Important topic.
We humans are obsessed with our emotions and self deception is a powerful tool for managing cognitive dissonance. It also helps us hide from ourselves the risks and consequences of excessive hedonism, thus reducing our inhibitions against self-inflicted harm.
总的来说，我倾向于认为有更健康的选择来管理和忍受更高水平的认知失调，比如正念和不依恋。
Self deception is potentially rational when it enhances our ability to deceive others (e.g. method acting), but it comes at a high risk of damage from collateral irrationality. Again, there are probably less risky ways to lie convincingly than by drinking from the poisoned cup.
Poor Richard
Poor Richard's Almanack 2010

We probably all know of the science fiction stories about the 'computer' that self-destructs when it is forced to contradict itself.
Assuming some manner of "mechanized" functioning to human thought and emotion, the above problem can be avoided by simply splitting the 'computing' process into two or as many independent divisions in the mind-machine' as necessary. One of the most fascinating examples of this appears to be the "divided brain" experiments and demonstrations where left-right sensory perceptions can be made to routinely contradict each other.
萨克斯(Sacks)和拉马钱德兰(Ramachandran)等神经学专家撰写的有趣文献描述了各种各样可以被视为大规模自我欺骗的现象。
One of the very big questions seems to me is what ultimate(?), philosophical(?), meaning(?) is to be attached to all that.

Jack,
The "divided brain" effects may be the most gross, macro examples of what I would call cognitive compartmentalization--which I think can occur at many levels.
I suspect the brain uses a version of "object oriented programming" in which at least some cognitive processes/programs/data can be instantiated over and over with variation. In effect, we can have many identities, many personalities, many brains in one; in combinations or configurations that can be both concurrent and sequential; and between which contradictions often seem to be pretty highly tolerated.
In other words, I suspect we all have sub-clinical cases of dissociative identity ("multiple personality") disorder!
Poor Richard
Poor Richard's Almanack 2010

Self-concealment seems to be the case, rather them self-deception, since it's the metaphorical self that has supposedly acted to deceive and therefor knows it's done so. But our executive "self" has evidently learned to conceal one element of its functional system from another, if such independence from mutual experience is deemed effective.

The question then is why one function can compete more successfully for attention than the other, when the executive functions should have learned that strategy simply wasn't working? One answer would be this often happens when the emotional brain sees short term strategies as reasonable where the long term abstractive rational brain would not. And by the process of evolution, our emotional deliberations have been partitioned off, and thus concealed from our more perceptive apparatus.
And the why remains.

Baron,
That is an interesting distinction between deception and concealment. It opened a can of worms in my mind.
Presumably, self-deception requires some concealment of contrary data from self, but self-concealment alone sounds more ethically neutral. Is it?
自我欺骗或自我隐瞒有动机或意图吗?
Is there such a thing as unconscious motive or intent?
我们的大部分认知功能都隐藏在我们的有意识意识之外，无论是偶然还是有意为之。许多大脑区域是“黑匣子”，它们向我们的意识发送一些输出，但不“显示它们的工作”。想必在这种庆祝中并没有欺骗的意图。很明显，没有不必要的信息过载，我们的高级认知功能会更好。
但是否存在选择性或故意的自我隐藏呢?人们普遍认为，如果一个人足够努力，他就可以驱除头脑中的某些想法或感觉。但我不知道这方面的任何研究。
I understand your use of "executive self", but what do you mean by "metaphorical self"?
Poor Richard
Poor Richard's Almanack 2010

Poor Richard,
The term "self" traditionally refers to our supposedly complete and singular identity, at least as we seem or want to appear to others. But internally we have many aspects of that identity that we don't present to others, and some of those not to each other.
自我隐藏在道德上是中立的吗?很可能不是。在从事一项有风险的操作时，我们宁愿为了短期利益而隐瞒对长期后果前景的怀疑吗?当然。我们显然已经找到了将这些考虑转移到我们“潜意识”的方法。但我们通常不允许忘记它们的存在。
And of course concealment is one form of deception, but not of the self that arranges for it. The term reflects the view of that concealment by an outside observer who assumes one hand can't know what the other hand is up to or it wouldn't let it happen.

Binocular vision is intriguing. When looking at a scene with distant and close objects, each eye usually sees different images that can be significantly unalike. Yet with both eyes the awareness is never of a dichotomy or confutation of the images but rather as if the conflicting information doesn't exist, together with the bonus of depth.

I think much of what we would call the executive self is unconscious. I can't recall the source off hand, but fMRI research has shown that a choice or decision can be detected as much as 5-10 seconds before it becomes conscious to the subject.
The line between conscious and unconscious seems vague and somewhat variable or fluid, especially in terms of attention. The boundary beyond which concentrated attention cannot penetrate seems to change under different conditions and mental states such as distraction, fatigue, or meditation.
自我隐藏(从自己的意识中隐藏某些东西)在伦理上是中立的，比如屏蔽背景噪音，但选择性不注意在某些时候可能会失去其伦理中立性，比如确认偏见或对“难以忽视的真相”的盲目性。
If the executive command is to ignore background noise, presumably there is still an open "interrupt" channel listening for some extraordinary noise that might yank the attention back to broad-spectrum alertness.
But in the case of intentionally burying some ethically or rationally inconvenient fact or memory, the conceal command may be given without any parameter to recall the concealed material under specified future conditions.
It may be that unless we explicitly tag perceptions to be remembered, they won't be. Like first hearing somebody's name--it often seems to be forgotten by default. So perhaps all we have to do when we encounter a possibly valid but inconvenient fact is fail to tag it for retention.
Poor Richard
Poor Richard's Almanack 2010

Poor Richard
我认为我们不能忽视任何我们认为非常重要的事情，从而要求隐藏它。显然，我们能做的是决定何时或何时不回忆它。但环境会不时地提醒我们这个标签，因为它代表着我们可能需要进一步学习的经验。
And yes, there is no fine or fixed line between our consciously monitored thought processes and the more unconscious. There are shifting or shiftable degrees of awareness that we seem to have some control over. We need to concentrate on the experiences that fit the circumstances, present experience assessed by our evaluations of the past. We may not be able to effectively forget on purpose but we can remember on purpose.

Baron wrote: "I don't think we can fail to tag anything that we felt was of significant importance to require its concealment. What we apparently can do is decide when or when not to recall it. But circumstances will remind us of the tag from time to time, as it represents experience that we may have further need to learn from.
Your view is persuasive. Do you know of any research on this particular topic available on-line (free)?
Poor Richard
Poor Richard's Almanack 2010

Poor Richard,
我对这种情况的理解大多来自我自己对人生战略运作主题的探索，以及导致其演变的各种经历。不，我不是进化论心理学的信徒。
There's a massive amount of reference material on self-deception, none containing (in may view) any more insight into the subject than was expressed initially on this blog, including the commentary by Van Leeuwen. However, now that I thought I'd coined the term of self-concealment, I find when googling the phrase that I was wrong. So maybe some of that stuff (which I've yet to read) will turn out to be useful.

But then again, a glance at some of that material shows that the term is used to designate the keeping of secrets from others such as your shrink, yet not from yourself.
Even so, it seems I'll have to come up with another label.

杰克写道:“……用两只眼睛，我们永远不会意识到图像的二分或混淆，相反，冲突的信息似乎不存在，以及深度的额外好处。"
Interesting point--that bilateral contradictions are represented to the mind's single "eye" not as errors but as another dimension. The same applies to all the senses, so this is a pretty standard way for the brain to deal with contradiction.
Maybe science deniers and pathological liars have a bunch of contradiction data curled up in a tiny, virtual dimension of the mind.
Poor Richard
Poor Richard's Almanack 2010

Baron wrote: "There's a massive amount of reference material on self-deception, none containing (in may view) any more insight into the subject than was expressed initially on this blog."
I'm mainly interested in stuff with an experimental psychology or cognitive neuroscience emphasis, if you know of any good recent stuff.
Poor Richard
Poor Richard's Almanack 2010

Poor Richard,
Experimental psychologists that study rationalization as a defense mechanism may be your best bet for new insights in this area. Although I think the mechanism is there as much for offense as for defense.
请注意，在配套的网站上写道:“自我欺骗不是一种由自然选择进化而来的适应，以服务于某种功能。”相反，我说过自欺是一种欺骗，这意味着什么呢?s a structural byproduct of other features of the human organism."
But my take is that this form of compartmentalization is not unique to humans - just unique with respect to our more abstract awareness of its use. Hence some observe it to be a spandrel when its long time service as a biological strategy belies that presumption.

Baron,
I'm willing to buy the idea that there are multiple mechanisms of self-deception--some that may have been actively selected and some that may be incidental byproducts of other selected traits. I don't focus on evo-psy much so its not a burning question. I'm mildly interested in where cognitive functions come from but more in how they work.
I'll look for some studies on rationalization. It also occurs to me that the literature on hypnosis and suggestibility might provide some clues about types and mechanisms of self-deception. I don't know the field--its just a guess.
Poor Richard
Poor Richard's Almanack 2010

很好，但是知道一个函数从哪里来是发现它如何工作的一半，因为它还可以告诉你为什么要开发它。

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A positive attitude toward life than negative

I am unfamiliar with terms such as executive self, but would tend to support the notion that deception and concealment are mutually inclusive. I believe that 1)We are taught to lie, trained to do so, at an early age. This training is not training in the usual sense: our parents, peers and associates do not go out of their way to teach us how and when to lie---we are conditioned to do so by life circumstances and 2)we lie as a matter of convenience and to obtain advantage where there was none previously, and/or to put ourselves in the most favorable light. Vanity is not the greatest of our weaknesses, only one of the more obvious ones.
总的来说，欺骗只是我们欺骗自己能力的延伸。毕竟(我们告诉自己)，每个人都在这么做。我们只是在行使现有的特权。

Deceit, of one form or another, has been a human failing or coping mechanism from the time we learned what it meant to deceive one another. Probably a very long time ago. Your posting and the ensuing comments have been informative, entertaining and speculative. I tend to agree with Heisenberg's Eyes concerning the attainment of advantage and the notion that deceipt is often perpetrated for the sake of convenience.
But there are numerous rationales for the telling of lies and most of us know most of them. Many of us are also quick to deceive without first considering the consequences of discovery. Some lie without a second thought, and we have labelled that pathological. The parameters are at best surprising when we know both intuitively and experientially how devastating deception can be. We just can't seem to help ourselves.
And that is the point. Forgive me, then, if I am skeptical when I hear of experts. In any field or in any branching thereof. I hope Mr. van Leeuwen is as good as you think he is.

自我本质上是有保护作用的，在我看来，自我的所有方面都是被选择的。爱情关系的矛盾在于，你必须选择把自己交给你爱的对象，如果你所做的没有得到回报，换句话说，他在欺骗你，那么随着时间的推移，他会变得比他最初的状态两倍以自我为中心，并伴随他的生活出现一个向下的螺旋。我不记得是谁说的了，有人说，自我陶醉的灵魂是邪恶的缩影。

自欺:扭曲的现实和有意的无知的丑陋混合物。“…这是一种模糊的现象，我们通过它蒙蔽了自己心灵的某些部分。我们对自己采取了行动。我们否认、压抑或贬低我们所知道的真相。我们断言、修饰、抬高我们知道是错误的东西。我们美化丑陋的现实，然后把美化过的版本卖给自己。我们变成了自己的被愚弄者，扮演着加害者和受害者的角色。我们知道真理，却不知道它，因为我们说服自己它的反面”(小科尼利厄斯·普兰廷加，《不该是这样》)。

I am a little more tolerant of self-deception. I feel that the self itself is a deception, just as all our other deceptions. I believe this deception begins in the newer areas of the modern human brain that develop abstract representations of our reality, allowing us to function better in the given circumstances. When the circumstances change, we ought to modify our abstractions but as poet Rilke puts it, they become habits. They become comfortable with and refuse to leave. this is the root problem.

I like and agree, in principle, with what Larry has said. However, my belief distills this thought into what has been characterized as SITUATIONAL ETHICS. The idea is not especially new, but the identification of it is. I have my own thoughts about what is going on. They are out there, and will, I hope, come to some fruition. Happy to see another mind in the mill.

在肯定的情况下，它们首先被显意识接受和接受，并逐渐成为潜意识的一部分。我们不能肯定一些内容与我们没有共鸣的东西。同样的道理，如果一个信息与我们的信仰体系不一致，并且是离散的，那么它不会对我们产生任何影响。