Editing Hard problem of consciousness (section)

====Eliminative materialism / Illusionism====
{{main|Eliminative materialism}}

Eliminative materialism or eliminativism is the view that many or all of the [[mental states]] used in [[folk psychology]] (i.e., common-sense ways of discussing the mind) do not, upon scientific examination, correspond to real brain mechanisms.<ref name="sep-elim">{{cite encyclopedia|last=Ramsey|first=William|editor-last=Zalta|editor-first=Edward N.|editor-link=Edward N. Zalta|encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|title=Eliminative Materialism|year=2019|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/|access-date=1 April 2019}}</ref> According the 2020 [[PhilPapers]] survey, 4.51% of philosophers surveyed subscribe to eliminativism.<ref name="philpapers2020" />

While [[Patricia Churchland]] and [[Paul Churchland]] have famously applied eliminative materialism to [[propositional attitudes]], philosophers including [[Daniel Dennett]], [[Georges Rey]], and [[Keith Frankish]] have applied it to [[qualia]] or [[phenomenal consciousness]] (i.e., conscious experience).<ref name="sep-elim"/> On their view, it is mistaken not only to believe there is a hard problem of consciousness, but to believe phenomenal consciousness exists at all.<ref name="frankish"/>{{r|dennett 2016}}

This stance has recently taken on the name of ''illusionism'': the view that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion. The term was popularized by the philosopher [[Keith Frankish]].<ref name="frankish-2016" /> Frankish argues that "illusionism" is preferable to "eliminativism" for labelling the view that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion. More substantively, Frankish argues that illusionism about phenomenal consciousness is preferable to realism about phenomenal consciousness. He states: "Theories of consciousness typically address the hard problem. They accept that phenomenal consciousness is real and aim to explain how it comes to exist. There is, however, another approach, which holds that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion and aims to explain why it seems to exist."<ref name="frankish"/> Frankish concludes that illusionism "replaces the hard problem with the illusion problem—the problem of explaining how the illusion of phenomenality arises and why it is so powerful."<ref name="frankish"/>

The philosopher [[Daniel Dennett]] was another prominent figure associated with illusionism. After Frankish published a paper in the [[Journal of Consciousness Studies]] titled ''Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness,''<ref name="frankish-2016" /> Dennett responded with his own paper humorously titled ''Illusionism as the Obvious Default Theory of Consciousness.''<ref name="dennett 2016"/> Dennett had been arguing for the illusory status of consciousness since early on in his career. For example, in 1979 he published a paper titled ''On the Absence of [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|Phenomenology]]'' (where he argues for the nonexistence of phenomenal consciousness).<ref>{{cite book
| last = Dennett
| first = Daniel C.
| year = 1979
| chapter = On the Absence of Phenomenology
| editor-first = Donald F.
| editor-last = Gustafson
| editor2-first = Bangs L.
| editor2-last = Tapscott
| title = Body, Mind, and Method
| publisher = Kluwer Academic Publishers
| pages = 93–113
}}</ref> Similar ideas have been explicated in his 1991 book [[Consciousness Explained]].<ref name="Dennett1991">{{cite book
| last = Dennett
| first = Daniel C.
| title = Consciousness Explained
| year = 1991
| publisher = Penguin Books
}}</ref> Dennett argues that the so-called "hard problem" will be solved in the process of solving what Chalmers terms the "easy problems".<ref name=Dennett/> He compares consciousness to stage magic and its capability to create extraordinary illusions out of ordinary things.<ref name=Dennett3/> To show how people might be commonly fooled into overstating the accuracy of their introspective abilities, he describes a phenomenon called [[change blindness]], a visual process that involves failure to detect scenery changes in a series of alternating images.<ref name=Dennett2/>{{page needed|date=January 2021}} He accordingly argues that consciousness need not be what it seems to be based on introspection. To address the question of the hard problem, or how and why physical processes give rise to experience, Dennett states that the phenomenon of having experience is nothing more than the performance of functions or the production of behaviour, which can also be referred to as the easy problems of consciousness.<ref name=Dennett/> Thus, Dennett argues that the hard problem of experience is included among—not separate from—the easy problems, and therefore they can only be explained together as a cohesive unit.<ref name=Dennett3/>

Eliminativists differ on the role they believe [[intuition|intuitive]] judgement plays in creating the apparent reality of consciousness. The philosopher [[Jacy Reese Anthis]] is of the position that this issue is born of an overreliance on intuition, calling philosophical discussions on the topic of consciousness a form of "intuition jousting".<ref name="anthis">{{cite book|last1=Anthis|first1=Jacy|title=Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures 2021|chapter=Consciousness Semanticism: A Precise Eliminativist Theory of Consciousness|series=Studies in Computational Intelligence|date=2022|volume=1032|pages=20–41|doi=10.1007/978-3-030-96993-6_3|isbn=978-3-030-96992-9|chapter-url=https://philarchive.org/rec/ANTCSA|access-date=7 August 2022}}</ref> But when the issue is tackled with "formal argumentation" and "precise semantics" then the hard problem will dissolve.<ref name="anthis" /> The philosopher Elizabeth Irvine, in contrast, can be read as having the opposite view, since she argues that phenomenal properties (that is, properties of consciousness) do not exist in our [[folk psychology|common-sense view of the world]]. She states that "the hard problem of consciousness may not be a genuine problem for non-philosophers (despite its overwhelming obviousness to philosophers)."<ref>{{cite book|last=Irvine|first=Elizabeth|date=2013|title=Consciousness as a scientific concept: a philosophy of science perspective|series=Studies in brain and mind|volume=5|location=Dordrecht; New York|publisher=[[Springer-Verlag]]|isbn=9789400751729|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=jO4HNB7OoUgC&pg=PA167 167]}}</ref>

A complete illusionist theory of consciousness must include the description of a [[Mechanism (biology)|mechanism]] by which the illusion of subjective experience is had and reported by people. Various philosophers and scientists have proposed possible theories.<ref name="meta-problem">{{cite journal|last1=Chalmers|first1=David|title=The Meta-Problem of Consciousness|journal=Journal of Consciousness Studies|date=2018|volume=25|issue=9–10|pages=6–61|url=http://consc.net/papers/metaproblem.pdf|access-date=6 February 2019}}</ref> For example, in his book ''Consciousness and the Social Brain'' neuroscientist [[Michael Graziano]] advocates what he calls [[attention schema theory]], in which our perception of being conscious is merely an error in perception, held by brains which evolved to hold erroneous and incomplete models of their own internal workings, just as they hold erroneous and incomplete models of their own bodies and of the external world.<ref name="Consciousness as engineering"/><ref name="Consciousness as engineering2"/>

===== Criticisms =====
The main criticisms of eliminative materialism and illusionism hinge on the counterintuitive nature of the view. Arguments of this form are called ''Moorean Arguments''. A Moorean argument seeks to undermine the conclusion of an argument by asserting that the [[negation]] of that conclusion is more certain than the [[premise]]s of the argument.<ref>{{cite journal
| last = Scarfone
| first = Matthew
| year = 2022
| title = Using and Abusing Moorean Arguments
| journal = Journal of the American Philosophical Association
| volume = 8
| issue = 1
| pages = 52–71
| doi = 10.1017/apa.2020.47
| s2cid = 239672728
| url = https://philpapers.org/rec/SCAUAA-2
}}</ref>

The roots of the Moorean Argument against illusionism extend back to [[Augustine of Hippo]] who stated that he could not be deceived regarding his own existence, since the very act of being deceived secures the existence of a being there to be the recipient of that deception.<ref group="note">"But, without any delusive representations of images or phantasms, I am most certain that I am, and that I know and delight in this. In respect to these truths I am not at all afraid of the arguments of the Academians, who say, What if you are deceived? For if I am deceived, I am. For he who is not, cannot be deceived..."</ref><ref>{{cite book
| last = Augustine of Hippo
| title = City of God
| chapter = Book 11, Chapter 26
}}</ref>

{{Wikisource|Discourse on the Method/Part 4|Descartes' Discourse on the Method/Part 4}}
In the Early-Modern era, these arguments were repopularized by [[René Descartes]], who coined the now famous phrase ''"Je pense, donc je suis"'' ("I think, therefore I am").<ref>{{cite book
| last = Descartes
| first = René
| year = 1637
| title = Discourse on the Method
| chapter = 4
}}</ref> Descartes argued that even if he was maximally deceived (because, for example, an evil demon was manipulating all his senses) he would still know with certainty that his mind exists, because the state of being deceived requires a mind as a prerequisite.<ref>{{cite book
| last = Descartes
| first = René
| year = 1641
| title = Meditations on First Philosophy
| chapter = Second Meditation
}}</ref>

This same general argumentative structure is still in use today. For example, in 2002 David Chalmers published an explicitly Moorean argument against illusionism. The argument goes like this: The reality of consciousness is more certain than any theoretical commitments (to, for example, physicalism) that may be motivating the illusionist to deny the existence of consciousness. The reason for this is because we have direct "acquaintance" with consciousness, but we do not have direct acquaintance with anything else (including anything that could inform our beliefs in consciousness being an illusion). In other words: consciousness can be known directly, so the reality of consciousness is more certain than any philosophical or scientific theory that says otherwise.<ref name="chalmers202-illusionism">{{cite journal
| last = Chalmers
| first = David
| year = 2020
| title = Debunking Arguments for Illusionism
| journal = Journal of Consciousness Studies
| volume = 27
| issue = 5–6
| pages = 258–281
| url = https://philpapers.org/rec/CHADAF-2
}}</ref> Chalmers concludes that "there is little doubt that something like the Moorean argument is the reason that most people reject illusionism and many find it crazy."<ref name="chalmers2020-illusionism">{{cite journal| last = Chalmers| first = David| year = 2002| title = Debunking Arguments for Illusionism| journal = Journal of Consciousness Studies| volume = 27| issue = 5–6| pages = 258–281| url = https://philpapers.org/rec/CHADAF-2}}</ref>

Eliminative materialism and illusionism have been the subject of criticism within the popular press. One highly cited example comes from the philosopher [[Galen Strawson]] who wrote an article in the [[New York Review of Books]] titled "The Consciousness Deniers". In it, Strawson describes illusionism as the "silliest claim ever made", next to which "every known religious belief is only a little less sensible than the belief that the grass is green."<ref>
{{cite web
|last=Strawson
|first=G.
|year=2018
|title=The Consciousness Deniers
|url=https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/13/the-consciousness-deniers/
|website=The New York Review of Books
}}</ref> Another notable example comes from [[Christof Koch]] (a neuroscientist and one of the leading proponents of [[Integrated Information Theory]]) in his popular science book ''The Feeling of Life Itself''. In the early pages of the book, Koch describes eliminativism as the "metaphysical counterpart to Cotard's syndrome, a psychiatric condition in which patients deny being alive."<ref>
{{cite book
|last=Koch
|first=Christof
|year=2019
|title=The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness is Everywhere But Can't be Computed
|publisher=MIT Press
|pages=2
}}</ref> Koch takes the prevalence of eliminativism as evidence that "much of twentieth-century analytic philosophy has gone to the dogs".<ref>
{{cite book
|last=Koch
|first=Christof
|year=2019
|title=The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness is Everywhere But Can't be Computed
|publisher=MIT Press
|pages=3
}}</ref>

Frankish has responded to such criticisms by asserting that "qualia realists" have to conceive of qualia as being either observational or theoretical in nature. If conceived of as observational, then realists cannot claim that illusionists are leaving anything out of their theories of consciousness, as such a claim would presuppose qualia as having certain theoretical components. If conceived of as theoretical, then illusionists are simply denying the theoretical components of qualia but not the mere fact that they exist, which is what they're attempting to explain in the first place.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Frankish |first=Keith |date=2022-12-02 |title=A dilemma for illusionists — and another for realists! |url=https://www.keithfrankish.com/blog/a-dilemma-for-illusionists-and-another-for-realists/ |access-date=2025-02-01 |website=Keith Frankish |language=en-GB}}</ref>