Abstract
This article explores the alleged “selectivity problem” for Alfred Mele’s deflationary position on self-deception, a problem that can allegedly be solved only by appealing to intentions to bring it about that one acquires certain beliefs, or to make it easier for oneself to acquire certain beliefs, or to deceive oneself into believing that p. This article argues for the following thesis: (1) the selectivity problem does not undermine this deflationary position on self-deception, and (2) anyone who takes it to be a problem for this position should regard it as being just as serious a problem for those who advocate the intention-featuring solution at issue.
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Notes
The term is due to José Bermúdez (1997, p. 108).
See Mele (2001), pp. 31–49, 63–70, 90–91, 96–98, 112–18.
Whether and to what extent subjects display the confirmation bias depends on such factors as whether they are given a neutral perspective on a hypothesis or, instead, the perspective of someone whose job it is to detect cheaters. See Gigerenzer and Hug (1992). For discussion of the confirmation bias, see Mele (2001), pp. 29–33, 43–45.
I should mention that Jurjako finds fault with my view on grounds that feature a confusion of the conceptually sufficient conditions for self-deception that I offer with a position on what is causally sufficient to issue in self-deception (2013, p. 159).
At least one critic seems to have misunderstood me in this way (Noordhof 2009, p. 58).
In much of the remainder of this section, I borrow from Mele (2001), pp. 84–85, 90–91.
Quattrone and Tversky took steps to reduce the likelihood that participants would lie to impress the experimenters. Participants were told that only shifts in tolerance would indicate heart-types and that neither the experimenter present during the first trial nor the one administering the second trial would know the results of the other trial. The experimenter at the second trial was presented as a secretary who “knew nothing of the study's hypotheses, description, or rationale” (1984, p. 24). The questionnaires were filled out anonymously.
The relative costs would depend partly on their beliefs about what can be done to cure heart disease and about coping measures. Also, we might expect participants with no prior indications of heart disease to respond differently than hypothetical participants with significant prior evidence that they have heart problems.
The same point applies to his threshold for believing that his present pain is as intense as the pain he assigned a “10” on the first trial, as compared to his threshold for believing that his present pain is less intense than that earlier pain.
Trope and his coauthors (Trope et al. 1997, p. 122) assume, unnecessarily, that participants in Quattrone and Tversky’s experiment were “making an effort” to adjust their tolerance.
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I presented versions of this article at Error! Main Document Only. Ruhr-University Bochum and the University of Basel. I am grateful to my audiences for their input.
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Mele, A.R. Self-deception and selectivity. Philos Stud 177, 2697–2711 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01334-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01334-9