how self deception works: My wife is having an affair; the house will burn down; Joe Biden believes he had done nothing wrong.

 Ellen says that she is doing well in her biology class, but systematically avoids looking at the results on her quizzes and tests. She says she doesn’t need to look; she knows she didn’t miss anything. 

When her teacher tries to catch her after class to discuss her poor grades, she is rushes off. Similarly, when she sees an email from her teacher, she ignores it. Ellen’s behavior suggests to these critics that she knows she is not doing well in her biology class, despite her avowals to the contrary. Insofar as deflationary approaches deny people like Ellen know the truth, they fail adequately to explain her self-deception

enying both the Welcome Belief and the Unwelcome Belief: Given the variety of proxies that have been offered for both the welcome and the unwelcome belief, it should not be surprising that some argue that self-deception can be explained without attributing either belief to self-deceivers, a position Edwards (2013) refers to as ‘nondoxasticism