Unlike the question of whether self-deception can be understood on the model of other-deception, the relationship between the two phenomena at the level of practice is hardly ever explored. Other-deception can support self-deception and vice versa. Self-deception often affects not only the beliefs and behavior of the self-deceiving person but also the beliefs and behavior of others who may become accomplices of self-deception. As I will show, however, (...) it is difficult to describe this supportive relationship between self-deception and the deception of others without conceptual contradiction. While “deflationary” approaches offer a convincing way to avoid the so-called paradoxes of self-deception, they do not resolve the conceptual tensions that arise here. I conclude by outlining a solution. (shrink)

This paper examines the connection between lies, deception, and self-deception. Understanding this connection is important because the consensus is that you cannot deceive yourself by lying since you cannot make yourself believe as true a proposition you already believe is false – and, as a liar, you must assert a proposition you believe is false. My solution involves refining our analysis of lying: people can lie by asserting what they confidently believe is true. Thus, self-deceivers need (...) not replace one belief with another; rather, they may just increase existing credence in a proposition they already believe is true. (shrink)

The self-deceived are usually held to be moral responsible for their state. I argue that this attribution of responsibility makes sense only against the background of the traditional conception of self-deception, a conception that is now widely rejected. In its place, a new conception of self-deception has been articulated, which requires neither intentional action by self-deceived agents, nor that they possess contradictory beliefs. This new conception has neither need nor place for attributions of moral (...) responsibility to the self-deceived in paradigmatic cases. Accordingly, we should take the final step toward abandoning the traditional conception, and drop the automatic attribution of responsibility. Self-deception is simply a kind of mistake, and has no more necessary connection to culpability than have other intellectual errors. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the view that self-deception is a moral failure. Instead of saying that self-deception is bad because it undermines our moral character or leads to morally deleterious consequences, as has been argued by Butler, Kant, Smith, and others, I argue the distinctive badness of self-deception lies in the tragic relationship that it bears to our own values. On the one hand, self-deception is motivated by what we value. On (...) the other hand, it prevents us from valuing those things properly. I argue that we owe it ourselves to take seriously our own values, by striving to properly value them. This gives us both prudential and moral reasons to avoid self-deception. (shrink)

This paper proposes that self-deception results from the emotional coherence of beliefs with subjective goals. We apply the HOTCO computational model of emotional coherence to simulate a rich case of self-deception from Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.We argue that this model is more psychologically realistic than other available accounts of self-deception, and discuss related issues such as wishful thinking, intention, and the division of the self.

The aim of this paper is to provide an account of a certain variety of self-deception based on a model of self-knowledge. According to this model, one thinks that one has a belief on the basis of one’s grounds for that belief. If this model is correct, then our thoughts about which beliefs we have should be in accordance with our grounds for those beliefs. I suggest that the relevant variety of self deception is a (...) failure of self-knowledge wherein the subject violates this epistemic obligation. I argue that construing this type of self-deception as a failure of selfknowledge explains two important aspects of it: The tension that we observe between the subject’s speech and her actions, and our inclination to hold the subject responsible for her condition. I compare this proposal with two other approaches to self-deception in the literature; intentionalism and motivationalism. Intentionalism explains the two aspects of self-deception but it runs into the so called ‘paradoxes’ of self-deception. Motivationalism avoids those paradoxes but it cannot explain the two aspects of self-deception. (shrink)

In this entry, I seek to show the interdependence of questions about self-deception in philosophy of mind, psychology, and ethics. I taxonomize solutions to the paradoxes of self-deception, present possible psychological mechanisms behind it, and highlight how different approaches to the philosophy of mind and psychology will affect how we answer important ethical questions. Is self-deception conducive to happiness? How does self-deception affect responsibility? Is there something intrinsically wrong with self-deception? (...) The entry, on the one hand, is a tour of the literature; on the other, it is a case for more work that crosses traditional sub-disciplinary boundaries. (shrink)

This paper takes a constitutivist approach to self-deception, and argues that this phenomenon should be evaluated under several dimensions of rationality. The constitutivist approach has the merit of explaining the selective nature of self-deception as well as its being subject to moral sanction. Self-deception is a pragmatic strategy for maintaining the stability of the self, hence continuous with other rational activities of self-constitution. However, its success is limited, and it costs are (...) high: it protects the agent’s self by undermining the authority she has on her mental life. To this extent, self-deception is akin to alienation and estrangement. Its morally disturbing feature is its self-serving partiality. The self-deceptive agent settles on standards of justification that are lower than any rational agent would adopt, and thus loses grip on her agency. To capture the moral dimension of self-deception, I defend a Kantian account of the constraints that bear on self-constitution, and argue that it warrants more discriminating standards of agential autonomy than other contemporary minimalist views of self-government. (shrink)

In this paper, I take up the question of whether the phenomenon of self-deception requires a radical sort of partitioning of the mind, and argue that it does not. Most of those who argue in favor of partitioning accept a model of self-deception according to which the self-deceived person desires to and intentionally sets out to form a certain belief that she knows to be false. Such a model is similar to that of deception (...) of other persons, and for this reason is thought to require that the self-deceiver’s mind be partitioned; one “part” of her knows the truth, while the other “part” is convinced of a false belief. I argue that while both the partitionist model and its main competitor should be rejected, each contains a key insight. On the one hand, anti-partitionist models correctly invoke some sort of desire or motivation on the part of self-deceivers as playing a role in the acquisition of their beliefs. But it is partitionists who identify the right sort of desire, namely, the desire to believe. (shrink)

There has been no systematic study in the literature of how self-deception differs from other kinds of self-distortion. For example, the term ‘cognitive dissonance’ has been used in some cases as a rag-bag term for all kinds of self-distortion. To address this, a narrow definition is given: self-deception involves injecting a given set of facts with an erroneous fact to make anex antesuboptimal decision seem as if it wereex anteoptimal. Given this narrow definition, (...) this paper delineates self-deception from deception as well as from other kinds of self-distortions such as delusion, moral licensing, cognitive dissonance, manipulation, and introspective illusion. (shrink)

I argue here that self-deception is not conducive to happiness. There is a long train of thought in social psychology that seems to say that it is, but proper understanding of the data does not yield this conclusion. Illusion must be distinguished from mere imagining. Self-deception must be distinguished from self-inflation bias and from self-fulfilling belief. Once these distinctions are in place, the case for self-deception falls apart. Furthermore, by yielding false beliefs, (...) self-deception undermines desire satisfaction. Finally, I argue for the positive view that *honest imagining* can yield the psychological benefits that others have claimed for self-deception. (shrink)

Self-deception is one of the topics that lends itself best to the task of exploring the possibilities of cross-fertilization between 'continental philosophy' and 'analytic philosophy'. Fifty years ago, in Being and Nothingness, Sartre defined the core notion of 'Bad Faith' as lying to oneself. On the other side of the Atlantic, self-deception has become one of the most exciting puzzles in the philosophy of mind, and a number of paradoxes encountered by the theory of rational (...) choice involve that very same notion. One of the objectives is to show that bridges can be thrown over the gap between the two traditions, but also that both of them make self-deception too intrapsychic and suffer from a serious individualistic bias. The conference was intended to explore the intersubjective and social dimensions of self-deception. (shrink)

This paper raises a slightly uncomfortable question: are some delusional subjects responsible for their delusions? This question is uncomfortable because we typically think that the answer is pretty clearly just ‘no’. However, we also accept that self-deception is paradigmatically intentional behavior for which the self-deceiver is prima facie blameworthy. Thus, if there is overlap between self-deception and delusion, this will put pressure on our initial answer. This paper argues that there is indeed such overlap by (...) offering a novel philosophical account of self-deception. The account offered is independently plausible and avoids the main problems that plague other views. It also yields the result that some delusional subjects are self-deceived. The conclusion is not, however, that those subjects are blameworthy. Rather, a distinction is made between blameworthiness and ‘attributability’. States or actions can be significantly attributable to a subject—in the sense that they are expressions of their wills—without it being the case that the subject is blameworthy, if the subject has an appropriate excuse. Understanding delusions within this framework of responsibility and excuses not only illuminates the ways in which the processes of delusional belief formation and maintenance are continuous with ‘ordinary’ processes of belief formation and maintenance, it also provides a way of understanding the innocence of the delusional subject that does not involve the denial of agency. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against three leading accounts of self-deception in the philosophical literature and propose a heretofore overlooked route to self-deception. The central problem with extant accounts of self-deception is that they are unable to balance two crucial desiderata: (1) to make the dynamics of self-deception (e.g., the formation of self-deceptive beliefs) psychologically plausible and (2) to capture self-deception as an intentional phenomenon for which the self-deceiver (...) is responsible. I argue that the three leading views all fail on one or both counts. However, I claim that many or most cases of self-deception conform to a different model, which I call ‘Self-deception as Omission’. In these cases, the process of self-deceptive belief formation and the intentional act for which the self-deceiver is responsible come apart, allowing us to meet both desiderata. Self-deceptive beliefs are often formed by unconscious mechanisms closely analogous to the 'System 1' processes of dual-systems psychology, or by other mechanisms of motivated reasoning. The nascently self-deceptive subject then acquiesces in the comforting belief and commits an epistemic failure by allowing it to persist. If this is done for motivationally biased reasons — e.g., preferring that the belief in question be true — then the subject is self-deceived and is blameworthy for her epistemic omission. (shrink)

A major problem posed by cases of self-deception concerns the inconsistent behavior of the self-deceived subject (SDS). How can this be accounted for, in terms of propositional attitudes and other mental states? In this paper, we argue that key problems with two recent putative solutions, due to Mele and Archer, are avoided by “the shifting view” that has been advanced elsewhere in order to explain cases where professed beliefs conflict with actions. We show that self-deceived (...) agents may possess highly unstable degrees of belief concerning the matters about which they are self-deceived. (shrink)

I propose that paradigmatic cases of self-deception satisfy the following conditions: (a) the person who is self-deceived about not-P pretends (in the sense of makes-believe or imagines or fantasizes) that not-P is the case, often while believing that P is the case and not believing that not-P is the case; (b) the pretense that not-P largely plays the role normally played by belief in terms of (i) introspective vivacity and (ii) motivation of action in a wide range (...) of circumstances. Understanding self-deception in this way is highly natural. And it provides a non-paradoxical characterization of the phenomenon that explains both its distinctive patterns of instability and its ordinary association with irrationality. Why, then, has this diagnosis been overlooked? I suggest that the oversight is due to a failure to recognize the philosophical significance of a crucial fact about the human mind, namely, the degree to which attitudes other than belief often play a central role in our mental and practical lives, both by "influenc[ing our]... passions and imagination," and by "governing.. .our actions.". (shrink)

Deflationists reduce self-deception to a motivated bias, eliminating the need for doxastic tension, divided minds, intentions, or even effortful action. While deflationism fits many cases, there are others that demand more robust psychological processes and complexity. We turn to the empirical literature on self-handicapping to find commonplace examples of self-deception with high levels of agential involvement. Many self-handicappers experience non-trivial doubts, engage in strategic and purposive self-deception, and possess knowledge that must remain (...) unconscious for their project to succeed. This occurs with self-handicapping for the sake of self-esteem regulation. Such self-handicapping not only requires self-deception but also furthers it. (shrink)

By systematically biasing our beliefs, self-deception can endanger our ability to successfully convey our messages. It can also lead lies to degenerate into more severe damages in relationships. Accordingly, I suggest that the biases reviewed in the target article do not aim at self-deception but instead are the by-products of several other mechanisms: our natural tendency to self-enhance, the confirmation bias inherent in reasoning, and the lack of access to our unconscious minds.

This paper aims to offer an alternative to the existing philosophical theories of self-deception. It describes and motivates a teleofunctional theory that models self-deception on the subintentional deceptions perpetrated by non-human organisms. Existing theories of self-deception generate paradoxes, are empirically implausible, or fail to account for the distinction between self-deception and other kinds of motivated irrationality. Deception is not a uniquely human phenomenon: biologists have found that many non-human organisms deceive (...) and are deceived. A close analysis of the pollination strategy of the mirror orchid (Ophrys speculum) provides the basis for an analysis of non-human deception as subintentionally purposive. This teleofunctional analysis is then used as the basis for a theory of self-deception that accounts for its normative and purposive features without defaulting to intentionalism. The teleofunctional theory accounts for distinction between self-deception and phenomena such as wishful thinking in an empirically plausible manner. Three objections to the theory are considered and rejected. (shrink)

The ability of leaders to be perceived as trustworthy and to develop authentic and effective relationships is largely a function of their personal identities and their self-awareness in understanding and making accommodations for their weaknesses. The research about self-deception confirms that we often practice denial regarding our identities without being fully aware of the ethical duties that we owe to ourselves and to others. This article offers insights about the nature of identity and selfawareness, specifically examining how (...) self-deception can create barriers to self-awareness within both a personal and a business context. (shrink)

People do, quite naturally and not uncommonly, speak of other people as deceiving themselves, as being their own dupes. A man's child is ill and growing constantly worse. The father keeps talking optimistically about the future, keeps explaining away the evidence, and keeps pointing to what he insists are signs of improvement. We can easily imagine ourselves deciding that he has deceived himself about his son's condition. Nor is it the case that talk of self-deception is appropriate (...) only in connection with other people. We can easily imagine the father admitting, say, after the son's death, that he has deceived himself about the child's condition. Thus the notion of self-deception obviously has application. Furthermore, ordinarily talk of self-deception is not thought to be puzzling. (shrink)

One of the most common views about self-deception ascribes contradictory beliefs to the self-deceiver. In this paper it is argued that this view (the contradiction strategy) is inconsistent with plausible common-sense principles of belief attribution. Other dubious assumptions made by contradiction strategists are also examined. It is concluded that the contradiction strategy is an inadequate account of self-deception. Two other well-known views — those of Robert Audi and Alfred Mele — are investigated and (...) found wanting. A new theory of self-deception relying on an extension of Mark Johnston's subintentional mental tropisms is proposed and defended. (shrink)

Self-deceptive projects are frequently supported by our social environment, with others influencing both our motives and capacities for self-deception. Digital spaces offer even more opportunities for interactive self-deception. Digital platforms are incentivized to sort us and capture our engagement, and online users also have desires to be sorted and engaged. The execution of self-deception is partially offloaded to algorithms and social networks that filter our evidence, selectively draw our attention to evidence, offer rationalizations, (...) and give us repetitive and emotion-laden feedback. Nevertheless, this is not so different from what we find in offline environments. Further, most of this offloading of information processing is willingly accepted by users and is in line with their desires. As such, responsibility for any motivationally biased beliefs largely lies with the individual internet user. (shrink)

Three puzzles about self-deception make this mental phenomenon an intriguing explanatory target. The first relates to how to define it without paradox; the second is about how to make sense of self-deception in light of the interpretive view of the mental that has become widespread in philosophy; and the third concerns why it exists at all. In this paper I address the first and third puzzles. First, I define self-deception. Second, I criticize Robert Trivers’ (...) attempt to use adaptionist evolutionary psychology to solve the third puzzle (existence). Third, I sketch a theory to replace that of Trivers. Self-deception is not an adaptation, but a spandrel in the sense that Gould and Lewontin give the term: a byproduct of other features of human (cognitive) architecture.Self-deception is so undeniable a fact of human life that if anyone tried to deny its existence, the proper response would be to accuse this person of it. (Allen Wood, Citation 1988 ). (shrink)

It is not easy to see how self-deception is possible because the man who deceives himself seems to be required to play two incompatible roles, that of deceiver and that of deceived. This makes self-deception sound about as difficult as presiding at one's own funeral. Many attempts have been made to remove the air of paradox from self-deception. These attempts are all unsuccessful, and they are best seen as expressions of philosophical puzzlement rather than (...) as actual solutions. In particular, the whole of the literature on self-deception is vitiated by two serious confusions. First, deception is confused with deceit; secondly, it is wrongly assumed that every case of deceiving oneself is automatically a case of self-deception and so self-deception proper becomes confused with other things. (shrink)

In this paper I shall first expose a weakness shared by several philosophical discussions of self-deception: I shall show that these discussions have failed to give it a complete analysis. The apparent phenomenon of self-deception is all too familiar, and yet its adequate characterization in general terms is wanting. More exactly, I shall argue that to understand self-deception statically, as these accounts have done, has been—and must be—to fail to give a characterization of it (...) as a state of mind, sufficient to distinguish it from other mental states not born of self-deception. (shrink)

On taking the common distinction between the legal and the ethical as a point of departure, and in an effort to understand Marshall's approach to self-interest, and thereby to his conception of an ethics of commerce, I read three of his essays in the light of some non-technical writings of Frank Hahn and three other Cambridge intellectuals. My larger project connects self-interest and self-deception to a possible ethics of theorizing in economics, and thereby to the (...) ethics of the relationship between the theorist and the theorized, the analyst and the analyzed. (shrink)

The argument of the paper is that, for cases of self-deception that involve grave consequences for others, judging moral accountability need not involve the claim that the person knows he is deceiving himself. ignorance can be genuine and yet be culpable. in disagreement with fingarette, i conclude further that self-deceptive disavowal does not entirely subvert moral authority over what is disavowed.

Robert Trivers has proposed perhaps the only serious adaptationist account of self-deception—that the primary function of self-deception is to better deceive others. But this account covers only a subset of cases and needs further refinement. A better evolutionary account of self-deception and cognitive biases more generally will more rigorously recognize the various ways in which false beliefs affect both the self and others. This article offers formulas for determining the optimal doxastic orientation, giving (...) special consideration to conflicted self-deception as an alternative to outright self-delusion. A novel taxonomy of self-deception, as it relates to the beliefs held by others, is also presented. While Trivers makes a plausible case for the adaptive value of certain cognitive biases, a more fragmented and nuanced account of the social forces impacting the evolution of self-deception is needed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 29.2 (2005) 379-393 [Access article in PDF] Love, Self-Deception, and the Moral "Must" Randy Ramal Claremont Graduate University I One significant impact that conceptual relativism has had on current discussions in moral philosophy is the denial of intelligibility to discourses that affirm moral absolutism. The denial is typically based on two allied arguments. The first argument entails that the justification of absolute moral laws (...) and values presupposes the existence of an Archimedean standpoint, but since such viewpoint is unintelligible, a "view from nowhere" as it has been called, then affirming moral absolutism could only be the result of a confused temptation for metaphysical universality and objectivity. The second argument states that since all moral values and concepts are the products of particular cultural-linguistic contexts, it would not make sense to speak of absolute values that have application in other cultural-linguistic contexts.I sympathize with the critical spirit in which this dual argument is made. The unintelligibility of a neutral standpoint and the obvious contextuality of all moral discourses render meaningless any attempt to affirm metaphysically-based moral absolutes. But what this argument fails to acknowledge is that the ordinary language of moral absoluteness is not only infinitely distant from the metaphysical claims to Olympian grounds but also internally related to the absolute moral judgments and principles it invokes. Furthermore, it is doubtful that one could speak at all of moral discourse as needing metaphysical justification. It would not make sense to speak of moral discourse as either needing or not needing metaphysical backing because both notions ignore the ordinary contexts of moral discourse, where the issue of philosophical justification does not arise. The point here is not simply to reject the [End Page 379] metaphysical need for justifying moral discourse but to question the intelligibility of the attempt itself.1In what follows I argue that the ordinary claims to moral absoluteness, be it to give moral advice, to justify personal beliefs and actions, or to judge and criticize the conduct of other people, are perfectly intelligible practices that embody ordinary moral judgments and values. I elucidate the intelligibility of these moral claims by discussing Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych," Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, and Ann Beattie's "Learning to Fall." These works, I argue, portray an ethical notion of "need" that expresses natural, and intelligible, affirmations of moral necessity. The context of this affirmation concerns the ethical call to end all self-deception about one's love life.Traditionally, the relationship between love and self-deception has been interpreted to suggest that people often deceive themselves about love in order to fulfill a deep need in them to give meaning to their lives. This interpretation is often invoked to explain, on the one hand, why people who are in love might claim otherwise and, on the other hand, why those who are not in love at all convince themselves of the opposite. Although this interpretation is not philosophical in nature and does not necessarily entail the denial of all discourses of moral necessity, the idea that self-deception fulfils a deep need in people is often invoked as a philosophical explanation of the notion of "need." One example of such philosophical explanation is Martha Nussbaum's Love's Knowledge, where she endorses the traditional interpretation of the relation between love and self-deception through a discussion, among other works, of the above mentioned works by Proust and Beattie.There is no doubt that self-deception, whether in regards to one's love life or other aspects of it, could sometimes arise as a result of a need in people to give their existence some meaningful stability. But this interpretation cannot apply to all cases of love and self deception because the radical plurality of our notions of love prevents such explanatory reductionism. The insistence on this type of reductionism, it seems to me, rests on a common tendency among moral philosophers, Nussbaum included, to read into literature personal ethical views that are not intended by it. The task of the moral philosopher... (shrink)

What is it to deceive someone? And how is it possible to deceive oneself? Does self-deception require that people be taken in by a deceitful strategy that they know is deceitful? The literature is divided between those who argue that self-deception is intentional and those who argue that it is non-intentional. In this study, Annette Barnes offers a challenge to both the standard characterisation of other-deception and current characterizations of self-deception, examining the (...) available explanations and exploring such questions as the self-deceiver's false consciousness, bias, and the irrationality and objectionability of self-deception. She arrives at a non-intentional account of self-deception that is deeper and more complete than alternative non-intentional accounts and avoids the reduction of self-deceptive belief to wishful belief. (shrink)

I raise the question of what cognitive attitude self-deception brings about. That is: what is the product of self-deception? Robert Audi and Georges Rey have argued that self-deception does not bring about belief in the usual sense, but rather “avowal” or “avowed belief.” That means a tendency to affirm verbally (both privately and publicly) that lacks normal belief-like connections to non-verbal actions. I contest their view by discussing cases in which the product of (...) class='Hi'>self-deception is implicated in action in a way that exemplifies the motivational role of belief. Furthermore, by applying independent criteria of what it is for a mental state to be a belief, I defend the more intuitive view that being self-deceived that p entails believing that p. Beliefs (i) are the default for action relative to other cognitive attitudes (such as imagining and hypothesis) and (ii) have cognitive governance over the other cognitive attitudes. I explicate these two relations and argue that they obtain for the product of self-deception. (shrink)

Three puzzles about self-deception make this mental phenomenon an intriguing explanatory target. The first relates to how to define it without paradox; the second is about how to make sense of self-deception in light of the interpretive view of the mental that has become widespread in philosophy; and the third concerns why it exists at all. In this paper I address the first and third puzzles. First, I define self-deception. Second, I criticize Robert Trivers' (...) attempt to use adaptionist evolutionary psychology to solve the third puzzle (existence). Third, I sketch a theory to replace that of Trivers. Self-deception is not an adaptation, but a spandrel in the sense that Gould and Lewontin give the term: a byproduct of other features of human (cognitive) architecture. Self-deception is so undeniable a fact of human life that if anyone tried to deny its existence, the proper response would be to accuse this person of it. (Allen Wood, 1988). (shrink)

This paper focuses on the question of whether and, if so, when people can be responsible for their self-deception and its consequences. On Intentionalist accounts, self-deceivers intentionally deceive themselves, and it is easy to see how they can be responsible. On Motivationist accounts, in contrast, self-deception is a motivated, but not intentional, and possibly unconscious process, making it more difficult to see how self-deceivers could be responsible. I argue that a particular Motivationist account, the (...) Desire to Believe account, together with other resources, best explains how there can be culpable self-deception. In the process, I also show how self-deception is a good test case for deciding important questions about the nature of moral responsibility. (shrink)

According to a traditional view of self-deception, the phenomenon is an intrapersonal analogue of stereotypical interpersonal deception. In the latter case, deceivers intentionally deceive others into believing something, p , and there is a time at which the deceivers believe that p is false while their victims falsely believe that p is true. If self-deception is properly understood on this model, self-deceivers intentionally deceive themselves into believing something, p , and there is a time (...) at which they believe that p is false while also believing that p is true. (shrink)

This paper argues that self-deception cannot be explained without employing a depth-psychological ("psychodynamic") notion of the unconscious, and therefore that mainstream academic psychology must make space for such approaches. The paper begins by explicating the notion of a dynamic unconscious. Then a brief account is given of the "paradoxes" of self-deception. It is shown that a depth-psychological self of parts and subceptive agency removes any such paradoxes. Next, several competing accounts of self-deception are (...) considered: an attentional account, a constructivist account, and a neo-Sartrean account. Such accounts are shown to face a general dilemma: either they are able only to explain unmotivated errors of self-perception--in which case they are inadequate for their intended purpose--or they are able to explain motivated self-deception, but do so only by being instantiation mechanisms for depth-psychological processes. The major challenge to this argument comes from the claim that self-deception has a "logic" different to other-deception--the position of Alfred Mele. In an extended discussion it is shown that any such account is explanatorily adequate only for some cases of self-deception--not by any means all. Concluding remarks leave open to further empirical work the scope and importance of depth-psychological approaches. (shrink)

Philosophy as Fiction seeks to account for the peculiar power of philosophical literature by taking as its case study the paradigmatic generic hybrid of the twentieth century, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. At once philosophical--in that it presents claims, and even deploys arguments concerning such traditionally philosophical issues as knowledge, self-deception, selfhood, love, friendship, and art--and literary, in that its situations are imaginary and its stylization inescapably prominent, Proust's novel presents us with a conundrum. How should (...) it be read? Can the two discursive structures co-exist, or must philosophy inevitably undermine literature (by sapping the narrative of its vitality) and literature undermine philosophy (by placing its claims in the mouth of an often unreliable narrator)? In the case of Proust at least, the result is greater than the sum of its parts. Not only can a coherent, distinctive philosophical system be extracted from the Recherche, once the narrator's periodic waywardness is taken into account; not only does a powerfully original style pervade its every nook, overtly reinforcing some theories and covertly exemplifying others; but aspects of the philosophy also serve literary ends, contributing more to character than to conceptual framework. What is more, aspects of the aesthetics serve philosophical ends, enabling a reader to engage in an active manner with an alternative art of living. Unlike the "essay" Proust might have written, his novel grants us the opportunity to use it as a practice ground for cooperation among our faculties, for the careful sifting of memories, for the complex procedures involved in self-fashioning, and for the related art of self-deception. It is only because the narrator's insights do not always add up--a weakness, so long as one treats the novel as a straightforward treatise--that it can produce its training effect, a feature that turns out to be its ultimate strength. (shrink)

Hypocrites are generally regarded as morally-corrupt, cynical egoists who consciously and deliberately deceive others in order to further their own interests. The purpose of my essay is to present a different view. I argue that hypocrisy typically involves or leads to self-deception and, therefore, that real hypocrites are hard to find. One reason for this merging of hypocrisy into self-deception is that a consistent and conscious deception of society is self-defeating from the point of (...) view of egoistical hypocrites. The best way for them to achieve their ends would be to believe in the deception, thereby not only deceiving others but also themselves. If my thesis is sound, we ought to be more cautious in ascribing hypocrisy to people, and less harsh in our attitude toward hypocrites. (shrink)

It is not easy to see how self-deception is possible because the man who deceives himself seems to be required to play two incompatible roles, that of deceiver and that of deceived. This makes self-deception sound about as difficult as presiding at one's own funeral. Many attempts have been made to remove the air of paradox from self-deception. These attempts are all unsuccessful, and they are best seen as expressions of philosophical puzzlement rather than (...) as actual solutions. In particular, the whole of the literature on self-deception is vitiated by two serious confusions. First, deception is confused with deceit; secondly, it is wrongly assumed that every case of deceiving oneself is automatically a case of self-deception and so self-deception proper becomes confused with other things. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.3 (2005) 257-259 [Access article in PDF] Atrocity, Banality, Self-Deception Adam Morton Keywords evil, self-deception, banality, atrocity, motivation When talking about evil we must make a fundamental choice about how we are to use the term. We may use it as half of the contrast "good versus evil," in which case it covers everything that is not good. That includes moral (...) incompetence, lack of imagination, willingness to follow orders, overreactions, and a host of other reasons why people who do not have personalities that we would call evil do things that are wrong, often very wrong. Call this the weak reading of evil: evil as wrongdoing. Or we may use it with the meaning suggested by "evil person," "really evil act," "the evil lurking in all of us," and other such idioms. If we do this, we focus on a particular class of actions, and the motives and people that produce them, that arouse a particular moral revulsion in us. Call this the strong reading of evil: evil as atrocity (for more on this contrast see Morton [2004] and Card [2002]).Kubarych, following Peck, thinks of evil in the strong way. Most of the time at any rate: Some of the philosophers, such as Kant, that he draws on are thinking of evil in the weak way, and some of his quotations are from the German, where good/bad/evil distinctions are not drawn in the same way as in English. He explores a general explanation of evil that seems to be targeted at the psychology of extremely abhorrent actions. But, I argue, his account is in danger of collapse in either of two directions. Depending on how we interpret Kubarych's account, it could turn out that it describes all wrongdoing as evil, or, making some different choices, it could turn out that there are no really evil people.The strong reading of evil is definitely the most interesting and potentially fruitful. After all, we have no shortage of satisfying explanations of why people lie to get out of unwelcome appointments, steal to support their children or their drug habits, or defraud investors to become rich. But we do feel deeply puzzled by those who commit torture, serial murder, or genocide. We ask of these people not so much "Why did he do it?" as "How could he do it?" We feel the need of a philosophical or psychological theory that can give us even a slight handle of these people and their deeds. There are two risks associated with the project of explaining atrocity, though. The first is the risk of accepting unsatisfactory accounts, just because they purport to explain what we desperately want to understand. The second is the risk of supposing that there is a single explanation when the causes of the phenomenon are in fact too varied. On other topics these two risks have often combined to make people believe what seem to us now to be evident falsehoods. Humans have often for example wanted to know the causes of disease, and as a result have accepted blanket explanations, in terms of [End Page 257] evil spirits or lack of faith, that seem ludicrous to us now that we have a better grasp of the variety of factors that can cause our bodies to misfunction. So before asking naively "Why and how can people do these awful things?" we should ask "Is there a deeper causal unity here, beyond the fact that we react to these acts with horror?"My suspicion is that there is not much unity, that it is asking too much to want a common profile to the psychology of serial killers, or of proponents of genocide, let alone a profile that applies across these and other categories. What we can do, I believe, is describe our concept of evil in such a way that we can leave some parameters to be filled in by a large variety of objective psychological factors. Even this runs the risk that the really relevant factors cannot be forced into the role that the philosophical account requires. In... (shrink)

The philosophical difficulties presented by self-deception are vexed and multifaceted. One such difficulty is what I call the ‘doxastic problem’ of self-deception. Solving the doxastic problem involves determining whether someone in a state of self-deception that ∼p both believes that p and believes that ∼p, simply holds one or the other belief, or, as I will argue, holds neither. This final option, which has been almost entirely overlooked to-date, is what I call ‘ (...) nondoxasticism ’ about self-deception. In this article, I present a negative case for nondoxasticism according to which, in the paradigm case of self-deception, there is no explanatory need to attribute the self-deceived person either their undesired belief that p, or their desired belief that ∼p. Folk psychology is replete with concepts other than belief, and if we bear this in mind, it becomes clear that the explanatory roles for which the self-deceived person's purported beliefs have traditionally been enlisted can be comfortably filled without recourse to belief. (shrink)

Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality includes several cases of agents who are, prima facie, self-deceived. Recent work has linked these cases to deflationary accounts on the one hand and intentionalist Sartrean accounts on the other. But neither is fully satisfactory. I suggest a new account that gives a central role to focused daydreaming and imagination, especially as related to affective content that threatens to destabilize self-deception. This approach, not neatly categorizable, builds upon both deflationary and (...) intentionalist accounts, emphasizing links between vengefulness and forgiveness in Nietzsche's psychology. (shrink)

In this paper, I address an ignored topic in the literature on self-deception—instances in which one is self-deceived about their emotions. Most discussions of emotion and self-deception address either the contributory role of emotion to instances of self-deception involving beliefs or assume what I argue is an outdated view of emotion according to which emotions just are beliefs or some other type of propositional attitude. In order to construct an account of (...) class='Hi'>self-deception about emotion, I draw a distinction between two variants of self-deception about emotion: cognitively motivated self-deception and phenomenologically motivated self-deception. After providing an account of each variant, I discuss the importance of the role that perception plays in cases of self-deception about emotion. I conclude with a comment on the relevance of this discussion for contemporary debates in moral theory. (shrink)

Patients with physical symptoms for which no organic cause can be found are distributed along a continuum of disease simulation that ranges from a sincere belief of having a serious disease to intentional presentation of false symptoms. The evolutionary hypothesis that self-deception improves the deception of others can explain such a combination of unconscious and intentional production of physical symptoms.

In this article we argue that self-deception evolved to facilitate interpersonal deception by allowing people to avoid the cues to conscious deception that might reveal deceptive intent. Self-deception has two additional advantages: It eliminates the costly cognitive load that is typically associated with deceiving, and it can minimize retribution if the deception is discovered. Beyond its role in specific acts of deception, self-deceptive self-enhancement also allows people to display more confidence (...) than is warranted, which has a host of social advantages. The question then arises of how the self can be both deceiver and deceived. We propose that this is achieved through dissociations of mental processes, including conscious versus unconscious memories, conscious versus unconscious attitudes, and automatic versus controlled processes. Given the variety of methods for deceiving others, it should come as no surprise that self-deception manifests itself in a number of different psychological processes, and we discuss various types of self-deception. We then discuss the interpersonal versus intrapersonal nature of self-deception before considering the levels of consciousness at which the self can be deceived. Finally, we contrast our evolutionary approach to self-deception with current theories and debates in psychology and consider some of the costs associated with self-deception. (shrink)

Von Hippel & Trivers reason that the potential benefits of successfully deceiving others provide a basis for the evolution of self-deception. However, as self-deceptive processes themselves provide considerable adaptive value to an individual, self-deception may have evolved as an end in itself, rather than as the means to an end of improving other-deception.

Self-deception and akratic action (roughly, uncompelled intentional action that is contrary to the agent's better judgment) are the leading dramatis personae in philosophical work on motivated irrational behavior. David Pears's Motivated Irrationality advances our understanding of both phenomena and of their causal and conceptual interrelationships. Irrationality, as Pears understands it, is "incorrect processing of information in the mind" (p. 14). In instances of motivated irrationality, the faulty processing is due to the influence of desires or wishes, broadly construed. (...) There is no "clear-cut distinction," Pears maintains, between "hot" and "cold" (i.e., motivated and unmotivated) cases, "but there are some indubitable cases of each type at each end of the spectrum" (p. 14). At the hot end are central species of self-deception and akratic action. Pears's primary concern is with motivated irrationality of these two sorts. He also comments at some length on other species of motivated irrationality, on cold irrational belief, and on practical reasoning (Chapter 7) and practical truth (Chapter 8). (shrink)

According to a traditional view of self-deception, the phenomenon is an intrapersonal analogue of stereotypical interpersonal deception. In the latter case, deceiversintentionallydeceive others into believing something,p, and there is a time at which the deceivers believe thatpis false while their victims falsely believe thatpis true. If self-deception is properly understood on this model, self-deceivers intentionally deceive themselves into believing something,p, and there is a time at which they believe thatpis false while also believing thatpis (...) true. (shrink)