[lit-ideas] Re: Wittgenstein's Incorrigibility
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 10:17:02 -0700 (PDT)
Hm... are the Cooperative Maxims descriptive of what happens in communication
or prescriptive ? It doesn't seem that truthfulness is always necessary for
communication to work.
O.K.
On Thursday, March 13, 2014 5:54 PM, "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
I enjoyed McEvoy's reference, quotations and expansions on this
evolutionary author on self-deception (or how to fool yourself to fool others).
The
comments below are motivated by Witters, and Pears, and Grice.
In "Method in philosophical psychology" Grice proposes to approach G. E.
Moore,
"It is raining but I don't believe it".
Grice comes up with
p -- any proposition, such as "It is raining"
ψ -- a psychological operator that may stand for belief or desire
ψAp A believes that p.
Grice wants to say that
ψAp --> ψψAp
i.e. If A believes that p, A believes that he believes that p.
Grice calls this a belief-2.
In ideal situations, there's an increase to belief-n.
-----
Decades earlier ("Method" was written in 1975) he spoke of a conversational
maxim, or desideratum,
"Do not say what you believe to be false".
This 'maxim' or desideratum of trustworthiness was later found by G. J.
Warnock (in "Object of Morality) and B. A. O. Williams to be VERY central.
With Davidson, Grice would like to ground trustworthiness on a sort of
transcendental argument (alla Apel, as Walter O. might agree). A world were
deception is generalised is not RATIONAL.
But in the quotes by McEvoy we have nature playing tricks -- we may still
refer to them as 'reasons' -- 'ratio essendi'. And the issue is whether
nature NEEDS to be rational (or, for that matter, reasonable).
I especially enjoy McEvoy's later paragraphs, recited below, where the
evolutionary author he quotes makes reference to at least two types of
deception in humans, and the possibility, mentioned by McEvoy, that they might
combine.
Or not, of course.
The reference to Witters' incorrigibility (and privileged access) is just
there to provide a more or less relevant subject-line. Or not.
And I would be curious to doublecheck the reference list to the book cited
by McEvoy, so should explore the link he provides.
Cheers,
----
ps. I will then try to oppose a few points made by McEvoy in the ilght of
Witters's idea that we can never deceive ourselves -- provided he did think
that.
The keywords should be: incorrigibility, privileged access, deception and
self-deception. And the key author should be D. F. Pears.
In a message dated 3/13/2014 5:05:20 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"This point, unpacked, is central to the interesting book by Robert
Trivers "Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool
Others" -
this attempts to sketch a Darwnian account of the role of deception in the
animal kingdom as a framework for understanding the role of deception and
self-deception at a human level."
D. F. Pears was fascinated with the idea of 'self-deception'. He wrote a
book or two on that. Wonder if Trivers cares to quote from him. He should!
"As an evolutionary biologist, Trivers brings out that deception is
absolutely central to any account of evolution and is widespread and central
at
every level of evolution: even at the level of a virus, which works by
deceiving your body that it is a 'friendly' thing."
Not understood in an anthropomorphic sense of the term (Aristotle on
'friend').
Trivers, McEvoy goes on,
"works with the idea that we can understand evolution as a series of
situations where dissembling can bring immense advantages (e.g. looking
poisonous when you are not, which may deter predators), and this sets up an
'arms
race' between dissembling strategies and counter-strategies to detect
dissembling.
"The answer from Trivers is an unequicocal yes: and not only animals [can
deceive] but also plants and even viruses. But that does not mean this
dissembling is consciously controlled."
"At the human level, Trivers is trying to suggest that, while consciously
controlled dissembling occurs, much of our dissembling is the result of
processes inbuilt by evolution and is not consciously controlled but more like
a kind of 'survival' auto-pilot."
"Human dissembling bypasses conscious control because it is more effective
that way."
"Take two examples."
"First, it is possible for a human to work out a lie and then convince
themselves of it like an actor learning a role, so that when they come to
perpetrate the lie they act from the devised 'script' as if it is something
they consciously accept as true (rather than try to act consistent with what
they consciously know is a lie)."
"Here we must use the idea that there are different levels and aspects to
consciousness, so that a person may engage in acting out their 'script' as
if it were true because they have suppressed that aspect of their
(potential) consciousness that knows it is lie."
"Second, it is also possible for the mind to devise a false 'script' in a
way that bypasses consciousness in the sense that the falsehood is not
consciously worked out."
"In fact, Trivers seems to think this kind of 'self-deception' is
widespread."
"There may also of course be cases where both these kinds of
self-deception are combined."
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