Illusionism about Phenomenal Consciousness: Explaining the Illusion
Review of Philosophy and Psychology April 1, 2021 Daniel S Shabasson 20 citations
Illusionism holds that phenomenal consciousness—the subjective, qualitative feel of experience—is an introspective illusion. This paper proposes a theory to explain why we are strongly disposed to mistakenly judge that we are phenomenally conscious. The explanation rests on three hypotheses: introspective opacity (we have limited access to our own mental processes), the infallibility intuition (we assume our introspective judgments are correct), and the justification constraint (we seek reasons for our judgments). These lead us to draw erroneous unconscious inferences about our sensory states, creating the illusion of phenomenal consciousness. The theory also accounts for common intuitions about consciousness—that it involves ineffable, private, non-physical qualities—and addresses why illusionism itself seems counterintuitive.