The overtone model of self-deception

Abstract

In this paper I will argue for what I call an ‘overtone model of self-deception’. The analogy to overtones (higher-order frequencies of a tone) is as follows: a self-deceiver’s optimal degree of instability (the term is borrowed from Friston et al. 2012, and applied to self-deception) is elevated so that constant exploration (of a certain number of hypotheses) is pursued instead of disambiguation in favor of a certain hypothesis. These hypotheses are explored in parallel (for similar ideas with respect to higher-order cognition in general see Pezzulo and Cisek 2016, and Metzinger 2017) and are like overtones of the currently active self-deceptive hypothesis (the base frequency) so that what we as self-deceivers, as well as observers, perceive as one tone (self-deception) is actually a fusion of different frequencies. The term ‘fusion’ is relevant because the phenomenology of the self-deceiver is co-determined by overtones.