ABSTRACT
This chapter presents deflationary accounts of self-deception. Deflationary accounts not only abandon strong agential involvement, they also reject other claims associated with intentionalism. The deflationary option is supposed to be beneficial not only due to general considerations of simplicity, but also because the typical non-deflationary posits are especially problematic in their own right. Alfred Mele has put forth the most well-developed deflationary account. Mele’s deflationary account posits a generic motive driving the irrationality, but argues that this motive does not necessarily capture the purposefulness of genuine self-deception. Deflationists can turn to experimental cognitive and social psychology to show that intentionalism is unnecessary, mining their discoveries in an attempt to cobble together purely motivational, non-intentional explanations for various forms of self-deception. The cognitivists posited inner mental states and processes that could actually be experimentally tested according to how they affected behaviour.
