Illusionism is (un)resistant to sentience
Омский научный вестник: Серия "Общество. История. Современность" April 6, 2026 M. D. Gorbachev
Illusionism denies that phenomenal consciousness and qualia exist, claiming that our belief in them stems from introspective distortion. This raises a normative challenge: if phenomenal consciousness does not exist, illusionism seems incompatible with sentientism, the view that sentience grounds moral status. François Kammerer argues that illusionism must therefore reject sentientism to avoid counterintuitive ethical consequences. This article proposes that the incompatibility arises from a theoretically overloaded understanding of sentience. Three variants are distinguished: K-sentience (classic qualia), Z-sentience (zero qualia), and D-sentience (diet qualia). Only K-sentience is incompatible with illusionism. D-sentience is compatible with illusionism, avoids the problems of diet qualia, and does not force illusionism into undesirable ethical consequences.