Self-Deception and Agential Authority. Constitutivist Account

Humana Mente 5 (20):93-116 (2012)
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Abstract

This paper takes a constitutivist approach to self-deception, and argues that this phenomenon should be evaluated under several dimensions of rationality. The constitutivist approach has the merit of explaining the selective nature of self-deception as well as its being subject to moral sanction. Self-deception is a pragmatic strategy for maintaining the stability of the self, hence continuous with other rational activities of self-constitution. However, its success is limited, and it costs are high: it protects the agent’s self by undermining the authority she has on her mental life. To this extent, self-deception is akin to alienation and estrangement. Its morally disturbing feature is its self-serving partiality. The self-deceptive agent settles on standards of justification that are lower than any rational agent would adopt, and thus loses grip on her agency. To capture the moral dimension of self-deception, I defend a Kantian account of the constraints that bear on self-constitution, and argue that it warrants more discriminating standards of agential autonomy than other contemporary minimalist views of self-government.

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Citations of this work

Self-deception.Ian Deweese-Boyd - 2023 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Self-Deception as a Moral Failure.Jordan MacKenzie - 2022 - The Philosophical Quarterly 72 (2):402-21.
Self-deception and selectivity.Alfred R. Mele - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (9):2697-2711.

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References found in this work

Self-Deception Unmasked.Alfred R. Mele - 2001 - Princeton University Press.
Necessity, Volition, and Love.Harry G. Frankfurt - 1998 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

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