George Orwell coined the term "doublethink" to describe the concept of "holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." Patients at end-of-life may be using “Therapeutic Doublethink” as a psychological mechanism to cope with the cognitive dissonance resulting from accepting a terminal diagnosis and desiring curative therapy. To develop the concept of Therapeutic Doublethink, we explored the literature on Unrealistic Optimism and decision-making, then grounded them in existing psychological and neurobiological concepts. Functional (...) neuroimaging studies can help to explain the biological mechanisms that permit Unrealistic Optimism and Therapeutic Doublethink to exist, including a failure to track less desirable information and a focus on outcomes without considering the actions required to achieve them. These findings help us appreciate the challenges patients face when trying to make “rational” treatment decisions. They also raise questions about the effectiveness and potential harm of truth-telling, which is a common approach used by physicians who are confronted by Unrealistic Optimism. In some cases, physicians may be able to use Therapeutic Doublethink to harness the beneficial aspects of Unrealistic Optimism while simultaneously helping patients accept the terminal nature of their condition. This approach may be conceptually and ethically challenging for many physicians, but has important implications for improving patient care. (shrink)

"Crooked people deceive themselves in order to deceive others; in this way the world comes to ruin." This quote from a medieval Confucianist expresses the ethical danger of self-deception. My paper examines the psychological proclivity for self-deception and argues that it lies behind much social and interpersonal injustice. I review Hitler's Mein Kampf, as a premiere example of such cognitive duplicity, and Socratic dialectic, as an example of the cognitive hygiene necessary to combat it. I conclude that a robust educational (...) program of Socratic-style critical thinking is crucial to the furtherance of a just society. (shrink)

A distinctive feature of Juan Comesaña's epistemological account is the possibility of an agent possessing a false proposition as evidence. Comesaña argues that there are a number of theoretical virtues of his account once we accept this possibility, however, one might expect that there are particular vices of his account as well. Littlejohn and Dutant (2021) claim that a reflective agent who accepts Comesaña's view is rationally compelled to update their credences differently than unreflective agents, or else they will be (...) guilty of a problematic kind of doublethink: evidence in general can be false, but my evidence is never false. I argue that parallel reasoning applies to any epistemological view that says that it is possible for a rational agent to be wrong about what their evidence is. When a rational agent reflectively accepts that they could be wrong about their evidence they are rationally compelled to update their credences differently than unreflective agents, or else they will be guilty of a problematic kind of doublethink: even though rational agents in general are wrong about their evidence, I'm never wrong about my evidence. Reflecting on a particular challenge to Comesaña's view ultimately reveals a general challenge to fallibilism. (shrink)

[MAGA thought process: We must punish evil China for sending this horrible virus that is just the common cold and we don’t need masks but Trump was a hero for wearing one that one time and God bles...

This paper reconsiders the claim made by mainstream internet platforms that they inherently foster a democratic public sphere, offering reasons why the opposite may be true. It surveys past studies that have supported both views, showing how the position taken by scholars tends to depend on their disciplinary perspectives. Historically, scholarly approaches to the public or political impacts of the internet and social media have been characterised by four main interpretative lenses: technodeterminism, behaviourism, and the prioritising of either ideology, or (...) the economics of media ownership. This article pays particular attention to the last two, and to Facebook, which among mainstream internet platforms has notably associated itself with democratic ideals. The article describes how many of the democratic ideals associated with Facebook’s impacts on society are in fact reversed by the platform’s practices, with effects that directly contradict the platform’s stated principles. The article ends by suggesting that Facebook consciously pretends to favour the public sphere, and that such Orwellian doublethink is a deliberate attempt to divert attention away from its augmentation of private and personal issues at the expense of collective engagement and empowerment. designed differently, Facebook could have had favourable impacts. (shrink)

The intentionalist account of the phenomenon of self-deception attributes directly contradictory beliefs to self-deceived agents, and postulates deceptive subsystems within these agents. Deflationists can explain the phenomenon without this attribution and this postulation. But is their explanation a better explanation? I argue that doublethink is widespread, and dissociation in certain mental illnesses, and even among the mentally healthy shows the existence of deceptive subsystems. Thus, deflationists gain no advantage over intentionalists by avoiding the attribution and postulation. In fact, the (...) intentionalist account turns out to be a better fit for the phenomena because the appearance of directly contradictory beliefs and deceptive subsystems need not be explained-away. It is also more parsimonious because a single account of the phenomena suffices. On these two grounds at least, the intentionalist account is the better explanation. (shrink)

The article examines the methodological problems of the historical-philosophical research of the “Soviet philosophy.” The process of the emancipation of thinking is examined through the analysis of the tradition of the Alushta Schools of Young Philosophers in 1987–1993. These schools played a historically significant role in overcoming the prejudices and stereotypes of the Soviet consciousness by the Ukrainian philosophical community. The mentioned analysis led to a few conclusions regarding the methodology of historical-philosophical research of the intellectual legacy – primarily texts (...) – of the Soviet era. (1) Soviet philosophy was certainly an anti-philosophy, a social machine of anti-thinking. (2) The basis of analyzing both texts and events of this philosophy should consider the phenomenon of doublethink – two simultaneous and parallel spaces of discourses’ (meanings’) existence. Doublethink reflects the situation when ideological officialdom, loyalty to which was necessary, and the opposing desire for true thinking coexisted. (3) This collision led to the development of and was characterized by a number of features: the “Aesopian language,” peculiar regimes of private trust, intellectual reservations, etc. The article corroborates that the change in the dynamics of the intellectual situation (language of philosophy, mode of communication, communities of intellectuals, ethos and ideals of scientific research, etc.) is the main subject of historical-philosophical research. (shrink)

I have suggested elsewhere that, when we wander out of our own academic and First-World enclosure, we share something like a relationship with Senanayak's doublethink.2 When we speak for ourselves, we urge with conviction: the personal is also political. For the rest of the world's women, the sense of whose personal micrology is difficult for us to acquire, we fall back on a colonialist theory of most efficient information retrieval. We will not be able t speak to the women (...) out there if we depend completely on conferences and anthologies by Western-trained informants. As I see their photographs in women's studies journals or on book jackets, indeed, as I look in the glass, it is Senanayak with his anti-Fascist paperback that I behold. In the inextricably mingling historico-political specificity with the sexual differential in a literary discourse, Mahasveta Devi invites us to begin effacing that image.· 2. See my "Three Feminist Readings: McCullers, Drabble, Habermas," Union Seminary Quarterly Review 1-2 , and "French Feminism in an International Frame."Mahasveta Devi teaches English at Bijaygarh College in Jadavpur, India, an institution for working-class women. She has published over a dozen novels, most recently Chotti Munda ebang Tar Tir, and is a prolific journalist, writing on the struggle of the tribal peasant in West Bengal and Bihar. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. The translator of Derrida's De la grammatologie, she has published essays on Marxist meminism, deconstructive practice, and contemporary literature and is currently completing a book on theory and practice in the humanities. (shrink)

Responding to Rawls’ pleas in Political Liberalism against appeals to comprehensive doctrines, be they religious or metaphysical, I argue that such constraints are inherently illiberal—and unworkable. Rawls deems political proposals inherently coercive and judges everyone in a democracy a participant in governance—thus, in effect, complicit in state coercion. He seeks to limit the sweep of his exclusionary rule to core questions of rights. But in an individualistic and litigious society like ours it proves hard to draw a firm boundary around (...) issues that raise core (constitutional) questions. The standards Rawls proposes seem oppressive in effect, their likeliest yield, a kind of doublethink, encouraging many citizens to cloak their deepest normative concerns in neutered language. I worry about the means by which Rawls’ ‘overlapping consensus’ might be attained, and about the exclusion (as metaphysical) of policy proposals in behalf of broadly conceived human goods. I find it suppositious in Rawls to presume the innocence of seemingly secular arguments while placing in the stocks the religious appeals critical to many, along with old and new metaphysical arguments that may seek to bridge the gap between religious and secular appeals. (shrink)

This thesis aims to challenge the position of a philosopher who thinks that claiming to have a "fictionalist attitude" towards, for example, mathematics, allows him, under certain conditions, both to maintain that mathematics is not true and to use it as one ordinarily would, without offering a paraphrase for it or regarding it as mere symbol-manipulation. The motivation for this position runs along the following lines. Mathematics purports to refer to numbers. Positing existence of such entities is deemed undesirable. Nevertheless, (...) abandoning mathematics altogether is not feasible, and giving a metaphysically attractive paraphrase---exceedingly difficult. Although the proponent of this position is aware of the potential charge of "doublethink" associated with similar views, he does not see his account as vulnerable insofar it satisfies certain conditions. ;The problem presented in this dissertation for such an approach is intended to be quite general. Although we talk mainly about numbers, it is simply for ease of exposition. ;First of all, it can't be too easy to claim to not believe a given content---this can't be a philosopher's ticket to the kind of wholesale scepticism that appears to simply shift the meanings of the words. In order to avoid that, however, one is obliged to give an account of the avowed "fictionalist attitude" which would make it clear that this attitude couldn't simply replace belief more or less across the board. In facing this challenge, one finds that while the contrast between this attitude and genuine belief is easy to account for in a range of familiar cases, still, in cases of philosophical interest , it becomes difficult to make sense of the contrast. To substantiate these claims, a number of tentative accounts are considered, and it is shown that for each one there comes a point when the contrast "collapses". In light of that discussion it becomes prima facie plausible to suppose that there simply is no contrast to be drawn for, e.g. , one's attitude to numbers. The implications of this are very briefly considered in the final chapter. (shrink)

Ought you to cultivate your own virtue? Various philosophers have argued that there is something suspect about directing one's ethical attention towards oneself in this way. These arguments can be divided between those that deem aiming at virtue for its own sake to be narcissistic and those that consider aiming at virtue for the sake of good behaviour to involve a kind of doublethink. Underlying them all is the assumption that epistemic access to one's own character requires an external (...) point of view that is, in principle, available to anyone. If cultivating virtue is concerned with forming one's dispositions as these appear to the external point of view, then these charges of narcissism and doublethink can be brought. However, there is another kind of access to one's own character. Since character is manifest in the practical structure of experience, reflection on that practical structure itself is reflection on one's character. Neither the charge of narcissism nor the charge of doublethink can be brought against this phenomenological cultivation of the practical structure of experience. Although not sufficient alone to provide all the information required for the task, phenomenological reflection is essential to the ethical cultivation of virtue. (shrink)

Fictionalists claim that instead of believing certain controversial propositions they accept them nonseriously, as useful make-believe. In this way they present themselves as having an austere ontology despite the apparent ontological commitments of their discourse. Some philosophers object that this plays on a distinction without a difference: the fictionalist’s would-be nonserious acceptance is the most we can do for the relevant content acceptance-wise, hence such acceptance is no different from what we ordinarily call ‘belief’ and should be so called. They (...) conclude that it is subject to the norms applicable to paradigmatic empirical beliefs, and hence, pace fictionalists, ontological commitments must be taken seriously. I disentangle three strands in the objector’s thought: the ‘What more can you ask for?’ intuition, a linguistic/ conceptual claim, and a claim about norms. I argue that the former two are compatible with ontological deflationism, and therefore do not entail applicability of the norms. Nevertheless, if indeed there is no more robust acceptance with which to contrast the supposed nonserious acceptance, then the fictionalist’s claim to austere ontology must be abandoned. Is there a reason to suppose there is any merit to the distinction-without-a-difference charge? I argue that there is, clarify it, and defend against objections, focusing on Daly 2008. (shrink)

The first part of the interview with Anatoly Akhutin, dedicated to the informal philosophical movement that began in the USSR during the Khrushchev Thaw, the trends of this movement in the 1970s, the phenomenon of soviet «doublethink» and the origins of Eurasianism’s modern versions.

Theists, under the influence of Plato’s Myth of the Sun, regarded God as most knowable. The Jewish philosopher Maimonides turns this theology upside down. God is the least knowable. The only truths about God are negative. The most appropriate response is learned silence.