Carla Bagnoli: Self-deception as alienation October 6, 2011

NSSR Philosophy Thursday Night Workshop:Carla Bagnoli: Self-deception as alienation

Thursday, October 06, 2011 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.

This paper takes a Kantian-constitutivist approach to self-deception,and argues that it should be evaluated under several dimensions of rationality. This 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 defensive strategy of insulation, rather than a species of wishful thinking, or evasion. It serves the purpose of maintaining the emotional and epistemic stability of the self, and to this extent it is 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. Under this description, self-deception is akin more to alienation and estrangement than deception. However, as in the case of deception, 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. In the final part of the paper, I tentatively argue that this account works also for self-deception understood as a collective phenomenon.

Location:

6 E 16 St Room D 1103

Admission:
Free; no tickets or reservations required; seating is first-come first-served

Official Website: http://www.newschool.edu/NSSR/eventsList.aspx?id=69882&DeptFilter=NSSR+Philosophy