Sign-In
Cart
The Paradox of Self-Deceit: How We Shape Inner Reality
Paperback
Series: Philosophical Questions
Please select the version of book you would like to purchase.
ISBN13: 9798277648063
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Dec 6 2025
Pages: 316
Weight: 0.93
Height: 0.66 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Dec 6 2025
Pages: 316
Weight: 0.93
Height: 0.66 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Modern thought treats placebo as a statistical inconvenience, a ghost to be subtracted so the real mechanisms of healing may stand. Yet this spectral effect may be the clearest revelation of how human reality is actually constructed. Placebo is not an accident of biology; it is the biological imprint of belief itself.
This work argues that the human being is not a passive observer of the world but an active architect of inner reality. Expectation is a physiological force. Meaning modifies chemistry. Consciousness and the body form a single predictive organism, ceaselessly generating models of the world and of the self. Placebo is the luminous edge of this process, where interpretation becomes sensation and belief becomes flesh.
The book dismantles the inherited split between mind and body, showing that trust, ritual, and narrative carry measurable consequences: they can trigger endogenous opioids, recalibrate pain, modulate immunity, and shift the felt boundaries of suffering. The world becomes what we expect of it; the body becomes what we believe ourselves to be. Healing is not merely repair but a reconfiguration of inner reality.
Yet the power of self-creation is neither unlimited nor fully transparent. If the organism responds so deeply to belief, why does healing fail? Why do earnest efforts at inner transformation collapse before chronic pain, fear, or despair? The paradox of self-deceit lies here: the very system that allows us to reshape our experience can also trap us within models we cannot feel ourselves believing.
THE PARADOX OF SELF-DECEIT: HOW WE SHAPE INNER REALITY takes the reader beyond the familiar sugar pill and into the deeper architecture of expectation, revealing both the promise and the boundaries of the constructed self. It suggests that the failure of belief may conceal the final secret of how inner worlds are made-and unmade.
The book dismantles the inherited split between mind and body, showing that trust, ritual, and narrative carry measurable consequences: they can trigger endogenous opioids, recalibrate pain, modulate immunity, and shift the felt boundaries of suffering. The world becomes what we expect of it; the body becomes what we believe ourselves to be. Healing is not merely repair but a reconfiguration of inner reality.
Yet the power of self-creation is neither unlimited nor fully transparent. If the organism responds so deeply to belief, why does healing fail? Why do earnest efforts at inner transformation collapse before chronic pain, fear, or despair? The paradox of self-deceit lies here: the very system that allows us to reshape our experience can also trap us within models we cannot feel ourselves believing.
THE PARADOX OF SELF-DECEIT: HOW WE SHAPE INNER REALITY takes the reader beyond the familiar sugar pill and into the deeper architecture of expectation, revealing both the promise and the boundaries of the constructed self. It suggests that the failure of belief may conceal the final secret of how inner worlds are made-and unmade.
Also from
Kriger, Boris
Freedom from Taxes: Introduction of Automated Payment Transaction Tax and Universal Basic Income
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$9.60
The Law of Imperative Uncertainty: Why Any Complex World Requires Uncertainty
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$23.88
Foundations of Intellectual Substrate Mining: A Methodology for Extracting Formal Laws from Raw Wisdom
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$28.80
Spinoza, Evolution, and the Model Trap: Why We Cannot Perceive Reality Directly
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$26.40
Irrational Reason and Rational Faith: Pascal and the Structural Limits of Rationality
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$22.56
The Dawn of Shared Intelligence: How Autonomous Technology Will Reshape Civilization
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$28.80
The Next Sexual Revolution: Ideas of Wilhelm Reich in the Age of Artificial Intimacy
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$16.80
Absurd Faith for an Absurd World: The Tertullian Paradox in the Age of Unreason
Kriger, Boris
Paperback
$17.20
Also in
Philosophy
Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea
Hunt-Hendrix, Leah
Taylor, Astra
Hardcover
$14.99
In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument
Williams, Bernard
Paperback
$46.25
The American Indian Mind in a Linear World: American Indian Studies and Traditional Knowledge
Fixico, Donald Lee
Paperback
$72.79
Dreaming of Cinema: Spectatorship, Surrealism, and the Age of Digital Media
Lowenstein, Adam
Paperback
$51.00
Machine Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Spiritual Freedom and the Re-Animation of Matter
Lafitte, Luke
Paperback
From $14.99
The Sociogony: Social Facts and the Ontology of Objects, Things, and Monsters
Worrell, Mark P.
Paperback
$43.50
On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Unpublished and Selected Writings
Pirsig, Robert M.
Pirsig, Wendy K.
Hardcover
$25.64
The Electromagnetic Brain: Em Field Theories on the Nature of Consciousness
Joye, Shelli Renée
Paperback
From $12.99
Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida
Roudinesco, Elisabeth
Paperback
$42.00
The New Science of Giambattista Vico: Unabridged Translation of the Third Edition (1744) with the Addition of Practic of the New Science
Vico, Giambattista
Paperback
$43.43
The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy
Giridharadas, Anand
Hardcover
$10.99
The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance
Gottlieb, Anthony
Paperback
$9.99
The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations
Julia, Annas
Annas, Julia
Barnes, Jonathan
Paperback
$48.84
Friendship and Society: An Introduction to Augustine's Practical Philosophy
Burt, Donald X.
Paperback
$28.49
Suffering and the Search for Meaning: Contemporary Responses to the Problem of Pain
Rice, Richard
Paperback
$24.69
The Philosophy of John Dewey: Volume 1. the Structure of Experience. Volume 2: The Lived Experience
Dewey, John
Paperback
$63.80
Essays V2: Moral And Entertaining On The Various Faculties And Passions Of The Human Mind (1815)
Clarendon, Edward Hyde Earl of
Paperback
$37.44
The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
Hanselman, Stephen
Holiday, Ryan
Hardcover
From $12.99
The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us
Goldstein, Rebecca Newberger
Hardcover
From $19.99
The Obstacle Is the Way Expanded 10th Anniversary Edition: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph
Holiday, Ryan
Hardcover
$26.60
Self-Help from the Middle Ages: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us about Living
Jones, Peter
Hardcover
$27.00
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
Godfrey-Smith, Peter
Paperback
$19.00
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse Fifth Anniversary Limited Edition: The Global Bestseller
Mackesy, Charlie
Hardcover
$28.49
Bless & Release: The physics of letting go-and wanting what's meant for you.
Laporte, Danielle
Paperback
$17.10
The Ethical Slut, Third Edition: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love
Easton, Dossie
Hardy, Janet W.
Paperback
$17.99
Eight Million Ways to Happiness: Wisdom for Inspiration and Healing from the Heart of Japan
Yoda, Hiroko
Hardcover
$26.10
Self-Reliance and Nature: The Complete First and Second Series of Emerson's Essays
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Hardcover
$24.99