Self-Deception and Agential Authority . Constitutivist Account

This article takes a constitutivist approach to self-deception, and argues that this phenomenon should be evaluated under several dimensions ofrationality. The constitutivist approach has the merit of explaining theselective nature of self-deception as well as its being subject to moralsanction. Self-deception is a pragmatic strategy for maintaining thestability of the self, hence continuous with other rational activities ofself-constitution. However, its success is limited, and it costs are high: itprotects the agent’s self by undermining the authority she has on hermental life. To this extent, self-deception is akin to alienation andestrangement. Its morally disturbing feature is its self-serving partiality.The self-deceptive agent settles on standards of justification that arelower than any rational agent would adopt, and thus loses grip on heragency. To capture the moral dimension of self-deception, I defend aKantian account of the constraints that bear on self-constitution, andargue that it warrants more discriminating standards of agentialautonomy than other contemporary minimalist views of selfgovernment.