Mele Self-Deception Unmasked
A woman told me that she knew that she had to believe in God. Apparently when she didn't
believe in God, she became depressed. This gave her insight as to how her mind worked and
convinced her that it was 'best' to believe in God. So, her reasoning went, "I believe in God."
The point is that one can believe one thing intellectually and another thing 'because of
emotional needs'.
The human mind consists of many modules which contribute to logic, reason, intuition,
imagination and various emotions. Some of these human modules are similar to parts of
reptile brains, other modules are more evolved and the neo-cortex in humans is the most
advanced of any animal.
Certainly a human may believe in something on an emotional level while disbelieving in the
same thing on an intellectual level. One could refer to such inconsistencies as self-
deception, but Mele apparently prefers to deceive himself and deny that the human brain is
incapable of self-deception or of two opposing positions at the same time.
His method of trying to convincing us of his theory is to focus on the logical part of our brain.
Since we are logical, we cannot believe in both proposition p and not p. My first instinct is to
believe that Mele is like a salesman trying to sell his 'product' and as such is willing to bias
the arguments toward his product by getting us to focus only on the logical parts of the brain.
Simultaneously another part of my brain believes that he is not only trying to deceive the
reader but that he has also thoroughly deceived himself. I do not have one consistent
conclusion about what Mele is trying to do or why. As a result, I believe multiple things
simultaneously and to different degrees. Not all of my feelings and theories are consistent.
This indicates that I have a normal mind.
Perhaps his method of attempting to deceive us simply evolved as he attempted to argue his
point of view with different people. People do sometimes become obsessed with ideas and try
to defend them. Perhaps he is trying to prove that he is smarter than all of the other
professors. After all, 90% of professors think that they are above average. In any case, his
resultant argument attempts to fool us by focusing only on the logical and conscious parts of
our minds.
In actuality, Mele is defending a lost cause. Humans believe contradictory things all of the
time. The very foundation of society is that people have 'free will'. If we, as ethical beings do
not believe in free will, then how are we to govern our society? A criminal may be punished
only if he has the ability to choose and he chooses to do the wrong thing.
Picture a college student taking a course in ethics. Certainly such a student would answer
any question from the teacher with an ethical frame of mind. As such, the student would
declare honestly that she believed in free will.
If the same student we were also taking a course in scientific or critical thinking and the
teacher asked her to explain how we can logically believe that a machine created from a DNA
genetic blueprint to specific parents and a specific environment with various chaotic inputs
can have any 'free will' at all. The same student could be in a scientific frame of mind and
honestly answer that the concept of free will makes no logical sense. Where is this will
located? It would have to be a little body of 'will' that is located somewhere in the human body
and is independent of human genes, past experience, neurotransmitters, psychology, etc.
This makes absolutely no sense scientifically. From a scientific point of view, 'free will' is
simply an illusion or self-deception which must be accepted ethically in order for society to
function smoothly.
All you need to prove Mele wrong is one example and the self-deception that we have free will
is just on such example.
Kindle location 861 the author states:
So, Alfred Mele, do you believe in free will or not? Since you state that you do, then where is
your independent 'free will' located? You don't have the backing of logical scientific critical
thinking.
The only way a normal intelligent human can view the world is ethically to believe in free will
and simultaneously scientifically to believe that free will is impossible. This is not the only
self-deception humans engage in. I will start dieting tomorrow, pass me the chocolate cake.
For a longer discussion of the subject, see Steven Pinker's book, How the Mind Works, pp. 53-
56.
Kindle highlight at location 792 in How the Mind Works
The premise of Mele's book is simply wrong. Our minds are not wholly logical and we can
believe proposition p logically and the proposition not p emotionally.
Donald Paul Martin
Herbert Fingarette, Self-Deception, opening lines:
Next
A woman told me that she knew that she had to believe in God. Apparently when she didn't
believe in God, she became depressed. This gave her insight as to how her mind worked and
convinced her that it was 'best' to believe in God. So, her reasoning went, "I believe in God."
The point is that one can believe one thing intellectually and another thing 'because of
emotional needs'.
The human mind consists of many modules which contribute to logic, reason, intuition,
imagination and various emotions. Some of these human modules are similar to parts of
reptile brains, other modules are more evolved and the neo-cortex in humans is the most
advanced of any animal.
Certainly a human may believe in something on an emotional level while disbelieving in the
same thing on an intellectual level. One could refer to such inconsistencies as self-
deception, but Mele apparently prefers to deceive himself and deny that the human brain is
incapable of self-deception or of two opposing positions at the same time.
His method of trying to convincing us of his theory is to focus on the logical part of our brain.
Since we are logical, we cannot believe in both proposition p and not p. My first instinct is to
believe that Mele is like a salesman trying to sell his 'product' and as such is willing to bias
the arguments toward his product by getting us to focus only on the logical parts of the brain.
Simultaneously another part of my brain believes that he is not only trying to deceive the
reader but that he has also thoroughly deceived himself. I do not have one consistent
conclusion about what Mele is trying to do or why. As a result, I believe multiple things
simultaneously and to different degrees. Not all of my feelings and theories are consistent.
This indicates that I have a normal mind.
Perhaps his method of attempting to deceive us simply evolved as he attempted to argue his
point of view with different people. People do sometimes become obsessed with ideas and try
to defend them. Perhaps he is trying to prove that he is smarter than all of the other
professors. After all, 90% of professors think that they are above average. In any case, his
resultant argument attempts to fool us by focusing only on the logical and conscious parts of
our minds.
In actuality, Mele is defending a lost cause. Humans believe contradictory things all of the
time. The very foundation of society is that people have 'free will'. If we, as ethical beings do
not believe in free will, then how are we to govern our society? A criminal may be punished
only if he has the ability to choose and he chooses to do the wrong thing.
Picture a college student taking a course in ethics. Certainly such a student would answer
any question from the teacher with an ethical frame of mind. As such, the student would
declare honestly that she believed in free will.
If the same student we were also taking a course in scientific or critical thinking and the
teacher asked her to explain how we can logically believe that a machine created from a DNA
genetic blueprint to specific parents and a specific environment with various chaotic inputs
can have any 'free will' at all. The same student could be in a scientific frame of mind and
honestly answer that the concept of free will makes no logical sense. Where is this will
located? It would have to be a little body of 'will' that is located somewhere in the human body
and is independent of human genes, past experience, neurotransmitters, psychology, etc.
This makes absolutely no sense scientifically. From a scientific point of view, 'free will' is
simply an illusion or self-deception which must be accepted ethically in order for society to
function smoothly.
All you need to prove Mele wrong is one example and the self-deception that we have free will
is just on such example.
Kindle location 861 the author states:
- The thrust of some of the responses to my challenge is that certain empirical or theoretical results provide direct
or indirect support for the idea that mental operations are layered, partitioned, or segmented in a way that favors
the possibility or probability of someone's believing that p while also believing that ~p. I myself would like to see
convincing evidence that this dual-belief condition is satisfied in some cases of self-deception. Such evidence
would settle one significant question about self-deception, and it might even provide indirect support for my own
belief that if there is self-deception of the dual-belief variety, it is remote from garden-variety instances. As I argue,
however, the alleged evidence I have seen is unconvincing.
So, Alfred Mele, do you believe in free will or not? Since you state that you do, then where is
your independent 'free will' located? You don't have the backing of logical scientific critical
thinking.
The only way a normal intelligent human can view the world is ethically to believe in free will
and simultaneously scientifically to believe that free will is impossible. This is not the only
self-deception humans engage in. I will start dieting tomorrow, pass me the chocolate cake.
For a longer discussion of the subject, see Steven Pinker's book, How the Mind Works, pp. 53-
56.
Kindle highlight at location 792 in How the Mind Works
- As science advances and explanations of behavior become less fanciful, the Specter of Creeping Exculpation, as
Dennett calls it, will loom larger. Without a clearer moral philosophy, any cause of behavior could be taken to
undermine free will and hence moral responsibility. Science is guaranteed to appear to eat away at the will,
regardless of what it finds, because the scientific mode of explanation cannot accommodate the mysterious
notion of uncaused causation that underlies the will. If scientists wanted to show that people had free will, what
would they look for? Some random neural event that the rest of the brain amplifies into a signal triggering
behavior? But a random event does not fit the concept of free will any more than a lawful one does, and could not
serve as the long-sought locus of moral responsibility. We would not find someone guilty if his finger pulled the
trigger when it was mechanically connected to a roulette wheel; why should it be any different if the roulette wheel
is inside his skull? The same problem arises for another unpredictable cause that has been suggested as the
source of free will, chaos theory, in which, according to the cliché, a butterfly's flutter can set off a cascade of
events culminating in a hurricane. A fluttering in the brain that causes a hurricane of behavior, if it were ever found,
would still be a cause of behavior and would not fit the concept of uncaused free will that underlies moral
responsibility.
The premise of Mele's book is simply wrong. Our minds are not wholly logical and we can
believe proposition p logically and the proposition not p emotionally.
Donald Paul Martin
Herbert Fingarette, Self-Deception, opening lines:
- Were a portrait of man to be drawn, one in which there would be highlighted whatever is most
human, be it noble or ignoble, we should surely place well in the foreground man's enormous
capacity for self-deception. The task of representing this most intimate, secret gesture would
not be much easier were we to turn to what the philosophers have said. Philosophical attempts
to elucidate the concept of self-deception have ended in paradox--or in loss from sight of the
elusive phenomenon itself. Yet whatever is obscure about self-deception infects our
understanding of what it is to act responsibily. Whether in morally assessing ourselves or
others, whether in the court of law or everyday life, we are beset by confusion when once we
grant that the person in question is in self-deception. For as deceiver, one is insincere, guilty;
whereas genuinely deceived, one is the innocent victim. What, then are we to make of the self-
deceiver, the one who is both doer and the sufferer?
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