Yeah, although seems only in the sense where “everything [we perceive] is illusion”? Which is not functionally different from “nothing is illusion”. Unless I’m missing something?
Illusionist theories of consciousness say that people do not actually ever experience phenomenal qualities; we just have the very deep delusion that phenomenal qualities are a thing.
Whether it’s a hallucination or not doesn’t matter. Either way, our delusion tells us that we’re perceiving things as “qualities”, as “feels”, even though all we are really perceiving is data. If I’m looking at something, then I am acquiring data that tells me, for instance, that there’s a certain dark red shape at a certain location in my visual field, and a different reddish-orange shape near it, and whatever else. I’m acquiring the knowledge, the concept, of certain colors and brightnesses being in certain locations in my visual field. But I mistakenly think I am experiencing a dark red quality, and a reddish-orange quality, and the qualities of bright and dark and in-between, etc. I think I’m getting my visual input in the form of a subjective experience.
This paper that I’m linking clears up several important points about the Attention Schema Theory. Graziano admits that “Illusionist theories emphasize how subjective awareness does not really exist – the brain tricks itself into thinking it has it. Obviously, AST aligns with that perspective.” But he says he doesn’t think the word “illusion” is a helpful word for expressing this, and illusionism should have been called something else, and I think he’s probably right. (It seems like it’s too late to change it now, though.)
we’re perceiving things as “qualities”, as “feels”, even though all we are really perceiving is data
I consider it my success as a reductionist that this phrase genuinely does not make any sense to me.
But he says he doesn’t think the word “illusion” is a helpful word for expressing this, and illusionism should have been called something else, and I think he’s probably right.
Yep, can’t agree more, basically that’s why I was asking—“illusion” doesn’t sound like the right concept here.
A friend of mine has not-quite-complete-aphantasia, meaning he cannot “see” visual images in his “mind’s eye”, except for some rare occasions. When he remembers things he saw, or imagines what hypothetical things might look like, he almost never has mental imagery. But he can still recall information about what he saw, including stuff like “how many items were there”, even though he did not consciously count the items when he was looking at them, and is only counting them by examining the memory when asked. I asked him how he was doing it, and he said it was like examining concepts about what he saw, and somehow using those concepts to figure out how many he remembers seeing.
For me to do the same thing, I would have to bring a mental image from my memory into my “mind’s eye”, and count how many items I “see”.
But maybe this mental imagery of mine is just something I’m convinced I experience, rather than something I actually experience? Maybe having aphantasia is nothing more than lacking a certain delusion when it comes to remembered or imagined sights? After all, I haven’t found anything that my mental images can figure out, which his concepts cannot. Or vice versa.
In any case, aphantasia only applies to mental images. When my friend is actually looking at something with his eyes (not remembering or imagining), then just like me, he’s convinced that what he’s experiencing is something more than just concepts.
An illusion is a misleading appearance , whereas a delusion is a false belief. Illusionists don’t believe there are any appearances. They think that everything is a belief , but some beliefs are accompanied by a false meta belief that they are not beliefs. So illusionism would be more literally described as delusionism.
Illusionism thinks the illusion-of-phenomenal-consciousness is ‘perception-like’ — it’s more like seeing an optical illusion, and less like just having a stubborn hunch that won’t go away even though there’s no apparent perceptual basis for it.
The view you’re describing is different from illusionism, and is more like the one articulated by Dennett for most of his career. E.g., Dennett’s 1979 “On the absence of phenomenology”:
[...] Since I hold that we have privileged access only to judgments, and since I cannot make sense of any claim to the effect that something to which I do not have privileged access is an element of my immediate conscious experience, I am left defending the view that such judgments exhaust our immediate consciousness, that our individual streams of consciousness consist of nothing but such propositional episodes, or better: that such streams of consciousness, composed exclusively of such propositional episodes, are the reality that inspires the variety of misdescriptions that pass for theories of consciousness, both homegrown and academic.
[...] You may be wondering if you even have judgments. Typically these episodes are the momentary, wordless thinkings or convictions (sometimes misleadingly called conscious or episodic beliefs) that are often supposed to be the executive bridges leading to our public, worded introspective reports from our perusal or enjoyment of the phenomenological manifold our reports are about. My view, put bluntly, is that there is no phenomenological manifold in any such relation to our reports. There are the public reports we issue, and then there are episodes of our propositional awareness, our judgments, and then there is—so far as introspection is concerned—darkness. What lies beyond or on the interior of our judgments of the moment, what grounds or causes or controls them, is wholly a matter for science or speculation—in any event it is not a matter to which we have any privileged access at all.
Or his 1991 Consciousness Explained:
[...] You seem to think there’s a difference between thinking (judging, deciding, being of the heartfelt opinion that) something seems pink to you and something really seeming pink to you. But there is no difference.
There is no such phenomenon as really seeming – over and above the phenomenon of judging in one way or another that something is the case.
Indeed, Dennett describes non-physicalism as being based on a “hunch”, as though it were just a nagging hard-to-pin-down belief and not something that feels palpably present in all experience. This seems very weird to me.
These days I believe Dennett endorses illusionism instead, though I’m not sure what changed his mind if so? And I have to wonder whether he has some aphantasia-like condition that made a view as weird as delusionism appealing.
Illusionism thinks the illusion-of-phenomenal-consciousness is ‘perception-like’ — it’s more like seeing an optical illusion, and less like just having a stubborn hunch that won’t go away even though there’s no apparent perceptual basis for
If you say so, but it doesn’t make it any easier to believe!
Indeed, Dennett describes non-physicalism as being based on a “hunch”, as though it were just a nagging hard-to-pin-down belief and not something that feels palpably present in all experience
It’s not clear that it’s a hunch , and it’s not clear that it’s a palpable presence. Physics is a complicated subject that most people do not understand , so why would anyone have reliable hunches or introspections about non physicallity? And the phenomenology varies anyway...some people, but nobody here, have the intuition that thought is non physical.
And I have to wonder whether he has some aphantasia-like condition that made a view as weird as delusionism appealing.
Dennetts phenomenonology is a mystery. Maybe it’s like one of those early computer games that prints out “you see a fire breathing dragon”.
I really like Graziano’s Attention Schema Theory. Even more because it’s essentially an illusionist theory.
Yeah, although seems only in the sense where “everything [we perceive] is illusion”? Which is not functionally different from “nothing is illusion”. Unless I’m missing something?
Illusionist theories of consciousness say that people do not actually ever experience phenomenal qualities; we just have the very deep delusion that phenomenal qualities are a thing.
Whether it’s a hallucination or not doesn’t matter. Either way, our delusion tells us that we’re perceiving things as “qualities”, as “feels”, even though all we are really perceiving is data. If I’m looking at something, then I am acquiring data that tells me, for instance, that there’s a certain dark red shape at a certain location in my visual field, and a different reddish-orange shape near it, and whatever else. I’m acquiring the knowledge, the concept, of certain colors and brightnesses being in certain locations in my visual field. But I mistakenly think I am experiencing a dark red quality, and a reddish-orange quality, and the qualities of bright and dark and in-between, etc. I think I’m getting my visual input in the form of a subjective experience.
This paper that I’m linking clears up several important points about the Attention Schema Theory. Graziano admits that “Illusionist theories emphasize how subjective awareness does not really exist – the brain tricks itself into thinking it has it. Obviously, AST aligns with that perspective.” But he says he doesn’t think the word “illusion” is a helpful word for expressing this, and illusionism should have been called something else, and I think he’s probably right. (It seems like it’s too late to change it now, though.)
https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/02643294.2020.1761782
I consider it my success as a reductionist that this phrase genuinely does not make any sense to me.
Yep, can’t agree more, basically that’s why I was asking—“illusion” doesn’t sound like the right concept here.
A friend of mine has not-quite-complete-aphantasia, meaning he cannot “see” visual images in his “mind’s eye”, except for some rare occasions. When he remembers things he saw, or imagines what hypothetical things might look like, he almost never has mental imagery. But he can still recall information about what he saw, including stuff like “how many items were there”, even though he did not consciously count the items when he was looking at them, and is only counting them by examining the memory when asked. I asked him how he was doing it, and he said it was like examining concepts about what he saw, and somehow using those concepts to figure out how many he remembers seeing.
For me to do the same thing, I would have to bring a mental image from my memory into my “mind’s eye”, and count how many items I “see”.
But maybe this mental imagery of mine is just something I’m convinced I experience, rather than something I actually experience? Maybe having aphantasia is nothing more than lacking a certain delusion when it comes to remembered or imagined sights? After all, I haven’t found anything that my mental images can figure out, which his concepts cannot. Or vice versa.
In any case, aphantasia only applies to mental images. When my friend is actually looking at something with his eyes (not remembering or imagining), then just like me, he’s convinced that what he’s experiencing is something more than just concepts.
An illusion is a misleading appearance , whereas a delusion is a false belief. Illusionists don’t believe there are any appearances. They think that everything is a belief , but some beliefs are accompanied by a false meta belief that they are not beliefs. So illusionism would be more literally described as delusionism.
Illusionism thinks the illusion-of-phenomenal-consciousness is ‘perception-like’ — it’s more like seeing an optical illusion, and less like just having a stubborn hunch that won’t go away even though there’s no apparent perceptual basis for it.
The view you’re describing is different from illusionism, and is more like the one articulated by Dennett for most of his career. E.g., Dennett’s 1979 “On the absence of phenomenology”:
Or his 1991 Consciousness Explained:
Indeed, Dennett describes non-physicalism as being based on a “hunch”, as though it were just a nagging hard-to-pin-down belief and not something that feels palpably present in all experience. This seems very weird to me.
These days I believe Dennett endorses illusionism instead, though I’m not sure what changed his mind if so? And I have to wonder whether he has some aphantasia-like condition that made a view as weird as delusionism appealing.
If you say so, but it doesn’t make it any easier to believe!
It’s not clear that it’s a hunch , and it’s not clear that it’s a palpable presence. Physics is a complicated subject that most people do not understand , so why would anyone have reliable hunches or introspections about non physicallity? And the phenomenology varies anyway...some people, but nobody here, have the intuition that thought is non physical.
Dennetts phenomenonology is a mystery. Maybe it’s like one of those early computer games that prints out “you see a fire breathing dragon”.