The Doors of Deception

-home

background info

- being eccentric

- faith

- gnormality

- insanity

- causes of death

- conversations

- wrath of God

- why G.O.D

- dreary

An interesting thing about deception is that those deceived don’t know it.

The deception problem is - when we are deceived we don’t know that we are deceived. Instead, we think we really know the truth.

Deception is a reality and therefore a fascinating paradox.
 

de·ceiv'a·ble adj.
de·ceiv'er n.
de·ceiv'ing·ly adv.
 

Synonyms of Deception: deceive, betray, mislead, beguile, delude, dupe, hoodwink, bamboozle, double-cross.

These verbs mean to lead another into error, danger, or a disadvantageous position by underhand means.

• Deceive involves the deliberate misrepresentation of the truth: “We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know, because they have never deceived us” (Samuel Johnson).

• Betray implies treachery: “When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself” (Isaac Bashevis Singer).

• Mislead means to lead in the wrong direction or into error of thought or action: “My manhood, long misled by wandering fires,/Followed false lights” (John Dryden).

• Beguile suggests deceiving by means of charm or allure: They beguiled unwary investors with tales of overnight fortunes.

• Delude is to mislead the mind or judgment. The government deluded the public about the dangers of low-level radiation.

• Dupe implies playing upon another's susceptibilities or naiveté: The shoppers were duped by false advertising. Hoodwink refers to deluding by trickery: It is difficult to hoodwink a smart lawyer.

• Bamboozle means to delude by the use of such tactics as hoaxing or artful persuasion: “Perhaps if I wanted to be understood or to understand I would bamboozle myself into belief, but I am a reporter” (Graham Greene).

• Double-cross implies the betrayal of a confidence or the willful breaking of a pledge: The thief double-crossed his accomplice.
   

Quotes on Deception

Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves
- Elias Canetti

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
- Samuel Johnson

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
- Goethe

Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.
- Goethe

Oh, the tangled webs we weave When we practice to deceive.
- Sir Walter Scott

The woman whose behavior indicates that she will make a scene if she is told the truth, asks to be deceived
- Elizabeth Jenkins

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
- Author: Ludwig Wittgenstein

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
- Author: William Shakespeare

Clouds that thunder do not always rain.
- Author: Armenian Proverb

It is twice the pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
- Author: Jean De La Fontaine

The people of the world having once been deceived, suspect deceit in truth itself.
- Author: Hitoadesa

You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
-Abraham Lincoln

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.
- Samuel Johnson

While all deception requires secrecy, all secrecy is not meant to deceive.
- Sissela Bok

Art is the most beautiful deception of all. And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory.
- Claude Debussy

People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?
-Claude Debussy

Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn't -it's human.
- Desiderius Erasmus

Politicians are masters of the art of deception.
- Martin L. Gross

Certainly, it seems true enough that there's a good deal of irony in the world... I mean, if you live in a world full of politicians and advertising, there's obviously a lot of deception.
- Kenneth Koch

Men still have to be governed by deception.
- George C. Lichtenberg

All war is deception.
- Sun Tzu

The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
- Oscar Wilde

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious.
- Aristotle

Perhaps the most obvious political effect of controlled news is the advantage it gives powerful people in getting their issues on the political agenda and defining those issues in ways likely to influence their resolution.
- W. Lance Bennett

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.
- Georges Bernanos

Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humiliation and misery.
- Georges Bernanos

An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods.
- Ambrose Bierce

Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.
- Ambrose Bierce

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.
- Giordano Bruno

No one has ever succeeded in keeping nations at war except by lies.
- Salvador de Madariaga

A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying to others and to yourself.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The reality is, if we tell the truth, we only have to tell the truth once. If you lie, you have to keep lying forever.
- Rabbi Wayne Dosick

The modern susceptibility to conformity and obedience to authority indicates that the truth endorsed by authority is likely to be accepted as such by a majority of the people.
- David Edwards

Propaganda is persuading people to make up their minds while withholding some of the facts from them. Harold Evans
That's not a lie, it's a terminological inexactitude.
- Alexander Haig

The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies, but would be ashamed to tell big lies.
- Adolf Hitler

Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.
- Eric Hoffer

Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion -- and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion ... while Truth again reverts to a new minority.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Many people today don't want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing, They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety.
- Louis Kronenberger

Not to be, but to seem, virtuous -- it is a formula whose utility we all discovered in the nursery.
- C. S. Lewis

For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

Since the general civilization mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
- James Madison

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -­ kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervour -­ with the cry of grave national emergency. Always, there has been some terrible evil at home, or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.
- General Douglas MacArthur

People may or may not say what they mean...but they always say something designed to get what they want.
- David Mamet
Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but, disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort.
- Marshall McLuhan

To die for an idea: it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true.
- H. L. Mencken

Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.
- Henry Miller

For when they shall say, 'Peace and Safety', then sudden destruction comes upon them, as travail upon a women with child; and they shall not escape.
- St. Paul

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. Ronald Reagan

If you cannot convince them, confuse them
- Harry S. Truman

Hypocrisy is anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.
- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
- Henry David Thoreau

One death is a tragedy, but a million deaths are a statistic.
- Josef Stalin

Can we truly expect those who aim to exploit us to be trusted to educate us?
- Eric Schaub

It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power.-
- Blaise Pascal

"Why, I don't exactly know about perjury, my dear sir," replied the little gentleman. "Harsh word, my dear sir, very harsh word indeed. It's a legal fiction, my dear sir, nothing more."
- Charles Dickens - The Pickwick Papers

Deception ( misinformation ) in War

• Tactical Deception: Deception which misleads others while they are actively involved in competition with you, your interests, or your forces.
   

• “A” Type Deception: “Ambiguity Deception” geared toward creating general confusion.
   

• “M” Type Deception: “Misleading Deception” designed to mislead an adversary into a specific and preconceived direction.
   

From Deception to Great Deception then The End

Deception has been a problem for man since the serpent first deceived Eve in the garden.

Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate" (Genesis 3:13).

Man is prone to being deceived because he loves sin. The people deceived are those whose names are not written in the Book of Life and they will be many. The only people who are not deceived are those who trusted in the Lord with all their heart.

All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast--all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world (Revelation 13:8).

Jesus, when responding to the disciples question about His Second Coming and the End of the Age, warned them repeatedly about deception. He indicated that deception would be a serious problem in the last days and that many people would fall. So great would be the deception that He warned us about it ahead of time. Lets see what Jesus says.

Paul wrote much about the return of Christ and warned us against being deceived. He provided a specific test to ensure we are not deceived about the timing of the Day of the Lord and the return of Christ. The Day of the Lord cannot come until ‘the man of lawlessness is revealed.’ Paul explains, that the ‘the man of lawlessness’ will be revealed when he goes into the temple of God and declares that he is God.

Don't let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God. (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4).

Deception is ever present but the days are coming and have come when most people will be deceived. Deception will continue to increase until the Day of the Lord and the return of Christ. When Christ returns, however, the one responsible for the deception will then be prevented from deceiving the nations again until the 1,000 years have ended.

He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended (Revelation 20:3).

An interesting thing about deception is that those deceived don’t know it.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil (Proverbs 3:5-7).

Richard Perry
 

Who are you trying to kid?

By Paul Davis

Self-deception is a common human enterprise. Our capacity for it seems no more exotic a part of our nature than our capacity to spell. We attribute the state freely to others ("you’re kidding yourself"), and come to realise we were in the state ourselves ("I was kidding myself when I said that"). However, when we step back from those confident judgements and try making sense of self-deception, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to do so.

Why is there a philosophical problem about self-deception? It lies in the apparent paradox that deceiver and deceived are the same. Deception seems logically to require that deceiver and deceived are distinct. If I deceive you, then I am deceiver and you deceived; I the doer, you the victim. The deceiver is one agent, and the deceived another. But in self-deception there are, it seems, not two agents but only one. The self-deceiver is both deceiver and deceived, both doer and victim. As deceived, he believes what is false. But since he knows the truth, he knows to be false what the deceived believes. But he is the deceived. So he believes what he knows to be false. How can this be so?

Any feasible account must recognise the quality of deception. Some accounts have failed to do this. Demos has characterised self-deception in terms of inconsistency of belief, in other words, the self-deceiver believes p and not-p simultaneously.

Here, self-deception becomes possible because the self-deceiver fails to "notice" one of the beliefs, and therefore has no opportunity to compare the two and appreciate the incompatibility. The problem with this account is that the definitive component of self-deception seems absent. Inconsistency of belief is unremarkable and does not amount to self-deception. There is no paradox. We all have inconsistent beliefs because we are not always aware of everything our beliefs entail. But we are not therefore in self-deception. This is because the purposeful element of deception is missing.

Popular explanations of self-deception posit a divided self, one part of which does the deceiving and another part of which suffers the deception. It is often thought that the knowing, deceiving part is an unconscious mental domain, which deceives a different, conscious part.

But considerable difficulties attach to this account. Where is the decision to deceive made? If at the conscious level, then it becomes difficult to see how consciousness can be deceived at all. It seems that consciousness must possess the truth, or the knowledge that attempts to deceive it are taking place (since it has issued the decision to deceive). It is therefore difficult to see how consciousness is deceived at all.

There might be a reply to this objection. It might be suggested that consciousness initially sends an instruction to the unconscious mind to later return messages devoid of the salient knowledge, and subsequently forgets having sent the instruction. This forgetting allows the subsequent, deceptive messages of the unconscious to be entertained by consciousness, providing consciousness with resistance against the uncomfortable truth, which becomes restricted to the unconscious.

But difficulties attach to this formulation too. Does consciousness remain hands-on in the workings of the unconscious, to guarantee the desired, deceptive returns? If so, it is again very difficult to make sense of the idea that consciousness is deceived. Or is it akin, instead, to consciousness "turning the key" and leaving the engine of the unconscious reliably ticking over, assured that the noise, smoke, and fumes returned will be appropriately deceptive, all the while forgetting the initial ignition? If so, then consciousness is faced with the onerous task of purposefully forgetting that the unconscious has been manipulated by it to return only desired messages.

If the decision to deceive is taken, on the other hand, at the unconscious level, then the unconscious must (1) be the repository of truth; (2) will the decision to deceive consciousness; and (3) implement the decision to deceive.

This surely introduces difficulties as big as those before. First, it would give the unconscious an enormous burden of psychological labour, leaving consciousness nothing but a passive, unwitting screen for the output of a knowing and furiously active unconscious. Second, it seems untenable to deny consciousness any active role whatever in self-deception. Self-deception is sometimes expedient only because of what first appears to consciousness. ("Intentionalists" believe that the self-deceiver acts intentionally to bring it about that she acquire a certain belief, without being motivated by a conviction of the truth of that belief. To conceive all self-deception like this might be – as we will see – simplistic, but the flavour of intentionalism shows recognition of the integral role robust awareness can play.) This requires that the policy to self-deceive is sometimes made at the conscious level, and embroils us once again in the difficulties outlined above.

Third, on what grounds could the unconscious adjudicate? How does it know what consciousness would want to have blocked? If consciousness is never aware of the relevant truths, then the unconscious has to assume the role of "psychopaternalist", censoring in the interests of consciousness the transmission of images from backstage. But its workings, in the imagined scenario, would seem unclear. It wouldn’t do to say that the unconscious witholds truths which it thinks would not appeal to consciousness. This is because lots of unappealing truths reach consciousness, and truths which can, moreover, be easily known before the event to be unpleasant for consciousness. Why doesn’t the unconscious withold the lot of them? Why are some of these truths "forwarded", accepted, and acknowledged, with no hint of self-deception, and others the object of self-deception (indeed, some of the former might be more traumatising than many of the latter)?

It is likely that the paradigm framing much discussion of self-deception is crude and should be jettisoned. It might seem natural to imagine self-deception as one, homogeneous affair, that is essentially a matter of belief and knowledge (as above), abherrant, solitary, morally retrograde, and undergone by a thing-like ‘self’. Each of these characterisations is, however, dubious.

The self has featured in a previous issue of The Philosopher’s Magazine (see issue 12). For many modern contributors, most famously Dennett, the unity of self, and the accompanying baggage of an omniscient boss who thinks and acts from a psychical Oval Office, is a stubborn hangover from a Cartesian heritage most now claim to have rejected. Maybe the self is a much more complex, fluid, and ersatz affair than this maddeningly seductive picture allows. Perhaps it is an emergent artifice of multifarious, haphazardly connected subsystems, with no boss and no Cartesian Theatre "where it all happens". If this, spaghetti-like notion of the self is correct, then it is too simple, also, to dichotomise the self into conscious and unconscious, far less to give executive primacy to either part (perhaps the inclination to do so is a stubborn hangover from our Freudian heritage). Perhaps the executors and beneficiaries of self-deception are sometimes subsystems of the self, whose activities are motivated, organically, by preservation of the system as a whole. If a subsystem is vital to a person’s identity, then it is liable to attempt deception of the other subsystems when threatened.

Whether these deceptive workings ever come near the brightest lights of conscious awareness will depend, again, upon the functional value of such exposure to the system as a whole.

An overlapping suggestion is that self-deception is not one singular psycho-behavioural phenomenon, reducing to issues of belief and knowledge. Self-deception is perhaps quite eclectic, and is not always easily distinguishable from germane phenomena such as compartmentalisation, repressed conflicts, submerged aggressions, false consciousness, and wishful thinking. It is arguable that its basic elements are sometimes performance and stratagem (mimetic and tactical), and not knowledge and belief (cognitive and epistemic). For instance, we purposefully deflect our gaze from features that would normally matter to us. As Oksenberg Rorty has noted, this can be the self-deception itself, as well as a means to achieving it. (Neglect of this point is perhaps one way in which intentionalists go wrong.) Such selectivity of attention can reveal the functional role of a belief or disposition: its (aforementioned) importance to the system as a whole. Similarly, we adopt behaviour designed to indicate attitudes – such as confidence, commitment, seriousness, or gaiety – that we do not possess. It might seem that whilst we know unambiguously that we don’t have such attitudes, then we are not self-deceived; and if we eventually succeed in achieving them, then we cannot be self-deceived either. However, what usually turns the latter into self-deception is that traces of the old, disowned attitude tend to remain, betrayed in, say, the sarcastic remark, the over-dramatic commitment, or the slip when angry, tired, or drunk.

Our self-deceptions regularly require social confirmation also. Our suspiciously strident declarations of intention and character are made more convincing to us in the presence of a trusty listener, who might tactfully collude in what she knows to be a fragile self-manipulative agenda. In fact, the agent of self-deception might itself be a social grouping, such as a happy-clappy religious cult.

Indeed, it might well be fair to conclude that socially induced self-deception is vital to individual sanity and social cohesion. It is natural and reasonable to be ambivalent about all that matters in most human lives, for example, work, family, and friendships (Adam sings, for instance, in As You Like It, "Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly"). The disguise and submergence of this ambivalence is required for us to play our social roles (employee, friend, parent, etc.), and to allow individual projects and interpersonal engagements to flourish. Far from being a solitary, abherrant, and morally retrograde enterprise, self-deception might sometimes be a psychologically, socially, and morally required extension of the natural operations of the imagination.
 

Hardly Gnome 2005
 

webmaster Hardly Himself  website by FreelyGive.org  Hardly Gnome © 2008