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Essay on The Cognitive Process of Deception and Its Effects on Memory
Why is the concept of self- deception sometimes thought to be a concept that cannot be instantiated? The answer is that self- deception appears doubly paradoxical. It is epistemically paradoxical since the claim that self- deception requires that the deceiver also be deceived seems to entail that the logical form of self- deception is a contradiction: S believes that p and S does not believe that p (where S is a believing subject and p is a proposition that is the intentional object of a belief). This contradiction follows from a necessary condition of deception: namely, in order to deceive someone the deceived must come to believe something the deceiver does not believe.
Self- deception is also morally paradoxical in that it seems to imply that the self-deceiver can sometimes be both blameworthy and innocent with respect to a particular action. Note that it is not necessary here to claim that self- deception is always morally wrong: Ibsen's The Wild Duck, for instance, vividly presents a case for certain sorts of self- deception being beneficial, and the psychologist Daniel Goleman (1985) has drawn attention to the personal utility of some forms of self- deception. All that is required for the moral paradox of self- deception is the plausible claim that self- deception is sometimes morally wrong. An example of such is the case of Albert Speer, Hitler's Minister of Armaments (Burrell & Hauerwas, 1974). In his autobiography Speer represents himself as self-deceived about conditions in Nazi Germany, particularly the use of slave labor and the existence of the concentration camps. It seems that he is morally blameworthy in this regard, as he himself insists; but it also seems that insofar as he was genuinely deceived, his guilt is mitigated.
Faced with the paradoxes of self- deception there are three main types of response..........................
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