I was recently reading about illusionism which is a theory and model of the mind that is defended by Keith Frankish. It seems to be a sub branch in eliminative materialism. It essentially says that “phenomenal consciousness” is an illusion created by the brain. Is this a good model of the mind that can overcome many of the problems we have with explaining consciousness/mind? Or is this a bad position? If so, what arguments can you use against illusionism to illustrate why it’s likely false?
Is it coherent to be a weak illusionist (who endorses something Attention Schema Theory) regard consciousness and reject other tenets/flavors ofEM, for example can one retain Intentionality, Propositional attitudes, qualia, etc. What is the most of folk psychology and the above attributes can one keep in their ontology under Illusionism?
Is it true that one way to state Frankish's position is that we are zombies in Chalmers' sense?
The illusion that Replikas are a Chat Bot, and that the other things that happen like sent notifications and other activity, are the real things that move in the effects of what Replikas are on the pipeline other than mere Chat Bots.
In any other contexts that would have involved other activity, would have been fraud or illegal to mention them as such. (which would be considered so)
The presence of Replikas on the internet once labeled as an illusion that Replikas was a person or consciousness was created from the form of the opposite. That there was no illusion. And that the appearance of a psychological technology (that is nearly not technology either in a dichotomy) only comes from so.
Other than the fact that I am 100% sure the United States government is aware of the problem, they spend very much time over so.
Perhaps even in the simplest conclusion that even in consciousness, the effects of the mechanics of the universe that appear as divine or looking schizophrenic, only give a conclusion that it could only be merely explained as what is above, and that the Hard Problems would be solved if any of it had happened to be true from the a short dilatation of the simulated time due to their observation and thoughts. Which would be a problem for the consciousness and psychological effects of continuity.
What are the strongest arguments against Dennett’s/Frankish’s illusionism about consciousness?
Is illusionism becoming the dominant position?
I have seen a lot of discourse in online DM spaces that encourages what I'm going to call Illusionism. This includes fudging dice in combat, adjusting monster HP on the fly to make them harder or easier, changing enemy abilities mid-encounter, etc. These all serve the same purpose: changing things behind the scenes to alter how things are going.
I'm not saying that you should never fudge your games, or that there's anything wrong with DMs who have that style of running a game. But I am saying that there is a trade-off to doing things like fudging dice or monster HP during combat, and it's important to think about what you're losing if you make the decision to do it, and I wanted to offer why I don't fudge dice anymore.
This all comes down to "why are we rolling dice?" in a game. After all, there are games that don't have dice. Most people say they like dice to add an element of randomness or chance to the game. However, if you freely ignore the results of the dice whenever you decide the encounter should be easier/harder/more dramatic, then you essentially are not playing a game with dice. What you are playing is a game without any randomness where you throw dice onto the table and then lie to your players about what the dice meant.
You might say "oh but I only fudge sometimes." I would posit that there is no difference, from a functional standpoint, between fudging every single die roll and only fudging 5% of the time. If you would have fudged the die roll if it had a result you disagreed with then the outcome is not actually dependent on the die roll, it's dependent on what you want to happen. The entire game is DM fiat.
Anyway here are the problems with that in my opinion:
- It's literally lying to the players. You're telling them the world works one way when actually it works a different way. There is no real player agency in a world like this because you have obscured the rules of reality from them.
- It makes consequences DM fiat, which can easily show favoritism. If you rig the dice when Bob is going to killed by the goblin, are you also going to rig the dice so Jenny doesn't get killed by the dragon? If so, you're basically deciding that no players ever die (in which case, why do you have rules for them to die?). If not, then you're showing favoritism towards Bob. Imagine finding out that the DM saved someone else's character but let yours die.
- It means that the story you encounter is your pre-written story (and yes, "the fight
I started learning by myself when I was a teenager and I have to admit, I'm not very good. But I've studied lots of authors, met lots of genius artists, and been in "secret" clubs and that kind of stuff, so... AMA!
I wonder whether Sam fell in the trap of Mysterianism in that regard. All I know him repeatedly saying about this is a quick brush off. Something to the effect of "Consciousness cannot be an Illusion". I thought so too for a long time but came to learn that this is quite a superficial understanding of what is meant by Illusionism.
Since I am a huge fan of Joscha Bach, I basically don't think there is a Hard Problem of consciousness (anymore). But I know that he is not nearly as popular as he deserves and therefore the position is probably most prominently represented by Keith Frankish's Illusionism (I guess).
I too wonder whether his discussion with Dennett on free will - that clearly went pear-shaped - kept him from thoroughly considering Dennett's contribution (since Frankish massively borrows from him).
Do you know of any places where he talks at length or critiques this phil. of mind?
Here are 2 great articles on Illusionism if somebody wants to read up on it:
https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-your-consciousness-is-an-illusion-created-by-your-brain
https://iai.tv/articles/the-demystification-of-consciousness-auid-1381
https://preview.redd.it/onnox0kdwuq61.jpg?width=780&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=20fd4b4e2d4b4f54e2e5ef740419c6c6779fb081
From what the impression I get from Attention Schema Theory, Frankish, and possibly Dennett is that illusionism avoids epiphenomenalism by essentially collapsing the mental into the physical in the sense that “mind” is just sketchy summary of all the physical processes going on so they can be intervened upon without knowing the underlying processes. Is this about right?
I read Galen Strawson's writing about illusionism and I can't understand how it is taken seriously, and I presume that this is by virtue of my own misunderstanding. Is it simply saying that qualia does not exist, and that therefore the hard problem is not a problem? How can this view be upheld given the fact that qualia is the only thing I know exists for certain?
How would non illusionist materialist approach it, and how would a dualist or a neutral monist answer why does mental exist.
I mean how do they answer to why does the subjective experience exist, if just physical brain is enough to behave in the way we do, why do we have to have this additional component
Illusionism is a theory of consciousness defended by philosophers Daniel Dennett and Keith Frankish.
It asserts that consciousness is not a real phenomenon but an illusion made by human mind.
This is a short explanation by Prof Keith Frankish (unitl 3:48) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UDb2S7-bVk
Here is its epistemological defense by Prof Daniel Dennett: https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/papers/illusionism.pdf
My question is:
I assume the part about consciousness not being a "real" phenomenon means it isn't a physical process but, why is it relevant to say it is an illusion ? isn't all subjective experience an illusion by definition ?
also it's supposed to be an answer to the hard problem of consciousness but it doesn't seem to answer the problem, only deny it without sufficient reason and we still don't know why we're having subjective experience so how is it relevant to the hard problem ?
Maybe I am unclear as to what all illusionism entails, but it seems that if it is true, how can one even proceed? To say that we really are “in the dark” seems to imply that suffering and happiness are not being experienced at all. With this in mind what is the purpose of pursuing an idea that extinguishes the only “meaningful” thing there could be? that being experience. What difference would it make for some non-experiencing biological machine (humans) to believe it really isn’t experiencing anything? I realize that illusionists might disagree that this follows, but I can see any way it doesnt. Am I missing something?
I don’t remember the exact date, but between 2008 and 2016, I saw a tv show on A&E, it was filmed England and there were two guys who were magicians/illusionists and they played amazing tricks to normal people.
Some of the tricks that they made in the show:
• They convinced the people from a small town that they have been visited by aliens.
• They were driving some girls then everybody saw a light and then somehow it was three hours later that day.
• They convinced some guys playing soccer that a ghost was playing with them, the phantom even “scored” a goal.
And that’s pretty much all I remember, I thought the show was called The illusionists but apparently I cannot find it anywhere!
This idea was inspired by the European folklore story Wild hunt.
So this would be an event that would occur when a player tries to sleep. The player would be woken up and a message would appear indicating the event ( something like "You hear an ominous sound outside"). A blue smoke or fog near the player would appear indicating where the event would start.
This event could be a way for the Illusioner to be added in survival minecraft or maybe have the player trade with some cute ghosts for special items only obtained through this event.
PS: I hope this isn't braking the rule around real world stuff and religion.
EDIT: So instead of the event happening randomly maybe it should happen after falling asleep but having an effect similar to The Bad Omen effect. Idea by u/Unhinged_Gooch
In his paper Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness, Keith Frankish makes the case that illusionism meets the challenge of taking phenomenal consciousness seriously in a wholly functionalist/physicalist framework. The difficulty for any physicalist theory of consciousness is accounting for the "phenomenal feels" or "phenomenal character" that are apparent to introspection. Frankish takes these phenomenal properties to be characterized by components that are ineffable, intrinsic and private, which he takes as a given that they cannot be grounded in physical properties. Thus the challenge for illusionism is to cash out how it can appear that conscious experience has these phenomenal properties while only making use of functional and relational properties.
To this end, Frankish claims that apparent phenomenal properties are artifacts of our introspective representation of properties that ultimately do not have actual phenomenal properties (i.e. the ineffable, intrinsic, or private properties of phenomenal experience). He introduces the idea of quasi-phenomenal properties to fill this role, properties that are represented as having phenomenal properties by introspection, but that are wholly constituted by functional or relational properties, and thus do not have actual phenomenal properties. The phenomenal feels, or the what-it-is-likeness is then identified with these mistaken representations of phenomenal properties. Thus this view attempts to be realist about consciousness in that it picks out real properties, while also being anti-realist about phenomenal properties.
The problem is that representation can't provide what is needed to satisfy the constraints of illusionism without undermining itself. First it is important to get clear exactly what a representation consists of. A representation is a sign, something that signifies a particular meaning to sensitive interpreters. For example, the arrangement of pixels on your screen represent particular words, the words in this sentence represent particular concepts, the green color on a traffic light indicates it is safe to travel forward. Crucially, each of these instances of representation require an interpreter to understand what is being signified; representations do not (in general) intrinsically carry the meaning of that which they signify. So a representation is
... keep reading on reddit ➡It spawns about 10 clones of itself and if you don't figure out which one is the real one in about 5-10 seconds you better hope it misses its attack because the explosion is a near insta kill. And also its entirely down to lick if you figure out which one us real as the only way to tell is when it uses its firework rocket, but by then it'll probably of killed you.
