Experience and Self-Deception

Experience and Self-Deception

A week ago, I was involved in an accident while driving a church van. The roads were incredibly icy and we ended up fishtailing off the road and tipping over on the passenger side. It was an amazingly surreal experience, something unlike anything I have ever experienced before (even though I had previously been involved in a one-car accident, it was of a profoundly different kind). It was one of those moments where the accident seemed to be over in a moment and yet seemed, simultaneously, to be in slow motion.

There is a fair amount of physical evidence that this accident actually happened. In addition to my own experience there were two other people in the van when we went off the road (other people's children. Thankfully, nobody was hurt). There is an accident report that was filled out by the state trooper, the bill from the tow truck who tipped the van right-side up again as well as physical damage to the van (of course, as the van is going to be repaired, this last evidence will soon be done away with).

The thing I have noticed in the week following the accident is that my memory of it is not like much of my memories of ordinary experiences. In the main, the things I experience are similar to other experiences I have had. This one, however, is markedly outside the realm of that ordinary experience. I find that, when I recall the accident, it does not feel altogether different than when I recall a particularly vivid dream. The questions that I have been asking myself in the past few days are these: "What if there were no physical evidence at hand to support my thinking that I was in an accident recently? Would that make that experience any less real?" Also, "In the absence of such evidence, would it be possible to convince myself that the accident had never happened?"

Granted, these are perhaps slightly artificial questions given the inherently physical nature of such an experience. When a full-sized van lands on its side, you lose the mirror on that side as well as suffer damage to the body of the van. But we can surely imagine a situation where the police were not notified and we can surely imagine a situation where, through some other means, the van was righted without such documentation as I received. If someone were to quickly repair the damage on the van, what is left? Just the personal testimony of three, admittedly shook-up passengers. How would such people justify their experience to one who didn't see it? It would be very easy for a hearer to doubt that the accident happened at all and that we simply made up the story, for attention perhaps.

And yet, that would not make our experience any less real. It still happened. Even if, in the absence of the physical evidence that I do, in fact, have, I were to begin to doubt the reality of that experience, that doubt would not undo it. Even if nobody ever believed me, the experience would stand, with or without "sufficient evidence."

When the time comes and the van is repaired and I manage to misplace my copies of the police report and tow truck bill, would it be possible for me to convince myself that the accident didn't happen? I could be told by others who heard the story that it happened, I could be reminded by the other passengers that it happened, but if my own experience is the yardstick of what I will or will not accept, is it not possible that I could refuse to be convinced, even by strong arguments and testimonies from outside of myself? After all, there is much in the experience that is easy to doubt. It was an incredibly bizarre day; many odd things that had never happened to me before happened. Again, the memory of the actual crash is not altogether unlike my memories of vivid dreams. How am I to know for sure that I did not make this "experience" up as well?

Granted, this is not the situation and, even if I were to feel that my memory is betraying me, I imagine that I will choose to believe the testimony of others and the physical pieces of paper that bear witness to the accident. But is not my appropriation of that evidence truly a choice, a decision I have to make? It is clear that evidence can be manufactured and I could convince myself that it has been so in this instance, or I could choose to believe that nobody would make up something as mundane as this (after all, people have accidents every day and nobody died or was injured). And yet, that does not mean that I was not deceived. At the end of the day, I have to put my trust in the belief that the external evidence bolsters my memory sufficiently to conclude that it was not a dream. It can never rise above radical skepticism, but it is a decision I make and live in light of.

I cannot help see the parallel of this line of thought with questions I have had regarding people who had profound religious experiences and then ultimately renounce any religious faith. It seems possible that such a person may really have had such a profound experience but have convinced themselves that they were mistaken, or that they manufactured the experience because of pressure from the rest of the community, or some such thing. It must be granted that this kind of thing does happen, from time to time.

The question is, on what basis can we decide for sure whether the experience (which, in spite of witnesses and others having similar experiences, is radically subjective in the actual event of the experience) was real or merely a deception, whether from ourselves or others? The fact of the matter is that there is no surefire way to decide. We are always having to do tacit statistical analysis to decide whether our experience was likely or not (though "likely" must never be actually equated with "real"). The unlikely happens, the real is often baffling. Though we must admit that most memories we have of experiences that are radically outside our everyday experience are false, it does not follow that all such experiences are false. The trick, for which there is no infallible method, is to discern the truth, from case to case.