Abstract
Illusionism is the thesis that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, but merely seems to exist. Many opponents to the thesis take it to be obviously false. They think that they can reject illusionism, even if they conceded that it is coherent and supported by strong arguments. David Chalmers has articulated this reaction to illusionism in terms of a “Moorean” argument against illusionism. This argument contends that illusionism is false, because it is obviously true that we have phenomenal experiences. I argue that this argument fails (or is dialectically irrelevant) by showing that its defenders cannot maintain that its crucial premise (properly understood) has the kind of support needed for the argument to work, without begging the question against illusionism.
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Notes
I do not distinguish between eliminativism and illusionism, although it can be argued that illusionists, contrary to eliminativists, insist that consciousness genuinely seems to exist, in some sort of significant pre-theoretical sense.
Here I follow the version given in (Chalmers, 2018, p. 47). Chalmers presents and discusses various versions of this argument, presents various objections to it. He also recognizes its dialectical force (Chalmers, 2018, p. 48), even if he ends up rejecting illusionism—on the basis of the Moorean argument exposed below.
As it somehow resembles Moore’s famous “proof of an external world” (Moore, 1939). More on “Moorean arguments” later.
Chalmers talks about ‘strong illusionism’ in his argument.
As pointed out by an anonymous reviewer, one could wonder whether this obvious claim—that people sometimes feel pain—is supposed to be obvious because it is commonsensical, or because it is introspectively obvious (this would mirror two possible interpretations of Moore’s original argument for the existence of the external world, one that would appeal to common sense, and one to perception). The way in which the premise itself is formulated—using the third person—suggests the first interpretation, while Chalmers’ talk of “introspective obviousness” (see the next footnote) suggests the second one. My understanding is that “people sometimes feel pain” is supposed to be an obvious commonsensical claim, the obviousness of which, however, stems mainly—if not entirely—from introspection (which informs me that I feel pain, which in turn implies that people sometimes feel pain). This is particularly clear, I think, if we see that the correct reading of this premise is a phenomenal reading—as opposed to the functional or the normative reading (see the next section).
Although he limits his claim to introspective obviousness: “But crucially, the sense in which it is introspectively obvious that we feel pain is the phenomenal sense” (Chalmers, 2018, p. 53‑54).
And maybe also allows us to imagine zombies, etc.
Of course, introspection also presents these states as phenomenal.
This is not to say that there is a single interesting psychological kind corresponding to functional pain (a question best left to cognitive science).
Although it is unclear whether these connotations constitute an independent standard reading of the term, or if they are usually entangled in the functional and/or the phenomenal reading.
I take here the various normative characterizations corresponding to this normative sense as constituted by a vaguely defined cluster of aspects—not all of them have to be strictly satisfied in order for the term to apply.
I discuss this point at length in (Kammerer, 2020), which is why I will not say more about it here. In the article cited, I explore various routes that an illusionist might take in order to avoid denying the reality of normative pain.
Keith Frankish makes a similar point (Frankish, 2019, p. 92).
This is what Galen Strawson suggests when he writes about Dennett’s illusionism: “If [Dennett is] right, no one has ever really suffered, in spite of agonizing diseases, mental illness, murder, rape, famine, slavery, bereavement, torture, and genocide. And no one has ever caused anyone else pain […] We must hope that [this idea] doesn’t spread outside the academy, or convince some future information technologist or roboticist who has great power over our lives” (Strawson, 2018).
Such as Kant and Hegel (Rinard, 2013, p. 185‑186).
In a nutshell: some claim that Moorean arguments are a matter of simply preferring the most plausible premises (Lycan, 2001, p. 38‑39), some state that they rely on the idea that we should pay attention to judgments about particular cases as opposed to general principles (Kelly, 2005), and some think that they can be justified by a general principle of theoretical conservatism (Harman, 2003). (See (Rinard, 2013, p. 198‑211) for extensive presentation and discussion). In what follows I adopt the first interpretation, which I take to be the least committal, but I do not think anything crucial hangs on this choice.
See (Pryor, 2004, p. 350, 359) for these various ways in which one might reject standard Moorean arguments.
Note that, when I talk of “common-sense beliefs”, I do not imply that these beliefs are justified only by common sense. Arguably, common-sense beliefs are often part of common sense because they are justified in various ways, and this justification can have (for instance) a perceptual and/or an introspective component. For example, that two events sometimes happen at the same time simpliciter (i.e. that there is absolute simultaneity) is probably a part of common sense which can arguably be justified by perception (it seems that we sometimes “see” two things happening objectively at the exact same time) or introspection (it seems that we can introspect two mental events as absolutely co-occurent).
Rinard goes further than that, arguing that, if science-cum-philosophy can overturn common sense, so does philosophy alone (as she thinks that scientific-cum-philosophical arguments can only be as strong as their weakest premise—by hypothesis, the philosophical ones). One can accept that scientific arguments against commonsense are always scientific-cum-philosophical while rejecting her stronger conclusion. There might be something peculiar that comes from having amongst your premises some crucial and surprising empirical premise, which changes the way in which the whole argument should be assessed (so that scientific-cum-philosophical arguments have a peculiar strength that pure philosophical arguments lack).
This point is independent of the debate on whether Moorean arguments can play offense against the skeptic (taking up the burden of proof and providing a successful positive argument for the non-skeptic conclusion) or can only play defense (merely showing that skeptical argumentation fails). Indeed, the uncomfortable consequence I am pointing out is not that this interpretation of the Moorean argument against illusionism makes it incapable of converting already-convinced illusionists, but that it renders it ineffective even for the phenomenal realist whose faith is not sufficiently unshakable.
Although it is not entirely clear that Frances’ realist argument really concerns phenomenal feelings (Frances, 2008, n. 8).
It is not clear, however, that Bergson attempted to defend inter-subjective absolute simultaneity.
Asking this question comes close to raising what Keith Frankish calls the “hard meta-problem” (Frankish, 2019): the problem of determining what could ground the confidence of phenomenal realists that something more than their intuitions about consciousness needs explaining. Frankish defends illusionism by focusing on the exact kind of metaphysical facts—e.g. regarding acquaintance—that would have to obtain in order for this confidence to be grounded. He argues that they do not plausibly obtain. My strategy, as will be made clear, instead leaves out the details of the exact account needed by the realist, and further pursues the dialogue with the realist at a higher-order level (regarding what grounds their confidence in this confidence, etc.) until the realist’s intuitions give up.
Such a move could also be made at some higher level in the dialectics (third-order, fourth-order), but my response would be essentially the same.
(Merlo, 2020) might be read as providing suggestions in that direction.
Given the distinction between the justification of the first premise of the Moorean argument (regarding the reality of phenomenal states), and the higher-order justification of the super-Moorean status of this premise, an interesting question can be raised. It seems that my argument bearing on the higher-order question could be cogent, so that we should conclude that we do not possess super-Moorean certainty regarding phenomenal states, even if at the same time some view implying that we enter phenomenal states and do possess such super-Moorean certainty regarding our phenomenal states is true. I do not believe that such a scenario is actual, but nothing I said seems to exclude its possibility (some justified beliefs can be false, and it seems that it could be the case of the belief that we do not ordinarily possess super-Moorean certainty). One could then wonder whether someone who has appreciated the cogency of this higher-order argument would then lose entirely the super-Moorean justification to believe in the reality of phenomenal states that they possessed previously, or if such justification would be merely undermined. I am inclined to accept the second option, but this would require more argument—and this point is somewhat peripheral to my own point, given that I hope to have shown that we should not believe that such situation really obtains. Note that, if my argument turned out not to be cogent, while nevertheless being somewhat persuasive—enough to generate serious doubts regarding one’s possession of super-Moorean certainty—it will then simply be on a par with standard skeptical arguments. (I do not think that it is the case, as I take illusionism to be well-supported and I operated under this assumption). One can wonder whether, in that case, in the assumption that subjects really possess super-Moorean certainty, the Moorean argument would keep some dialectical effectiveness—for example, it might be that, in this eventuality, someone persuaded by my bad-but-persuasive argument would keep their super-Moorean justification from being undermined, but nevertheless would be rationally obstructed to form beliefs on the basis of this super-Moorean certainty. This would endanger the dialectical effectiveness of the Moorean argument. For the distinction between suppression or undermining of first-order justification by higher-order justification on the one hand, and rational obstruction due to skeptical beliefs, see (Pryor, 2004, p. 367).
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to David Chalmers, Krys Dolega, Marco Facchin, Keith Frankish, Paola Gega, Takuya Niikawa, Daniel Stoljar, Shang Long Yeo, Sonia Paz Higgins, Nina Poth, Tobias Schlicht, Tobias Starzak, and the audience at the “Illusionism and the hard problem” workshop at the ANU. I also want to thank the anonymous reviewers at Philosophical Studies for their very helpful remarks. A special thanks to Adrian Downey for his in-depth comments and linguistic suggestions.
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This research was funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
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Kammerer, F. How can you be so sure? Illusionism and the obviousness of phenomenal consciousness. Philos Stud 179, 2845–2867 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01804-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01804-7