I’ve been noticing a topic I’ve dealt with repeatedly in other contexts but would like to address head on: the possibility of deliberately lying to oneself, of intentionally believing things that aren’t true. I spoke before of “noble lies” to others, but not to oneself.
The point seems to come up again and again, for there are many reasons why trying to believe false things might prove valuable. In cases where one’s children make one less happy, one is still a better parent if one falsely believes that children make one happy. Some psychologists suggest the possibility of depressive realism: the idea that depressed people actually view the world more accurately than others. In a comment I noted the happiness often radiated by evangelical Christians: should one perhaps try to become such a person even if their God doesn’t exist? Last time the point came up in speaking of prayer: there seem to be real benefits from prayer, but it might require belief in an entity that isn’t real.
Now in every one of these cases, the good thing about lying to oneself has something in common: it is a good result. If one believes false things, one will treat one’s children better, be happier, be more successful, be stronger, as a consequence of that false belief. And so the goodness of lying to oneself in these cases seems to rest primarily on the truth or falsity of consequentialism: the idea that whether actions are good or bad (and a belief is a kind of action in this case) depends entirely on their consequences.
Consequentialism has a real intuitive appeal. To do something for a reason other than its consequences – well, that seems literally pointless. And yet, in cases like these, it seems to land one in outright contradiction. It’s one thing to tell other people false things for the sake of their happiness or success. But oneself? It doesn’t even seem possible to believe something one believes to be false. For to believe something is just to believe it to be true.
What is possible, and indeed frequent, is to believe contradictions. People hold beliefs that contradict each other all the time. And yet, it is difficult for those beliefs to survive reflection. In speaking of contradiction previously, I noted Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance: something feels wrong about contradiction, makes us uncomfortable. (And we would seem to feel this cognitive dissonance for good reason, since even contradiction’s most sophisticated defenders, like Graham Priest, admit that “[i]f we have views that are inconsistent we are probably incorrect.”) Also, practically, contradiction can lead us to acting at cross-purposes with ourselves, foiling our own goals (spiritual or otherwise).
It would seem that a pure consequentialism requires us to believe false things. Peter Railton’s defence of consequentialism relies at least in part on a distinction between truth and justification, so that on consequentialist grounds one could be justified in believing things that are false. But if we believe false things, the false things we believe are very likely to contradict other true beliefs. And such contradictions get us in various kinds of trouble.
It seems to me, as a result, that a pure consequentialism may well be wrong. Certain kinds of action, especially believing, will have to be good even though they bring worse results than their absence. I guess this takes me back to an earlier post on the idea that pleasure is the only good: truth must be a good in itself. For that reason, as far as I can tell, we should try never to lie to ourselves.
Hi Amod,
Interesting thoughts….quite relevant too. I think that in religious contexts, there is a lot of what you call consequentialism arising from believing.
Yet, a framework of belief is ultimately self-sabotaging and indicates a naive interpretation of any authentic teaching.
The authentic teacher teaches centrally from one’s own realization experience. There is a difference between a teaching that asks you to believe in some external power outside of you and one that invites you to find the answer in your own experience of reality. In the first, you are giving away your own ability to discover truth. In the second, you are empowered to discover the truth, to recognize that the truth has always been within you yourself.
Believing in an external power is always tricky though…because you really have no way to ultimately verify its existence. It always remains the case that it is someone else’s experience, and not yours.
Further, if we impose anthropomorphic and moral qualities onto that external power, it becomes even more problematic. Then one continually questions why the world has evil in it instead of just all good? Why is there death and not immortal life? Finally, one never gets to see the “face of god”.
Holding beliefs in this way puts us in a perilous position. We are like the jury who has condemned a person to death when we really don’t have enough evidence. This is why so many rational thinking people cannot buy into religion…because there is the interpretation that it is asking you to buy into an unverifiable belief.
Those who have already bought into the belief framework, find it difficult too. The evidence never directly presents itself and doubts always surface about whether one is living ones life the way one should. In particuliar, one thinks about denying oneself pleasure that may be experienced were it not for the moralistic constraints of the religion.
Within such communities, consequentialism may play a strong role. There are community rewards for believing. Essentially, one becomes accepted into the community and one receives all the social perks that come with being accepted. There is a real barrier to disbelieving once one has entered the ranks. At the minimum one is ostracized while in some religions, the believers reserve the (extreme) right to kill someone who has fallen out of rank.
With respect to spiritual practice, one either lives with beliefs and doubts or one attempts to live with certainty. There is a kind of “intelligent belief” in religions like Buddhism where the living teacher is still a living reality. By this I mean that the teacher is certified to teach only after others already with realization experience recognize the realization within the teacher.
In such religions, there is a very long tradition and culture of observed phenomena associated with realization, phenomena which is far from mundane. These phenomena are not sensationalized and spoken about only within the context of inspiring students towards their own direct experience. So by enculturation into these phenomena, one practices towards realization with an intelligent kind of faith.
The religion of Buddhism inherently demands a kind of intelligent belief. Though one is already a Buddha, one cannot directly see it. If one already experiences oneself as a Buddha, then it’s a direct experience and no longer a belief, is it? So until we have the direct experience of being a Buddha, we have the experience that we are not. It is up to the Buddhist student to find the confidence in the Buddha’s assertion.
In fact, this is the crux of the problem. Not directly knowing one’s Buddha-nature is called “Poverty Mentality”. In this case, even believing is not enough; for believing still entails “not experiencing”. In fact, to go beyond belief requires an act of transcendence. One must abandon get to the root of belief systems altogether. Finding that they exist within the larger framework of linguistic and conceptual systems, one must uproot these.
It’s like the gardener who must get right to the root of the weed to uproot it entirely. To merely continue using concepts while denying beliefs is still insufficient; it is still leaving the root in place.
Within conceptual systems, we are always afraid of contradiction and always looking for consistency. However, the field of awareness which lies at the root of any and all conceptual experiences itself has the greatest freedom….within it’s all encompassing space is allowed to coexist the states of conceptual consistency as well as states of conceptual contradiction. While conceptual mind abhors contradiction like nature abhors a vacuum, the field of awareness allows all conceptual states, allows all moral states, allows anything that we experience.
Certainty entails exorcising of beliefs and conceptual frameworks. Finding one’s own enlightened nature requires letting go of even the concept of Buddhahood. At this point, spiritual practice becomes more difficult by a millionfold. One is no longer relying on other people’s words and ideas; one must rely solely on oneself.
Hi Gien, and welcome to the blog. The question is what a realization experience really is, and what counts as one. A prisoner of war could have what seems like a realization experience under brainwashing – they are convinced of the truth of the opposite side, and others who agree with it see that realization. I don’t think the idea of direct perception of knowledge gets you out of the need to verify truth and falsity. There’s a big difference between knowledge and mere certainty – one can be certain of false things. One can certainly perceive false things directly – we perceive that the Earth is flat.
THis very post is full of stuff that I want to make myself believe in!
I’ve never been too sold on the idea of cognitive dissonance. It seems to me like the kind of explanation an academic comes up with for: “No, really, being logically correct IS important! To everyone!” I think we all know countless people who believe in contradictory things, and avoid any dissonance by just not thinking very much about the implications of (some of their) beliefs. And if we’re not distinguishing between truth and justification, then we can even avoid dissonance just by not having figured out (“yet”, to be charitable) where our beliefs contradict.
I want to agree with your final phrase, but I don’t think these arguments are enough to take us there- there are too many spheres in which contradictions can be safely ignored.
Hmmm…. interesting. I probably need to go more deeply into the evidence for cognitive dissonance theory. In common-sense terms, it’s true that contradictions typically don’t bother people when they don’t think about them. The issue comes up when they do start thinking.
In which case, the question “What’s wrong with contradictions?” starts to get displaced onto “What’s wrong with not thinking?” And it seems like in most cases there’s an answer to that one: if we don’t think about what we’re doing, we run into more trouble when things change.
Ben notes, “I think we all know countless people who believe in contradictory things, and avoid any dissonance by just not thinking very much about the implications of (some of their) beliefs.” And there’s the rub– the problem is that the contradictions do get made more pressing by thinking about them, so that the only way to avoid this is to decline–sometimes actively refuse– to think.
As you may know, children tend to be consequentialists at a certain stage of development; a child who accidentally hits another is just as culpable in the eyes of his victim as the one who intentionally lashes out. Three- or four-year-olds tend to see a child who accidentally breaks two things as naughtier than one who breaks one thing on purpose. It’s only later we start to care about intentions. There’s a study coming out that seems to indicate that a strong burst of magnetism to a certain brain region can turn us into consequentialists again.
Needless to say, the fact that we might be a sort of consequentialist at age four does not constitute an argument for or against consequentialism per se. Nor does this address your point about false beliefs. And of course, a false belief can also have terrible consequences. But leaving those cases aside, I feel there’s a sort of paradox you are pointing to as regards happiness and false belief: If, for instance, depressive realism, or the health benefits of optimism, are real phenomena, then we are better off being less accurate. But to even arrive at this conclusion is a function of a quest for accuracy. By the time we have learned the value of inaccuracy, it’s too late. (I blogged a bit about this here.)
I consider the task of philosophy to be to protect the baby of fulfillment from being tossed out with the bathwater of illusion.
To cultivate the art of happiness in conjunction with the love of truth is not easy. It might even be the case that believing it possible is an act of faith. (“Even, perhaps, a false belief?”, the demon of nihilism whispers).
I think you’ve pretty much nailed it in the general case, Skholiast. As ever, the devil is in the details: how do we reconcile truth and fulfillment/happiness in each particular case? I suspect this is a sort of Aristotelian virtue, where a mean is required, and can only be learned through practice.
“If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise”. William Blake. That appears to be a recipe for resolute folly and a true proverb of Hell. It encourages commitment even when commitment may be to the wrong thing. Against that, if we set our compass by the truth though there may be iron mountains that cause massive deviation we will eventually get there however anfractuose our track. Of course it is not just a matter of orientation, practice comes into it because we require a means of checking our present position. The ‘who am I’ method of self-enquiry is a spiritual quadrant that scryes our authenticity. There are others. The important thing is to will one things as Kierkegaard puts it.
Is there a difference between “willing one thing” and “becoming wise by persisting in folly”? They seem to express roughly the same sentiment – that what’s required is singleness of purpose.
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