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Show Chapter VIII. First-Person Anomaly 328 2. Affective and Conative Anomaly So far I have discussed the pseudorational response to theoretically anomalous beliefs about oneself relative to a self-aggrandizing but internally coherent self-conception. Belief is the primary case because, as we have seen in Volume I, Chapter II as well as in Chapters II - VI of this volume, the Kantian conception of the self I am defending in this project claims that all aspects of an agent's perspective are mediated by the attempt to preserve the rational intelligibility of the concepts - and so the judgments, and so the beliefs - constitutive of it. But I tried to show in Chapter II that beliefs are complex intentional attitudes composed of subsentential constituent concepts; and, in Chapter VII and Section 1 above, that the horizontal and vertical consistency of these concepts can be violated before propositional beliefs or judgments are ever formed. So anomalous beliefs are only one type of conceptual anomaly that may conflict with an agent's self-aggrandizing selfconception and thereby call forth the self-deceptive mechanisms of pseudorationality. Emotions (including desires) and actions also must be represented conceptually in order to achieve rational intelligibility. So conceptually anomalous emotions and actions may have the same disruptive effect. Self-preservation requires the internal coherence and intelligibility of all of our experience, whether cognitive, affective or conative. 2.1. Affective Anomaly We saw in Chapter VII that the cognitive principle of understanding external events causally is horizontally consistent with that of understanding interior events causally, by seeking out their origins in our upbringing, social environment, and previous experiences. We saw also that it is vertically consistent relative to the more general principle that subsumes both external and interior causal inquiry, i.e. that we understand all the phenomena of experience by seeking out their causal connections. But now consider how a theoretically anomalous interior event such as an unacceptable emotion might violate that part of our self-aggrandizing self-conception that describes our emotional character and so lead similarly to self-deception. It is a truism that we are socially and biologically disposed to delight in the esteem or admiration of a person we love; and similarly disposed to feel self-confidence and optimism upon receiving praise from some superior whose authority we respect. The more general, motivationally effective principle of which both of these are vertically consistent instances hypothesizes a positive, joyful response to obtaining approval from someone whose regard is valuable to us. We take this principle for granted in our self-conceptions, despite the reality that we do not always respond emotionally in the way we recognize as appropriate. Suppose a highly valued personage in one's life shares too many extrinsic traits in common with other individuals one has valued highly in the past © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
