Abstract

Theories of self-deception differ with respect to their views about its form and function. Intentionalists hold that self-deception resembles interpersonal deception, and that its function is to cause agents to adopt false beliefs. Nonintentionalists reject this view, and argue that the form of self-deception is best captured in terms of unconscious biases and that it does not have any function. I argue that both of these theories have major shortcomings, and present an alternative, called "teleofunctional non-intentionalism". On this account, selfdeception resembles the non-intentional deceptions perpetrated by non-human organisms and has the subintentional function of causing the agent's representational apparatus to fail.