Illusionism is the doctrine that phenomenal consciousness does not exist. Frankish introduced the term, so it makes sense to anchor it to his usage.
In the essay “Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness”, Frankish makes very clear that he is not advocating a “conservative realist” position in which phenomenal properties can be reduced to brain states. Illusionism is in fact ideologically close to dualism—both agree that phenomenal properties are too weird to be explained by physical phenomena, they just disagree on what to make of this. He distinguishes between weak illusionism and strong illusionism—weak illusionists deny some of phenomenal consciousness’s putative features, whereas strong illusionism denies that it exists altogether. Illusionism is to be understood as strong illusionism. Finally, illusionism should not be understood as the denial of experiences altogether—we have sensations like pain and color, it is just that introspection falsely depicts them as possessing phenomenal properties.
NOW, there is definitely room for confusion and equivocation here, because the meaning of “phenomenal consciousness” is not perfectly clear. The main idea seems to be that introspection systematically misrepresents our own experiences in a way that gives rise to dualist intuitions. At this point I lose a grip on what is meant by statements like “An illusionist would not deny the existence of 🟩”
Interesting. What is the difference then between illusionism and eliminativism? Is eliminativism the even more “hard-core” position, whereby while illusionism only denies the existence of phenomenal properties, but not experience, eliminativism denies the existence of any experience altogether?
Hmm. It gets tricky because we get into like, what does the English word “experience” mean. “Phenomenal properties” is supposed to pick out the WOW! aspect of experiences, that thing that’s really obvious and vivid that makes us speculate about dualism and zombies. I think Frankish uses “experience” basically to mean whatever neural events cause us to talk about pain, hunger etc, so I don’t think an eliminativist would deny those exist. But I’m not sure.
Illusionism is the doctrine that phenomenal consciousness does not exist. Frankish introduced the term, so it makes sense to anchor it to his usage.
In the essay “Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness”, Frankish makes very clear that he is not advocating a “conservative realist” position in which phenomenal properties can be reduced to brain states. Illusionism is in fact ideologically close to dualism—both agree that phenomenal properties are too weird to be explained by physical phenomena, they just disagree on what to make of this. He distinguishes between weak illusionism and strong illusionism—weak illusionists deny some of phenomenal consciousness’s putative features, whereas strong illusionism denies that it exists altogether. Illusionism is to be understood as strong illusionism. Finally, illusionism should not be understood as the denial of experiences altogether—we have sensations like pain and color, it is just that introspection falsely depicts them as possessing phenomenal properties.
NOW, there is definitely room for confusion and equivocation here, because the meaning of “phenomenal consciousness” is not perfectly clear. The main idea seems to be that introspection systematically misrepresents our own experiences in a way that gives rise to dualist intuitions. At this point I lose a grip on what is meant by statements like “An illusionist would not deny the existence of 🟩”
Interesting. What is the difference then between illusionism and eliminativism? Is eliminativism the even more “hard-core” position, whereby while illusionism only denies the existence of phenomenal properties, but not experience, eliminativism denies the existence of any experience altogether?
Hmm. It gets tricky because we get into like, what does the English word “experience” mean. “Phenomenal properties” is supposed to pick out the WOW! aspect of experiences, that thing that’s really obvious and vivid that makes us speculate about dualism and zombies. I think Frankish uses “experience” basically to mean whatever neural events cause us to talk about pain, hunger etc, so I don’t think an eliminativist would deny those exist. But I’m not sure.