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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 319 ways in which the symmetry requirement may be violated and the agent's interior integrity consequently destroyed. Section 5 adopts the perspective of the anomalous self that is the object of these pseudorational operations, and Section 6 concludes that rational integrity is not an in-theory impossibility in the non-ideal case. Finally, Section 7 applies this conclusion, building on the apparatus developed in Chapters II and III, to show how our disposition to preserve rational integrity both imposes constraints on rational final ends and so terminates the infinite regress of self-evaluation discussed in Volume I, Chapter VII that is generated by Frankfurt's Humean conception of the self. 1. Self-Deception A personal investment in our self-conception is a personal investment in its horizontal and vertical consistency over time. This investment requires that, at any given moment, we conceive the experienced things and properties our self-conception subsumes in such a way as to satisfy the requirements of theoretical reason, whether they do so in fact or not. This, in turn, strongly disinclines us to detect logical inconsistencies in our theory-laden conceptions of our experience. In particular, this investment renders us unable to conceive ourselves at a particular moment as simultaneously desiring contradictory objects, nor as simultaneously believing contradictory propositions, even if in fact we do. If this is true, it means that for dogmatists with a personal investment in their self-conceptions, self-deception is just as inevitable as selfconsciousness. Below I explain the sense in which self-deception is pseudorationality about first-person theoretical anomaly. For in situations in which we may simultaneously hold such contradictory beliefs or desires, it is virtually impossible for us to recognize this. Self-deception is a particularly difficult and central problem for metaethics because, as Keynes showed us in Chapter VII.8, no matter how fully developed or compelling our substantive moral theory may be, it is useless to us if we are psychologically incapable of acknowledging that we have violated it. "A conscience," Alice Hamilton observed, "may be a terrible thing in a man who has no humility, who can never say, 'I might be mistaken.'" Kant also saw this quite clearly. He saw that the really pressing motivational problem for actual moral agents - i.e. for motivationally ineffective intellects - is not weakness of will, but rather self-deception.1 Kant realistically assumes weakness of will to be a given - just as I do See the footnote to 1C, A 551; and the further elaborated claim at G, Ak. 407-408. Also see Kant's description of a brand of self-deception at G, Ak. 424-5, and compare it with his characterization of man's natural propensity to evil in R, Ak. 32-34. For further remarks on the inevitability of self-deception and the inscrutability of our own motives, see R, Ak. 20, 38-39, 50, 62-63, 75-76, 83, 93, and 98-99. I am indebted to Henry Allison for pointing out to me the importance of Kant's preoccupation with self-deception. 1 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
