At an amateur cricket match, a mature and rather plump philosopher comes in to bat. The bowler who delivers the ball to the batsman mistakenly expects an easy out. We might quite naturally say of the bowler that he was deceived by appearances – he believed the batsman would be a bad cricket player when in fact he was a good one. Although the philosopher was pleased (it is reported that he was very pleased) when his opponent was thus fooled, he did not deceive him into believing that he was a bad player. The philosopher behaved as he normally would. He did not, for example, pretend to be in worse shape than he was. The homeless man in New York City with matted hair and dirty slept-in clothes, whose appearance, the New York Times reported, led the pediatrician who passed him to believe that he was not an affectionate father of an infant daughter, did not seek to create this mistaken impression.

While no one would deny that we can be, and often are, deceived by appearances, and that in such cases the deception can be achieved without there being anyone who attempts to bring about the deception, or even anyone who wants the deception to occur, many would deny that self-deception is in this regard like deception by appearances. Among the deniers would be those who believe that self-deception should be strictly modeled on interpersonal deception, a deception which can only occur if there is someone who attempts to bring about the deception.