Is the Mind a Magic Trick? Illusionism about Consciousness in the “Consciousness-Only” Theory of Vasubandhu and Sthiramati
Ergo, An Open Access Journal of Philosophy February 18, 2025 Amit Chaturvedi 1 citation
The paper examines whether the classical Buddhist philosophers Vasubandhu and Sthiramati, writing in Sanskrit, actually hold an illusionist view of phenomenal consciousness—the claim that conscious qualia do not really exist but only seem to. The author finds that their concept of the mind as the 'imagination of what is non-existent' aligns with contemporary illusionism: an unconscious causal basis generates the illusion of representational states with phenomenal content. The paper considers three candidates for what might seem to be real phenomenality—mental appearances, affective sensory experience, and intrinsic luminosity—and concludes that Vasubandhu and Sthiramati indeed appear to be strong illusionists, especially if phenomenal states are assumed to be essentially representational.