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Notes
With honorable exceptions such as Mike W. Martin, Self-Deception and Morality (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1986) and Kathi Beier, Selbsttäuschung (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010).
The example of banker Bulstrode has been discussed as a case of paradigmatic self-deception in Allan Wood, “Self-deception and Bad Faith” (in A. O. Rorty & B. P. McLaughlin (eds.), Perspectives on Self-deception, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 223f., and more recently in D. K. Nelkin, “Self-deception, Motivation, and the Desire to Believe” (in: Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 83/4 (2002)), p. 384–386. An insightful description of a similar wrongdoing can be found in Joseph Butler, “Upon the Character of Balaam,” in: Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel and A Dissertation upon the Nature of Virtue, ed. Rev. W. R. Matthews (London: G. Bell and Sons LTD, 1914). Butler emphasizes the complexity and inconsistence in the character of self-deceptive wrongdoers (p. 112).
George Eliot, Middlemarch, ed. D. Carroll (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 581.
Ibid., p. 580.
Ibid., p. 662.
Peter Jones in Philosophy and the Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975) claims that one of the most important functions of imagination is looking for reasons, arguments and justifications. According to Jones, all these activities of the mind can be biased by desire, the mechanism which Eliot tries to depict in Middlemarch (See in part “Imagination and Egoism in Middlemarch”, p. 18).
Eliot, op. cit., p. 666.
Ibid., p. 668.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics in Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 19, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934), III, 3, 1111a20.
See ibid., III, 1, 1110a1.
See ibid., III, 2, 1110b18.
For an original account of action-description see G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), § 6, p. 11. However, Anscombe’s identification of action gets problematic in the self-deceptive cases where the conscious aspects of action are blurred.
See Eliot, op. cit., p. 658.
As we suggested earlier, the concept of the voluntary is broader than that of the intentional. Here it covers the side effects of action that are known, yet not directly intended by the agent. Even here we say she did them voluntarily (see Anscombe, op. cit., p. 89).
Note that the question of authorship that has just been shown is independent of the question of whether Bulstrode can be held responsible for his self-deception. Even though a proper discussion would be needed, I would defend a positive answer: since Bulstrode’s deliberation is a conscious activity, it is voluntary. It is necessary, however, to clarify its intention and its relation to the biasing motive. I would suggest an argument parallel to the one about his action, namely that Bulstrode’s self-deception is voluntary on account of its motive, yet unintentional concerning the description “justifying myself” or “deceiving myself”.
I assume here that it is not possible for an agent not to know her reason for action as well as her intention (if she has one), whereas a motive can be unknown and the agent can be mistaken about it.
See Anscombe, op. cit., p. 7.
Compare Butler, op. cit., p. 156 ff.; A. O. Rorty, “Self-deception, akrasia and irrationality,” in Jon Elster (ed.), The Multiple Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 125.
A. Wood interprets Bulstrode’s example in a similar vein claiming that “his self-deception requires for its explanation some appeal to a ‘divided mind,’ some kind of partition between what Bulstrode unconsciously knows and what he consciously makes himself believe” (op. cit., p. 224). If we accept that a person doesn’t have to be conscious of her belief that can nevertheless be testified by her behavior, reactions, attitudes, etc., it seems perfectly possible for a person to hold two inconsistent beliefs. See also A. O. Rorty, “Belief and Self-deception,” Inquiry 15/4 (1972), Part I.
Nelkin claims that “against his own best evidence, Bulstrode acquires the belief that he is innocent of any wrongdoing”, motivated by the desire “that it be true that he is innocent of any wrong-doing” (op. cit., p. 384, 385). My interpretation of Bulstrode’s self-deception is stronger than Nelkin’s since I agree with Wood in claiming that 1) Bulstrode on some level keeps the previous belief and that 2) he persuades himself to the contrary by adopting a false justification. That makes my interpretation closer to the “agency view” criticized for example in A. Mele, Self-deception Unmasked (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
For a similar point see Butler, op. cit., p. 153.
See Eliot, op. cit., p. 662.
Compare Butler, op. cit., p. 116f.
For a discussion of the strategies of self-deception see Rorty, “Self-deception, akrasia and irrationality,” op. cit., Part III.
This paper has been supported by a grant no. 13–14510S of the Czech Science Foundation. Preliminary versions of the paper have been presented at the Philosophy and Literature Graduate Conference (University of Warwick, 26th May 2009) and the Colloquium on the Modalities of the Good (Prague, 6th August 2009) and published in Czech in Reflexe 44 (2013). I would like to thank Marina Barabas a David Levy for their invaluable comments and support, and also Christopher Cowley and Ulrike Heuer for very helpful discussion of the text.
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Pacovská, K. Banker Bulstrode Doesn’t Do Wrong Intentionally. A Study of Self-Deceptive Wrongdoing. J Value Inquiry 50, 169–184 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9505-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9505-x