What’s confusing in discussions such as this is the lack of a clear definition of self-deception.
Minds are complex. They contain stuff other than conscious verbal beliefs, things like gut-level feelings (aliefs?), unconscious assumptions, imagery, emotions, desires.
We absolutely suck at conveying mental phenomena other than explicit beliefs and attempts to do so result in silliness like “believe in yourself” or “just do it”.
This leads to two problems. First, it is not clear what you mean about self-deception. Trying to deliberately alter your beliefs is obviously bad. But what about controlling your attention? Do I self-decieve about something by refusing to look at it? What about influencing emotions through positive mental imagery? Or using a relaxation technique to calm myself down?
The second problem is that when someone says “I will win” you can’t be sure wheter he really means “I expressly believe that my success is certain” or maybe “I know of the possibility of failure but refuse to bring it to the forefront of awareness. I feel energized, motivated and determined to achieve my goal.” The second option seems like a more reasonable interpretation, unless you already have reasons to suspect the speaker of being an idiot.
What’s confusing in discussions such as this is the lack of a clear definition of self-deception.
Minds are complex. They contain stuff other than conscious verbal beliefs, things like gut-level feelings (aliefs?), unconscious assumptions, imagery, emotions, desires. We absolutely suck at conveying mental phenomena other than explicit beliefs and attempts to do so result in silliness like “believe in yourself” or “just do it”.
This leads to two problems. First, it is not clear what you mean about self-deception. Trying to deliberately alter your beliefs is obviously bad. But what about controlling your attention? Do I self-decieve about something by refusing to look at it? What about influencing emotions through positive mental imagery? Or using a relaxation technique to calm myself down?
The second problem is that when someone says “I will win” you can’t be sure wheter he really means “I expressly believe that my success is certain” or maybe “I know of the possibility of failure but refuse to bring it to the forefront of awareness. I feel energized, motivated and determined to achieve my goal.” The second option seems like a more reasonable interpretation, unless you already have reasons to suspect the speaker of being an idiot.