Amelie Oksenberg Rorty

Self-deception. akrasia and irrationality

Self-deception and akrasia present severe problems for certain theories of rational agency, problems that have provoked an astonishing exercise of philosophic self-deception in denying the phenomena, redescribing them in ways that attempt to preserve the theories they jeopardize. Such philosophical self-deception is often also accompanied by philosophic akrasia: standard practices violate the preferred philosophic theories. There have of course also been attempts to save the phenomena

From Passions to Emotions and Sentiments

During the period from Descartes to Rousseau, the mind changed. Its domain was redefined; its activities were redescribed; and its various powers were redistributed. Once a part of cosmic Nous, its various functions delimited by its embodied condition, the individual mind now becomes a field of forces with desires impinging on one another, their forces resolved according to their strengths and directions. Of course since there is no such thing as The Mind Itself, it was not the mind that changed. Conceptions of the mind changed. Yet even to say this is misleading, because it suggests that somewhere out there in nowhere there is Nous, Psyche, Soul or Mind, the true but opaque object of all these conceptions. But of course there is no Mind in the realm of things in themselves, waiting for us to see it truly, like a China of the noumenal world, amused that our various conceptions reveal as much about ourselves as about it.

The Two Faces of Courage

Courage is dangerous. If it is defined in traditional ways, as a set of dispositions to overcome fear, to oppose obstacles, to perform difficult or dangerous actions, its claim to be a virtue is questionable. Unlike the virtue of justice, or a sense of proportion, traditional courage does not itself determine what is to be done, let alone assure that it is worth doing. If we retain the traditional conception of courage and its military connotations–overcoming and combat–we should be suspicious of it. Instead of automatically classifying it as a virtue, attempting to develop and exercise it, we should become alert to its dangers. And yet and yet. There is an aspect of traditional courage that serves us: we require the capacities and traits that enable us to persist in acting well under stress, to endure hardships when following our judgments about what is best is difficult or dangerous. If courage is checked, redefined as the virtue that enables virtue–the various sets of dispositions, whatever they may be, that make us resolute in worthy, difficult action–then we need not fear the dangers of courage. We need rather to reform it by diversifying it, as a heterogeneous variety of traits that enable us to act well under stress, against the natural movements of self-protection.

User-Friendly Self-Deception

Since many varieties of self-deception are ineradicable and useful, it would be wise to be ambivalent about at least some of its forms.1 It is open-eyed ambivalence that acknowledges its own dualities rather than ordinary shifty vacillation that we need. To be sure, self-deception remains dangerous: sensible ambivalence should not relax vigilance against pretence and falsity, combating irrationality and obfuscation wherever they occur.

Belief and self‐deception

In Part I, I consider the normal contexts of assertions of belief and declarations of intentions, arguing that many action‐guiding beliefs are accepted uncritically and even pre‐consciously. I analyze the function of avowals as expressions of attempts at self‐transformation. It is because assertions of beliefs are used to perform a wide range of speech acts besides that of speaking the truth, and because there is a large area of indeterminacy in such assertions, that self‐deception is possible. In Part II, I analyze the conditions of self‐deception, and discuss the grounds on which it is regarded as irrational, even when particular instances may be beneficial. I consider some of the classical analyses of the motives for self‐deception, and attempt to give an account of the occasions in which it is likely to occur. In the final section, I discuss the complex organization of the self that is presupposed by the phenomena of self‐deception.

Plato's counsel on education

Platos dialogues can be read as a carefully staged exhibition and investigation of paideia , education in the broadest sense, including all that affects the formation of character and mind. The twentieth century textbook Plato — the Plato of the Myth of the Cave and the Divided Line, the ascent to the Good through Forms and Ideas — is but one of his elusive multiple authorial personae, each taking a different perspective on his investigations. As its focused problems differ, each Platonic dialogue exhibits a somewhat different model for learning; each adds a distinctive dimension to Platos fully considered counsel for education. Setting aside the important difficult questions about the chronological sequence in which the dialogues were written and revised, we can trace the argumentative rationale of Platos fully considered views on paideia , on who should be educated by whom for what, on the stages and presuppositions of different kinds of learning. Those views are inextricably connected with his views about the structure of the soul, about the virtues and the politeia that can sustain a good life; and about cosmology and metaphysics.

THE TWO FACES OF STOICISM: ROUSSEAU AND FREUD

The Stoics are a weighty embarrassment to their friends who, like myself, want to defend them from the charges that their views are at best vague or ludicrous, perhaps offensive or inconsistent. There is no doubt that some of their pronouncements seem material for Aristophanic comedy, others callous and yet others incoherent. And there is also no doubt that they openly defy common sense and deliberately change the terminology they inherit, introducing neologisms ad hoc. And yet, and yet — it is no accident that they continue, rightly continue, to have a powerful hold on ordinary belief and acute philosophical reflection.

Identities of Persons.

Introduction, by Amelie O. Rorty 1. Survival and Identity, by David Lewis 2. Survival, by Georges Ray 3. The Importance of Being Identical, by John Perry 4. Lewis, Perry, and What Matters, by Derek Parfit 5. Embodiment and Behavior, by Sydney Shoemaker 6. Lock, Butler, and the Stream of Consciousness: And Men as Natural Kind, by David Wiggins 7. Conditions of Personhood, by Daniel Dennett 8. Persons, Character, and Morality by Bernard Williams 9. Rational Homunculi, by Ronald de Sousa 10. Identification and Externality, by Harry Frankfurt 11. Self-Identity and Self-Regard, by Terence Penelhum 12. Responsibility for Self, by Charles Taylor A Literary Postscript: Characters, Persons, Selves, Individuals, by Amelie O. Rorty Bibliography

The Advantages of Moral Diversity

We are well served, both practically and morally, by ethical diversity, by living in a community whose members have values and priorities that are, at a habit-forming, action-guiding level, often different from our own. Of course, unchecked ethical diversity can lead to disaster, to chaos and conflict. We attempt to avoid or mitigate such conflict by articulating general moral and political principles, and developing the virtues of acting on those principles. But as far as leading a good life — the life that best suits what is best in us — goes, it is not essential that we agree on the interpretations of those common principles, or that we are committed to them, by some general act of the will. What matters is that they form our habits and institutions, so that we succeed in cooperating practically, to promote the state of affairs that realizes what we each prize. People of different ethical orientations can — and need to — cooperate fruitfully in practical life while having different interpretations and justifications of general moral or procedural principles. Indeed, at least some principles are best left ambiguous, and some crucial moral and ethical conflicts are best understood, and best arbitrated, as failures of practical cooperation rather than as disagreements about the truth of certain general propositions or theories. This way of construing ethical conflict and cooperation carries political consequences. It appears to make the task of resolving ethical conflicts more modest and, perhaps, easier to accomplish. But it raises formidable problems about how to design the range of educative institutions that bridge public and private life.

VI. Akrasia and conflict

As Elster suggests in his chapter ‘Contradictions of the Mind’, in Logic and Society, akrasia and self‐deception represent the most common psychological functions for a person in conflict and contradiction. This article develops the theme of akrasia and conflict. Section I says what akrasia is not. Section II describes the character of the akrates, analyzing the sorts of conflicts to which he is subject and describing the sources of his debilities. A brief account is then given of the attractions of the akratic alternative: its power to focus or dominate the agents attention; its being strongly habitual; its having the pull of social streaming: following the charismatic leader, the mechanisms of sympathetic or antipathetic infection, the models of role casting. Following these strategies is by no means pathological: these are relatively automatic (though still voluntary) psychological functions. That is precisely their power and attraction: they provide the conflicted akrates with an action solution, tho...