What is the relationship between unconscious and conscious intentionality? Contemporary philosophy of mind treats the contents of conscious 10 intentional mental states as the same kind of thing as the contents of un- conscious mental states. According to the standard view that beliefs and desires are propositional attitudes, for example, the contents of these states are propositions, whether or not the states are conscious or unconscious. I dispute this way of thinking of conscious and unconscious content, and propose an alternative, (...) which helps to explain why the various mental things that are called unconscious deserve that label. (shrink)

If we are to understand why psychoanalysis extends ordinary psychology in the precise ways that it does, we must take account of the existence of, and the interplay between, two distinct kinds of explanatory concern: functional and idiographic. The form and content of psychoanalytic explanation and its unusual methodology can, at least in part, be viewed as emerging out of Freud's attempt to reconcile these two types of explanatory concern. We must also acknowledge the role of the background theoretical context (...) that shapes Freud's functional thinking about the mind. A neglect of the role of the background theory in shaping the extension of ordinary psychology leaves us with puzzles about the nature and direction of the psychoanalytic extension and gives rise to an unbelievable history of psychoanalysis. (shrink)

‘Intentionalist’ approaches portray self-deceivers as “akratic believers”, subjects who deliberately choose to believe p despite knowing that p is false. In this paper I argue that the intentionalist model leads to a number of paradoxes that seem to undermine it. I claim that these paradoxes can nevertheless be overcome in light of the rival hypothesis that self-deception is a non-intentional process that stems from the influence of emotions upon cognitive processes. Furthermore, I propose a motivational interpretation of the phenomenon of (...) ‘hyperbolic discounting bias’ which highlights the role of emotional biases in akratic behavior. Finally, I argue that we are not the helpless victims of our irrational attitudes, insofar as we have the ability – and arguably the epistemic obligation – to counteract motivational biases. (shrink)

This dissertation focuses on questions regarding the metaphysical and psychological possibility of self-deception and attempts to show that self-deception is a phenomenon best characterized as both motivated and intentional, such that self-deceivers can be held responsible for their deceptions in a stronger sense than that of being merely epistemically negligent. -/- In Chapter One, I introduce the paradoxes of self-deception, which arise when one attempts to draw a close analogy between self- and other-deception, and I discuss the various ways in (...) which one might characterize an unwarranted belief as irrational. I go on to show how the various ways one understands interpersonal deception may mirror the various accounts one might give of self-deception. I concluded the chapter with a brief discussion of the role of empirical studies in philosophical investigations of irrationality. -/- In Chapter Two, I look more closely at a particular kind of intentionalist account of self-deception, namely the claim that we must suppose the existence of a partitioned mind to make sense of the so-called "internal irrationality" of the self-deceiver. I discuss both stronger and weaker versions of this theory, in an attempt to show that it tends to raise more metaphysical worries than it solves. I argue further that if there is such a thing as divisions within the mind, an account of self-deception centered around such divisions will not get the intentionalist about self-deception what he or she wants. -/- In Chapter Three, I move on to discuss non-intentionalist accounts of self-deception. Such theories have gained in popularity in recent years, due to their appeals to explanatory parsimony. Against these theories, I argued that there are certain phenomenon we take to be central to self-deception that Mele, Barnes, et al. cannot account for. I therefore propose that a more robust account of self-deception is necessary to make sense of these phenomena. -/- Chapter Four attempts to provide such an account. I claim that if we focus more heavily on the diachronic process by which self-deceivers elicit and/or maintain their beliefs over time, what emerges looks much more like an intentional project aimed at the manipulation of one's evidence or evidential standards than a mere more-or-less unconscious process of motivated biasing. I suggest that such a view can escape the paradoxes of self-deception, while at the same time making sense of the features lacking on non-intentionalist accounts. -/- Finally, in Chapter Five I examine the morality of self-deception. I argue that self-deceivers are not only epistemically but also morally responsible for their self-deceptions, and that self-deception generally represents a moral failure on the part of the moral agent, regardless of the normative moral theory one adopts. (shrink)

This dissertation reassesses the complex philosophical relationship between Sartre and psychoanalysis. Most scholarship on this topic focuses on Sartre’s criticisms of the unconscious as anathema both to his conception of the human psyche as devoid of any hidden depths or mental compartments and, correlatively, his account of human freedom. Many philosophers conclude that there is little common ground between Sartrean existentialism and psychoanalytic theory. I argue, on the contrary, that by shifting the emphasis from concerns about the nature of the (...) unconscious to questions about the role of imagination in psychical life, we can see that Sartre and Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalytic theory develop strikingly similar accounts of human subjectivity. After establishing the historical background of Sartre’s career-long engagement with psychoanalysis, I demonstrate the proximity of Sartre and Lacan on the nature of unconscious thought. I proceed to develop the claim that there is a homology between the concept of unconscious fantasy in psychoanalysis and the concept of the imaginary in Sartre’s philosophical corpus. Despite the concept of fantasy being one of the more structuralist-inspired aspects of Lacan’s metapsychology, I show that Sartre’s concept of the imaginary is likewise a structural feature of the psyche, one which establishes the coordinates within which the subject engages with the world. For Sartre, Freud, and Lacan fantasies form the core of subjectivity, giving form to the basic patterns of one’s character. Taken together, these three thinkers furnish a nuanced view of fantasy/the imaginary. On the one hand it is determining insofar as it is responsible for many of the psychopathologies met with in psychoanalysis. On the other hand, it is liberating insofar as the agency of the subject is implicated in the formation of fantasy. I thereby show that Sartre does not fit the caricatured picture of a radical voluntarist that is often attributed to him and that psychoanalysis can accommodate a conception of human freedom. (shrink)

If, as Axel Honneth has recently argued, critical theory needs psychoanalysis for meta-normative and explanatory reasons, this does not settle the question of which version of psychoanalysis critical theorists should embrace. In this paper, I argue against Honneth's favoured version – an intersubjectivist interpretation of Winnicott's object-relations theory – and in favour of an alternative based on the drive-theoretical work of Melanie Klein. Klein's work, I argue, provides critical theorists with a more realistic conception of the person and a richer (...) explanatory account of human aggression and destructiveness than does Honneth's intersubjectivist view. As such, it better serves the ends for which Honneth claims that critical theory should turn to psychoanalysis in the first place. (shrink)

I argue against the commonly held intuition that robots and virtual agents will never have emotions by contending robots can have emotions in a sense that is functionally similar to humans, even if the robots' emotions are not exactly equivalent to those of humans. To establish a foundation for assessing the robots' emotional capacities, I first define what emotions are by characterizing the components of emotion consistent across emotion theories. Second, I dissect the affective-cognitive architecture of MIT's Kismet and Leonardo, (...) two robots explicitly designed to express emotions and to interact with humans, in order to explore whether they have emotions. I argue that, although Kismet and Leonardo lack the subjective feelings component of emotion, they are capable of having emotions. (shrink)

The notion of sublimation is essential to Nietzsche and Freud. However, Freud's writings fail to provide a persuasive notion of sublimation. In particular, Freud's writings are confused on the distinction between pathological symptoms and sublimation and on the relation between sublimation and repression. After rehearsing these problems in some detail, it is proposed that a return to Nietzsche allows for a more coherent account of sublimation, its difference from pathological symptoms, and its relation to repression. In summary, on Nietzsche's account, (...) while repression and pathological symptoms involve a disintegration , sublimation involves integration. The article concludes with a brief consideration of some post-Freudian accounts of sublimation that represent a return to a more Nietzschean approach. (shrink)

The first part of the essay tries to show that Davidson's explanation of irrationality in terms of a fragmentation of the mind is not compatible with interpretationist premises of his own theory. Instead of adopting the conception of two semi-autonomous departments of the mind, I argue for an explanation of strong forms of irrationality based on two kinds of contentful mental states: functionally individuated representational states and states whose content depends on a rationalizing interpretation. Akrasia – as a form of (...) irrationality caused by mental states that are not propositionally transparent – seems to fit neatly into that picture. (shrink)