On Self-deceptive Intention

Abstract

Can we be unaware of the intention which is actually guiding our own purposeful behavior? This is the question I shall tackle in this paper, discussing the paradoxical nature of the phenomenon: self-deception. When the deceiver and the deceived are one and the same person,the deceptive intention of the former seems to be easily detected by the latter, rendering the whole project self-defeating. But what exactly is intentional about self-deception? Or is it an unintentional process after all?
In this paper I shall focus on the various data-manipulating strategies in which the self-deceiver engages during the process of making himself believe what he knows to be false. These are intentional activities the motive of which is to reduce the anxiety caused by the unpleasant true belief. I will clarify the conditions under which the privileged access to our own mental states breaks down and secure the ontological possibility of self-deception without reducing it either to unintentional wishful thinking or to ‘Pascal’s wager’, namely an explicit conscious attempt at self-reformation.