Abstract

Paradoxical reports of self-knowledge and self-referential statements are the pathological statements that concern philosophers, but they also appear in the delusional statements of psychopathology studied by psychologists. I argue that these seemingly irrational utterances, or self-deceptive responses to conflicting beliefs, can be understood using the same vocabulary and tools used to explain logical paradox. For example, the pragmatic paradoxes that arise from the first-person utterances that one is dead, absent, asleep, and the like appear in certain delusions of psychopathology. The delusion of negation , expressed by the paradoxical utterances "I am dead," and "I do not exist," is an example of the pragmatic paradoxes. The delusion of negation is the psychopathological equivalent of existential doubt: the major symptom is the denial of one's proper existence. Delusion of negation is the logical consequence of uncurbed skepticism generated from self-doubt. Since the attempt to perceive the self makes the self disappear, we can also hear such delusional utterances as skeptical declarations regarding the potential for self-knowledge. Either self-conscious activity approaches the self as an object in a reflection destroying the identity of self by introducing negation and absence, or the attempt to reach a state of self-conscious awareness creates an infinite regress of reflections never reaching the self as an object. Paradoxes of infinity, which are generated by a self-referential application of a rule or relation, likewise appear in the attempt to know the phenomenon of self-consciousness. Knowing how one knows will plummet one into an infinite regress. Self-doubt is fueled by the suspicion that one cannot judge the truthfulness of one's judgments just as one cannot judge one's proper sanity. Self-doubt---not knowing that one knows---becomes the rational justification for engaging in self-deceptive activity. The paradoxes that interest logicians are reflected in the structure of self-deceptive repression. Meinong's theory of assumptions is used to explain this structural similarity and is likewise employed towards an understanding of the purportedly paradoxical nature of self-deception