Voice recognition and the ontological status of self-deception

Douglas and Gibbins (1983) recently argued that our demonstration that errors in self-other recognition are often instances of self-deception was inadequate. In their study, they found that both self-other and acquaintance-other recognition errors met two of the four criteria we had offered as necessary and sufficient for ascribing self-deception. They presented no evidence that either type of recognition error was not an instance of self-deception. Here we describe the original basis of our demonstration and point out the logical fallacy in Douglas and Gibbins' argument.