School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry Seminar, Virtue and Self-Deception presented by Dr William Ransome
Event Details
- Date:
- Friday, 13 March 2015
- Time:
- 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
- Room:
- Room E302
- UQ Location:
- Forgan Smith Building (St Lucia)
- URL:
- http://www.hapi.uq.edu.au/seminars-and-events
- Event category(s):
Event Contact
- Name:
- Serena Bagley
- Phone:
- 52795
- Email:
- s.bagley@uq.edu.au
- Org. Unit:
- Historical and Philosophical Inquiry
Event Description
- Full Description:
- A smoky atmosphere of philosophical controversy – if not outright paradox – pervades the concept of self-deception, from its very possibility and meaning to its proper definition, and from the mysteries of its psychological mechanics to its consequences for self-knowledge. Two paradoxes, one ‘static’ and one ‘dynamic’, arise for traditional accounts of self-deception. The static paradox appears to require that self-deceivers hold contradictory beliefs; the dynamic paradox appears to render self-deceptive intentions self-defeating.
Intentionalist approaches to resolving these paradoxes typically appeal to either temporal or psychological partitioning, whilst non-intentionalists typically reject the interpersonal model of deception that generates them. Some of the deepest philosophical issues surrounding self-deception, however, concern not its epistemological or psychological status, but its ethical implications.
Self-deception is thought to be especially pernicious when it erodes self-deceivers’ own ethical agency by alienating them from their own defining ethical values, principles and commitments. In this context, the virtue of integrity is an especial focal point: self-deceivers fail ethically because they lack integrity. Yet, it may be the case that self-deception is an ineliminable feature of some of the central ethical virtues. This seems to be so for those personal states of ethical excellence which are paradigmatically self-effacing. For this category of virtue, those who are fully virtuous cannot be self-consciously motivated by what justifies their ethical excellence, and those who are not fully virtuous cannot become so without deceiving themselves about what being fully virtuous would amount to.
Virtue in these cases appears to require self-deception – and worse, it seems to require self-deception about one’s own fundamental ethical values, principles and commitments. The upshot seems to be that some virtuous people may be self-deceivers who lack integrity. This paper investigates the curious problems that self-deception raises for ethics, integrity and virtue.
Directions to UQ
- Google Map:
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- Directions:
- St Lucia Campus | Gatton campus.
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