Bad faith
Encyclopedia
Bad faith is double mindedness or double heartedness in duplicity
, fraud
, or deception
. It may involve intentional
deceit of others, or self deception.
The expression “bad faith” is associated with “double heartedness”, which is also translated as “double mindedness”. A bad faith belief may be formed through self deception, being double minded, or "of two minds", which is associated with faith, belief, attitude
, and loyalty
. In the 1913 Webster’s Dictionary, bad faith was equated with being double hearted, "of two hearts", or “a sustained form of deception which consists in entertaining or pretending to entertain one set of feelings, and acting as if influenced by another”. The concept is similar to perfidy
, or being "without faith", in which deception is achieved when one side in a conflict promises to act in good faith (e.g. by raising a flag of surrender) with the intention of breaking that promise once the enemy has exposed himself. After Jean Paul Sartre’s analysis of the concepts of self deception and bad faith, bad faith has been examined in specialized fields as it pertains to self deception as two semi-independently acting minds within one mind, with one deceiving the other.
Some examples of bad faith include: a scientist who holds metaphysical beliefs which are not consistent with the findings of science, but puts forth his belief system as though they were; a company representative who negotiates with union workers while having no intent of compromising; a person who edits an online encyclopedia to be consistent with their point of view rather than verifiable facts; a prosecutor who argues a legal position that he knows to be false; an insurer who uses language and reasoning which are deliberately misleading in order to deny a claim.
Bad faith may be viewed in some cases to not involve deception, as in some kinds of hypochondria
with actual physical manifestations. There is a question about the truth or falsity of statements made in bad faith self deception; for example, if hypochondriac makes a complaint about their psychological health, is it true or false?
Bad faith has been used as a term of art in diverse areas involving feminism
, racial supremacism, political negotiation
, insurance claims processing
, intentionality, ethics
, existentialism
, and the law.
, two loyalties
, two thinkings
, two beliefs
, or being as two souls at the same time. It was originally used as a pejorative
in the Christian Bible. In Psalms 119:113, one translation is “I hate double-minded men, but I love your law”.
It is related to self-deception, where one Biblical translation is that a person "perpetually disagrees with himself". "Taking the Lord's name in vain", bad faith justifies actions known to be wrong by claiming a direction from God or religious authority to take unethical positions or untrue beliefs, when a person should know otherwise It is related to hypocrisy
. It is associated with divided loyalty, when translated as “I hate those with divided loyalties, but I love your instructions.”
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.
In James 1.8, it denotes instability of a cognitive attitude
, "he is a double-minded man, unstable in attitude". In the translation in the God's Word Translation, "a person who has doubts is thinking about two different things at the same time and can't make up his mind about anything". Young's Literal Translation
translates this as being "two souled". In Clarke's Commentary on the Bible, a double-minded man is one of two souls in that one is for earth, and the other for heaven, wishing to secure both worlds at once. Gill's
exposition of the Bible refers to asking for one thing and meaning another, honoring in word but not in heart, confused in the mind.
in Matthew 6:22, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary says "double-minded-literally, 'double-souled', the one soul directed towards God, the other to something else... It is not a hypocrite that is meant, but a fickle, 'wavering' man, as the context shows". Alford's
translation of the Bible uses the ancient Greek literature's "waverer" to express "double minded".
. The true desires of the subconscious express themselves as wish fulfillment
in dreams, or as an ethical position unconsciously taken to satisfy the wishes of the unconscious mind.
is central to the ethics of belief
, which discusses questions at the intersection of epistemology, philosophy of mind
, psychology
, Freudian psychoanalysis
, and ethics
.
A person who is not lying to themself 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.
Phenomenology plays a role leading to discussions of bad faith. It has a role in ethics by an analyses 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 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 where he 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. In Being and Nothingness, Sarte begins his discussion of bad faith by rasing 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 divisiable, 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.
Existentialist philosopher 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. 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.”
is that women are systematically subordinated, and bad faith exists when women surrender their agency to this subordination, e.g., acceptance of religious beliefs that a man is the dominant party in a marriage by the will of God; Simone de Beauvoir labels such women "mutilated" and "immanent". Simone de Beauvoir developed modern conceptions of bad faith and modern feminism together in her book The Second Sex
.
A “tropism” is an action done without conscious thought. 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 for personal pleasure, wealth, power, or to get into heaven. 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.
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.
In humanistic psychology
, recognition of bad faith in one’s own acts by the actor results in guilt
and regret
.
, when they know that it is wrong, e.g., in the Guantanamo
detention center.
in John Rawls
’ theory of justice, where mutual commitment of the parties requires that the parties cannot choose and agree to principles in bad faith, in that they have to be able, not just to live with and grudgingly accept, but to sincerely endorse the principles of justice; a party cannot take risks with principles he knows he will have difficulty voluntarily complying with, or they would be making an agreement in bad faith which is ruled out by the conditions of the original position.
The pseudoscience
of racist eugenics is explained by some to be a result of racism as a kind of bad faith that promotes their own desires for superiority over at least someone; e.g., some whites believe in bad faith that blacks are inferior. Bad faith racial supremacist's beliefs are studied in African American Studies
. In Nazi Germany, companies knowingly competed for the manufacture of efficient ovens for the concentration camps to make money, with the manufacturers justification to themselves a kind of self deception, but intentionally so, bad faith. A person can intentionally self deceive themselves by being inauthentic
or insincere
, as the Nazis did in holding their beliefs to justify their eugenics
and genocide
.
Creation science
's "scientific research" about the age of the earth, against paleontology
and evolution
and in the face of overwhelming evidence, has been called bad faith.
The philosophy of loyalty
examines unchosen loyalties, e.g., one does not choose one's family or country, but when there is excessive wrongdoing, there is a general unwillingness to question these unchosen loyalties, and this exhibits bad faith as a type of lack of integrity
; once we have such loyalties, we are resistant to their scrutiny and self-defensively discount challenges to them in bad faith. In the philosophy of patriotism
(loyalty to one's country) bad faith is hiding from oneself the true source of some of one’s patriotic beliefs, such as when one fights for a racist totalitarian dictatorship against a free and egalitarian democracy.
whereby parties pretend to reason to reach settlement, but have no intention to do so, for example, one political party may pretend to negotiate, with no intention to compromise, for political effect.
Bad faith in political science
and political psychology
refers to negotiating strategies in which there is no real intention to reach compromise, or a model of information processing
. The "inherent bad faith model
" of information processing is a theory in political psychology that was first put forth by Ole Holsti
to explain the relationship between U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
’ beliefs and his model of information processing. It is the most widely studied model of one's opponent. A state is presumed to be implacably hostile, and contra-indicators of this are ignored. They are dismissed as propaganda ploys or signs of weakness. Examples are John Foster Dulles’ position regarding the Soviet Union, or Israel’s initial position on the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
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.
tradition statements involving moral values have caused concern because of their similarity to statements about objects and events in the physical world. Compare:
Both have the same grammatical structure, but the way we might verify the first is quite different from the way we might want 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 statement 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.
In law, there are inconsistent definitions of bad faith, with one definition much more broad than used in other fields of study discussed in the above sections. Black's Law Dictionary
equates fraud
with bad faith. But one goes to jail for fraud, and not necessarily for bad faith. The Duhaime online law dictionary similarly defines bad faith broadly as "intent to deceive", and "a person who intentionally tries to deceive or mislead another in order to gain some advantage". A Canadian labor arbitrator wrote, in one case, that bad faith is related to rationality in reasoning, as it is used in other fields, but is ill defined in the law.
What was called "Canada's best judicial definition of 'bad faith'" by Duhaime's Legal Dictionary is similarly more consistent with use in other fields discussed above.
Duhaime also refers to another description, "...bad faith refers to a subjective state of mind… motivated by ill will ... or even sinister purposes."
is a tort
claim that an insured may have against an insurer for its bad acts, e.g. intentionally denying a claim by giving spurious citations of exemptions in the policy to mislead an insured, adjusting the claim in a dishonest manner, failing to quickly process a claim, or other intentional misconduct in claims processing. Insurance bad faith has been broadened beyond use in other fields to include total inaction, a refusal to respond to a claim in any way.
, one case of this type resulted in a record punitive award of $1 million CAD
when an insurance company pressed a claim for arson
even after its own experts and adjusters had come to the conclusion that the fire was accidental; the company was advised by legal counsel that the desperate insured parties would be willing to settle for much less than what they were owed.
Duplicity
Duplicity is a software suite that provides easy encrypted, digitally signed, versioned, remote backup of files requiring little of the remote server. It is capable of both full backups and incremental backups where only changes since the prior backup was made are stored...
, fraud
Fraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
, or deception
Deception
Deception, beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, bad faith, and subterfuge are acts to propagate beliefs that are not true, or not the whole truth . Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda, and sleight of hand. It can employ distraction, camouflage or concealment...
. It may involve intentional
Intentionality
The term intentionality was introduced by Jeremy Bentham as a principle of utility in his doctrine of consciousness for the purpose of distinguishing acts that are intentional and acts that are not...
deceit of others, or self deception.
The expression “bad faith” is associated with “double heartedness”, which is also translated as “double mindedness”. A bad faith belief may be formed through self deception, being double minded, or "of two minds", which is associated with faith, belief, attitude
Attitude
-Science and engineering:* Attitude as orientation of a geometric figure, such as a line, plane or rigid body* Attitude as strike or dip of a layer of rock in geology* Attitude of a wing or aircraft relative to airflow...
, and loyalty
Loyalty
Loyalty is faithfulness or a devotion to a person, country, group, or cause There are many aspects to...
. In the 1913 Webster’s Dictionary, bad faith was equated with being double hearted, "of two hearts", or “a sustained form of deception which consists in entertaining or pretending to entertain one set of feelings, and acting as if influenced by another”. The concept is similar to perfidy
Perfidy
In the context of war, perfidy is a form of deception, in which one side promises to act in good faith with the intention of breaking that promise once the enemy has exposed himself .The practice is specifically prohibited under the 1977 Protocol I Additional to the...
, or being "without faith", in which deception is achieved when one side in a conflict promises to act in good faith (e.g. by raising a flag of surrender) with the intention of breaking that promise once the enemy has exposed himself. After Jean Paul Sartre’s analysis of the concepts of self deception and bad faith, bad faith has been examined in specialized fields as it pertains to self deception as two semi-independently acting minds within one mind, with one deceiving the other.
Some examples of bad faith include: a scientist who holds metaphysical beliefs which are not consistent with the findings of science, but puts forth his belief system as though they were; a company representative who negotiates with union workers while having no intent of compromising; a person who edits an online encyclopedia to be consistent with their point of view rather than verifiable facts; a prosecutor who argues a legal position that he knows to be false; an insurer who uses language and reasoning which are deliberately misleading in order to deny a claim.
Bad faith may be viewed in some cases to not involve deception, as in some kinds of hypochondria
Hypochondria
Hypochondriasis or hypochondria refers to excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness. This debilitating condition is the result of an inaccurate perception of the body’s condition despite the absence of an actual medication condition...
with actual physical manifestations. There is a question about the truth or falsity of statements made in bad faith self deception; for example, if hypochondriac makes a complaint about their psychological health, is it true or false?
Bad faith has been used as a term of art in diverse areas involving feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, racial supremacism, political negotiation
Negotiation
Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more people or parties, intended to reach an understanding, resolve point of difference, or gain advantage in outcome of dialogue, to produce an agreement upon courses of action, to bargain for individual or collective advantage, to craft outcomes to satisfy...
, insurance claims processing
Insurance bad faith
Insurance bad faith is a legal term of art that describes a tort claim that an insured person may have against an insurance company for its bad acts. Under the law of most jurisdictions in the United States, insurance companies owe a duty of good faith and fair dealing to the persons they insure...
, intentionality, ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
, existentialism
Bad faith (existentialism)
Bad faith is a philosophical concept used by existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre to describe the phenomenon where a human being under pressure from societal forces adopts false values and disowns their innate freedom to act authentically...
, and the law.
General use
In ordinary usage, bad faith is equated with being of "of two hearts", or “a sustained form of deception which consists in entertaining or pretending to entertain one set of feelings, and acting as if influenced by another”, and is synonymous with double mindedness, with disloyalty, double dealing, hypocrisy, infidelity, breach of contract, unfaithfulness, pharisaicism (emphasizing or observing the letter but not the spirit of the law, see Doctrine of absurdity), tartuffery (a show or expression of feelings or beliefs one does not actually hold or possess, affectation, bigotry, and lip service.In theology
Various commentators and translators have discussed being of two beliefs or faiths in being double hearted or double minded. Webster's Dictionary equates bad faith with "being of two hearts". "Double hearted" is translated also as "double minded", or “of two hearts” or "of two minds" or souls, two beliefs, two attitudesAttitude
-Science and engineering:* Attitude as orientation of a geometric figure, such as a line, plane or rigid body* Attitude as strike or dip of a layer of rock in geology* Attitude of a wing or aircraft relative to airflow...
, two loyalties
Loyalty
Loyalty is faithfulness or a devotion to a person, country, group, or cause There are many aspects to...
, two thinkings
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
, two beliefs
Belief
Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.-Belief, knowledge and epistemology:The terms belief and knowledge are used differently in philosophy....
, or being as two souls at the same time. It was originally used as a pejorative
Pejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
in the Christian Bible. In Psalms 119:113, one translation is “I hate double-minded men, but I love your law”.
It is related to self-deception, where one Biblical translation is that a person "perpetually disagrees with himself". "Taking the Lord's name in vain", bad faith justifies actions known to be wrong by claiming a direction from God or religious authority to take unethical positions or untrue beliefs, when a person should know otherwise It is related to hypocrisy
Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie....
. It is associated with divided loyalty, when translated as “I hate those with divided loyalties, but I love your instructions.”
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.
Of two beliefs: Double hearted and double minded
Clarke's commentary on the Bible commented on Deuteronomy 26:17 and Jewish theology regarding being double hearted, in that Rabbi Tanchum (fol. 84) remarked, "Behold, the Scripture exhorts the Israelites, and tells them when they pray, that they should not have two hearts, one for the holy blessed God, and one for something else." Clarke's comments that "James refers to those Jews who were endeavoring to incorporate the law with the Gospel, who were divided in their minds and affections, not willing to give up the Levitical rites, and yet unwilling to renounce the Gospel. Such persons could make no progress in Divine things."In James 1.8, it denotes instability of a cognitive attitude
Attitude
-Science and engineering:* Attitude as orientation of a geometric figure, such as a line, plane or rigid body* Attitude as strike or dip of a layer of rock in geology* Attitude of a wing or aircraft relative to airflow...
, "he is a double-minded man, unstable in attitude". In the translation in the God's Word Translation, "a person who has doubts is thinking about two different things at the same time and can't make up his mind about anything". Young's Literal Translation
Young's Literal Translation
Young's Literal Translation is a translation of the Bible into English, published in 1862. The translation was made by Robert Young, compiler of Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible and Concise Critical Comments on the New Testament. Young produced a "Revised Version" of the translation in...
translates this as being "two souled". In Clarke's Commentary on the Bible, a double-minded man is one of two souls in that one is for earth, and the other for heaven, wishing to secure both worlds at once. Gill's
John Gill (theologian)
John Gill was an English Baptist pastor, biblical scholar, and theologian who held to a firm Calvinistic soteriology. Born in Kettering, Northamptonshire, he attended Kettering Grammar School where he mastered the Latin classics and learned Greek by age 11...
exposition of the Bible refers to asking for one thing and meaning another, honoring in word but not in heart, confused in the mind.
Relation to hypocrisy
Commenting on double mindedness in James 1:6, James 1:7, and its relation to hypocrisyHypocrisy
Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie....
in Matthew 6:22, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary says "double-minded-literally, 'double-souled', the one soul directed towards God, the other to something else... It is not a hypocrite that is meant, but a fickle, 'wavering' man, as the context shows". Alford's
Henry Alford
Henry Alford was an English churchman, theologian, textual critic, scholar, poet, hymnodist, and writer.-Life:...
translation of the Bible uses the ancient Greek literature's "waverer" to express "double minded".
In philosophy, psychology, psychoanalysis, and social sciences
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.How is bad faith self deception possible?
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. In Being and Nothingness, Jean Paul Sartre states the problem this way -Freudian psychoanalysis
Freudian psychoanalysis answers how bad faith self deception is made possible by postulating an unconscious dimension of our being that is amoral, whereas the conscious is in fact regulated by morality, law, and custom, accomplished by what Freud calls repressionPsychological repression
Psychological repression, also psychic repression or simply repression, is the psychological attempt by an individual to repel one's own desires and impulses towards pleasurable instincts by excluding the desire from one's consciousness and holding or subduing it in the unconscious...
. The true desires of the subconscious express themselves as wish fulfillment
Wish fulfillment
Wish fulfillment in psychology is the satisfaction of a desire through such involuntary thought processes such as dreams, daydreams, an neurotic symptoms. In Freudian psychoanalysis, it is when desires of the unconscious are unacceptable to the ego and superego because of feeling of guilt or...
in dreams, or as an ethical position unconsciously taken to satisfy the wishes of the unconscious mind.
Ethics, phenomenology, existentialism
Bad faith wish fulfillmentWish fulfillment
Wish fulfillment in psychology is the satisfaction of a desire through such involuntary thought processes such as dreams, daydreams, an neurotic symptoms. In Freudian psychoanalysis, it is when desires of the unconscious are unacceptable to the ego and superego because of feeling of guilt or...
is central to the ethics of belief
Ethics of belief
The ethics of belief discusses questions at the intersection of epistemology, philosophy of mind, psychology, Freudian psychoanalysis, and ethics. It has been said that Bad faith wish fulfillment is central to these questions....
, which discusses questions at the intersection of epistemology, philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
, psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, Freudian psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
, and ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
.
A person who is not lying to themself is authentic
Authenticity (philosophy)
Authenticity is a technical term in existentialist philosophy, and is also used in the philosophy of art and psychology. In philosophy, the conscious self is seen as coming to terms with being in a material world and with encountering external forces, pressures and influences which are very...
. "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
Honesty
Honesty refers to a facet of moral character and denotes positive, virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, and straightforwardness along with the absence of lying, cheating, or theft....
would require it.
Phenomenology plays a role leading to discussions of bad faith. It has a role in ethics by an analyses of the structure of will
Will (philosophy)
Will, in philosophical discussions, consonant with a common English usage, refers to a property of the mind, and an attribute of acts intentionally performed. Actions made according to a person's will are called "willing" or "voluntary" and sometimes pejoratively "willful"...
, valuing, happiness, and care for others (in empathy
Empathy
Empathy is the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings that are being experienced by another sapient or semi-sapient being. Someone may need to have a certain amount of empathy before they are able to feel compassion. The English word was coined in 1909 by E.B...
and sympathy
Sympathy
Sympathy is a social affinity in which one person stands with another person, closely understanding his or her feelings. Also known as empathic concern, it is the feeling of compassion or concern for another, the wish to see them better off or happier. Although empathy and sympathy are often used...
). Phenomenologist Heidegger discussed care, conscience
Conscience
Conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition or judgment of the intellect that distinguishes right from wrong. Moral judgement may derive from values or norms...
, and guilt
Guilt
Guilt is the state of being responsible for the commission of an offense. It is also a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that...
, moving to “authenticity
Authenticity (philosophy)
Authenticity is a technical term in existentialist philosophy, and is also used in the philosophy of art and psychology. In philosophy, the conscious self is seen as coming to terms with being in a material world and with encountering external forces, pressures and influences which are very...
”, which in turn led to the feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
of Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
and existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, 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 where he developed an ontology of value as produced by willing in good faith
Good faith
In philosophy, the concept of Good faith—Latin bona fides “good faith”, bona fide “in good faith”—denotes sincere, honest intention or belief, regardless of the outcome of an action; the opposed concepts are bad faith, mala fides and perfidy...
.
Bad faith (existentialism)
Bad faith is a philosophical concept used by existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre to describe the phenomenon where a human being under pressure from societal forces adopts false values and disowns their innate freedom to act authentically...
, using the concepts of bad faith and "authenticity" in the ethics of belief. In Being and Nothingness, Sarte begins his discussion of bad faith by rasing 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
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
was unitary and not divisiable, 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.
Existentialist philosopher 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
Seriousness
Seriousness is an attiude of gravity, solemnity, persistence, and earnestness toward something considered to be of importance....
because they take their values too seriously, and forget that values are contingent, chosen and assigned subjectively. In Sartre’s words, “the spirit of seriousness has two characteristics: it considers values as transcendent
Transcendence (philosophy)
In philosophy, the adjective transcendental and the noun transcendence convey the basic ground concept from the word's literal meaning , of climbing or going beyond, albeit with varying connotations in its different historical and cultural stages...
‘'givens’’, independent of human subjectivity, and it transfers the quality of ‘desirable’ from the ontological structure of things to their simple material constitution.”
Feminism
Central to feminismFeminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
is that women are systematically subordinated, and bad faith exists when women surrender their agency to this subordination, e.g., acceptance of religious beliefs that a man is the dominant party in a marriage by the will of God; Simone de Beauvoir labels such women "mutilated" and "immanent". Simone de Beauvoir developed modern conceptions of bad faith and modern feminism together in her book The Second Sex
The Second Sex
The Second Sex is one of the best-known works of the French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir. It is a work on the treatment of women throughout history and often regarded as a major work of feminist literature and the starting point of second-wave feminism. Beauvoir researched and wrote the book...
.
Love
A life’s project to be in love may result in bad faith; love is an example of bad faith given by both Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre (who were in love with each other). A woman in love may in bad faith allow herself to be subjugated by her lover, who has created a dependency of the woman on him, allowed by the woman in bad faith. bad faith created by the both parties.Psychology
Psychologists have proposed answers as to how bad faith self delusion can be possible.A “tropism” is an action done without conscious thought. 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 for personal pleasure, wealth, power, or to get into heaven. 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.
A homunculus
Homunculus
Homunculus is a term used, generally, in various fields of study to refer to any representation of a human being. Historically, it referred specifically to the concept of a miniature though fully formed human body, for example, in the studies of alchemy and preformationism...
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.
In humanistic psychology
Humanistic psychology
Humanistic psychology is a psychological perspective which rose to prominence in the mid-20th century, drawing on the work of early pioneers like Carl Rogers and the philosophies of existentialism and phenomenology...
, recognition of bad faith in one’s own acts by the actor results in guilt
Guilt
Guilt is the state of being responsible for the commission of an offense. It is also a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that...
and regret
Regret (emotion)
Regret is a negative conscious and emotional reaction to personal past acts and behaviors. Regret is often expressed by the term "sorry." Regret is often felt when someone feels sadness, shame, embarrassment, depression, annoyance or guilt after committing an action or actions that the person later...
.
Torture
Psychologists have examined the role of bad faith in psychologists overseeing and directing tortureTorture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
, when they know that it is wrong, e.g., in the Guantanamo
Guantánamo
Guantánamo is a municipality and city in southeast Cuba and capital of Guantánamo Province.Guantánamo is served by the Caimanera port and the site of a famous U.S. Naval base. The area produces sugarcane and cotton wool...
detention center.
Truth values
There is controversy as to whether propositions made in bad faith are true or false, such as when a hypochondriac has a complaint with no physical symptom.Theory of justice
Bad faith is important to the concept of original positionOriginal position
The original position is a hypothetical situation developed by American philosopher John Rawls as a thought experiment to replace the imagery of a savage state of nature of prior political philosophers like Thomas Hobbes. In it, the parties select principles that will determine the basic structure...
in John Rawls
John Rawls
John Bordley Rawls was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard University....
’ theory of justice, where mutual commitment of the parties requires that the parties cannot choose and agree to principles in bad faith, in that they have to be able, not just to live with and grudgingly accept, but to sincerely endorse the principles of justice; a party cannot take risks with principles he knows he will have difficulty voluntarily complying with, or they would be making an agreement in bad faith which is ruled out by the conditions of the original position.
In pseudosciences
Bad faith can exist not only in an individual, but in entire systems of knowledge.The pseudoscience
Pseudoscience
Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
of racist eugenics is explained by some to be a result of racism as a kind of bad faith that promotes their own desires for superiority over at least someone; e.g., some whites believe in bad faith that blacks are inferior. Bad faith racial supremacist's beliefs are studied in African American Studies
African American studies
African American studies is a subset of Black studies or Africana studies. It is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to the study of the history, culture, and politics of African Americans...
. In Nazi Germany, companies knowingly competed for the manufacture of efficient ovens for the concentration camps to make money, with the manufacturers justification to themselves a kind of self deception, but intentionally so, bad faith. A person can intentionally self deceive themselves by being inauthentic
Authenticity (philosophy)
Authenticity is a technical term in existentialist philosophy, and is also used in the philosophy of art and psychology. In philosophy, the conscious self is seen as coming to terms with being in a material world and with encountering external forces, pressures and influences which are very...
or insincere
Sincerity
Sincerity is the virtue of one who speaks and acts truly about his or her own feelings, thoughts, and desires.-Sincerity in Western societies:Sincerity has not been consistently regarded as a virtue in Western culture...
, as the Nazis did in holding their beliefs to justify their eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
and genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
.
Creation science
Creation science
Creation Science or scientific creationism is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and disprove generally accepted scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about the history of the Earth, cosmology...
's "scientific research" about the age of the earth, against paleontology
Paleontology
Paleontology "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought") is the study of prehistoric life. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...
and evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
and in the face of overwhelming evidence, has been called bad faith.
Loyalty and patriotism
Bad faith is associated with being double minded, or of divided loyalty. (See theology section above.)The philosophy of loyalty
Loyalty
Loyalty is faithfulness or a devotion to a person, country, group, or cause There are many aspects to...
examines unchosen loyalties, e.g., one does not choose one's family or country, but when there is excessive wrongdoing, there is a general unwillingness to question these unchosen loyalties, and this exhibits bad faith as a type of lack of integrity
Integrity
Integrity is a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one's actions...
; once we have such loyalties, we are resistant to their scrutiny and self-defensively discount challenges to them in bad faith. In the philosophy of patriotism
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...
(loyalty to one's country) bad faith is hiding from oneself the true source of some of one’s patriotic beliefs, such as when one fights for a racist totalitarian dictatorship against a free and egalitarian democracy.
Negotiation theory
Bad faith is a concept in negotiation theoryNegotiation theory
The foundations of negotiation theory are decision analysis, behavioral decision making, game theory, and negotiation analysis.Another classification of theories distinguishes between Structural Analysis, Strategic Analysis, Process Analysis, Integrative Analysis and behavioral analysis of...
whereby parties pretend to reason to reach settlement, but have no intention to do so, for example, one political party may pretend to negotiate, with no intention to compromise, for political effect.
Bad faith in political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
and political psychology
Political psychology
Political psychology is an interdisciplinary academic field dedicated to understanding political science, politicians and political behavior. Psychological theories of behavior including; belief, motivation, conflict, perception, cognition, information processing, learning strategies, socialization...
refers to negotiating strategies in which there is no real intention to reach compromise, or a model of information processing
Information processing
Information processing is the change of information in any manner detectable by an observer. As such, it is a process which describes everything which happens in the universe, from the falling of a rock to the printing of a text file from a digital computer system...
. The "inherent bad faith model
Inherent bad faith model
The inherent bad faith model of information processing is a theory in political psychology that was first put forth by Ole Holsti to explain the relationship between John Foster Dulles’ beliefs and his model of information processing....
" of information processing is a theory in political psychology that was first put forth by Ole Holsti
Ole Holsti
Ole Rudolf Holsti is an American political scientist and academic. He currently holds the position of George V. Allen Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Duke University...
to explain the relationship between U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world...
’ beliefs and his model of information processing. It is the most widely studied model of one's opponent. A state is presumed to be implacably hostile, and contra-indicators of this are ignored. They are dismissed as propaganda ploys or signs of weakness. Examples are John Foster Dulles’ position regarding the Soviet Union, or Israel’s initial position on the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
Zen Buddhism
Persons practicing ZenZen
Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."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.
Analytical philosophy and the error theory of moral statements
For philosophers in the Anglo-American analyticalAnalytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
tradition statements involving moral values have caused concern because of their similarity to statements about objects and events in the physical world. Compare:
- 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 verify the second. We can verify the first statement by observations made in the physical world, but, according to David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
, 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 statement 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
J. L. Mackie
John Leslie Mackie was an Australian philosopher, originally from Sydney. He made significant contributions to the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language, and is perhaps best known for his views on meta-ethics, especially his defence of moral skepticism.He authored six...
contended that moral statements are false. Mackie's view discomforts Crispin Wright
Crispin Wright
Crispin Wright is a British philosopher, who has written on neo-Fregean philosophy of mathematics, Wittgenstein's later philosophy, and on issues related to truth, realism, cognitivism, skepticism, knowledge, and objectivity....
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.
In law
Black's Law Dictionary
Black's Law Dictionary is the most widely used law dictionary in the United States. It was founded by Henry Campbell Black. It is the reference of choice for definitions in legal briefs and court opinions and has been cited as a secondary legal authority in many U.S...
equates fraud
Fraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
with bad faith. But one goes to jail for fraud, and not necessarily for bad faith. The Duhaime online law dictionary similarly defines bad faith broadly as "intent to deceive", and "a person who intentionally tries to deceive or mislead another in order to gain some advantage". A Canadian labor arbitrator wrote, in one case, that bad faith is related to rationality in reasoning, as it is used in other fields, but is ill defined in the law.
What was called "Canada's best judicial definition of 'bad faith'" by Duhaime's Legal Dictionary is similarly more consistent with use in other fields discussed above.
Duhaime also refers to another description, "...bad faith refers to a subjective state of mind… motivated by ill will ... or even sinister purposes."
Insurance bad faith
Insurance bad faithInsurance bad faith
Insurance bad faith is a legal term of art that describes a tort claim that an insured person may have against an insurance company for its bad acts. Under the law of most jurisdictions in the United States, insurance companies owe a duty of good faith and fair dealing to the persons they insure...
is a tort
Tort
A tort, in common law jurisdictions, is a wrong that involves a breach of a civil duty owed to someone else. It is differentiated from a crime, which involves a breach of a duty owed to society in general...
claim that an insured may have against an insurer for its bad acts, e.g. intentionally denying a claim by giving spurious citations of exemptions in the policy to mislead an insured, adjusting the claim in a dishonest manner, failing to quickly process a claim, or other intentional misconduct in claims processing. Insurance bad faith has been broadened beyond use in other fields to include total inaction, a refusal to respond to a claim in any way.
Punitive and exemplary damages
Courts can award punitive or exemplary damages, over and above the claim, against any insurance company which is found to have adjusted a claim in bad faith; the damages may be awarded with the aim of deterring such behavior among insurers in general, and may far exceed the amount of the damage due under the insurance policy. In CanadaCanada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, one case of this type resulted in a record punitive award of $1 million CAD
Canadian dollar
The Canadian dollar is the currency of Canada. As of 2007, the Canadian dollar is the 7th most traded currency in the world. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or C$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies...
when an insurance company pressed a claim for arson
Arson
Arson is the crime of intentionally or maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires...
even after its own experts and adjusters had come to the conclusion that the fire was accidental; the company was advised by legal counsel that the desperate insured parties would be willing to settle for much less than what they were owed.
See also
- Authenticity (philosophy)Authenticity (philosophy)Authenticity is a technical term in existentialist philosophy, and is also used in the philosophy of art and psychology. In philosophy, the conscious self is seen as coming to terms with being in a material world and with encountering external forces, pressures and influences which are very...
- Bad faith (existentialism)Bad faith (existentialism)Bad faith is a philosophical concept used by existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre to describe the phenomenon where a human being under pressure from societal forces adopts false values and disowns their innate freedom to act authentically...
- BeliefBeliefBelief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.-Belief, knowledge and epistemology:The terms belief and knowledge are used differently in philosophy....
- FaithFaithFaith is confidence or trust in a person or thing, or a belief that is not based on proof. In religion, faith is a belief in a transcendent reality, a religious teacher, a set of teachings or a Supreme Being. Generally speaking, it is offered as a means by which the truth of the proposition,...
- Good faithGood faithIn philosophy, the concept of Good faith—Latin bona fides “good faith”, bona fide “in good faith”—denotes sincere, honest intention or belief, regardless of the outcome of an action; the opposed concepts are bad faith, mala fides and perfidy...
- Guilty conscienceGuilty Conscience"Guilty Conscience" is a song released in 1999 by rap artist Eminem featuring his mentor, Dr. Dre. It was the third single from his major label debut album, The Slim Shady LP, also released in 1999...
- PerfidyPerfidyIn the context of war, perfidy is a form of deception, in which one side promises to act in good faith with the intention of breaking that promise once the enemy has exposed himself .The practice is specifically prohibited under the 1977 Protocol I Additional to the...
- Self deception