Self-deception unmasked

161 Pages·2001·6.137 MB·English

by  Mele, Alfred R

SELF-DECEPTION UNMASKED

SELF-DECEPTION
UNMASKED
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Cop! r~gh0t 200 1 b! Pr~llcetolLl Tnn erslg Press
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Princeton, hTenJ ersej 08540
In the LTnited IGngdom Pr~ucetonL -n~rersigP ress,
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411 kghts Resen ed
Libraq- of Congress Cataloging-in-Publicatioll Data
AIele, Alfred R., 195 l-
Self-deception unrl~asked/ Afred R. AIele.
p. cm. - (Princeton monographs in philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBAT0 -691-057W-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)-
ISBK 0-691-0574.5-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-1 3: 978-0-691-05745-3
I. Self-deception. I. Title. 11. Series.
BD439 .A145 2000
128'.3-dc21 00-032626
This book has been co~nposedin Janson Text and Centaur
The paper used in this publication
meets the minimum req~iirementso f
.=SIlKISO 239.48-1992 (R1997)
(PPw?I~~of IP~ap~ezr)c ~
Printed in the LTnited States of Limema

Contents
CHAPTEIR. I ~ltrodzlct~Aop~p~~:. oncbes,P zlzzles, B~nses-a,n lzd Agency
3
CHAPTER Garden-Vnrzet), Stra~ghtS elflDecept~on:
2.
Sowe Psycbolog~cnlP l.ocesses
5
2
CHAPTEjR. TzL'i.rted Self-Deceptiorz
94

V i TM~OTI~T~~~TE DM E to accept Harry Frankfurt's kind invita-
tion to submit a mailuscript to this series was the opportunity
to present and defend in a systematic way a positioil on self-
deception that has evolved partly out of my earlier attempts to
shed light on the phenomenon. Although I draw on previously
published work, the defense offered here of my central theses
about the kind of self-deception that has received pride of place
in the philosophical and psychological literature is nluch more
robust and has an importailt new dinlensioil that benefits from
recent empirical work on hypothesis testing. The general posi-
tion on self-deception advanced here also is considerably more
comprehensive than what I have been able to mailage in my
scattered efforts on the topic over the years.
I have been thinking about self-deception longer than it
pleases me to acknowledge. My first stab at the topic (Mele
1982)' a brief commentary on a provocative paper by Robert
Audi( 1982), coiltains some of the seeds of the position ad-
vanced in this book. Ally central point there was that "there is
no close general analogy between self-deception and i7zterztio7znl
other deception" and that "when our attachment to this analogy
is broken, there is significantly less motivation to postulate un-
conscious [tr~~bee]l iefs in ordinary cases of self-deception"
(Mele I 982, p. 164). I11 Mele 1983, I offered a more rigorous