If claim 1 were false, i.e., if deceivers must intentionally get themselves to believe something which they know or truly believe is false, and if one models self-deception on other-deception, then self-deception, as we saw earlier, appears to be doubly paradoxical. It seems to require that if I deceive myself, then:

1. (a) as deceiver, I must believe of some proposition that it is false, and at the same time, as deceived, believe that it is true, and

2. (b) as deceived, I must be taken in by a deceitful strategy that, as deceiver, I know to be deceitful.

If, as I argued, claim 1 is true, but deceivers must introduce into the deceived's situation something that the deceiver believes has a real possibility of causing the deceived to believe that p, and the deceiver takes that something to provide neither adequate evidence for p nor direct sensory awareness that p then while paradox (a) does not arise in self-deception if one models self-deception on other-deception, paradox (b) would arise.

Nearly all who write about self-deception have assumed that claim 1 was false, that the relevant sort of knowledge or true belief was a prerequisite for the intentional deception of another. While this assumption and the seeming paradoxes it engenders in self-deception when self-deception is modeled on other-deception have led some philosophers to doubt the very possibility of self-deception – a doubt which runs counter to a widespread conviction that self-deception is actual and pervasive – they have led many others to seek a resolution of the seeming paradoxes.