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The demystification of consciousness

Illusionists don’t deny that consciousness exists, but propose that we rethink what it is

Issue 86, 20th March 2020
| Philosopher and Honorary Professor at The University of Sheffield, and best known for his "illusionist" stance in the theory of consciousness.
3,571 words
Read time: approx. 18 mins

This article was written in response to Bernardo Kastrup's article 'The Mysterious Disappearance of Consciousness'

Bernardo Kastrup is mystified by the view of consciousness that has come to be known as illusionism. He describes it as a “mind-bogglingly extraordinary claim”, which seems to be, simply, “nonsense”. He’s not alone. The philosopher Galen Strawson has called it “the silliest claim ever made” and likened it to Flat Earth theory, and I’ve no doubt that many others would agree.

It seems to these people that illusionists such as myself are saying something utterly ridiculous — that we’re claiming that people are not conscious, don’t have experiences, don’t see or hear, don’t feel pain or emotion, don’t have an inner life. What’s going on? How could we possibly believe that, and, if we don’t, how could highly intelligent people such as Kastrup and Strawson have so radically misunderstood what we do mean? This is, Kastrup says, “an authentic and rather baffling mystery”, and I shall now attempt to shed some light on it.

The basic explanation is simple; illusionists don’t deny that we are conscious. It is true that some interviews with me have appeared under titles that suggest otherwise, but I always make it clear that my target is a much more specific claim, as I shall now explain. There’s a straightforward sense in which we obviously are conscious, and indeed I describe illusionism as a theory of consciousness. What illusionists reject is a certain conception of what consciousness is. However, this conception is so deeply rooted in our way of thinking that, to many people, denying it is equivalent to denying the existence of consciousness itself.

What illusionists reject is a certain conception of what consciousness is

As these people see it, there is a stark and simple choice: endorse that conception or deny that consciousness exists. There is no third option, and anyone who sincerely believes there is must be confused and self-deluded. Of course, there might not be a third option, and, even if there is, it might not be an attractive one. But that needs to be argued. To assume at the start that there isn’t and that illusionists are denying the existence of consciousness is to assume the answer to the very point at issue (to beg the question in philosophical parlance). Let me explain what the option is supposed to be, so that you can judge for yourself.

I’ll start with a description of the sense in which we undoubtedly are conscious. It’s this. Our lives are filled with conscious experiences — episodes of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and of having bodily sensations of various kinds. These episodes acquaint us with the world around us — they tell us about the shapes, sizes, colours, and motions of objects, about the composition of our food, about the substances in the air, about the texture of things against our skin, about the condition of our bodies and our psychological well-being, and much more. We also have experiences of mental imagery, which seem like impoverished versions of regular experiences, detached from their normal causes.

It is a mark of conscious experience that we are, or can easily become, aware of having it. We can direct our attention inward (“introspect”) and think about the experiences we are having. We can recognize different experiences when we have them, compare them with other experiences, say whether or not we like them, and tell people about them.

Keith Frankish
Issue 86, 20th March 2020

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TiborZ Koos 5 July 2023

Great reply Keith! Not that he deserves the attention (or the kind tone)...

What Mr. Kastrup calls "...tortuous conceptual knots ... question-begging, sleights of hand ... perplexing webs of conceptual indirection ... layer upon layer of smoke and mirrors ... conjured-up artefacts of conceptual fog” we call thinking seriously about difficult problems instead of writing science fiction as he does.

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Sandro Magi 9 May 2021

@Ekalabya Mohanty
> But that definition of illusion is not an ILLUSION.
> Consider this: I believe in the sun's existence and react as if it exists.
> Is the sun an illusion?

It would be if the sun didn't actually exist. Since you seem hung up on a sensible definition of illusion, let me provide a clearer one: an illusion is a perception that, if taken at face value, entails a false conclusion. It seems clear that stage magic, optical illusions and illusory mental qualities are all proper illusions under this definition, and I don't think it includes anything that shouldn't be there. This is basically what the article is getting at.

@Frank Spence
> Put another way, if the ultimate objective outcome of scenario A turns out to be equivalent to the ultimate objective outcome of scenario B, but scenario A involves a transient period of excruciating pain and scenario B is accompanied by only pleasant sensations, why should an individual prefer B over A?

Pain is strongly correlated with physical damage that harms survival odds, which under illusionism, *is the whole reason we evolved perception of qualities*, ie. pain avoidance generally drives adaptive behaviour. The fact that damage isn't always occurring when pain is present is irrelevant.

The correlation between pain and damage doesn't need to be 100% precise or 100% accurate, because precision and accuracy are *never free*, ie. they must cost something in terms of resources and energy. The pain-damage correlation must simply have adaptive pressures, like a) it needs to be accurate enough in the most common scenarios where damage is actually occurring, or b) a more precise distinction between non-damaging pain and damaging pain would cost more resources on average than any benefits it may convey.

Mutations that are more precise on this pain-damage correlation in a way that doesn't serve any adaptive advantage would simply die out, or if there are benefits, it may be more beneficial yet to evolve higher-level mechanisms to discern damaging damaging and non-damaging pain, so we can ignore the former given sufficient motivation (which is what humans can do).

@ Ed-e Belmonte
> For example, the icons on my desktop are fully explainable in the terms of the underlying computer system.
> You cant simply say the physical states are in fact equivalent to the mental ones and fix the problem that only correlative data exists.

This is not a theory of consciousness, it's a philosophy of mind that will ultimately form the basis of a scientific theory of consciousness. The analogy to computer systems is simply to demonstrate that, once the full machinery is understood, then how and why the the illusion works will also be understood. The fact that only correlative data exists is irrelevant, this is true of most of science. At some point the correlative data will be so significant that there will be little reason to assume that whatever explanatory gap remains actually entails something fundamentally different is missing. This is what happened with vitalism, for instance.

@ Jeff Wunder
> All I know is that when I experience anything subjective at all -- call it an illusion if you like -- that experience is not publically observable, even though it may be correlated with publically observable things. As far as I know, unobservable properties (illusory or not) don't emerge from observable systems.

You're just asserting that it's unobservable, you haven't proven that. How do you know that the observable correlates aren't exactly the experience itself? You're tagging on some additional qualities to this experience without justifying its necessity, and appeals to direct perceptions of these qualities are just begging the question.

> Paul Topping
> I don't find Dennett's analogy very convincing at all. The force pushing the water down into the bucket is real from the bucket's frame of reference.

You know perfectly that doesn't qualify as a *fundamental* force, which is what was intended by the example. The whole point of centrifugal force being an illusion is that it's not actually a fundamental force, but appears to be one until you account for the rotating frame of reference. Therefore we must evaluate claims given a *consistent body of knowledge*, and illusionism is consistent with our entire body of knowledge, where dualism is emphatically not.

Maciej Sitko 24 July 2020

I just love how Kastrup accuses everyone of "question-begging". And there comes his "evolutionary" and "naturalistic" explanations of mind dissociating into smaller minds, like the necessity of which wasn't question-begging itself. Why does the mind dissociate into smaller minds? Because it adapts; it gathers information. But why it has to adapt? Because it dissociates in first place! Not circular enough?

Also, that everything is a big mind is not question-begging too? We can't forget that these idealist hypotheses are already far-fetched and badly shot; based on a self-verifying and non-falsifiable premises like "All is Mind". Excuse me, but this falls into the same Popperian scepticism about pseudoscience of Freud's psychoanalysis, basing stuff on "evident" truths that cannot be meaningfully tested/falsified in a scientific way.

Ekalabya Mohanty 17 June 2020

and reacting to it as if it does. I am assuming that believing it exists means some unconscious version of belief, because under eliminativism beliefs, desires, and emotional reactions don't exist in the traditional sense.
Nothing seems like anything in that definition and notion of "seems like it exists" is left out.
Dennett wrote the same in his paper in 2007. Under materialism, there are no seemings. Frankish seems to agree with that and posits a different "functional" definition of illusion.
But the problem is if nothing seemed like anything to me, I WOULD NEVER UNCONSCIOUSLY BELIEVE that I am conscious, because it actually doesn't seem to me like I am conscious. Nothing seems like anything to the brain, so why would an intelligent brain unconsciously believe that it is conscious when it doesn't even seem to him like he is conscious. There is no evidence that anyone is conscious outside of the fact that it seems to people like they are conscious. There is no scientific evidence that i am conscious. It just seems to me like I am conscious. If it didn't seem to me like I am conscious I wouldn't believe I am conscious. So, in my opinion, Frankish's view is ultimately self-refuting.

Ekalabya Mohanty 17 June 2020

Oh god, it took me a while to understand Keith Frankish's points about consciousness and now hopefully I can refute them better.
So, Frankish essentially claims that illusions don't require awareness of mental qualities.
He says to have an illusion of qualia is to be inclined to believe that in them and react as if they exist.
But that definition of illusion is not an ILLUSION.
Consider this: I believe in the sun's existence and react as if it exists.
Is the sun an illusion?
That definition of illusion is laughably incomplete.
Furthermore, Frankish is right when he says that introspecting what seems like a mental quality produces the same beliefs, desires, etc as actually being aware of the mental quality would be. That is a tautology because seeming to introspect a mental quality is identical to having that conscious experience of that mental quality.
But then, he comes to his laughably incomplete definition of illusion. An illusion of qualia is believing it exists

Ekalabya Mohanty 14 May 2020

My previous post has some errors and I understand Frankish's point better.
That is a strange definition of illusion.
To have an illusion of something is to be inclined to believe it exists and act as if it does.
The traditional definition of illusion is itself a mode of consciousness.
But Frankish does convolute the conception and response to the "self-refuting" argument. The argument relies on this definition of illusion. An illusion is something that seems as if it exists, but does not. And that is not possible for consciousness.The seeming like is itself a form of qualia. So illusions are a form of qualia. Frankish claims that the flaw in the objection is that the assumption is that consciousness entails awareness of mental qualities. Which is incorrect: to Frankish the real flaw in the objection is that he rejects that definition of illusion. But to me Frankish cannot. The functional definition of illusion that Frankish gives noticeably leaves out the "seemings".
Its to be inclined to believe it exists and act as if it does. Well, the unconscious equivalent of belief. So, it doesn't even seem to people like they are consciousness. When I say that it seems to me like I am conscious I am just lying in some sense. There is no me that it actually seems like something to. It is just the unconscious robot saying stuff. Which I find to be a silly claim.
So, it doesn't even seem like
So

Ekalabya Mohanty 13 May 2020

"The flaw in this objection is obvious: it assumes that experience involves awareness of mental qualities. That is, it assumes the truth of the qualitative conception of consciousness. And that is the very point at issue. To be sure, if the qualitative conception were correct, then illusionism would be incoherent. But illusionists reject that conception in favour of the functional one. And the functional conception treats illusions differently."
This is a hilarious strawmen of the "illusion itself is a mode of consciousness" objection. The assumption is not that consciousness involves awareness of mental qualities.The assumption of that objection is qualia or the "what it feels like to experience" SEEMS TO EXIST. It assumes that there SEEMS TO BE mental qualities. THAT ENTIRE ARGUMENT IS EVALUATING THE CLAIM THAT CONSCIOUSNESS IS AN ILLUSION. Why on earth would it assume the existence of qualia when its analyzing the whether it is an illusion. No, it assumes that qualia seems to exist and thereby infer that it does.

Analogously, seeming to introspect a mental quality (say, the quale of yellowness) involves having a stream of introspective information which produces the same psychological effects that awareness of the actual quality would have done — producing appropriate beliefs, preferences, associations, emotional reactions, and so on. In short, to have the illusion of qualia is to be inclined to believe that one has them and to react as if one has them. This does not require the existence of the qualia themselves, so the account is not self-defeating or circular.
This is just flat out false. First of all Frankish meant to say introspect what seems to be a mental quality. The first part is absolutely true and to me seems like a red herring. What's the point of iterating it? Seeming to experience qualia produces the same psychological effects that actually experiencing qualia would produce. Then Frankish goes on to say to have an illusion of qualia is to believe it exists and react to it accordingly. But that is a definition of illusion that doesn't involving "seemings" or appearances. That definition of illusion is a false belief. But you can hold a false belief with it seeming to be false.
For example, it seems to me that the earth is round, but I believe the Earth is flat. That wouldn't be an illusion in the sense of it being a false perception. Because the perception in this case is true because the Earth in fact is round. The belief is wrong, so it is an illusion in that sense.
So, Frankish would have to deny the claim that it seems like consciousness exists because he acknowledges that qualitative consciousness cannot seem to exist and not exist. That is to say that it doesn't appear to people as if they are conscious. They are just lying.
And guess what. I am not. It seems to me like I am consciously experiencing frustration at this article and it feels like its pretty annoying.
Furthermore, who is doing this believing? Frankish claims that illusions of qualia comprises of believing that it exists and reacting like it does.
Who believes that qualia exists? Neural networks BELIEVE that qualia exists? Neurons believe in things? This whole thing is nonsensical and circular.

Frank Spence 22 March 2020

If consciousness is nothing more than a relationship with and reaction to the public world, why does it matter? Specifically, if excruciating pain, for example, is just a relationship with the world based on information sharing, why does it matter whether or not there is excruciating pain? And in anticipation of the only answer imaginable, why does survival matter?
Put another way, if the ultimate objective outcome of scenario A turns out to be equivalent to the ultimate objective outcome of scenario B, but scenario A involves a transient period of excruciating pain and scenario B is accompanied by only pleasant sensations, why should an individual prefer B over A?

"The alternative is that consciousness consists, not in awareness of private mental qualities, but in a certain relation to the public world — a relation that involves receiving information about things and reacting to them. For one to have a conscious experience of something is, I claim, for one to have a rich stream of sense-based information about it and for this information to have a wide range of effects — causing rapid behavioural responses, generating beliefs and desires, evoking memories, triggering associations, initiating emotional responses, and changing one’s psychological and behavioural dispositions in a myriad subtle ways. Episodes of blindsight and subliminal perception are not conscious, since the sensory information received is much more impoverished and does not have this wide range of effects."

Ed-e Belmonte 21 March 2020

You claimed this is a theory of conciousness, the instant issue I see here is it simply ignores the fact that even if you want to equate qualities to the physical states of the brain, they need to be explainable the former in terms of the later. This provides 0 suggestions as to how illusions of a mental qualities are inherently related to the specific patterns in any inherent way.
For example, the icons on my desktop are fully explainable in the terms of the underlying computer system.
You cant simply say the physical states are in fact equivalent to the mental ones and fix the problem that only correlative data exists.
No theory of conciousness is presented here.

Jeff Wunder 21 March 2020

All I know is that when I experience anything subjective at all -- call it an illusion if you like -- that experience is not publically observable, even though it may be correlated with publically observable things. As far as I know, unobservable properties (illusory or not) don't emerge from observable systems. That is the hard problem in a nutshell, and science is not going to solve it.

Paul Topping 20 March 2020

As I've said on many occasions, the worst thing about illusionism is the name. An "illusion" is often used to describe something one sees but that doesn't actually exist. I know that it is meant in the sense that it is not what it appears but many are still going to be misled, especially with motivated philosophers dismissing your theory.

I don't find Dennett's analogy very convincing at all. The force pushing the water down into the bucket is real from the bucket's frame of reference. Rather than being an illusion, it seems to reflect the observer's choice of concerns. It is only an illusion to an observer who knows modern physics and mechanics. To a mind using a naive physics model supplied by evolution, the water IS being pushed down into the bucket.