Deception: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives

Virtually all aspects of human society – our intimate and superficial relationships, daily dealings in the market, interactions through virtual spaces – are permeated with at least some degree of dishonesty, lying, manipulation, pretense, and other – more or less benign – forms of deception. In fact, very few phenomena in our lives are as unequivocally morally condemned, and yet as ubiquitous and widely expected as the deception of and by our fellow humans, be they complete strangers or our nearest and dearest. But not only do we sometimes (intentionally or unintentionally) deceive others, but very often (and perhaps even to a greater extent) we deceive ourselves about various facets of our lives (possibly, according to some, only to be more successful in our attempts at deceiving others). Various forms of deception and self-deception have long been capturing our attention not only in branches of philosophy, such as ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of mind, and informal logic but also in political science, psychology, research on artificial intelligence, human-robot interaction research, biomedical ethics, statistics, mathematics, etc. The 2023 Summer School of the Institute of Philosophy in Zagreb aims to provide participants with an in-depth presentation and analysis of some of the most influential theoretical approaches to the phenomena of deception and self-deception, as well as an analysis of their practical (normative) implications.

The summer school is intended for Ph.D. students of philosophy and disciplines such as psychology, communication science, journalism, information science, etc. Applications from advanced master's students, as well as from media/PR experts will also be considered.