ABSTRACT
A placebo is effective if it makes me better simply because I believe it will. But if I realize it is a placebo, I can no longer believe that it will work because of any of its pharmaceutical properties. If my belief that I will get better makes me better, then it is the belief, not the pill, that cures me. The pill drops out of the picture. If a placebo works, it works via a false belief that it has intrinsic therapeutic properties. Realizing how it is supposed to work defeats the object of taking the placebo. So I can say, ‘The pill will cure him just because he believes it will’, but I cannot sincerely say, ‘The pill will cure me just because I believe it will’. Though I can, of course, realize later that I have benefited from a placebo effect, and so say that the pill cured me simply because I believed it would.
