EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW – ‘The Daily Show and Philosophy’ contributor Amber Griffioen (Part I)

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Today’s interview is Part I of our Q&A with Amber Griffioen, a PhD candidate at the University of Iowa, and the author of the chapter “Truthiness, Self Deception and Intuitive Knowledge” in ‘The Daily Show and Philosophy’.

It’s actually quite amusing. I have been a huge fan of both TDS and TCR for years, and when I saw Colbert’s first ever WORD on ‘truthiness’, it reminded me of a lot of the phenomena of wishful thinking and self-deception, on which I’ve done some philosophical work. I then resolved to someday write a paper on the similarities between truthiness and these basic cases of irrationality. So when I received the announcement calling for papers for “The Daily Show and Philosophy,” I figured it would be the perfect opportunity for me to finally write that paper. I submitted an abstract to the editor, Jason Holt, and when it was accepted, I set out to write the article. It was probably the most fun paper I’ve ever written, and I’m pretty happy with the final product.

In your chapter, you discuss the two related notions of Truthiness – could you describe those just a little bit?

There appear to be two different-but-related senses of truthiness that emerge when Colbert is in “truthy” mode. One is the sense in which one chooses to believe something based on what one wants to believe, as opposed to believing what the relevant facts support. The other is the sense in which one appeals solely to an intuition (or a “gut feeling”) to provide justification for a belief.

You also go in-depth into two types of irrationality, wishful thinking and self-deception. Can you give us a brief overview of what you mean by these terms?

Wishful thinking occurs when one really wants to believe something, and comes to believe it based only (or primarily) on that desire (and not for any reason based on the facts of the situation). Self-deception seems to be a stronger case of irrationality than wishful thinking, however, because it requires that one come to hold an irrational belief in the face of the evidence to the contrary. Thus, wishful thinking does not require that one know the relevant facts at hand; it requires only that one have arrived at a belief merely because one desires to hold that belief, not because the individual has paid attention to the facts and based her belief off of the evidence at hand. Self-deception, on the other hand, implies that one is aware of the relevant facts and nevertheless goes ahead and tries to believe what they desire to believe, as opposed to what those facts support.

For example, Stephen might really want to believe he will win an Emmy in 2008. (It will make him feel better about himself; he really desires to win an Emmy; etc.) He may somehow come to form the belief that he will, in fact, win an Emmy next year, where this belief emerges solely as a product of his desire to win—not from any consideration of the facts. This would be an example of wishful thinking (regardless of whether he wins next year or not).

Alternatively, we can imagine a scenario in which Stephen refuses to believe that he did not win an Emmy this year. Not getting beaten by another American music icon may have been so important to him, that we can imagine him concluding (or trying to conclude) he has won, even though he is fully aware that the facts indicate otherwise. He directs his attention away from the newspapers and blogs; he rationalizes that Tony Bennett’s acceptance speech was a mere attempt to make the aging musician feel good about himself, but that the “true” Emmy will be awarded to him (Stephen) later; he dismisses all attempts to tell him he lost as people’s “just being jealous”; and so on. This would be an example of an individual actively engaged in a project of self-deception.

Wow. It is hard to give a “brief overview” of this stuff. Damn philosophers and all their distinctions!

Click here for Part II of the interview!

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