Bad faith

 ( Concepts In Ethics ) 

A person who is not lying to himself is authentic. "Authenticity" is being faithful to internal rather than external ideas.

Bad faith in ethics may be when an unethical position is taken as ethical, and justified by appeal to being forced to that belief as an excuse, e.g., by God or by that person's natural disposition due to genetics, even though facts disconfirm that belief and honesty would require it."...required by honesty, and to hide this from ourselves is 'bad faith'. One form of bad faith is to pretend that there is a God who is giving us our tasks. Another is to pretend that there is a 'human nature' that is doing the same thing", Religion and Morality, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, [5]

Phenomenology plays a role leading to discussions of bad faith. It has a role in ethics by an analysis of the structure of will, valuing, happiness, and care for others (in empathy and sympathy). Phenomenologist Heidegger discussed care, conscience, and guilt, moving to "authenticity", which in turn led to the feminism of Simone de Beauvoir and the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, both based on phenomenology's considerations of authenticity and its role in bad faith. Sartre analyzed the logical problem of "bad faith" as it relates to authenticity, and developed an ontology of value as produced by willing in good faith.

Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir developed ideas about bad faith into existentialism, using the concepts of bad faith and "authenticity" in the ethics of belief."The 'ethics of belief' refers to a cluster of questions at the intersection of epistemology, philosophy of mind, psychology, and ethics ... central ... is ... bad faith wish-fulfillment...", The Ethics of Belief, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy In Being and Nothingness, Sartre begins his discussion of bad faith by raising the question of how bad faith self-delusion is possible. Sartre calls "bad faith" a kind of project of self-deception. In order to produce excuses, bad faith first takes a third-person stance toward itself. When it becomes necessary to elude this stance it has made of itself, it then adopts the first-person perspective. In neither case can the deception fully succeed. Without these two facets of existence, if consciousness was unitary and not divisible, as in the indivisible "I" in "I think, therefore I am", it would be impossible to explain how the very project of self-deception could be possible. The Freudian theory of the unconscious is viewed by Sartre as based on an incoherent view of consciousness, but the project of psychoanalysis as an uncovering of the "fundamental project" of an individual's life is considered to be valid.

Jean-Paul Sartre called the belief that there is something intrinsically good in itself, which is inherent in the world as absolute value and is discoverable by people, the "spirit of seriousness", which he argued leads to bad faith. He argued that people fall into the spirit of seriousness because they take their values too seriously, and forget that values are contingent, chosen and assigned subjectively."Spirit of Seriousness", The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy, Nicholas Bunnin and JiYuan Yu, editors, [6] In Sartre's words, "the spirit of seriousness has two characteristics: it considers values as transcendent givens, independent of human subjectivity, and it transfers the quality of 'desirable' from the ontological structure of things to their simple material constitution."Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre

A "tropism" is an action done without conscious thought. "action done without cognitive thought", Websters Dictionary Online, [7] While self-deception may be a tropism, not consciously done, it may be guided by "projects" one may set for one's life, such as a desire to get into heaven, or for personal pleasure, wealth, or power. For example, a creationist has a project to get into heaven, and a racist with feelings of personal inadequacy may have a project to be superior or to have power over some others. The project may create self-deception without conscious thought, as a tropism creates action without conscious thought. A project may be selfish, and overwhelm reason from facts, though its consequences are not directly intentional. But the project itself may be intentionally sought, and in a selfish way, whence bad faith arises, as a result of selfish or bad intention in choice of project. "Self Deception and the Nature of Mind", Tropisms and Reason, Perspectives on Self Deception, Brian P. McLaughlin, editor, [8] Irrationality in Philosophy and Psychology: the Moral Implications of Self-Defeating Behavior, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 5, 1998, (2): 224–234, Christine A. James Between Freedom and Self-Subjection: The Dilemma of Writing in an African Language, Literator: Journal of Literary Criticism"Anatomy of Self Deception: Judgment, Belief, and the US Decision to Invade Iraq" by Peter Zimmerman Perspectives on Self-Deception edited by Brain P. McLaughlin and Amelie Oksenberg Rorty"Exploring the Possibility of Self-Deception in Belief" by Brian P. McLaughlin

A homunculus is a little person (or map of the person) inside a person, and homuncularism is the theory in psychology that there are subsystems of the mind performing different operations; the homuncularist answer to the question as to how bad faith is possible is that one such subunit deceives the other. "There is a natural homuncularist response to this surface paradox of self deception. Distinct subsystems that play the distinct role of deceiver and deceived are located within the self deceiver. So no single subject of belief is required to both believe (know) a proposition and not believe (know) it.", Self Deception and the Nature of Mind, "Tropisms and Reason", Perspectives on Self Deception, Brian P. McLaughlin editor, pp. 63–64, Mark Johnson author, [9]

In humanistic psychology, recognition of bad faith in one's own acts by the actor results in guilt and regret. "Existential Regret: A Crossroads of Existential Anxiety and Existential Guilt", Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Marijo Lucas, Ph.D

Psychologists have examined the role of bad faith in psychologists overseeing and directing torture, when they know that it is wrong, e.g., in the Guantanamo detention center.

Within the pseudoscience of racial eugenics, bad faith is proposed to be a motivator for self-defensive action against an objectified race of people to justifiably uphold a desire for racial supremacy; e.g., a minority group of whites who believe that blacks are inferior in bad faith to motivate the preservation of their white-race differences, while their faith is motivated in fear of elimination from within a volatile racial environment."...bad faith can be defined as fleeing a displeasing truth for a pleasing falsehood. Thus, constructing black people as inferior to white identity is a 'pleasing falsehood of antiblack racism.", Measured Lies: The Bell Curve Examined, Joe L. Kincheloe, p. 186, , [11] Bad faith supremacist's beliefs are studied in African American studies. Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism, L. Gordon, Humanities Press, New Jersey In Nazi Germany, companies knowingly competed for the manufacture of efficient ovens for the concentration camps to make money with the manufacturers justified in their actions by self-deception, but intentionally so as to be in bad faith."In Nazi Germany, companies knowingly competed for the manufacture of efficient ovens for the concentration camps. The manufacturers could say to themselves...", Good Faith and other essays, Joseph S. Catalano, p. 168 A person can intentionally self-deceive by being inauthentic or sincerity, as the Nazis organization did in holding their beliefs to justify their eugenics and genocide."...the "authentic Nazi" is explicitly disqualified as being oxymoronic", Jean-Paul Sartre, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, [12]

The Catholic Church does not consider everyone with heretical views to have bad faith: for example, people who earnestly seek the truth and lead exemplary lives. An Introductory Dictionary of Theology and Religious Studies, Orlando O. Espín and James B. Nickoloff, p. 551, [14].

Persons practicing Zen claim not to be subject to the "bad faith" in "self-deception", since they do not explain a motivation for action, as a rationalist would. A rationalist must rationalize an irrational desire that is actually rooted in the body and the unconscious as if it were not. "Japanese Zen Buddhist Philosophy", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

• Littering is commonplace in Chiang Mai
• Littering is wrong

Both have the same grammatical structure, but the way we might verify the first is quite different from the way we might want to verify the second. We can verify the first statement by observations made in the physical world, but according to David Hume, no amount of physical world observation can verify statements of the second type. Hume's view is summarized as "you can not derive 'ought' from 'is. Whereas statements of the first type must be true or false, some philosophers have argued that moral statements are neither true nor false. Richard M. Hare, for example, argues that moral statements are in fact imperatives (commands). For him, the statement "littering is wrong" means "do not litter", and "do not litter" is neither true nor false.

In sharp contrast to people like Hare, J.L. Mackie contended that moral statements are false. Mackie's view discomforts Crispin Wright who says that it "relegates moral discourse to bad faith". Wright is not saying that all moral statements are bad faith. What he is saying is that if Mackie is correct, and somebody believes that Mackie is correct, then that person will be guilty of bad faith whenever he makes a moral statement.