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Deceiving ourselves about self-deception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Stevan Harnad
Stevan Harnad
Affiliation:
Institut des sciences cognitives, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, QC H3C 3P8, Canada; School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ Southampton, United Kingdom. [email protected]://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/harnad
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Abstract

Were we just the Darwinian adaptive survival/reproduction machines von Hippel & Trivers invoke to explain us, the self-deception problem would not only be simpler, but also nonexistent. Why would unconscious robots bother to misinform themselves so as to misinform others more effectively? But as we are indeed conscious rather than unconscious robots, the problem is explaining the causal role of consciousness itself, not just its supererogatory tendency to misinform itself so as to misinform (or perform) better.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , February 2011 , pp. 25 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

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