13 Self‐Deception and Three Psychiatric Delusions

Abstract Audi has suggested that the difference between self‐deception and delusion with respect to a false proposition turns on whether the subject believes the false proposition: the self‐deceived do not actually believe what they avow. But the chapter holds that the self‐deceived and the deluded both believe the false proposition, and so an account of the difference between self‐deception and delusion that differs from Audi's must be offered. The chapter discusses several standard cases of self‐deception, sketching his view of self‐deception as the product of motivational or emotional biases. It then considers three psychiatric delusions found in volume IV of the American Psychiatric Association's, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and argues that they are best explained not by the kind of biasing characteristic of self‐deception, but instead by the presence of cognitive deficits.