are two... who/ what is the other? — Evil
p1 Being tricked requires not knowing your being tricked. — creativesoul
p4 One cannot do both, know s/he is tricking him/herself, and not know that s/he is being tricked. — creativesoul
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
That seems along the right lines to me. The "splitting of selves" approach (I think it goes by the term "psychological partitioning" in the literature) only makes sense if one tries to force self-deception into the model of one person being deceitful to another. In those cases the key point is that the deceitful person both believes/knows something to be the case and intends that the other should believe the opposite is the case. Self-deception does not seem like that to me, it is more like having a suspicion that something you wish to be true may not be true, but rather than pursuing the chain of reasoning that will decide the issue for you, you give yourself (perhaps bad) reasons for not pursuing that chain of reasoning.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...
Lets say I'm at a singles bar looking for a date, and I know that statistically my chances of being successful are low — VagabondSpectre
what would make this singular self picture a better picture than a split self picture? — Moliere
it seems pretty relevant to me. — Moliere
p4 One cannot do both, know s/he is tricking him/herself, and not know that s/he is being tricked.
— creativesoul
Why not? — Moliere
...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. — Moliere
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