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Existentialism – Essay 2 Tom Barnes - a1077142

Sartre and Bad Faith.

Bad faith as Sartre describes it, is the peculiar ability that humans possess of

being able to lie to themselves, a phenomenon more commonly referred to now

as self-deception. The strongest sense in which this phenomenon occurs takes

the form of a subject believing that something is the case contrary to the bulk of

evidence available to that subject. According to Sartre the form of the deception

looks much the same as if one individual were to lie to another. Sartre’s biggest

question is how this might be possible when the person doing the deceiving is

the same person that is the deceived. Sartre believes that this is problematic in

nature for two reasons. Firstly it is simply the case that one should not be able to

believe in something that one already believes not to be true, and secondly, that

one must be intentionally working against what one knows to be true. The key

to Sartre’s position is that he thinks ‘All knowing is consciousness of knowing.’

(Sartre pp.53) Sartre believed this had to be the case because in the general form

of lying one must have the intention to deceive and it does not seem clear that

one could hold an intention without being conscious of that intention. It seems

to me however that much of the function of the human mind takes the form of

deception and that the kind of deception the human mind performs does not

demand the kind of intention, Sartre seems to think it does. If we can show that

“knowing” does not entail that one must also be conscious of knowing, we may

be able to explain self-deception without generating these frustrating paradoxes.

In the general form of a lie there must be a deceiver and also some one who is

deceived if the lie is to succeed. Sartre believed that self-deception must be of

the same form in that there is a separation between what a deceiver must be

aware of and what the deceived comes to believe as a result of listening to the

deceiver. Sartre believed that this same structure must somehow be able to exist

inside an individual in order for self-deception to be possible. Sartre refers to

this requirement of bad faith as a ‘duality’. There must be some kind of

separation of mind; a way to hide things one knows from ones self. In Being and

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Nothingness Sartre speaks of “The Other” as the part of consciousness that we

are aware of having. It is our perceptive experience of being a thinking thing.

This is the part of the mind we feel as if we have direct access to and in the case

of bad faith is the one being lied to. For the sake of simplicity I will refer to this

part of the mind as the ‘Ego’. This leaves the subconscious mind to do the work

of the deceiving which can be referred to in similar Freudian terms as the ‘Id’. It

seems Sartre’s frustration with the nature of bad faith stems from how these two

parts of them mind might be connected. “There must be an original intention

and a project of bad faith; this project implies a comprehension of bad faith as

such and a pre-reflective apprehension (of) consciousness as affecting itself with

bad faith. It follows first that the one to whom the lie is told and the one who

lies are one and the same person, which means I must know in my capacity as

deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the one being

deceived.” But what is Sartre really trying to say here? That the conscious mind

must be aware of all things unconscious? This would seem to be a contradiction

in terms and is perhaps one that has sprung from Sartre’s belief that all knowing

is consciousness of knowing. If we can show that there are many instances of

things that are known that one is not aware of we might be able to step around

this problem and treat the Id and the Ego in the same way that one might treat

one person lying to another person.

Whilst you read the first five words of this sentence I am willing to bet that you

are not aware of what you had for breakfast this morning. (Unless you happen

to currently be eating breakfast). I’m sure by now you have remembered it and

have become aware of what you had for breakfast, but before you recalled it,

would it be correct to say that you did not know what you had for breakfast?

This is perhaps a weak example of knowledge without awareness and does not

seem to entail any kind of deception but none the less it starts to highlight the

point that most of the time there is very little content in our active awareness.

We are at any time conscious of only a small fraction of the things that we

know. They are brought into consciousness when needed and become part of

what we are currently aware of but spend almost all of their time being

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knowledge that one is unaware of. What we really need to do in order to show

that knowing things and being conscious of things are not the same is an

example where some kind of deception or extreme cognitive dissonance is

present. There is a particular brain disorder that highlights a nature of the

working of the mind that I imagine must have seemed perhaps even more

peculiar to Sartre than bad faith. The condition is commonly known as blind-

sight and refers to a malfunctioning brain process in which a patients eyes may

work perfectly, and they are able to gather facts about the world visually, but

will insist absolutely that they are truly blind because they are simply not aware

of being able to see. David Eagleman explores this phenomenon in his book

Incognito. He gives a verbal account of a patient of his who suffers this

condition in only one eye whilst the other eye was unaffected.

When I asked her to close her eyes, she said “O.K.” and closed one eye, as in a

permanent wink.

“Are your eyes closed” I asked

“Yes” she said.

“Both eyes?”

“Yes.”

I held up three fingers “How many fingers am I holding up Mrs G?”

“Three” she said.

“And your eyes are closed?”

“Yes”

In a non-challenging way I said, “Then how did you know how many fingers I

was holding up?”

An interesting silence followed. If brain activity were audible, this is when we

would have heard different regions of her brain battling it out.” (Eagleman 2011

pp.136)

What this passage demonstrates is that knowledge can be almost perfectly

mechanical in nature and not does not necessarily require consciousness or

awareness. Eagleman’s patient Mrs G was absolutely convinced that she was

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not able to see and indeed it would seem to be the case that her ego could not

see, but visual information must have been getting to her subconscious mind so

that she was able to answer questions about things she could only know if she

could see. It is important to note that Eagleman points out that it is only when

Mrs G is questioned as to how she has pulled off such a clever trick that she

becomes confused and the deception of the situation becomes obvious or

challenging for the patient. It seems all that might be required for deception is

for one mental cog to be out of place. In this instance it seems to be the case

that deception is not a complicated beast that requires a secondary

consciousness with intention. Deception comes about by virtue of the fact that a

mental event that would normally be happening a cross reference between the

things one knows about what they are seeing and the fact that they can not see

in the first place is broken. This suggests that there are requirements needed in

order to avoid self-deception and in this case they are broken allowing the

deception.

In order to avoid mechanising the mind so easily, Sartre may hold that the

deception appears to arrive from a desire and this is problematic for the

mechanical explanation of deception.

The Liar intends to deceive and he does not seek to hide this intention from himself nor disguise the translucency of consciousness; on the contrary he has recourse to it when there is a question of deciding secondary behaviour. It explicitly exercises regulatory control over all attitudes. As for his flaunted intention of telling the truth (“I’d never want to deceive you! This is true! I swear it!) – all of this of course is the object of an inner negation, but also it is not recognised by the liar as his intention. It is played, imitated, it is the intention of the character, which he plays in the eyes of his questioner, but this character, precisely because he does not exist, is a transcendent. Thus the lie does not put into the play the inner structure of present consciousness; all the negations, which constitute it bear in the objects which by this fact are removed from consciousness. (Sartre pp.48)

But might there be another explanation as to why instances of self-deception

might have come about by way of evolution? In many instances of self-

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deception the result seems to be geared towards an overall positive result for the

subject. This may take the form off unreasonable optimism. Believing that one is

better at a task than one actually is may provide a motivation for a subject to

continue to improve on that task. Take the example of a budding young

basketball star playing in an armature league that desperately wants to be

picked for a major league. Lets say it is the case that his statistic reports show

that he was not quite of a standard that was likely to make the cut and have a

shot at progressing to the majors. The objective reality of this fact might be

interpreted as a reason to give up. There’s no hope in making it, so why bother

trying? But if the player has an inflated sense of his own abilities he might use

this deception as motivation to stay in the game. The larger the deception, the

more motivating power the deception has, that is to say the deception might

motivate a player to improve so much as to change the results of his stat reports

so that he is considered for the major league. This is the survival of the fittest

argument to a tea. It seems reasonable that the laws of evolution should be

taken heavily into consideration when trying to make investigations as to how

the mind works because the mind is simply and undeniably a product of

evolution.

This evolutionary theory of self-deception can seem peculiar, as society’s trends

have evolved much faster than our biological mind can keep up with. This is

why it seems peculiar that some one might try to convince themselves they are

not sick when in fact there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that they are. It

is only recently that the best course of action upon discovering oneself is injured

or sick is to rest and call a doctor immediately! The same might be said of the

common occurrence of anxiety connected with instances of financial problems.

Anxiety triggers many physical instances associated with protecting oneself.

Adrenalin levels spike, heart rate increases, neither of which are particularly

useful things to have going on when trying to remain calm and collected whilst

planning your road to financial recovery. They are good things to have happen

to you if you are trying to run away from tigers that might consider you dinner.

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This is an instance where a subject might know they are not under immediate

physical threat but might very well behave as if they are!

Sartre’s mistake is perhaps to insist that the human mind is a machine based on

logic. In Sartre’s mind, beliefs must only make sense if there is an overwhelming

amount of evidence to support in the first place. This is what I think he must

mean by All knowing is consciousness of knowing. The “Id” might not

necessarily be the duplicate complete consciousness setting out to deceive with

intent. But a much lower level of consciousness that in a much more

mechanistic sense knocks out just the right cog. One is all that is necessary as

we can see from the example of Mrs G’s blind-sight. Once cog is gone and

deception is set in play mechanistically our subject may behave as if he really

believes this is the case. The lie is absolutely real. Its just that its set in motion at

such a low level of consciousness that once its been set going everything

downstream figures itself out for free with no reference to the “id”. The ego has

been told what the situation is and is just behaving accordingly until some very

hard evidence that points out his severe cognitive dissonance becomes apparent

to him. If we deny Sartre that there is no real plausible way that All knowing is

consciousness of knowing, it is easy to find simpler explanations for the purely

mechanical explanation of bad faith and avoid the need for complex

paradoxical explanations. However unattractive the mechanical picture of the

human mind might not be for aesthetic reasons it seems possible to paint a

complete picture of self-deception that avoids the need to engage with the

frustration of the paradoxes in Sartre’s account of bad-faith.

REFRENCES

D.Z. Phillips 1981 Bad Faith and Sartre’s Waiter Philosophy, Vol.56, No.215

pp.23-31 Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal Institute of philosophy.

J.P Sartre.1956 Being and Nothingness, English translation, Hazel E. Barnes.

D.M. Eagleman 2011, Incognito. Pantheon Books New York.

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J. Webber 2012, Bad Faith and the Unconscious The International

Encyclopaedia of Ethics, ed. Hugh LaFolette, John Deigh, and Sarah Stroud.

(Wiley Blackwell)