Blog – Page 25

Along the lines of last night’s post, Keith Frankish has an article at Aeon describing and defending the illusion ist viewpoint, that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion. It’s an excellent introduction for anyone who isn’t familiar with the basic argument.

As noted before, I think the illusion ists are right about the reality, but I’m not sure using the word “illusion” is productive. We could just as easily say that yes, phenomenal consciousness exists *subjectively* but not objectively, and this is how that subjective experience is constructed. There is some value in using stark language to get people’s attention, but it also frequently gets their summary dismissal.

I’m also not entirely sure it’s all in the introspection mechanisms. Phenomenal qualities seem useful in discriminating between different objects, and the affect lacing the brain weaves in also clues the deliberation engine on how to regard those objects. It seems likely that our introspective representations of these perceptual representations are value added rather than entirely constructive. Thinking the latter implies a lot of processing overload for introspection, which doesn’t necessarily feel adaptive to me.

Philosopher Peter Hankins at Conscious Entities has a write-up on the November 12 issue of the JCS (Journal of Consciousness Studies) in which philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists such as Keith Frankish, Daniel Dennett, Susan Blackmore, and Michael Graziano, debate whether it makes sense to refer to phenomenal consciousness as an illusion. Unfortunately the full text of the journal articles are paywalled, although if you are on a university network, or have the ability to access the site through one, you might find you can reach them.

Saying that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion is often met with derision. The phrase “is an illusion” is meant to state that consciousness isn’t what it appears to be, but many people read it as “does not exist”, which seems self evidently ludicrous. Which is why, while I generally agree with the illusionists ontologically, that is with their actual conclusions about reality, I’ve resisted using the “illusion” label for the last few years. As one of the JCS authors (Nicholas Humphrey) stated, it’s bad politics. People have a tendency to stop listening when they perceive you’re saying consciousness isn’t there.

And it can be argued that, whatever phenomenal experience is, we most definitely have it. And that the perception of a subjective experience is the experience, such that questioning it is incoherent. I have some sympathy with that position.