Lying requires full conscious possession of the truth being hidden

Evidence

In psychology, self-delusion and self-deception describe a temporal space of uncertainty, with the inference “that the person ‘knows’ and ‘does not know’ at the same time.” Self-deception, then, is an assessment about the self-knowledge of others. It is also an evaluation that may be made about one’s own past actions but not made in situ, not in the active voice, about one’s present self. Others describe it as “a suspension in the normal objective interest in reality,” what one feels and believes “at the edge of awareness.” In this frame, self-deceptive constructions are “not judgments of reality” but actions done unknowingly to convince oneself. Sartre rejects both the Freudian frame and the divided self on which it rests. We constantly believe and disbelieve the same propositions simultaneously, he argues. Rather than acting ignorantly, “We must know the truth very exactly, in order to conceal it” more carefully from ourselves. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1397 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Bad faith then has in appearance the structure of falsehood. Only what changes everything is the fact that in bad faith it is from myself that I am hiding the truth. Thus the duality of the deceiver and the deceived does not exist here. Bad faith on the contrary implies in essence the unity of a single consciousness. … One does not undergo his bad faith; one is not infected with it; it is not a state. But consciousness affects itself with bad faith. There must be an original intention and a project of bad faith; this project implies a comprehension of bad faith as such and a pre-reflective apprehension (of) consciousness as affecting itself with bad faith. It follows first 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 in my capacity as deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 280 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Thus psychoanalysis substitutes for the notion of bad faith, the idea of a lie without a liar; it allows me to understand how it is possible for me to be lied to without lying to myself since it places me in the same relation to myself that the Other is in respect to me; it replaces the duality of the deceiver and the deceived, the essential condition of the lie, by that of the “id” and the “ego.” It introduces into my subjectivity the deepest intersubjective structure of the Mit-sein. Can this explanation satisfy us? — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 283 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Self-deception requires precise knowledge of the truth being concealed, not ignorance — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1397; Psychoanalysis explains self-deception as a lie without a liar — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 283; Bad faith collapses the deceiver and deceived into one consciousness — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 280 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Self-deception requires precise knowledge of the truth being concealed, not ignorance #corroborates (0.90) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1397
• Bad faith collapses the deceiver and deceived into one consciousness #corroborates (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 280
• Psychoanalysis explains self-deception as a lie without a liar #corroborates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 283