From: Dan Fabulich (dfabulich@warpmail.net)
Date: Tue Jun 17 2003 - 12:51:11 MDT
Robin Hanson wrote:
> Perhaps I didn't understand you before. It sounds now like you are saying
> that while it might look like you are saying untruths, you are actually
> not because you are using an "approximating model", with the fact that
> your approximation is way off here having conveniently slipped your mind.
> I would call this self-deception and biased reasoning.
No, you understood me the first time. I didn't mean that it would FULLY
slip my mind: I merely mean that it can get far enough out of mind that it
doesn't trigger those reflexes (twitching, eye shifting, increased heart
rate, etc.) that signal "lying" to other people.
If we really did FULLY forget, then, you're right, it would be
self-deception.
> >I might add that your claim that most people seem to be mostly
> >self-deceived about most of what's around them, especially in particular
> >areas of discourse, seem vulnerable to (Donald) Davidsonian arguments: I'd
> >say that we could not say of a society that we understand what they are
> >saying and that they are radically mistaken about most of what they're
> >saying. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/davidson/
>
> I've heard that argument against the possibility of detecting self-deception
> and reject it. If you read the literature on self-deception it becomes
> clear that it is a real phenomena that we can in fact reliably detect in
> many circumstances.
This argument isn't an epistemological one, (like Quine's similar argument
from radical translation,) it's a logical one. The claim is that, while
you can detect self-deception in relatively rare individual cases, you
can't correctly say of a group of individuals engaged in discourse that
most of them are by-and-large wrong most of the time. The reason for this
is couched in the notion of "radical interpretation", which Quine took to
be an epistemic limit, but which a Davidsonian takes to be a metaphysical
argument about propositions in general: they just can't go wrong THAT
badly, because to do so, they'd have to be wrong on somebody's
interpretation (even if an omniscient interpretation), but all such
interpretations must be done with charity.
Self-deception is real, but you must take yourself to have misunderstood
us if you think that we're ALL lying to *everyone*, including ourselves.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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