DISTAL VERSUS PROXIMAL MECHANISMS OF REAL SELF-DECEPTION

There is little fear that the concept of motivational bias as proposed by Mele is likely to dampen the current academic ferment (see Mele's Introduction) with respect to self-deception for several reasons: (a) like philosophy, science has more recently abandoned the heuristic of a rational human mind; (b) the concept is parsimonious, applicable to many research topics other than self-deception, and, therefore, scient ifically serviceable; (c) as a proximal mechanism it addresses process rather than function, that is, how rather than why questions; (d) it is not as interesting a question as why there is a high prevalence of ''real'' self-deception (i.e., ''garden-variety self-deception'' as de scribed by Mele, see sect. 6); and (e) a more penetrating issue is whe ther ''real'' self-deception is adaptive.