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Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1997), 20: 105-105 Cambridge University Press
Copyright © 1997 Cambridge University Press

Open Peer Commentary
Mele: Real self-deception

Thinking and believing in self-deception

Kent Bach a1
a1 Department of Philosophy, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132 kbach@sfsu.edu

Abstract

Mele views self-deception as belief sustained by motivationally biased treatment of evidence. This view overlooks something essential, for it does not reckon with the fact that in self-deception the truth is dangerously close at hand and must be repeatedly suppressed. Self-deception is not so much a matter of what one positively believes as what one manages not to think.


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