Self-Deception in Belief Acquistion

• Main Author: Echano, Mario R
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2019
• Subjects: : Cognitive Bias; Motivated Believing; Self-Deception; LayHypothesis Testing; Philosophy
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/philo-faculty-pubs/5; https://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_25/echano_december2019.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Attempts to analyze self-deception (“SD,” from here on) have produced a series of articles and books trying to characterize the phenomenon and to resolve the problems involved in it. None has been found to satisfy the inquisitive minds as no analysis has been able to embrace all cases of SD. Alfred Mele is one of the leading scholars on SD. In the course of his works from 1982 to 2012, he has offered different formulations of SD, all aiming to accommodate all its instances. In this work, I examine Mele’s latest version of analysis of SD. I argue that his formulations exclude cases of twisted SD. Moreover, by his appeal to PEDMIN (Primary Error Detection and Minimization) that is involved in Lay Hypothesis Testing theory (LHT), he is courting a contradiction. Before delving into his set of conditions, I first situate the analysis in the problems that are involved in SD with desiderata {1}. In section {2}, I present the problem with Mele’s formulations of the analysis. In section {3} I dwell into why SD is acquisition of false belief. Section {4} is my justification of additional condition to Mele’s set of conditions. From sections {5} to {8}, I explain the relevance of the added condition to Mele’s existing set.