Self-deception makes best sense as a self-defensive mechanism by which the self protects itself from painful reality. Hence, we typically imagine self-deceivers as people who cause themselves to believe as true what they want to be true. Some self-deceivers, however, end up believing what they do not want to be true. Their behaviour can be explained on the hypothesis that the function of this behaviour is protecting the agent's perceived focal benefit at the cost of inflicting short-term harm, which is a basis for a unified account of the phenomenon. In this paper, I argue that this view is narrow. Cases of altruistic, benevolent, and even self-punishing self-deception also exist. There, the function is not the self-deceiver's benefit. In fact, self-deception may have no function at all. Therefore, I put forward a novel account that analyses the function of self-deception on a case-by-case basis.

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论自欺的作用

自我欺骗是一种自我保护机制，自我保护自己免受痛苦现实的伤害，这是最有意义的。因此，我们通常将自我欺骗者想象为那些让自己相信他们想要成为真实的东西的人。然而，一些自欺欺人的人最终相信了他们不想成为真的东西。他们的行为可以根据这样的假设来解释，即这种行为的功能是以造成短期伤害为代价来保护代理人的感知焦点利益，这是对该现象进行统一解释的基础。在本文中，我认为这种观点是狭隘的。利他、仁慈，甚至自罚自欺的案例也存在。在那里，功能不是自欺者的好处。事实上，自欺欺人可能根本没有任何作用。所以，