What is deception, and can it occur without an intention to mislead, especially when the person being deceived is oneself?
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1. Guest
Vladimir Krstić is Assistant Professor at the United Arab Emirates University, and his work focuses on philosophy of mind, language, philosophy of deception.
Check out his book with Cambridge Elements!
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/deception-and-selfdeception/F245F27D1A823DB21CC24B9C2D161C7A
2. Book Summary
Vladimir Krstić argues that the main puzzles about self-deception come from starting with the wrong theory of interpersonal deception. Traditional “intentionalist” accounts say deception requires an intention to mislead; when that model is applied to self-deception, it generates classic paradoxes (roughly: you’d have to knowingly trick yourself).
His alternative is a functional account: something counts as deceptive when its function is to mislead—so deception (including self-deception) may be intentional, but it needn’t be, and crucially it’s never merely accidental or a simple mistake. This functional framework is meant to unify human deception, self-deception, and biological deception under one analysis.
On the self-deception side, he applies the same functional idea to explain familiar “motivated” cases (e.g., rationalizing away distressing evidence) without requiring intention to self-deceive, and he suggests a practical marker: self-deception often shows up as a motivated departure from one’s normal standards—being “not oneself.” He also argues against the idea that self-deception must be beneficial or adaptive; some forms can be neutral or even harmful, so it calls for case-by-case treatment.
3. Interview Chapters
00:00 – Introduction
00:50 – Overview of the book
11:09 – Intention
17:58 – Is deception always wrong?
29:25 – Functional account
36:29 – Function
43:08 – Sci-fi case
48:13 – Vagueness
53:45 – Objections
57:51 – Self-deception
1:02:15 – Function and self-deception
1:09:12 – Semantics
1:17:27 – Value of philosophy
1:24:33 – Conclusion
