...okay, I'll post just one more piece of text here. This is the longer, main part of the above IEP article, where the author talks about what self-deception is and how to define it:


1. What Is Self-Deception?


a. Conceptual Challenges

There is a vast literature on the nature and possibility of self-deception. And given the state of the debate, it seems unlikely that philosophers will soon agree upon one account of self-deception. This may be due, in part, to the fact that we ordinarily use the term, “self-deception”, in a broad and flexible way. But it is also the case that our various experiences with self-deception shape our thoughts about the paradigmatic self-deceiver. We can view much of the work on the nature of self-deception as a response to its apparently paradoxical nature. If self-deception is structurally similar to interpersonal deception, then it would seem that the self-deceiver must A) intentionally bring about the self-deception, and B) hold a pair of contradictory beliefs. Theorists who accept this model claim that deception is, by definition, an intentional phenomenon; that is, one person cannot deceive another without intending to do so. They also maintain that deception always involves contradictory beliefs; that is, a deceiver believes that p and brings it about that the deceived believes that not-p. And since the self-deceiver plays the role of the deceiver, and the deceived, he must believe both that p and that not-p. Suppose, for example, that William is self-deceived about his talent as a writer and believes that he will be the world’s next Marcel Proust. If this is true, then William must hold contradictory beliefs regarding his talent; that is, he must believe both that he will be the world’s next Proust, and that he will not be the world’s next Proust. Moreover, as per condition A, it must be the case that he intentionally brings it about that he holds the former (desirable) belief. But it not obvious that a single person can satisfy both of these conditions. Each of these conditions generates a “puzzle” or “paradox” when applied to cases of self-deception. Condition A, which gives rise to the “dynamic” puzzle, is problematic because it seems unlikely that a person could deceive himself while being fully aware of his intention to do so; for awareness of the self-deceptive intention would interfere with the success of his project (Mele 2001, p. 8). And condition B, which gives rise to the “static” puzzle (pp. 6-7), would be difficult to satisfy because it is often thought that believing that p rules out believing that not-p as well (see Goldstick 1989). Even if one thinks that it is possible for a person to hold contradictory beliefs, one might still be reluctant to accept that this can happen when the beliefs in question are obvious contradictories, as they are thought to be in cases of self-deception. Indeed, theorists who accept this model generally maintain that it is the very recognition that p that motivates a person to produce in himself the belief that not-p. What then should we conclude about the nature and possibility of self-deception?


b. Divided Mind Accounts

Some philosophers respond to these puzzles by denying that strict or literal self-deception is possible (see Haight 1980). Other philosophers, such as Donald Davidson (1986, 1998) and David Pears (1984, 1985), have developed sophisticated accounts of self-deception that embrace conditions A and B, but avoid—or so they claim—the two corresponding puzzles. Both Davidson and Pears have introduced divisions in the mind of the self-deceiver in order to keep incompatible mental states apart, and thus preserve internal coherence. Pears, at times, seems to be willing to attribute agency (at least in some incipient form) to a part or sub-system that results from such divisions (see Pears 1984). But Davidson firmly denies that these divisions result in there being multiple agents, or “autonomous territories”, in the mind of the self-deceiver. Instead, he asks us to suppose that the self-deceiver’s mind is “not wholly integrated,” and is, or resembles, “a brain suffering from a perhaps self-inflicted lobotomy” (1998, p. 8). On Davidson’s model, it is possible for a self-deceiver to hold contradictory beliefs as long as the two beliefs are held apart from each other. We need to distinguish between “believing contradictory propositions and believing a contradiction, between believing that p and believing that not-p on the one hand, and believing that [p and not-p] on the other” (p. 5). If incompatible beliefs can be held apart in the human mind, then we can coherently describe cases of self-deception that satisfy conditions A and B.


c. Deflationary Accounts

Alfred Mele has rejected the two conditions for literal self-deception, and has developed a “deflationary” account of self-deception (Mele 2001, p. 4). His account of self-deception is based heavily upon empirical research regarding hypothesis testing and biased thinking and believing. He tries to show that ordinary cases of self-deception can be explained by looking at the biasing effect that our desires and emotions have upon our beliefs (pp. 25-49). A person’s desiring that p can make it easier for her to believe that p by influencing the way that he or she gathers and interprets evidence relevant to the truth of p. The ordinary self-deceiver does not do anything intentionally to bring it about that he is self-deceived. Rather, his motivational economy can cause her to be self-deceived automatically, as it were, and without her intervention. One of the ways that a person’s desires can shape the way that she forms beliefs is through what Mele calls “positive misinterpretation”. Positive misinterpretation occurs when one’s desiring that p leads him “to interpret as supporting p data that we would easily recognize to count against p in the desire’s absence” (p. 26). Mele illustrates how this can happen through his example of the unrequited love that a student, Sid, feels for his classmate, Roz. Sid is fond of Roz and wants it to be true that she feels the same way about him. Sid’s desire for Roz’s love may cause him to “interpret her refusing to date him and her reminding him that she has a steady boyfriend as an effort on her part to “play hard to get” in order to encourage Sid to continue to pursue her and prove that his love for her approximates hers for him” (p. 26). Positive misinterpretation is just one piece of Mele’s careful empirical study of the nature and aetiology of self-deception.

Annette Barnes (1997) and Ariela Lazar (1999) have also developed accounts of self-deception that reject conditions A and B. Lazar’s account emphasizes the influence that desires, emotions, and fantasy have upon the formation of our beliefs. Barnes examines the way that “anxious” desires affect what we believe, and cause us to become self-deceived. Barnes, unlike Mele, argues that the desires at work in cases of self-deception must be “anxious” ones. A person has an “anxious” desire that q when “the person (1) is uncertain whether q or not-q and (2) desires that q” (p. 39). For Barnes, self-deceptive beliefs are functional, and serve to reduce the self-deceiver’s anxiety (p. 76).
In dispensing with conditions A and B of self-deception, some theorists might worry that deflationary accounts do away with anything worthy of the name “self-deception”. On this view, what Mele et al succeed in describing is best understood as wishful thinking or a kind of motivated believing (see Bach 2002). They seem to fail to account for self-deception, which is a conceptually distinct phenomenon that is described by conditions A and B (or conditions closely resembling conditions A and B). José Luis Bermúdez (2000) and William J. Talbott (1995), who both defend “intentionalist” accounts of self-deception (that is, accounts that accept condition A but reject condition B), have individually argued that deflationary (and thus, “anti-intentionalist”) accounts cannot explain why self-deceivers are selective in their self-deception. Why is it that an individual can be self-deceived about his artistic talent, say, but not about the fidelity of his spouse? Bermúdez refers to this as the “selectivity problem” (p. 317). Mele is confident that his analysis and application of the “FTL model” for lay hypothesis testing (which combines the results of James Friedrich 1993; and Akiva Liberman, and Yaacov Trope 1996), can provide us with an answer to this question (Mele 2001, pp. 31-46). According to the FTL model, desires and corresponding “error costs” influence the way that we test for truth. When the cost of falsely believing that p is true is low, and the cost of falsely believing that p is false is high, it will take less evidence to convince one that p is true than it will to convince one that p is false (pp. 31-37). It follows from this analysis that individuals may test hypotheses differently due to variations in their motivational states (pp. 36-37). By way of example, Mele explains that
[f]or the parents who fervently hope that their son has been wrongly accused of treason, the cost of rejecting the true hypothesis that he is innocent (considerable emotional distress) may be much higher than the cost of accepting the false hypothesis that he is innocent. For their son’s staff of intelligence agents in the CIA, however, the cost of accepting the false hypothesis that he is innocent (considerable personal risk) may be much greater than the cost of rejecting the true hypothesis that he is innocent—even if they would like it to be true that he is innocent. (pp. 36-7)

On Mele’s view, we can make sense of the different responses that parents and CIA agents would have to the same hypothesis without introducing talk of intentions; for differences in motivation give rise to differences in error costs and, in turn, beliefs. Still, Mele’s critics may remain sceptical about the ability of FTL model to deal with the selectivity problem in its full generality. Can error costs alone determine when a person will, or will not, become self-deceived? Unimpressed by Mele’s treatment of the problem, Bermúdez insists that “[i]t is simply not the case that, whenever my motivational set is such as to lower the acceptance threshold of a particular hypothesis, I will end up self-deceivingly accepting the hypothesis” (p. 318). Clearly, there is still a great deal of disagreement concerning the intentionality of self-deception, and of motivationally biased belief more generally.


d. Other Approaches

There are numerous intermediate, and alternative accounts, of self-deception in the literature. Jean-Paul Sartre is well known for his existential treatment of self-deception, or bad faith (mauvais fois), and the human condition that inspires it. The person who is guilty of bad faith bases his decisions and actions upon an “error”; he mistakenly denies his freedom and ability to invent his self (1948, pp. 50-15). Consider Sartre’s provocative and well-known description of a woman who halfheartedly, and in bad faith, “accepts” the advances of a certain male companion. Sartre tells us that the woman is aware of her companion’s romantic interest in her. However, she is at the same time undecided about her own feelings for him, and so neither accepts nor rejects his advances wholeheartedly. She enjoys the anxious uncertainty of the moment, and tries to maintain it through her ambivalent response to his attempted seduction of her (1956, p. 55). Suddenly, though, the woman’s companion reaches for her hand, and with this gesture “risks” forcing her to commit herself one way or another (p. 56):

To leave the hand there is to consent in herself flirt, to engage herself. To withdraw it is to break the troubled and unstable harmony which gives the hour its charm. The aim is to postpone the moment of decision as long as possible. We know what happens next; the young woman leaves her hand there, but she does not notice that she is leaving it. She does not notice because it happens by chance that she is at this moment all intellect. She draws her companion up to the most lofty regions of sentimental reflection; she speaks of Life, of her life, she shows herself in her essential aspect—a personality, a consciousness. And during this time the divorce of the body from the soul is accomplished; the hand rests inert between the warm hands of her companion—neither consenting nor resisting—a thing. (pp. 55-56)
Sartre charges the woman in this example with bad faith because she fails to acknowledge and take full responsibility for her situation and freedom. Instead of committing herself to one choice or the other (that is, flirting or not flirting), she attempts to avoid both choices through a deliberate but feigned separation of the mental and the physical.

Herbert Fingarette, influenced by Sartre’s existential approach, has developed a theory of self-deception that is couched in what he calls the “volition-action” family of terms. According to Fingarette, we can make progress towards understanding self-deception if we replace the old “cognitive-perception” terminology with his new “volition-action” family of terms (2000, p. 33). Whereas the cognitive-perception family of terms emphasizes belief and knowledge, the volition-action family of terms highlights the dynamic and semi-voluntary nature of consciousness. Crucial to Fingarette’s active or dynamic conception of consciousness is the idea that a person can become explicitly aware of something by “spelling it out” to himself. When a person does this, he directs his attention towards the thing in question and makes himself fully and explicitly conscious of it (p. 38). Fingarette describes the self-deceiver as a person who cannot (or will not) spell-out an “engagement” to himself (p. 46). He is unable, or unwilling, to do this because the engagement in question challenges his conception of himself. He cannot “avow” this threatening feature of himself or the world, and so actively prevents himself from doing so. Moreover, the success of his project demands that he avoid spelling-out that he is not spelling-out a particular engagement in the world. In this way, the self-deceiver adopts a strategy or policy that is “self-covering” (p. 47).

Fingarette offers a plausible and insightful account of the motivation behind typical cases of self-deception. But some may interpret his shift in terminology as an evasion of the central issues that need to be discussed. Fingarette describes the self-deceiver as one who adopts a policy that is self-covering. But how is the self-deceiver able to adhere to this policy without noticing, or even suspecting, that it is his policy? Will he not find himself in the grip of the dynamic puzzle of self-deception? And what, on Fingarette’s model, should we make of the self-deceiver’s doxastic state? Does the self-deceiver hold only desirable beliefs about himself and his engagement in the world? Or is he confused about what he believes because he is engaged in the world in a way that he cannot avow? Fingarette seems to think that his new way of framing the problem avoids these questions altogether. But those who are not immediately sympathetic to Fingarette’s shift in terminology may find his account lacking in detail and clarity on these “key” points.

Also of interest here is Ronald de Sousa’s treatment of self-deceptive emotions. de Sousa has considered the possibility that we can be self-deceived not only about our beliefs, but about our emotions as well. In explaining one source of self-deception, de Sousa examines the way that various social ideologies influence the emotions—or the quality of the emotions—that we experience (1987, p. 334). In explaining how self-deceptive emotions are possible, de Sousa looks at the way that stereotypes shape the emotions that we experience.

For example, according to certain gender stereotypes,
[a]n angry man is a manly man, but an angry woman is a “fury” or a “bitch.” This is necessarily reflected in the quality of the emotion itself: a man will experience an episode of anger characteristically as indignation. A woman will feel it as something less moralistic, guilt-laden frustration, perhaps, or sadness. Insofar as the conception of gender stereotypes that underlies these difference is purely conventional mystification, the emotions that embody them are paradigms of self-deceptive ones. (p. 334)

de Sousa adds that we cannot account for the emotions in question on the basis of socialization, or external social forces alone. Individuals whose emotions embrace these stereotypes are not simply socialized; they are self-deceived. And they are self-deceived, according to de Sousa, because they have internalized these stereotypes, and have allowed them to affect the character of what they feel (p. 336). To this extent, they are complicit and deeply involved in the modeling of their own emotions. Fortunately, we have some hope of freeing ourselves from gender stereotypes and other social mythologies through what de Sousa describes as “consciousness-raising”. By engaging in a process of critical review and redescription, we can challenge our assumptions and our view of the situation that is contributing to our emotive response (pp. 337-338).

Now how a theorist approaches the ethics of self-deception will depend upon the view of self-deception that he accepts. As we begin to explore the ethical dimension of self-deception, it is important to keep in mind that there is no single account of self-deception that has acquired universal acceptance among philosophers. At times, these points of disagreement will have a profound impact upon the way that we evaluate self-deception. This will become particularly clear (in Section 6) when we consider whether or not a self-deceiver is ever responsible for his self-deception.