No-self, real self, ignorance and self-deception: Does self-deception require a self?

Asian Philosophy

Volumn 8, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 103-110

  Levine, Michael P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61249424377     PISSN: 09552367     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09552369808575475     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. See RORTY, A. O. (1988) The deceptive self: liars, layers, and lairs, in: B. MCLAUGHLIN and A. RORTY (Eds) Perspectives on Self-Deception (Berkeley, University of California Press), pp. 11-28
2. and BARON, MARCIA (1988) What is wrong with self-deception, in: MCLAUGHUN and RORTY, ibid., pp. 92-120.
3. See FINGARETTE, H. (1969) Self-Deception (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul).
4. See p. 315 of DEUTSCH, EUOT (1996) Self-deception: a comparative study, in: ROGER T. AMES and WIMAL DISSANAYAKE (Eds) Self and Deception: a cross-cultural philosophical enquiry (Albany, State University of New York Press), pp. 315-326.
5. DEUTSCH, EUOT, Self and Deception: a cross-cultural philosophical enquiry, Ibid.
6. See BARON, Self and Deception: a cross-cultural philosophical enquiry, op. cit., note 1.
7. DEUTSCH, Self and Deception: a cross-cultural philosophical enquiry, op. cit., note 3, pp. 316-317.
8. See LARSON, GERALD JAMES and DEUTSCH, EUOT (1988) New Essays in Comparative Philosophy (Princeton, Princeton University Press)
9. and AMES and DISSANAYAKE, Self and Deception: a cross-cultural philosophical enquiry, op. cit., note 3. A principal aim of the Larson and Deutsch volume is to address the theoretical foundations of comparative philosophy.
10. account to Audi's [AUDI, ROBERT (1985) Self-deception and rationality, in: MICHAEL MARTIN (Ed.), Self Deception and Self-Understanding. New essays in philosophical psychology (Lawrence, University Press of Kansas), pp. 169-194], but this does not appear to have implications for Deutsch's substantive claims about self-deception in Indian thought. Fingarette's account of self deception "is not necessarily connected at all with one's holding irreconcilable beliefs, but is rather to be understood . . . as the refusal of someone to avow or to acknowledge some aspect of one's self and one's activity in the world because such an acknowledgement would be, so the deceiver believes, unbearable. . . ."
11. (DEUTSCH, Self Deception and Self-Understanding, op. cit., note 3, p. 316).
12. See FINGARETTE, Self Deception and Self-Understanding, op. cit., note 3, chapter 3. Sooner or later the notion of conflicting beliefs (i. e. a member of the cognition-perception family) must come into any adequate analysis of self-deception. Fingarette might agree since he does not seek to eliminate the cognition-perception family of terms, but to shift 'the emphasis away' from these terms. These are not, however, the issues of concern in this paper.
13. AUDI, ROBERT (1988) Self-deception, rationalization, and reasons for acting, in: MCLAUGHLIN and RORTY, op. cit., note 1, p. 94.
14. Nothing in Deutsch's own account of self-deception suggests otherwise - or so I shall argue. DEUTSCH, Self-deception, rationalization, and reasons for acting, op. cit., note 3, p. 317 says, "My own analysis of self-deception as cast in Western terms, is more closely akin to Fingarette's approach. One is in self-deception whenever there is a fundamental discrepancy between what one (believingly) avows to be the case about oneself and one's action, and what is patently the case. Self-deception is a refusal to acknowledge who I am and what I am doing, not out of simple ignorance [my emphasis], but from what appears to be a kind of unselfconscious wilful perversity. I am in self-deception whenever, while having the opportunity for self-knowledge and person development (and especially when confronted with that opportunity), I refuse to acquire the knowledge and undertake the development". Like Fingarette, Deutsch implausibly sees self-deception in entirely negative terms.
15. See DEUTSCH, ELIOT (1992) Creative Being: the crafting of person and world (Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press), chapter 2.
16. DEUTSCH, Creative Being: The crafting of person and world, op. cit., note 3, p. 316.
17. says, "Philosophers such as Robert Audi, Creative Being: The crafting of person and world [op. cit., note 8, p. 169ff] are thus able to argue that self-deception can be understood rationally only as a conflict of unconscious and conscious experience as this is supported by a particular 'want'. Others with a more epistemiological-analytic approach, which seem to presume some form of what might be called a 'rational view of the self', tend to see self-deception as a matter of someone's holding what appears to be irreconcilable beliefs - that A believes both P and not-P at the same time - a gross affront to our own notion of 'rationality' ". It is worth noting that the two different views Deutsch outlines are neither incompatible, nor inconsonant.
18. GILES, JAMES (1993) The no-self theory: Hume, Buddhism, and personal identity, Philosophy East and West, 43, pp. 175-200.
19. For an account of eliminativism in the philosophy of mind that I think makes it clear why the no-self theory is reductionist rather than eliminativist, see CHURCHLAND, PAUL (1988) Matter and Consciousness: a contemporary introduction to the philosophy of mind (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press) -though Churchland does not explicitly discuss the Buddhist no-self theory.
20. Also see LESSER, A. H. (1979) Eastern and Western empiricism and the 'no-self' theory, Religious Studies, 15, pp. 55-64. Throughout his paper, Giles appears to use "self" and "personal identity" interchangeably, and this is a source of various further related difficulties with his views.
21. DEUTSCH, Religious Studies, op. cit., note 3, p. 317.
22. DEUTSCH, ELIOT (1969) Advaita Vedānta: a philosophical reconstruction (Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press).
23. DEUTSCH, Advaita Vedānta: a philosophical reconstruction, op. cit., note 3, p. 319.