If weakness of will is a pathology of agency, then it is natural to regard self-deception as a pathology of cognition. Self-deception is a species of motivated believing in which the cognition of a subject is driven by desire towards the embrace of some proposition—typically, "in the teeth of the evidence." Here we may think of the alcoholic, the terminal cancer patient, or the anorexic, who, even while in possession of compelling evidence of his condition, insists, sincerely, that it is just not so. Many investigators require that, more than this, the self-deceiver must be understood to bring about his deception intentionally and knowingly in pursuit of the doxastic embrace of some motivationally or affectively favored proposition. Were this so, self-deception would seem to involve the sort of deep or internal irrationality distinctive of weakness of will. For just as the weak-willed individual knowingly and intentionally acts...