by Corry Shores
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[Roland Breeur, entry directory]
[Breeur, Lies – Imposture – Stupidity, entry directory]
[The following is a paragraph by paragraph summary of Breeur’s text. Boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own. Proofreading is incomplete, so please forgive my mistakes. The book can be purchased here.]
Summary of
Roland Breeur
[Breeur’s academia.edu page and researchgate page]
Lies – Imposture – Stupidity
Part 1
Lies and Stupidity
Ch.2
Alternative Facts and Reduction to Stupidity
2.6
“Duchenne: Smile!”
Brief summary (collecting those below):
(2.6.1) David Livingstone Smith provides an evolutionary account for self-deception. He begins by noting that it is “difficult to suppress the non-verbal signs that convey our inmost thoughts and feelings” (49). (Yet, it is to our advantage not to let other people always know our true thoughts, feelings, and intentions.) So we developed ways “to move through the world without broadcasting our inmost thoughts and feelings on every occasion,” which for Smith is lying (49). Yet, even with our best efforts to do so, often “our bodies betray and seem to sabotage our conscious mind’s efforts to deceive or conceal” (49). However, if we truly believe our own lies, or if we were made unaware that we were dissimulating, then we would not have contrary inner feelings that might inadvertently indicate otherwise. Hence human self-deception: “We learned to lie without knowing doing so” (50). (2.6.2) Guillaume Duchenne “discovered the facial distinction between a true and a false smile. The true one involves more than just lip retraction: A real smile produces contractions around the eyes, causing wrinkles and narrowing the eyes” (50). Smith uses this term for a fake smile however. Yet the idea remains that there are two kinds of smiles: “The phony smile is the artificial one of ‘airplane personnel,’ smiles produced for cameras, for ‘public consumption’ (de Waal), etc., while the true smile is the direct expression of our deeper self, it ‘arises from a specific inner state, as sincere | reflections of enjoyment, happiness, or affection.’ True smiles are therefore ‘harder to feign’” (50-51). (2.6.3) Breeur notes some complications with this supposed clear-cut distinction between a fake and genuine smile. The smiles of airplane personnel are “not meant as an expression of one’s inmost thoughts and feelings, hence there is nothing deceptive about it,” so they are not simply false and deceptive (51). “Likewise, any variant of conventional social expressions of politeness are not necessarily, inherently, or irreducibly false or insincere” (51). In contrast to this sort of a polite, service smile, Breeur designates the “real false smile,” which “is not the phony one, but the imitation of the true one” (51). (While the service smile is made with both parties knowing it is done as a service to the other), the real false smile is “the smile of the imposter, i.e. someone that in a context of social smiles intends to convince the other that his or her smile is genuine and sincere, is true and not fake” (51). Also, the real false smile is, of course, not meant to express a feeling that the imposter genuinely has but rather to evoke a feeling in the receiver, which is “precisely what actors do. An imposter [...] is an actor off stage” (51). The imposter is so good at this sort of deception that they “can deliberately, fully, self-consciously neutralize the work of a lie detector” (51). For the lie to be effective, the liar needs this sort of “Absolute and total self-control” (51). Breeur notes that this sort of self-control is “what trained spies achieve when they | are submitted to lie detectors. They betray nothing because they are real fakes” rather than the “phony fakes” with service smiles (51-52). (2.6.4) (Recall from section 1.3.5 that Augustine defines lying as having one thought in your head while expressing another thought instead, with the intention to deceive. In this way, the liar has a double heart and holds a double thought. Lying is an act of duplicity in which “You dissimulate what is true, and you simulate what is untrue” (19). (Augustine: “dissimulation is pretending not to be what one actually is, whereas simulation is pretending to be what one actually is not.”)) Breeur notes that often the “the problem of imposture is seen as a variant of lying, i.e. a tendency to combine forms of dissimulation and simulation” (52). (So, perhaps, it is not that we see imposture as a subcategory or subtheme of the topic lying.) Rather, “it is the other way around” (52). (Perhaps, lying is one of the tools the imposture uses in their overall deceptive, misleading behavior in which they craft a fake identity for themselves.) “As we saw, a liar is an actor. His or her play is not part of a deliberate tendency to lie. But his or her lying is integrated into a general strategy to seduce, to impose a mise-en-scene and to play a certain role, to incarnate a fake identity, to imitate a ‘real’ smile” (52).
[Self-Deception About Our Deception]
[Fake Smiles]
[The Real False Smile of the Self-Controlled Imposter]
[Imposture and Lying]
Summary
[Self-Deception About Our Deception]
[David Livingstone Smith provides an evolutionary account for self-deception. He begins by noting that it is “difficult to suppress the non-verbal signs that convey our inmost thoughts and feelings” (49). (Yet, it is to our advantage not to let other people always know our true thoughts, feelings, and intentions.) So we developed ways “to move through the world without broadcasting our inmost thoughts and feelings on every occasion,” which for Smith is lying (49). Yet, even with our best efforts to do so, often “our bodies betray and seem to sabotage our conscious mind’s efforts to deceive or conceal” (49). However, if we truly believe our own lies, or if we were made unaware that we were dissimulating, then we would not have contrary inner feelings that might inadvertently indicate otherwise. Hence human self-deception: “We learned to lie without knowing doing so” (50).]
[ditto]
In his captivating book on the motives for lying, David Livingstone Smith gives an evolutionary account of deception.51 His claim is that deception and the unconscious are coextensive. Starting from the idea that it is difficult to suppress the non-verbal signs that convey our inmost thoughts and feelings, he suggests that nature moved human beings to develop systems to lie, i.e. to move through the world without broadcasting our inmost thoughts and feelings on every occasion. Even so, it often occurs that our bodies betray and seem to sabotage our conscious mind’s efforts to deceive or conceal; | indeed, we would lie far more effectively if only we could operate ignorant of our dissimulations or if we could make ourselves believe that we were not dissimulating. This is how Smith explains the evolutionary origin of self-deception: It “helps us to ensnare others more efficiently.” Deception often makes us “anxious, hesitant, nervous etc. The greater the risk, the more self-conscious we become”;52 hence the need of a strategy to neutralize our painful knowledge of our deception in order to avoid “betray[ing] our dishonesty accidentally” (blushing, perspire, etc.). We learned to lie without knowing doing so.
(49-50)
51. See his Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004).
(49)
52. Smith, Why We Lie, p. 75.
(50)
[Fake Smiles]
[Guillaume Duchenne “discovered the facial distinction between a true and a false smile. The true one involves more than just lip retraction: A real smile produces contractions around the eyes, causing wrinkles and narrowing the eyes” (50). Smith uses this term for a fake smile however. Yet the idea remains that there are two kinds of smiles: “The phony smile is the artificial one of ‘airplane personnel,’ smiles produced for cameras, for ‘public consumption’ (de Waal), etc., while the true smile is the direct expression of our deeper self, it ‘arises from a specific inner state, as sincere | reflections of enjoyment, happiness, or affection.’ True smiles are therefore ‘harder to feign’” (50-51).]
[ditto]
This claim, however, is built on a rather simplistic model of expression. As do many other scientists today who are interested in the bodily expression of emotion, Smith refers to the classic case of the so-called “Duchenne smile.”53 Guillaume Duchenne was a French neurologist who in his book The Mechanisms of Human Facial Expressions discovered the facial distinction between a true and a false smile. The true one involves more than just lip retraction: A real smile produces contractions around the eyes, causing wrinkles and narrowing the eyes. Funnily enough (or very symptomatically), Smith and Frans de Waal differ in the attribution of the term “Duchenne smile”: For Smith it refers to the phony smile54 while for de Waal it refers to the true smile.55 But both converge in the determination of the nature of the distinction. The phony smile is the artificial one of “airplane personnel,” smiles produced for cameras, for “public consumption’’ (de Waal), etc., while the true smile is the direct expression of our deeper self, it “arises from a specific inner state, as sincere | reflections of enjoyment, happiness, or affection.” True smiles are therefore “harder to feign.”56
(50-51)
53. See also Frans de Waal, Mama ‘s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Teach Us about Ourselves (London: Granta, 2019), pp. 66-68.
54. “The false, mouth-only ‘have a nice day’ kind of smile was named the ‘Duchenne smile’ in honor of its discoverer” (Smith, Why We Lie, p. 72).
55. “Only the so-called Duchenne smile is a sincere expression of joy and positive feeling” (de Waal, Mama’s Last Hug, p. 66).
(50)
56. de Waal, Mama’s Last Hug, p. 67.
(51)
[The Real False Smile of the Self-Controlled Imposter]
[Breeur notes some complications with this supposed clear-cut distinction between a fake and genuine smile. The smiles of airplane personnel are “not meant as an expression of one’s inmost thoughts and feelings, hence there is nothing deceptive about it,” so they are not simply false and deceptive (51). “Likewise, any variant of conventional social expressions of politeness are not necessarily, inherently, or irreducibly false or insincere” (51). In contrast to this sort of a polite, service smile, Breeur designates the “real false smile,” which “is not the phony one, but the imitation of the true one” (51). (While the service smile is made with both parties knowing it is done as a service to the other), the real false smile is “the smile of the imposter, i.e. someone that in a context of social smiles intends to convince the other that his or her smile is genuine and sincere, is true and not fake” (51). Also, the real false smile is, of course, not meant to express a feeling that the imposter genuinely has but rather to evoke a feeling in the receiver, which is “precisely what actors do. An imposter [...] is an actor off stage” (51). The imposter is so good at this sort of deception that they “can deliberately, fully, self-consciously neutralize the work of a lie detector” (51). For the lie to be effective, the liar needs this sort of “Absolute and total self-control” (51). Breeur notes that this sort of self-control is “what trained spies achieve when they | are submitted to lie detectors. They betray nothing because they are real fakes” rather than the “phony fakes” with service smiles (51-52).]
There are more than a few problems with these accounts. For starters, one would be justified in one’s skepticism regarding such simplistic models of “facial expression.” I would also like to know what kind of scientific evidence corroborates the claim that “our faces most of the time mirror true feelings.”57 But the more relevant issue is that I do not believe that the distinction between the public consumption smile and the genuine personal smile maps so neatly onto that of false and true respectively. The public smiles of “airplane personnel,” for example, are not simply false. Likewise, any variant of conventional social expressions of politeness are not necessarily, inherently, or irreducibly false or insincere. In the example of airplane personnel, a frequent flyer who frequently feels betrayed by the “phony” smiles of airplane personnel might very well be paranoiac. The key is that the airplane personnel smile is not meant as an expression of one’s inmost thoughts and feelings, hence there is nothing deceptive about it, unless one believes in the possible existence of a society based only on true smiles. What is false is not the socially adaptive face expression, the mask called persona: A real false smile is not the phony one, but the imitation of the true one. The latter is the smile of the imposter, i.e. someone that in a context of social smiles intends to convince the other that his or her smile is genuine and sincere, is true and not fake. The domain of the fake smile is that of evocation instead of expression. Evoking a feeling is precisely what actors do. An imposter, as we will see immediately, is an actor off stage. An imposter is someone who can deliberately, fully, self-consciously neutralize the work of a lie detector. This is the core of the effective lie: Absolute and total self-control. This is what Eichmann achieved during his trial. This is what trained spies achieve when they | are submitted to lie detectors.58 They betray nothing because they are real fakes. Not phony fakes with an “airplane personnel smile”.
(51-52)
57. de Waal, Mama’s Last Hug, p. 67.
(51)
58. Cf. Bettina Stangneth, Lügen lessen (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2017).
(52)
[Imposture and Lying]
[(Recall from section 1.3.5 that Augustine defines lying as having one thought in your head while expressing another thought instead, with the intention to deceive. In this way, the liar has a double heart and holds a double thought. Lying is an act of duplicity in which “You dissimulate what is true, and you simulate what is untrue” (19). (Augustine: “dissimulation is pretending not to be what one actually is, whereas simulation is pretending to be what one actually is not.”)) Breeur notes that often the “the problem of imposture is seen as a variant of lying, i.e. a tendency to combine forms of dissimulation and simulation” (52). (So, perhaps, it is not that we see imposture as a subcategory or subtheme of the topic lying.) Rather, “it is the other way around” (52). (Perhaps, lying is one of the tools the imposture uses in their overall deceptive, misleading behavior in which they craft a fake identity for themselves.) “As we saw, a liar is an actor. His or her play is not part of a deliberate tendency to lie. But his or her lying is integrated into a general strategy to seduce, to impose a mise-en-scene and to play a certain role, to incarnate a fake identity, to imitate a ‘real’ smile” (52).]
[ditto]
Very often the problem of imposture is seen as a variant of lying, i.e. a tendency to combine forms of dissimulation and simulation. But it is the other way around. As we saw, a liar is an actor. His or her play is not part of a deliberate tendency to lie. But his or her lying is integrated into a general strategy to seduce, to impose a mise-en-scene and to play a certain role, to incarnate a fake identity, to imitate a “real” smile.
(52)
Breeur, Roland. Lies – Imposture – Stupidity. Vilnius: Jonas ir Jakubas, 2019.
The book can be purchased here.
Breeur’s academia.edu page and researchgate page.
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