Definition
A person may hold beliefs in their mind even though they are directly contradicted by facts. These are beliefs held in bad faith. But there is debate as to whether this self deception is intentional or not.
In his book Being and Nothingness, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre defined bad faith as hiding the truth from oneself. The fundamental question about bad faith self deception is how it is possible. In order for a liar to successfully lie to the victim of the lie, the liar must know that what is being said is false. In order to be successful at lying, the victim must believe the lie to be true. When a person is in bad faith self deception, the person is both the liar and the victim of the lie. So at the same time the liar, as liar, believes the lie to be false, and as victim believes it to be true. So there is a contradiction in that a person in bad faith self deception believes something to be true and false at the same time. Sartre observed that "the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are one and the same person, which means that I must know my capacity as deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived", adding that "I must know that truth very precisely, in order to hide it from myself the more carefully—and this not at two different moments of temporality..."
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