Philosophy Talk: The Blog

Why Self-Deception Research Hasn’t Made Much Progress

by Neil Van Leeuwen

I’d like to talk frankly about why research on the topic of self-deception hasn’t made much progress—as far as I can see—despite a steady-stream of on-going interest. There’s been some excellent work, but it doesn’t seem to me that the topic on the whole has moved forward all that much.

In both philosophy and psychology there has been a tendency to talk about self-deception as if it were one thing. If it’s one thing, we can just figure out what that is. Right?

 The philosopher’s approach is to try to solve the paradox of self-deception and come up with an analysis of self-deception in terms of necessary and/or sufficient conditions.

 The psychologist’s approach is to try to demonstrate experimentally that certain behaviors require positing a mental state of “self-deception.” (This approach is excellently illustrated by the classic 1979 article from Ruben Gur and Harold Sackheim, entitled “Self-Deception: a Concept in search of a Phenomenon.”)

 Neither approach is exactly wrong. But here’s the problem. “Self-deception” is a term that only loosely refers. If we were to survey all the psychological states that the term can aptly be applied to, we’d find vast differences within that set of perfectly real phenomena. There are, at least, what I would call classic self-deception, self-inflation bias, semi-pretense, and false emotion, all of which seem to me to be distinct—but all of which get loosely termed “self-deception.” I’ll turn to those shortly. For now, let’s stay focused on the methodological problem.

 The implicit assumption that self-deception is a unified phenomenon creates problems for philosophers and psychologists in different ways.

 For philosophers: any good analysis of one of the self-deceptive phenomena (which ends up being an “analysis of self-deception [full stop]”) is subject to apparent counterexamples from someone who points to one of the other self-deceptive phenomena. For example, theorist number 1 (who has classic self-deception in mind) may produce an “analysis of self-deception” that theorist number 2 (who has false emotion in mind) presents a “counterexample” to. The two theorists are in fact talking past each other without realizing it, because of this mistaken assumption of unity. They are both talking about “self-deception.”

 For psychologists: the problem is even simpler to describe. Bodies of data can seem to contradict when they in fact don’t, simply because a data set about one phenomenon is labeled under the same heading (“self-deception”) as a data set that’s in fact about a distinct phenomenon. Something like this may be what happened in the debate in the 1990s consisting of Shelley Taylor (and colleagues) versus Randy Colvin (and colleagues). The “self-deceptive” phenomena that Taylor found conducive to success and happiness are just not the same mental states as the “self-deceptive” phenomena that Colvin found detrimental to social well-being. (I do some untangling of that particular debate in “Self-Deception Won’t Make You Happy,” in case you’re interested.)

 This whole situation impresses upon me one thing that Robert Trivers told me once. He said that what I should be doing with my time and philosophical ability is logically analyzing and distinguishing different kinds of self-deception, which could be a benefit to everyone. I think he was implying that it was a mistake to look for one holy grail analysis of self-deception.

 So here I’d like to make some progress on his suggestion. The following four phenomena are distinct, although they could all (in some cases more loosely than others) be called “self-deception.”

 Classic self-deception. This is a phenomenon of motivated irrationality, in which motivational forces in the agent somehow drive him/her to form a belief that runs contrary to the wealth of evidence that she possesses. The mind is in some sense divided. Thus, classic self-deception is rightly said to involve some sort of epistemic tension. This is the phenomenon that philosophers are most focused on, since it seems paradoxical. But being focused on classic self-deception hasn’t saved us from accidentally labeling cases of the other phenomena as “self-deception.”

 Self-inflation bias. We often hear statistics along the following lines. “94% percent of college professors believe they are above average in their scholarly abilities.” “85% of people think they are above average at driving.” And so on. These statistics are evidence of a general tendency people have to think better of themselves than rigorous analysis of the evidence would warrant. Importantly, I don’t think this self-inflation bias needs to involve an epistemic tension like self-deception does. The self-inflator is wholehearted in her high opinion of herself. Furthermore, this general tendency isn’t motivated by specific desires and insecurities, as is the case in classic self-deception.

 Semi-pretense. Often we go about imitating others without any intention to imitate or pretend. Sartre’s waiter is a great example of this. We take on the trappings of a certain character, without even being aware that that’s what’s happening. If the character I’m unwittingly imitating is inappropriate to my actual circumstances, someone might say I’m deceiving myself. But I prefer to call this phenomenon semi-pretense, because it’s in between plain action and full pretending. (But note that semi-pretense can contribute to classic self-deception, if the agent goes on to form beliefs on the basis of the semi-pretense.)

 False emotion. As Robert Frank discusses in Passions within Reason, people often have emotions for strategic social reasons. Often that’s good. We may cry because we genuinely need help. But crying may well be disproportionate to the amount of genuine need—a way of manipulating other parties into doing one’s will. Importantly, such manipulative false emotion needn’t be (and perhaps usually isn’t) consciously planned. The agent is convinced by her own false emotion! This, again, may be loosely called self-deception, although it is rather different from the preceding three phenomena.

 There are other distinct phenomena, too, that pre-theoretically get thrown into the basket of “self-deception.” Progress will require greater precision going forward.

I’d like to close this blog with a note to anyone who, like me, takes an interest in the evolutionary status of “self-deception.” I have argued in various places that self-deception is not an adaptation evolved by natural selection to serve some function. Rather, I have said self-deception is a spandrel, which means it’s a structural byproduct of other features of the human organism. My view has been that features of mind that are necessary for rational cognition in a finite being with urgent needs yield a capacity for self-deception as a byproduct. On this view, self-deception wasn’t selected for, but it also couldn’t be selected out, on pain of losing some of the beneficial features of which it’s a byproduct. This view seems opposed to the view of Robert Trivers, who maintains that self-deception is an adaptation to facilitate interpersonal deception. But it could be, in light of the foregoing distinctions, that Trivers and I were talking past each other.

I hereby wish to suggest the following. Self-inflation bias and false emotion are evolutionary adaptations that serve interpersonal deception, as Trivers has theorized. But classic self-deception and semi-pretense are in fact spandrels. Whether or not I am right in these particular hypotheses, I think the methodological point of this blog still stands.

William James and the Squirrel Example.

This post was originally published shortly after our episode on William James -- which is being rebroadcast this wee-- originally aired.  We're moving it up to the top of the blog in honor of the rebroadcast. 

Russell Goodman, who was our guest a couple of weeks ago, for our episode on William James sent the following remarks as a follow up to our on-air conversation. They are posted here with his permission.

I wanted to comment on that squirrel going around the tree story with which  James opens the second chapter of Pragmatism.  It's a great story, but it seems, from my experience, to itself provoke as much disagreement and puzzlement as the squirrel and the man themselves do.

At first blush, it seems like a good verificationist story- a dispute about  two terms or hypotheses that have the same empirical consequences.  James's  point would be then be that the dispute is idle (as you put it in your  introduction, the campers are “arguing about nothing.”)  This seems to be  James's conclusion in the second paragraph, where he writes:  “If no  practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle.”  That's fine, and this statement fits Peirce's example (in “How to Make our Ideas Clear”) of a cup of wine that is allegedly Christ's blood but gives all the signs of  just plain wine.

But James's conclusion does not fit what he says in the first paragraph,  where the point is NOT that there is no “practical difference” between the  cases but rather that if one makes the distinction between two senses of  “going around”  (i. e. passing north of,  east of, south of,  west of, vs. facing the belly, then the side, then the back, then the other side of the  squirrel) there is no need for disagreement.  That's because each sense determines a DIFFERENT, empirically verifiable set of consequences, either for the man himself (if he can catch sight of the squirrel's belly, etc, it being a narrow tree) or certainly for the observers, who can tell whether  the man is facing the squirrel's back or belly (is the squirrel standing?) or merely circling a squirrel who keeps his belly facing the man.

So, James misinterprets his own example as one in which there is no practical difference between the two hypotheses, when there actually is. In either interpretation however, the example is meant to furnish a picture of traditional philosophy, as (in the words of one of James's heroes, George Berkeley) raising a dust and then complaining that one cannot see. In this guise pragmatism is a critical philosophy or therapeutic philosophy, freeing us from pseudo problems.  There's also a positive side (e. g. his 'humanistic epistemology') that the example doesn't seem to exemplify.

Another puzzling thing about James's example is the question of what it has to do with pragmatism, or why we need pragmatism to tell us this?  As James points out, the idea of making a distinction when we encounter a (seeming) contradiction is an old one in philosophy.  It's a funny idea to invoke at the beginning of a chapter where one expects to learn about what is distinctive about pragmatism.

From years of teaching this chapter I've learned not to start with the squirrel example,  but to pass to other points he makes in this really quite amazing piece of writing.  Last spring I gave a seminar on the chapter in North Carolina and we had a very lively discussion about the squirrel example for most of an hour, with people disagreeing about whether James really did misinterpret his own example!  We didn't get much further however.  What do you think?

Move Over Letterman: A Philosophical Top 10 LIst for the 21st Century

To mark the occasion of our 200th episode, we invited three former  guests,  Brian Leiter, Jenann Ismael, and Martha Nussbaum, and also  our listeners to help us come up with a list of the 10 most pressing  philosophical issues of the 21st Century. We talked about all sorts  of ideas and it was hard to distill out just 10, but John and Ken  summarized the suggestions and compiled them on the fly at the end  of the show. But with a little more time to reflect, we decided to  clean the list up a bit. So what follows is an improved version of the  makeshift list that was generated during the broadcast.  10.  Finding a new basis for common sensibilities and common values. The world is more economically interconnected than it has ever been. But it still seethes with divisions and social fragmentation. Can we find a new basis for shared values that will bring us together rather than tear us apart?   9. Finding a new basis for social identification. Distant and powerful forces, not answerable to local communities, shape so much of our lives. Howcan we sustain local communities, communities with which we can identify?  Or is the very idea of a local community an outmoded parochial idea suited only to centuries gone by?  8. The Mind-Body problem.  Neuroscience is revealing so much about the brain. Does this new knowledge solve age-old mysteries of the mind?  Or does it reduce the mind to mere dumb matter and rob us of what we once thought was so special about us?  7. Can freedom survive the onslaught of science? Science, especially neuroscience, is revealing more and more about the true workings of the mind,  threatening to explode our ancient beliefs about things like the freedom of the will.  Can traditional practices that presuppose human freedom survive this scientific onslaught?  If we are not really free is it really permissible to punish people, and even put them to death, for their wrongful acts?  6. Information and misinformation in the information age. The 21st century threatens to wreak havoc on the social organization of information and knowledge. We are awash in a glut of information coming at us from all sources -- some reliable, some unreliable.  But the old top-down authorities that once functioned to certify some information as true and other information as false, are quickly being dismantled.  How can we distinguish the good from the bad, the wheat from the chaff?  We philosophers for a new century thus face epistemological problems hardly imagined by our predecessors.  5. Intellectual property, in the age of re-mix culture. Ideas now spread like wildfire -- mixing and re-mixing in the blink of an eye.  Can the very idea of intellectual property survive in the age of re-mix?  Are outmoded ideas of property stifling the growth of a new culture? 4. New models of  collective decision making and collective rationality. Solving the problems of the 21st Century will require coordinated rational action on a massive scale. But we really have no models of collective rationality, no idea of the institutional, social, political and economic structures that will allow us to meet these challenges.  Can philosophers help build them in time to guide us in meeting the challenges of this century?   3. What is a person? WIth the rise of cloning,designer babies, and drugs that can alter one's personality, enhance one's memory, or make one smarter, we may be forced to rethink the very idea of human person.   What exactly is a human person, when every aspect of our biological and genetic and psychological make-up can be manipulated at will?  What, if any,  part of a person is fixed and unchanging?  2.  Humans and the  environment.  What relationship should humans have to the environment?  Are we called to be stewards of the environment? Or is the environment just there for our exploitation and use?  Never in the history of humankind have such questions been so pressing.  But we have barely begun to think about them in a systematic philosophical way.   And the number one philosophical problem for the 21st Century:

1. Global Justice.  What new principles of justice will help us manage distinctively 21st Century problems like preserving the environment while  allowing the poorer nations of the world to improve their standards of living?   The philosophy of the past has given no real models for answering such questions. It is urgent that philosopher of the 21st century do so.

Listen to to the 200th episode.

The Philosophical Legacy of Charles Darwin

Today our topic is Darwin's Philosophical Legacy and our guest is the one man in best suited to help think this through. That would be Dan Dennett, author of many books inspired by Darwinian ideas. Dennett thinks that Darwin's idea of evolution through natural selection is both the single best idea that anyone has every had about life and how it works and also a deeply unsettling even "dangerous" idea. You can join the conversation by posting to this open blog entry.

Does Postmodernism Mean Moral Relativism?

For those not in the KALW Broadcast area, we will be re-airing our episode on Post-Modernism during this coming week. So we're moving an old blog post by our guest Gary Aylesworth, written when this episode originally aired, to the top of the blog.

posted by Gary Aylesworth

Toward the end of last Sunday’s broadcast of Philosophy Talk, a caller asked whether the “moral relativism” supposedly rampant in our time was part of postmodernism. While I would certainly agree that the current hysteria over moral relativism is a postmodern phenomenon, I don’t agree that postmodern thought takes an “anything goes” view of politics or ethics, or that it prevents us from saying that the terrorists of 9/11 committed mass murder. Instead, I see postmodern thought as a kind of moral humility, a humility that prevents us from assuming that the world divides neatly into “us” and “them” or that “others” are simply evil while “we,” by mere opposition, are assured to be in the right. Such absolutism, after all, has the same structure as the ideology of the terrorists. Several figures associated with philosophical postmodernism emphasize our obligation to the other as an other, that is, not as “one of us” but as one who marks the limit of our own identity or community. It is an obligation to receive the other as such and not to silence or eliminate her. We can agree that the 9/11 terrorists violated this obligation and that they are responsible for their actions, but it also forces us to examine our own sense of victimization. Nietzsche warned us against the moral righteousness of the victim; it is dangerous because it seeks to annihilate the other and tolerates no dissent.

The alarms against moral relativism we hear around us are, I think, the latest bellowings of the morality of ressentiment, a morality that looks for someone or something to blame for the insecurities and uncertainties of our age. Postmodern thought did not create this situation, but tries to explore its structures and its limits. It also upholds certain Enlightenment values, such as the freedom to dissent, social and political emancipation, the rights of individuals and minorities, etc., but it does so without claiming to know, once and for all, who individuals are or what ultimately constitutes a right. That these identities must remain open is itself a moral imperative, and one that obliges us to be humble in our judgments. Moral humility, not moral relativism, is the lesson of postmodern thinking.

Work and the Self

This post was originally published back in January of 2008, when the episode on work -- which was actually recorded in October of 2007 -- first aired. I thought it would be interesting to republish it at the top of the blog as we re-air that episode.

posted by Ken Taylor

Today's episode was on Work. Our guest was Al Gini from Loyola University of Chicago. He's a philosopher by trade, the author of a number of books about work and the self, and the resident philosopher at WBEZ public radio in Chicago.

The episode was recorded a couple of months ago, back in late October, in front of a live, large and lively audience of students and faculty at Centenary College in Shreveport Louisiana. We were at Centenary for the better part of a week. We not only recorded today's episode there, but we also broadcast an episode on Philosophy and Literature live from Centenary's college radio station, KSCL, which has the singular distinction of airing our show twice per week. We also did a couple of other public events in connection with Centenary's First Year experience. Meeting with the students was especially fun. But we were also wined and dined, in very fine style, by many of Centenary's energetic and engaged faculty members. It was a delight getting to know you all.

We thank all the good folks at Centenary, the nation's smallest Division 1 school, for making this all possible. And I hope you enjoyed having us around as much as we enjoyed being around.

We'd like to do more of this sort of thing in the future -- as I think I've mentioned before. So if you'd like to bring us to a college campus near you, including your own, get in touch and let us know.

Since it's been a couple of months since we recorded the show, I have to admit that it's been about that long since I thought hard about the topic of the show. I listened to it as it was broadcast this morning and was reminded of many things that I thought at the time. I think I still think most of them. But in the rest of this post, I'll try out briefly a few follow-up thoughts.

I count myself very lucky in my own work. I mostly love being a professor of philosophy. I love doing philosophy for its own sake. I love teaching philosophy. And I love this public intellectual radio thing that I've stumbled into in the last few years. I enjoy almost everything about working at a top-flight university like Stanford, where I am surrounded by world class colleagues in just about every department and where I get to teach extremely well-prepared, disciplined and often highly creative students. I even admire the intellects and dedication of the people who do the necessary but less intrinsically rewarding task of administering this very fine place. I can sometimes hardly believe my good fortune in finding work to which I am so well suited, in a place where a love living, in a community whose values I mostly share and respect. To be sure, I do work very long hours -- especially in the years since I have been simultaneously chairing my department, trying to make a go of a certain radio show, and trying to keep my teaching and research more or less on track. The long hours aren't always happiness making -- both because some of what I have to do as department chair, for example, I could easily do without. But, more importantly, it's at times hard to keep work confined to its proper proportions. I am deeply committed to being an available and engaged father to my son and a supportive and present husband to my wife. Sometimes the demands of work and the demands of family come into deep conflict. So as much as I love my work, it's not as though I find it "cost free" or that I've found the magical formula for adjudicating the delicate balance between costs and benefits of work vs. non-work.

I said something during the episode that certainly could have been said more clearly about getting the proportions right. On the one hand, there's how much of the time available to one, one's work will take. There are only so many hours in a day, week, or life. How many of the hours of one's day will one allow one's work to consume? Work also consumes the self. And there's only so much of the self to go around too. What occurred to me as the conversation developed during the show was sort of a half-baked formula. Try to let one's work consumes no greater portion of one's available hours -- one's total temporal allotment, as we might call it -- than the proportion of one's self that one is willing to give over to one's work -- one's degree of self investment, as it were. The rough thought was just that, all things being equal, the more of one's self one "invests" in one's work, the more of one's total temporal allotment it will be worth investing in one's work. Correlatively, the less of one's self one invests in one's work, the less of one's total temporal allotment, one should invest in one's work.

Or so the thought went.

Two plus month's later, I'm not sure that I had a fully coherent thought or that the thought provides very much positive guidance as to how to adjust the balance between work and the rest of one's life. Even if the rough thought is right, it's surely only roughly right. Not every minute of one's life counts the same, for one thing. Hours spent doing sheer drudgery or delaying gratification can cost relatively less in terms of "self-investment" than is gained back in the moments in which one finally, if only briefly, reaps the reward.

One could spend one's entire life doing back-breaking, intrinsically unrewarding work, in service of a cause larger than oneself. Imagine a factory worker, with children to feed, clothe and educate, doing work that he finds mind-numbing. But he does it nonetheless, does it with pride and does it in a sense willingly, because he invest himself not so much in his work per se, but in what that work is instrumental to -- providing for his children and his wife. I think generations have taken deep and deserved pride in doing work like that.

Would their lives have been "better" had they been able to provide for their families by means of work they found more intrinsically rewarding, more intrinsically self-defining? In some sense, that certainly seems true. Certainly, all things being equal one would prefer intrinsically rewarding to intrinsically unrewarding work. But a life willingly given over to back-breaking, intrinsically unrewarding, work out of devotion to things larger than oneself seems to have a certain dignity and nobility to it that is not easily matched by a life spent doing only work that naturally "fits" the self, as it were.

Of course, I don't mean to romanticize back-breaking, intrinsically degrading work. Probably, nobody should have to do such things -- at least not without decent compensation. But to acknowledge this is not to deny the quiet dignity that is often displayed by those who find themselves stuck doing such work.

Comment on Pornography by Rae Langton

We invited Rae to guest blog, and she graciously agreed.  And unlike many who agree to guest blog for us, she actually followed through on her intention.  But somehow the technology didn't work for her.   So we're posting this on her behalf --Philosophy Talk.  

John says, first, it's only fantasy, and second, outlawing is always 'a losing strategy'. 

Well yes, it might be fantasy or pretend: someone is being paid to pretend to be bound, and paid to pretend to enjoy it. The viewer is joining in with the pretence. 

But (i) note that even fictions are told and experienced against a backdrop of presupposed claims about the real world. For example, the Sherlock Holmes stories make claims about a fictional detective, against the backdrop of real world London. What does porn say or presuppose about the real world? That many real life women enjoy being bound and gagged, and that women who say no don't mean it. That's why, on the social science evidence, many consumers actually get their beliefs changed (see e.g. Donnerstein et al, the Question of Pornography). 

And (ii) as 'one of many' points out, even if consent is there, the woman's pleasure may not be; and rehearsing even pretend violence can 'stay in that man's mind' to shape how he looks at other women later. There is a lot of psychological literature now about how our 'off-line' imaginings and pretendings can influence our 'on-line' behaviour. This can be a good thing when it means that rehearsing your tennis strokes, just in imagination, can actually help you play better! But bad when it's shaping your responses to real people. 

Furthermore (iii) it's naive to assume that there is always consent, on the part of the actors, in the first place. Sara raises some excellent points about the real life conditions of many in the industry, for example in South East Asia, effectively the conditions of appalling sexual slavery. Consumers using pornography made in this way are effectively sex tourists, using virtual brothels in South East Asia. Possibly they are even the same consumers who would think twice about buying sneakers made with sweat shop labor.

Strategies: Why so pessimistic about the law? Most people think the law can and should be used to restrict or make actionable some sorts of pornography, for example, in the US, child porn; and in the UK now (legislation pending) 'extreme pornography',  that eroticizes life threatening attitudes and behaviours such as necrophilia and asphyxiation. (This follows the porn-inspired murder of a school teacher by Graham Coutts, who was addicted to this sort of porn.) 

 I also agree with Michael that other strategies should be pursued—I would say, 'as well', not 'instead'. Yes, more and better sex education please! Otherwise porn will be the default sex educator of the next generation. But also: education for us all about porn itself: the conditions under which it's made (thanks again Sara!), and what it can do to people—to women, and to men too. It's naive, though, to think it will go away because it will just fail in the marketplace of ideas. People don't have their truth filtering brains switched on when they consume porn: they aim for pleasure, not knowledge. But it changes their minds all the same, just like effective advertising does. 

And then in addition to education, a consumer boycott too. For the same reasons you might boycott sneakers made with sweat shop labour. Or for the same reason you might choose not to own a gun, even if you think you have a 'right to bear arms'. Why exercise that right, if it's more likely to damage you yourself—or those who are, or could be, closest to you?

Two Skeptical Arguments

Since We're repeating this show this week, I thought I'd move this post to the top. Jim was one our rare guests to actually both accept our invitation to guest blog and then to follow through. Enjoy --KT

I’ve been claiming that there are some really powerful skeptical arguments (on the show and in response to Ken's previous post).  I have also been claiming that one aspect of their force is that they do not depend on setting the standards for knowledge very high.   Here are two such arguments. 

1.  Hume’s argument.
The first is inspired by David Hume.  The argument begins with the assumption that our beliefs about the external world are at least partly based on how things appear.  For example, I believe that I am presently seated at my desk at least partly because that is the way things visually appear to me.  But that can’t be the whole story, the argument continues.  I must also be assuming, at least implicitly, that the way things appear is a good indication of the way things really are.  If I were not relying on that assumption, Hume argues, then the fact that things appear to me a certain way would not be a reason to think that they are that way.  But now how am I to justify this assumption about the reliability of appearances?  How can I know that the way things appear is a good indication of the way things really are?  According to Hume, there is no way to justify that assumption.  For example, suppose I were to rely on appearances, reasoning that, as far as I can tell, the way things appear to me appear to be a reliable indication of the way things really are.  This, of course, would be to argue in a circle, taking for granted the very thing at issue.   Here is Hume’s argument put more formally.

(H)

1.    All my beliefs about the external world depend for their evidence on both a) the way things appear to me, and b) an assumption that the way things appear to me is a reliable indication of the way things really are.
2.    But the assumption in question can’t be justified.
Therefore,
3.    All my beliefs about the external world depend for their evidence on an unjustifiable assumption. (1, 2)
4.    Beliefs that depend for their evidence on an unjustifiable assumption do not count as knowledge.
Therefore,
5. None of my beliefs about the external world count as knowledge.  I don’t know anything about the external world.  (3,4)

Clearly, a linchpin of this argument is premise (2): that an assumption regarding the reliability of appearances cannot be justified.  In support of premise (2), Hume considers various possibilities for justifying the assumption in question.  One consideration that Hume emphasizes is that the assumption is itself a contingent claim about the external world.  That is, the assumption claims that sensory appearances are, as a matter of contingent fact, related to the way things are in a particular way.  This suggests that the assumption can be justified, if at all, only in the way that contingent claims about the external world are justified in general—i.e. by relying on the way things appear!  But this, of course, would be to argue in a circle, taking for granted the very thing at issue.  Here again is the reasoning in support of (2).

(H2)

1.    All my beliefs about the external world depend for their evidence on both a) the way things appear to me, and b) an assumption that the way things appear to me is a reliable indication of the way things really are.
2.    The assumption in question is itself a belief about the external world.
Therefore,
3.    The assumption depends on itself for its evidence. (1, 2)
4.    Beliefs that that depend on themselves for their evidence can’t be justified.
Therefore,
5.    The assumption in question can’t be justified.  (3, 4)

    A natural thought is that the assumption that appearances are a reliable guide to reality can be justified in some other way, perhaps by some sort of a priori reflection that proceeds independently of appearances.  But Hume thinks that this line of reasoning is a dead end.  This is because the assumption in question makes a contingent claim about the way things are—it is a matter of contingent fact, and not a matter of necessity, that appearances do or do not reflect the way things really are.  But that sort of fact cannot be known through a priori reflection.  In short, a priori reflection gives us knowledge of necessary truths rather than contingent truths. 

2.  Descartes’s argument.
The second skeptical argument is inspired by Descartes’s Meditation One, and in particular by Barry Stroud’s reading of that meditation.  To understand the argument, consider the claim that one sees a goldfinch in the garden, based on one’s observation that the bird is of a particular size and color, and with a tail of a particular shape.  Suppose now that a friend challenges one’s claim to know, pointing out that woodpeckers also are of that size and color, and also have tails with that shape.  As Stroud points out, this seems to be a legitimate challenge to one’s claim to know that the bird is a goldfinch.  More generally, if one’s evidence for one’s belief that the bird is a goldfinch is consistent with the possibility that it is in fact a woodpecker, then one does not know on the basis of that evidence that it is a goldfinch. Based on this sort of reasoning, the skeptic proposes the following plausible principle:

1.         A person knows that p on the basis of evidence E, only if E rules out alternative possibilities to p. 

Further support for this sort of principle comes from reflection on scientific enquiry.  Suppose that there are several competing hypotheses for explaining some phenomenon, and suppose that these various hypotheses are “live” in the sense that current evidence does not rule them out as possibilities.  It would seem that one cannot know that one of the hypotheses is true until further evidence rules out the remaining ones.  Again, principle (1) above looks plausible.
    The second step in the skeptical argument is to point out that there are various possibilities that are inconsistent with what we claim to know about the external world.  For example, it is possible that things appear to me visually just as they do now, but that I am actually lying in my bed asleep rather than sitting at my desk awake.  It is possible that things appear to Descartes’s just as they do, but that he is actually the victim of an evil demon, a disembodied spirit who only dreams that he inhabits a material world and is presently seated by the fire.  To be clear, it is no part of the skeptical argument that such alternative possibilities are true, or even that they are somewhat likely.  The point is only that they are possibilities, and so undermine our knowledge if our evidence does not rule them out. 
  The third step in the skeptical argument is to claim that our evidence does not in fact rule these possibilities out.  The gist of the present claim is something like this:  These possibilities are consistent with all the evidence that we have or could have at our disposal.  Even if, practically speaking, we don’t usually give such possibilities a thought, upon reflection we have no evidence available to us that counts against them, and in favor of our preferred beliefs.
  If we put these three claims together we have the materials for a powerful skeptical argument.  Here is the argument stated more formally.

(D)

1.    A person knows that p on the basis of evidence E, only if E rules out alternative possibilities to p.  (Principle 1 from above.)
2.    It is a possibility that I am not sitting at my desk awake, but merely dreaming that I am.
Therefore,
3.     I know that I am sitting at my desk only if my evidence rules out the possibility that I am merely dreaming. (1, 2)
4.    But my evidence does not rule out this possibility.
Therefore,
5.    I do not know that I am sitting at my desk. (3, 4)

And of course the skeptical argument is supposed to generalize. That is, it is supposed to apply to beliefs about the external world in general.  We therefore have:

6.    The same line of reasoning can be brought to bear against any belief about the external world.
    Therefore,
7.    No one knows anything about the external world.  (5, 6)

    One way to understand the notion of “ruling out” a possibility is as follows:  A body of evidence E rules out a possibility q if and only if E supports not-q in a non-circular way.  Here we can understand support as a semantic notion:  Evidence E supports propositions p, in the relevant sense, just in case E entails p or E makes p probable.  Putting these ideas together, we get the following interpretation of premise (4) of argument (D).

4a.  My evidence for my belief that I am sitting at my desk neither entails nor makes probable (in a non-circular way) the proposition that I am not dreaming.

    Why might one accept premise (4a)?  One reason for accepting (4a) is the considerations put forward by Hume’s argument above.  That is, one might think that my evidence for believing that I am sitting at my desk is the way things appear to me, together with my assumption that the way things appear to me is a reliable indication of the way things are.  But as Hume’s reasoning shows, there is no non-circular way to justify the assumption in question, and therefore no good evidence for either that assumption or further beliefs that are based on it.  In particular, my evidence cannot entail or even make probable (in a non-circular way) the proposition that I am not dreaming. Insofar as this is the reasoning behind (4a), argument (D) is parasitic on argument (H).
    There is, however, another way to understand the notion of evidence ruling out alternative possibilities.  On this understanding, a body of evidence E rules out alternative possibilities to p just in case E discriminates the state of affairs represented by p from alternative states of affairs.  For example, hearing my wife coming in the door from work, my auditory experience rules out the possibility that it is my children coming home from school or a burglar coming in through a window.  In effect, I have the capacity to “tell the difference,” so to speak, and this is what allows me to know that it is my wife who has just come in the house. On this understanding of “ruling out”, it does seem plausible that my evidence must rule out alternative possibilities in order to ground knowledge.  For example, how could I know that my wife has just come home, on the basis of hearing her come through the door, if I could not discriminate that state of affairs from my daughter’s coming through the door? Moreover, premise (4) of argument (D) becomes plausible on this understanding of “ruling out.”  We now have

4b.  My evidence does not discriminate my sitting at my desk from my merely dreaming that I am sitting at my desk.

One might think that this claim is obviously right.  To be clear-- I assume that the skeptical argument must be wrong somewhere.  My point here is that it isn't obvious where, or that the argument is invoking some very high standard for knowledge.

Thoughts on the Reader

posted by Ken Taylor 

Thanks to everybody who made our  First Annual Dionysus Awards Show  such a success.  It was a lot of fun.  We got lots of  great input from our listeners.   If you haven't heard the show, be sure to check it out.  We're trying to get it picked up as pre-Oscar special by stations throughout the public radio system.  Wish us luck with that.   

Anyway,  I thought I'd follow up a bit on the discussion of one movie in particular -- The Reader.   David Thomson -- who was originally scheduled to be our guest but had to cancel at the last minute  -  had suggested to us in our preparation for the show that we  think about spending the entire hour talking about just this one film  --- I guess because he thinks that no other film from 2008 comes close the Reader in its depth and complexity.   I'm not sure I agree with that and we didn't accept the suggestion, in any case.   But I did find the movie profoundly interesting and profoundly challenging.   So I thought I'd ruminate about it a bit more in this blog entry as a follow up to our episode.  

I know that some people seem to find this film  morally reprehensible.    Manhola Dargis, writing about the Reader for the New York Times,  concludes his review with  the following:

Although the commercial imperatives that drive a movie like this one are understandable — the novel was a best seller and an Oprah’s Book Club selection, for starters — you have to wonder who, exactly, wants or perhaps needs to see another movie about the Holocaust that embalms its horrors with artfully spilled tears and asks us to pity a death-camp guard. You could argue that the film isn’t really about the Holocaust, but about the generation that grew up in its shadow, which is what the book insists. But the film is neither about the Holocaust nor about those Germans who grappled with its legacy: it’s about making the audience feel good about a historical catastrophe that grows fainter with each new tasteful interpolation.

My reactions to this movie are completely at odds with this.   In my view,   the movie raises a number of profound moral questions and though it doesn't decisively answer those questions  -- what movie could -- it does explore -- in a way movies seldom do (though novels more often do) --  the space of possible answers to the questions it raises.  Let me explain what I mean.   Obviously  Hanna, aka,  Kate Winslett,  is the moral center of this movie. By the way, about Hanna,  Dargis says the following:

In the novel and the film — which monumentalizes every trembling lip and fluttering eyelash, turning human gestures into Kodak moments — Michael’s pain turns him not just into Hanna’s victim, but also a kind of survivor. Outrageously, Hanna is a victim too, because she took the guard job only to hide her illiteracy, as if illiteracy were an excuse for barbarism.

Dargis is surely right that both Michael and Hanna are represented as victims   -- he of her;  and she of something more diffuse and less pointed.   I suppose she is partly represented as a "victim"  of the German attempt to understand and come to grips with the past.   She is also, I suppose,  partly represented as the "victim"  of the Nazi system in which she was a participant.   But I don't think it's at all right  to say that the film  "excuses" Hanna's participation in the barbarism of the Holocaust because of her illiteracy.  The movie does nothing of the sort.  It is true that the movie doesn't take the morally "easy" way out of simply condemning Hanna's act. Certainly,   that would be the more superficially morally  satisfying thing to do -- to offer  (again) the simple, unambiguous, untroubled judgment that the Nazi's, and all who aided them,  were purely and simply evil barbarians.

Why would that be the  "easy"  way out, you ask?   Well,  my answer  goes back to a claim made a few years ago, on a show we did about evil,  by our guest, Peter Van Inwagen.  He argued, as I recall,  that the psychology of evil is incomprehensible to us, that true evil is  alien and "other."   I think something like that thought lies behind Dargis's reaction to this movie.  I say that because if you think that the Nazi's were purely and simply evil barbarians, there is nothing much  to be said or done about them except to note and condemn their barbarism. Certainly,  no "explaining" or "excusing"  is necessary.   If we are in a position to unambiguously condemn, then there's not much self-reflection called for in thinking about the Nazi's.   They were evil.  We are not.  They performed acts of unspeakable barbarism. We did not.   That was them.  This is us.   We are different. 

But I think the movie rejects this simple-minded picture and is  trying to make the point on behalf of Germans who came of age after the war  that such a proffered neat moral separation between those who lived through the war, and took part in the Nazi's atrocities and those who came of age only after the war, and therefore had no  part in those atrocities, is an illusion.   The movie makes that point in several ways.   First and foremost,  there is the somewhat opaque, but in many ways ordinary inner psyche of Hanna.  The remarkable thing about Hanna is that she is in almost every way unremarkable.  In particular,  she isn't Van Inwagen's alien other,  peculiarly capable of unspeakable acts that those her came after are incapable of.      No doubt,   Hanna is  a troubled and  wounded person, with things to hide.  But she's more than that too.   She is capable of joy and passion and a kind of love. 

You could,  I suppose,  look upon her as a sexual predator.     If Michael were a Michelle and Hanna a Hermann, we'd no doubt  see Hermann as a child molester.  Curiously,   I find that I am not quite prepared to say that Hanna  molests the young Michael -- who is, after all,   only 14, if I've got my math right -- when they begin their affair.  But it's very clear that the affair with her leaves a scar on his psyche. 

The fact that Hanna is in many ways an unremarkable person --  neither heroic, nor particularly virtuous,  but also not possessed with  an utterly alien and incomprehensible psyche of the sort that Van Inwagen suggested is the hallmark of true evil   -- is by my lights what gives the movie true moral force.  Hanna was put to a certain moral test.   She failed because she lacked whatever inner psychic resources it would have required to pass the moral test.  But I think that one of the deepest points made by the movie is that  many of who were fortunate enough not to be put the test differed from Hanna in no morally significant respect.  She and many in her generation were put to a moral test to which those in the succeeding generation were not subject.  

That doesn't mean that Hanna gets a free pass.  She is not excused. Her atrocities are not explained away -- despite what Dargis says.   I think the movie makes that point forcefully and clearly.     But at the same time, in recognizing that Hanna is just an ordinary person with an unremarkable psyche,  the movie  also raises a very deep puzzle about what exactly we are condemning when we condemn her.    Of course, we condemn her acts.  But we'd like to condemn more than her acts.   We'd like also to condemn the inner psyche that produced the acts.   That's why the judge tries to discern whether Hanna  "willingly"  joined the SS.   But if it turns out that Hanna's psyche is not so unlike our own, is not so alien and other,  what then?  How are we really to distinguish ourselves from Hanna?   

This  has to do with the problem of what  philosophers call moral luck.  Hanna was unlucky in her circumstances  -- or in the combination of her circumstances and her character.   Suppose that she had been born in Britain rather than in Germany.  In such circumstances,  the very traits that made her a willing SS guard, might have led her to willingly enlist in the British Red Cross.   And then we might have praised rather than blamed not just her acts but the inner character that led to those acts.    But the point is that it's the very same inner character in the two cases.  So on what basis do we condemn its expression through acts here, while praising its expressions through acts there?

I said earlier that the movie explores the space of possible answers to the moral questions that it raises.  I'm thinking of a couple of different things.   First, recall the scene near the end when Michael goes to New York to meet the jewish woman who wrote the book about the death march from Auschwitz.   She is stern and steadfast in her refusal to grant any absolution to Hanna.   And I do not think that the movie represents her as being somehow wrong in doing so.   Rather,  the movie takes note of and accepts that attitude as one entirely legitimate attitude among others that we might adopt.  Michael,  recall, makes no attempt to change her attitude toward Hanna.  Indeed, he seems rather  silenced in the face of such moral certainty.  Just as the court offers no answer to Hanna's biting question  "What would you have done,"  Michael has no response to the survivors refusal to offer any kind of absolution to Hanna.  

Though the movie takes note of the fact of felt moral certainty and does nothing to challenge it,  it also doesn't rest with moral certainty as the final and sole legitimate response.  Exhibit A for the movie's refusal to rest with moral certainty is the complexity of  Michael's own attitudes towards Hanna.  His welter of attitudes are as complex as could be.   I'm not sure that I can even fully describe the totality of his attitudes.    On the one hand, there is his  deeply passionate affair with her, that both opened up a certain realm of human experience to him and left him  scarred. The Hanna of his youth haunts his memory.    On the other hand, there is his subsequent encounter with her and his startling realization that she took part, willingly, it seems, in the atrocities of the past.  To the very end,  he wishes to be assured that she has "learned something from the past."  This bespeaks a kind of enduring condemnation.     But there is also more.  There is, of course,  Hanna's  refusal, driven by I am not quite sure what --  a kind of shame, I suppose --  to reveal that she is illiterate even when it might have saved her from years in prison and his silence in the face of that refusal.  He cannot even bring himself to see her to speak to her about what he knows and she knows.  And then there is the mercy he offers her years later,  through his subsequent act of recording books for her again.    Or is this a way of seeking absolution for himself?   You could see his failure to come to her aid as a kind of moral cowardice, driven by revulsion and shame, perhaps.  But if it is a kind of cowardice, it is the kind that disguises itself as "respect."    

So how, ultimately,  should we understand  the moral relationship between  Michael - who I suppose is some sort of stand in for the generation whose moral task it was to narrate the history of Nazi Germany as somehow both a chapter in its  own history  and a chapter from which it is determined to make  a decisive break  --  and Hanna -- who I suppose is a stand in,  not for the main movers and shakers of the Nazi era, but for the millions of ordinary Germans, inwardly indistinguishable from the average run of humanity, without whose cooperation the Nazi's could not have carried off their barbarism?   How are we to understand that moral relationship?  

The movie doesn't really tell us, I think,   because it doesn't really know.   It leaves us with no simple answers.  But I do think it leaves us with a profound question.   Again,  as a protective impulse, we may tell ourselves that  evil is other,  alien and distant.  But the reality is that it lives just around the corner in the souls of people little different from ourselves.   Only if we come to grips with that fact,  I think the movie is trying to say,  can we really come to grips with the past. 

Separation of Powers and the Charismatic Presidency

posted by Ken Taylor

I wrote this entry when our Separation of Powers episode originally aired. I'm moving it up to the top since that episode is about to air again. I welcome further discusssion. KT

Later this morning, our episode "Power out of Balance? Exploring the Separation of Powers" will air. This epsiode was recorded back in July [of 2006] on Capitol Hill in a tiny little room in the basement of the building. Though the audience was small, they were quite engaged and engaging. We were there at the invitation of Congresswoman Anna Eshoo. We are most grateful to Congresswoman Eshoo for being our sponsor and for participating in the program. Our main guest during the program was Kathleen Sullivan. Kathleen was a terrific guest. They say that if the Democrats get to make a Supreme Court appointment anytime soon, Kathleen is high on the list of potential nominees. I can see why. She is very smart, very articulate, and has really deep knowledge of constitutional law. It was a pleasure having her as our guest. I've invited her to guest blog on the topic of separation of powers. But since she is a very busy woman, who knows if she'll take up the invitation. Anyway, I hope you enjoy listening to the program.

In the remainder of this post, I'll ruminate, just a little bit, on what's become of the separation of powers in our time.

The founding fathers in their considerable wisdom took the separation of powers to be a "bulwark of liberty." Indeed, they took the concentration of power into a single agency to be the very definition of tyranny. Conversely, they apparently believed that not just the formal separation of powers among the branches of the federal government and between the federal and state governments, but also what might be called the subsantive seperation of political interests to which the formally separated branches are asnwerable, was the key to a government that was unlikely to ever devolve into tyranny. By formally dividing the powers of government among competing branches and among the several states and the federal government and by making the various branches and and levels of government answerable to society in different ways that reflect different and competing constellations of "parts, interests, and classes of citizens," Madison seemd to believe, the government would incapable of trampling the rights of the citizens. Moreover, no ad hoc constellation of citizens would be able to sieze the powers of government and deploy them against the fundamental civil liberties of the remainder of the citizenry.

It's a nice sounding story, but I think the founders vastly overestimated the degree to which the formal separation of powers, even when conjoined with a substantive separation of interests, might suffice, on its own, to guard against tyranny and to protect civil liberties. This isn't a startling new inisght, of course. Jefferson saw the limits of merely procedural safe-guards to liberty right away and rightly insisted that an enumerated Bill of Rights be added to the constitution.

The founders lacked prescience on two particular fronts that have come to define the American political scene and that jointly conspire to make the formal separation of powers far less of a bulwark against tyranny than they imagined. First, the founding fathers failed to anticipate what I'll call the charismatic nature of the Presidency. Second, they failed to anticipate the extent to which partisan loyalty would come to trump institutional loyalty within the legislature. Let's consider the second thing first. The founders seemed to believe that Congress would be extremely jealous of its perogatives and would strongly resist the encroachment of the executive upon its domain. To some extent that has been true over the course of our history but mostly, it seems, at least to my non-expert eye, that Congress mostly resists encroachment when different parties control the executive and the legislative branches. When a single party controls both the executive and the legislative, partisan loyalty seems almost always to trump institutional loyalty. The current Republican House and Senate have been almost suppine in their obedience to the will of the President.

Why should that be? The answer has, I think, to do with the charismatic nature of the presidency in a time of modern communications. I'm not talking about the personal charisma of the any particular president. Many occupants of that office, including the current occupant, seem to me to be seriously charisma challenged. Indeed, it's something of a mystery how such a charismatic office has managed to have so many charisma challenged occupants.

By calling the presidency -- the office, not the occupant -- charismatic, I'm thinking about the power of the president to set the national agenda, to command national attention. The president's formal powers aren't really all that great in comparison with Congress. But the charismatic reach of the presidency far outstrips the charismatic reach of Congess. It's not just that the president speaks with a single (if sometimes incoherent and conflicted voice), while the legislature is a cacophony of competing voices. It's also the focus of the national media on every word and gesture of the president compared to its fairly shallow and desultory focus on the Congress. And it's also the fact that we spend millions and millions on seemingly endless presidential campaigns that seem largely designed to manufacture of exploit competing personality cults rather than competing subsantive agendas for action.

If you're an obscure member of congress trying to rise to greater national prominence, it's pretty hard to compete with the charisma of the presidency merely in the name of safeguarding the perogatives of the legislature. After all, if you are a member of the president's party you probably want most of what the president wants. So why insists on the perogatives of the legislature?

On the other hand, if your a member of the opposition party -- whether in the minority or the majority -- you do have some rationale, often considerable rationale --- for resisting. But not really because you are jealous as such of the perogatives of your branch. It's rather because you have allegiance to the competing party. Still when we have divided government, we get at least the shadow of what the Founders were after, because then we have not just the formal separation of powers but also the substantive diversion of interests that is nicely aligned with the formal separation of powers.

Of course, I haven't touched on the subject of the Supreme Court. But Kathleen Sullivan has a great deal to say about the court and its role in maintaining a balance between the executive and the legislative branches. I won't try to summarize what she has to say here. Instead, I'll urge you to check out the show -- which is about to begin right now.

I'm going to tune in via KALW's website. You could do the same.