I don’t like the word “illusionism” here because people just get caught on the obvious semantic ‘contradiction’ and always complain about it.
The arguments based on perceptual illusions in general are meant to show that our perception is highly constructed by the brain, it’s not something ‘simple’. The point of illusionism is just to say that we are confused about what the phenomenological properties of qualia really are qua qualia because of wrong ideas that come from introspection.
I don’t like “illusionism” either, since it makes it seem like illusionists are merely claiming that consciousness is an illusion, i.e., it is something different than what it seems to be. That claim isn’t very shocking or novel, but illusionists aren’t claiming that. They’re actually claiming that you aren’t having any internal experience in the first place. There isn’t any illusion.
“Fictionalism” would be a better term than “illusionism”: when people say they are having a bad experience, or an experience of saltiness, they are just describing a fictional character.
I don’t like the word “illusionism” here because people just get caught on the obvious semantic ‘contradiction’ and always complain about it.
The arguments based on perceptual illusions in general are meant to show that our perception is highly constructed by the brain, it’s not something ‘simple’. The point of illusionism is just to say that we are confused about what the phenomenological properties of qualia really are qua qualia because of wrong ideas that come from introspection.
I don’t like “illusionism” either, since it makes it seem like illusionists are merely claiming that consciousness is an illusion, i.e., it is something different than what it seems to be. That claim isn’t very shocking or novel, but illusionists aren’t claiming that. They’re actually claiming that you aren’t having any internal experience in the first place. There isn’t any illusion.
“Fictionalism” would be a better term than “illusionism”: when people say they are having a bad experience, or an experience of saltiness, they are just describing a fictional character.