Online research in philosophy

This title gathers together essays on deception, self-deception, and the intersections of the two phenomena, from the leading thinkers on the subject.

Mele's study of philosophical and psychological theories of self-deception informatively links the conceptual and dynamic aspects of self-deception and explicates it without positing mutually inconsistent beliefs, such as those occurring in two-person deception. It is argued, however, that he does not do full justice to the dissociation characteristic of self-deception and does not sufficiently distinguish self-deception from self-caused deception.

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.

This response addresses seven main issues: (1) alleged evidence that in some instances of self-deception an individual simultaneously possesses “contradictory beliefs”; (2) whether garden-variety self-deception is intentional; (3) whether conditions that I claimed to be conceptually sufficient for self-deception are so; (4) significant similarities and differences between self-deception and interpersonal deception; (5) how instances of self-deception are to be explained, and the roles of motivation in explaining them; (6) differences among various kinds of self- deception; (7) whether a proper conception of self-deception implies that definitive ascriptions of self-deception to individuals are impossible.