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Reviewing the logic of self-deception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Ellen Fridland
Ellen Fridland
Affiliation:
Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt University of Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany. ellenfridland@yahoo.comhttp://sites.google.com/site/ellenfridland/
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Abstract

I argue that framing the issue of motivated belief formation and its subsequent social gains in the language of self-deception raises logical difficulties. Two such difficulties are that (1) in trying to provide an evolutionary motive for viewing self-deception as a mechanism to facilitate other-deception, the ease and ubiquity of self-deception are undermined, and (2) because after one has successfully deceived oneself, what one communicates to others, though untrue, is not deceptive, we cannot say that self-deception evolved in order to facilitate the deception of others.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , February 2011 , pp. 22 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

Trivers, R. (1976/2006) Foreword. In: The selfish gene, Dawkins, R., pp. 19–20. Oxford University Press. (Original work published in 1976).Google Scholar