Comment by hackinthebochs
3 years ago
What you gain is not having to defend your terminology or confusions derived from disagreements on the meaning of key terms. Following Kieth Frankish on twitter, it seems like he spends far more time defending against misconceptions about illusionism than actually defending the content of the theory. And it's an entirely self-inflicted wound. (Though it works for him as it raises his h-index.)
When your terminology results in you saying things like "consciousness is an illusion (doesn't exist)" and "the existence of qualia (features of our subjective experience) is false", you're just undermining your own project. I mean, you're literally engaging in a verbal dispute with the other guys in this thread. I just don't see the point. There would be far more agreement if we could align the usage of key terms with how most people understand them.
I agree there would be far more agreement, in the sense that fewer people would object and less forcefully, but I think it would be because they don't understand the substance.
If I explain that chairs don't really exist because there's no such thing in physics, I get nodding heads all around. If I say the same about consciousness, people are all up in arms.
The challenge here is the implicit assumption that their perception of subjective experience is a direct perception of reality, where they can accept that their perception of chairs is mediated by other things.
This is the assumption that must be challenged and I think your approach just lets people think they understand a position when they really don't.
> I think it would be because they don't understand the substance.
Fair point. This is a danger.
>If I explain that chairs don't really exist because there's no such thing in physics, I get nodding heads all around. If I say the same about consciousness, people are all up in arms.
The difference is that with chairs people immediately know you're speaking in jargon. No one in their right mind would say something like "chairs are an illusion". This isn't the case when it comes to phenomenal consciousness.
>The challenge here is the implicit assumption that their perception of subjective experience is a direct perception of reality
I'm in favor of challenging these kinds of assumptions. But saying phenomenal consciousness doesn't exist isn't a good way to do it. It (correctly) invites such strong resistance that it makes communicating the more subtle point nearly impossible. Although perhaps there really isn't a more subtle point in the case of illusionism. Frankish views seem to have evolved towards a straightforward eliminativist account, which is disappointing. I was originally very sympathetic to illusionism when I first looked into it, but it is much less appealing now. I go into some detail about my problems with it here[1] if you're interested.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/naturalism/comments/zr6udy/a_challe...
> No one in their right mind would say something like "chairs are an illusion". This isn't the case when it comes to phenomenal consciousness.
Au contraire! I did something like this recently by arguing that solidity is basically illusory. It went ok.
Solidity simply doesn't have the properties that we naively attribute to it given our perceptions (even solids are mostly empty space!), and analogously, neither does our qualitative experience. The qualities we attribute to solids simply changed as we understood more of what was going on.
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