What's so great about reality?
Published: 2005
Language: eng
Number of pages: 155
Description: In Chapters One and Two, I argue that a person's motivational state can cause her to become self-deceived without her trying. With these results in view, I next consider what, if anything, is wrong with self-deception. One can evaluate self-deception on at least two dimensions. First, one can ask whether self-deception could ever be rational. Secondly, one can ask whether one is more or less free in typical cases of self-deception. In Chapter Four, I examine the extent to which these dimensions are independent. It is commonly thought that a person's freedom is in some way tied to her rationality. If this is true, it might seem that a person is less free when she is irrational. But in certain cases, might a person not be freer in acting and believing irrationally---in regarding rationality as one option for her among others? In responding to this question, I show that most cases of "irrationality" that would seem to increase a person's freedom are cases of rationality in disguise. Given this analysis, I argue, in Chapter Five, that self-deception (on the view that I defend) generally diminishes the freedom or autonomy of the person who is self-deceived. In such cases, the person who is self-deceived may lack information that she values and, as a result, be cut off from reasoning and acting in response to the world as it is apart from her mind. But if the case of self-deception in question was intentionally brought about (as uncommon as such cases may be), our analysis of it will be somewhat different. By deceiving herself, the self-deceiver exercises her autonomy. She expands the realm of her possibilities and puts even her aim to believe only what it is true up for revision.
Notes: Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

Electronic version licensed for access by U. of T. users.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-06, Section: A, page: 2247.