"Bad Faith," as it is used in the writings of Sartre, is a concept that is one of the harder ones in ethics to get one's mind around (as far as I have encountered, at least). At the most fundamental level, it appears that lying to oneself should be impossible. After all, when there is a lie there must be a deceiver and a deceived, and the two are things that are mutually exclusive. People like to think about counterexamples but ultimately almost all of these examples boil down to their premise's being too vague. Sure there are plenty of cases where someone, despite knowing the truth, tells themselves something else for one reason or another, but no matter how complicated the situation may be, what matters is that in an individual's deepest level, they either believe what they are telling themselves it true, and are thus not a deceiver, or else do not believe what they are trying to convince themselves to be true is actually true, and so ultimately aren't deceived. Sure, enough telling oneself something may eventually make you believe it, but the moment that transition is made so do change the other factors and no "lie" can ever really be present.
This is something that has been discussed in class a relatively large amount, and every time the discussion goes in the direction of example after example in attempt to prove that it is possible to lie to oneself, but personally I find this base argument to be irrefutable. Things may seems opposite on the surface, but I cannot imagine a way that deeper down a supposed "lie to oneself" does not fall into one of these two possibilities and become not a lie at all. Even in the case of Sartre's examples intended to demonstrate Bad Faith there is no actual lie to oneself, just people telling themselves things that they know is not true. When the waiter thinks "I have to do this," he certainly does not believe this to actually be the case. He is aware there are other options, it's just that to him none of the other options are even worth considering. Or, assuming the unlikely case that he actually believes there is "no other option," then he isn't deceiving himself because he himself doesn't know any better (the same as Professor Johnson's "it is sunny in x place" example). Similar logic can be applied to Sartre's other examples or any example in general.
I'll go out on a limb a bit and say that similar situations all throughout philosophy. Because philosophy tries to answer the questions that other fields cannot, it is often rather 'wishy-washy,' for lack of a better term, about addressing hard facts of situations. I'm not trying to say that philosophers are just refusing to look at facts that would prove or disprove lines of philosophical thought, but rather that so many philosophical debates revolve around a particular point that we don't know and can't scientifically prove one way or the other, and at least to me once I can identify what that unknown is I can't help but find the elaborate theories based off of an assumption that cannot be proven to be kind of... aside from the point. Perhaps this is just my more math-based way of thinking preventing me from viewing philosophy in the proper light, but following if/then lines of logic without any proof that the 'if' is true to begin with leads to problems. But I digress, for the base of this argument is that it is impossible to prove these questions one way or the other, so there isn't really an alternative anyways.
Philosophy!
Well I have to disagree that you can't truly lie to yourself and I'll jump straight to the example that Sartre uses. In the case of the waiter in the cafe I would think that is a situation where one lies to themselves. This isn't an explicit lie like when one person lies to another, but it might be considered a lie on the subconscious level. Your first objection is that the waiter says that "I have to do this" but knows that there are other options he/she has. I don't think this is an example of bad faith because this is not the example that Sartre gives. From my understanding the waiter does not realize (or acknowledge) that he/she can do other things as a waiter (such as be rude) or can quit and do something else. Your second objection I think stays true to Sartre's example but you say that the waiter's belief that they have no other option is just ignorance, but this is not true. The waiter is demonstrating bad faith because they basically say to themselves "To be a waiter I have to be a waiter in this particular way". As we discussed this isn't true because they can be a bad waiter or can choose not to be a waiter at all (or kill themselves). I do think that your example was more aimed at the waiter needing to be a waiter to provide for themselves, but even in the case of a person thinking "I have to be a waiter" they are still lying to themselves because they can do all of the things I mentioned earlier.
ReplyDeleteAlso the second section you wrote about philosophy is interesting. To me philosophy contains a lot of abstract thought because it sometimes feels like philosophers pull something from nothing, but I suppose that is partially what Dr. J meant when she said that Philosophy is the study that creates concepts. Now by "facts" do you also include the realm of scientific facts, because it turns out that science itself works a little backwards in establishing these facts. Look at gravity, scientists didn't say "If there is gravity then things will fall to the ground"; they instead said "Because things fall to the ground there must be a thing called gravity". (I could be wrong, but this seems to show a "then/if" relationship). Lastly I would like to say that the facts that science advocates now may later be proven false, and here is a little funny clip about how science is a liar sometimes.
http://vimeo.com/69970735
Two different topics call for two different responses.
ReplyDeleteResponse to the First Topic
In my understanding, Sartre completely agrees with you. He even says as much. I will quote you the passage on page 243 of our text:
“We shall willing grant that bad faith is a lie to oneself, on condition that we distinguish the lie . to oneself from lying in general.”
Sartre does not mean that Bad Faith is a lie in the traditional sense. His examples are meant to distinguish Bad Faith from traditional lies. He even explains the distinction between the “deceiver” and the “deceived” and how this separates Bad Faith from falsehood (I take the intended meaning of falsehood here to be “a traditional lie”) on page 245. I will quote you this passage as well:
“Bad faith then has in appearance the structure of falsehood. Only what changes
everything is the fact that in bad faith it is from myself that I am hiding the truth.
Thus the duality of the deceiver and the deceived does not exist here. Bad Faith on the
contrary implies in essence the unity of a single consciousness.”
So, Sartre makes exactly your point. He does not think that one can lie to one’s self, but neither does he think that Bad Faith is a lie in the traditional sense.
Response to the Second Topic
I know that you are not attacking philosophy with an overarching intent to expose it as a farce, but your view regarding your juxtaposition of philosophy and science is—unless I misunderstand you—misguided in two respects. So I caution you against holding these beliefs, and encourage you to question the validity of our sciences.
First, to imply that science and math is separate from philosophy is simply incorrect. I believe that you intend to suggest this. However, I would even go so far in the opposite direction as to say that without philosophy there never would have been science. I will give you one concrete example of why they are not separate. The scientific method, though not truly attributable to any one person alone, was pioneered by Rene Descartes whose philosophical works—Discourse on the Method and Meditations on First Philosophy—explore the best method to ensure certainty. In fact, Descartes himself made major contributions to both Math and Philosophy, and most likely would not have been able to do so without having the knowledge of both. There are more examples of this relationship between science and philosophy if you desire to search for them. Additionally, discussion of what levels of certainty we get from science is still a subject of debate, even among scientists.
Secondly, science and math may appear more certain to you than philosophy, but all three of these fields have to start somewhere with concepts or axioms that have to be taken as true (as opposed to being proven to be true), and each has their own faults. I do not have any good examples of math axioms off the top of my head. Besides that, however, Math and Physics are things we have made up to describe the world around us and they are not full proof. Many of the laws of Physics break down in extreme physical situations, and we struggle to reconcile these embarrassing moments with mathematical tricks. Unfortunately, sometimes we cannot.
Justin and Pierce have sufficiently addressed the first topic, so I will only focus on the second one about the point of philosophy.
ReplyDeleteYou might think philosophy is “wishy-washy” because every position in philosophy has counter positions. It seems that it never makes progress: it has been trying to answer the same questions since the beginner of philosophy. At least in science we seem to move forward and constantly make everyone who believe an old theory look like “bitches” (used in the way as suggested in Justin’s video). Am I right that this is why you think philosophy may not be as worthwhile as science?
If that’s what you think, then you are right to say that philosophy is “wishy-washy”. However I do disagree with you and say that philosophy is in fact worthwhile. Philosophy does come up with theories from assumptions, which may be “aside form the point” of science, but it has a point nonetheless. Since we are in an Ethics class, we already have seen some questions that are “aside from the point” of science: how do one live a good life? What are the justifications for the norms that govern our lives? Scientific discoveries in certain fields (such as neuroscience, sociology, and psychology) could aid in forming the theories that attempt to answer these questions, but we still have to remember that philosophical inquiries are the ones that came up with the questions and determined the importance of these questions in the first place. In the end, philosophy is what allows us to tie all the proven data from science together to make sense of our lives.
Pierce is right to say that philosophy gave birth to science. If not giving birth, at least it was the midwife of science. If you take a scientific question, such as “why does A molecule attach to B molecule” and ask “why are we asking that question?” You might answer: “because we asked why A and B molecules are important to lives”. If you keep doing this, you will finally come to philosophical questions such as “what is life”. Philosophical questions led humans to ask more and more questions. As Pierce has said, Descartes has been the one we say invented the scientific method, which is a method to answer questions. Philosophy has a method to answer questions as well, however more importantly, it raises questions. For example, it is still in question whether science is improving the world or destroying the world. Scientists who are simply trying to understand how A and B molecules attach to each other do not spend time to answer that question because they assume that science is improving the world. If we don’t have someone (possibly a philosopher) there to regulate science to make sure it makes the world better than worse, how do we even make “progress” with science?
Philosophy is the oldest subject to be taught in educational institutions. To extrapolate from Justin and Pierce’s point, science could appear “wishy-washy” too. It proves theories but it does not make them true. Linked is a vsauce video that addresses the said point. We delve with reality through science like a cat try to understand the passages produced by a typewriter. In order to start trying to understand what’s said in those passages, the cat needs philosophy.
http://www.quarkmagazine.com/vsauce-and-
idea-channel-challenge-the-very-notion-o
f-truth/