[lit-ideas] Re: Wittgenstein's Incorrigibility
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 16:02:31 -0700 (PDT)
It seems to me that Grice has neglected some of the points of none other a
fellow ordinary language philosopher, J.L. Austin. I take it to be one of the
central points of Austin's talk about 'performatives' that much or most
communication isn't about truth or truthfulness. Communicative success, i.e.
'felicitousness' is to be distinguished from truth or truthfulness, even if
occasionally they spend a night under the same roof. Grice's reintroduction of
truthfulness as 'Maxim of Quality' into the criteria of communicative success
is quite dubious.
O.K.
On Thursday, March 13, 2014 11:10 PM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
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.>
Trivers references neither DF Pears nor KR Popper, neither
Wittgenstein nor Whitehead. He deals with – even disposes of – any so-called
philosophical objection to the notion of self-deception, as follows [p.8]: “What
exactly is self-deception? Some philosophers have imagined that self-deception
is a contradiction in terms, impossible at the outset. How can the self deceive
the self? Does that require that the self knows what it does not know (p/~p)?
This contradiction is easily sidestepped by defining the self as the conscious
mind, so that self-deception occurs when the conscious mind is kept in the
dark. True and false information may be simultaneously stored, only with the
truth stored in the unconscious mind and the falsehood in the conscious.
Sometimes this involves activities of the conscious mind itself, such as active
memory suppression, but usually the processes themselves are unconscious yet
act to bias what we are conscious of….So the key to defining self-deception is
that true information is preferentially excluded from consciousness and, if
held at all, is held in varying degrees of consciousness.”
Comment: while I agree “self-deception” is a valid enough notion
rather than a logically incoherent one, I do not agree that we should identify
the self with “the conscious
mind” (even if “the conscious mind” is vital for full selfhood, we need not
posit an identity). More generally, we may need many distinct, complex models
of the ways “self-deception” works – models that are alert to the truth that we
can (at present) only make primitive guesses as to how different facets of the
conscious mind interact with different facets of the unconscious mind, though we
may guess these inter-relations are highly complex (after all, even a mental
state that is not one of “self-deception”
is the product of highly complex processes). The basic model of self-deception
may be that (somehow) the mind tends to accept some falsehood in preference to
“the
truth” – but detailed explanation for this may involve myriad factors. There
may be cases where “self-deception” involves dismissing “the truth”, others
where “the truth” is simply ignored, others where “the truth” is suppressed,
others where “the truth” is missed – and different admixtures of conscious and
unconscious mental states may be involved in various cases.
It perhaps helps here to see that “the truth” is seldom or
never manifest: so our critical stance (or lack of) towards “the truth” may be
indispensable to whether we recognise “the truth”. It helps to accept that what
is “the truth” may diverge from what is “useful” or convenient given our aims
and preferences and values, and so our commitment to such aims etc. (i.e. our
‘biases’) may distort cognition as regards “the truth”. It
helps to see that we are prone to believe what, at some level, it suits us to
believe (unless we critically guard against this proclivity, as science seeks
to do [Trivers rightly remarks that scientific method may be regarded as a set
of anti-“self-deception” strategies]) – and this means we are prone to
underplay the counter-evidence to what it suits us to believe: hence
‘confirmation
bias’ and a host of other uncritical tendencies.*
Dnl
Ldn
*(Including that
building block of ‘inductive’ make-believe: the idea that a positive instance
is (inductive and positive) supporting evidence – an idea that needs to be
replaced with the critical view that a positive instance is at best an example
where the theory in question has passed a test, and what we must consider is
whether the theory passes the most severe
tests we can devise – which even then does not prove it true).
On Thursday, 13 March 2014, 17:17, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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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