Online research in philosophy

Mele's analysis of self-deception is persuasive but it might also be useful to consider the varieties of self-deception that occur in real-world settings. Instances of self-deception can be classified along three dimensions: implicit versus explicit, motivated versus process-based, and public versus private. All three types of self-deception have implications for the scientific research enterprise.

The views of self-deception that Mele attacks are thoroughly metaphorical, and should never have purported to imply the existence of real internal acts of deception. Research on self-deception, including Mele's appealing account, could be enriched and constrained by a broader investigation of the prevalent use of metaphor in thinking and talking about the mind.

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.

Self-deception raises complex questions about the nature of belief and the structure of the human mind. In this book, Alfred Mele addresses four of the most critical of these questions: What is it to deceive oneself? How do we deceive ourselves? Why do we deceive ourselves? Is self-deception really possible?

Drawing on cutting-edge empirical research on everyday reasoning and biases, Mele takes issue with commonplace attempts to equate the processes of self-deception with those of stereotypical interpersonal deception. Such attempts, he demonstrates, are fundamentally misguided, particularly in the assumption that self-deception is intentional. In their place, Mele proposes a compelling, empirically informed account of the motivational causes of biased beliefs. At the heart of this theory is an appreciation of how emotion and motivation may, without our knowing it, bias our assessment of evidence for beliefs. Highlighting motivation and emotion, Mele develops a pair of approaches for explaining the two forms of self-deception: the "straight" form, in which we believe what we want to be true, and the "twisted" form, in which we believe what we wish to be false.

Underlying Mele's work is an abiding interest in understanding and explaining the behavior of real human beings. The result is a comprehensive, elegant, empirically grounded theory of everyday self-deception that should engage philosophers and social scientists alike.

A form of self-deception exists that is both intentional and common. In it, people act as if they are undergoing a certain state of mind as a tactic for experiencing the state. This kind of self- deception can be illustrated by what happens to players of simulation games. Someone playing a pilot in a flight simulator game, for example, comes to experience aspects of the world of a pilot. Research on hypnotic responding is used to illustrate the nature and effectiveness of such a strategy of self-deception.

This commentary defends intentionalist accounts of self-deception against Mele by arguing that: (1) viewing self-deception on the model of other-deception is not as paradoxical as Mele makes out; (2) the paradoxes are not entailed by the view that self-deception is intentional; and (3) there are two problems for Mele's theory that only an intentionalist theory can solve.

There is little fear that the concept of motivational bias as proposed by Mele is likely to dampen the current academic ferment (see Mele's Introduction) with respect to self-deception for several reasons: (a) like philosophy, science has more recently abandoned the heuristic of a rational human mind; (b) the concept is parsimonious, applicable to many research topics other than self-deception, and, therefore, scientifically serviceable; (c) as a proximal mechanism it addresses process rather than function, that is, how rather than why questions; (d) it is not as interesting a question as why there is a high prevalence of “real” self-deception (i.e., “garden-variety self-deception” as described by Mele, see sect. 6); and (e) a more penetrating issue is whether “real” self-deception is adaptive.

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.

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.

I agree with Mele that self-deception is not intentional deception; but I do believe that self-deception involves intentional biasing, primarily for two reasons: (1) There is a Bayesian model of self-deception that explains why the biasing is rational. (2) It is implausible that the observed behavior of self- deceivers could be generated by Mele's “blind” mechanisms.