Reconciling Practical Knowledge with Self-Deception
Is it impossible for a person to do something intentionally without knowing that she is doing it? The phenomenon of self-deceived agency might seem to show otherwise. Here the agent is not (at least in a straightforward sense) lying, yet disavows a correct description of her intentional action. This...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Oxford University Press
2019
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| Online Access: | View Fulltext in Publisher |
| Summary: | Is it impossible for a person to do something intentionally without knowing that she is doing it? The phenomenon of self-deceived agency might seem to show otherwise. Here the agent is not (at least in a straightforward sense) lying, yet disavows a correct description of her intentional action. This disavowal might seem expressive of ignorance. However, I show that the self-deceived agent does know what she's doing. I argue that we should understand the factors that explain self-deception as masking rather than negating the practical knowledge characteristic of intentional action. This masking takes roughly the following form: when we are deceiving ourselves about what we are intentionally doing, we don't think about our action because it's painful to do so. © 2018 Marcus. |
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| ISBN: | 00264423 (ISSN) |
| DOI: | 10.1093/mind/fzy061 |