Abstract
In his defense of Illusionism, D. Pereboom quotes S. Shoemaker as finding it mysterious how we can represent properties that are nowhere instantiated in our world. This paper begins by detailing the problem, clarifying its relation to Illusionism, and explaining the inadequacy of Pereboom’s response. It then examines papers by K. Frankish and F. Kammerer, and finds that they face the same problem. With this background, it becomes plausible that representation of uninstantiated properties is an endemic problem for illusionism. Responding by making such representation a sui generis relation amounts to abandoning the physicalism that is typically cited as a reason for accepting illusionism about experiences. Appeal to quality spaces may seem to provide a way to solve the problem without admitting a sui generis relation, but careful reflection reveals this to be a subtle version of the sui generis response. There is thus strong reason to think that Illusionism harbors a problem to which it can give no physicalistically acceptable solution.
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Notes
As we shall see, one can use ‘experiences’ to denote certain BEP instances that occur in pathways between sense organs and motor areas. Such instances, however, are not controversial; illusionists are not saying that there is any illusion about BEP instances.
A related point will be considered in the discussion of Frankish’s view.
Balog (2016, p. 48) makes a similar point more succinctly. She calls the quoted passage ‘hand-waving’.
If lack of directness for red2 is thought to need proof, consider metamers, i.e., cases where different MSS properties of two objects cause visual effects in us, but nothing is presented to us a different about those objects’ surfaces.
In the online text, this principle appears with the word ‘to’ at the end. I take this to be a typo.
References
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Chalmers, David. 2018. ‘The Meta-Problem of Consciousness’. Journal of Consciousness Studies 25 (9–10): 6–61.
Clark, Austen. 2000. A Theory of Sentience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Frankish, Keith. 2016. ‘Illusionism as a theory of consciousness’. Journal of Consciousness Studies 23 (11–12): 11–39.
Kammerer, François. 2019. ‘The illusion of conscious experience’, Synthese, online document, https:/doi.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-02071-y. Accessed 10/1/20.
Pereboom, Derk. 2011. Consciousness and the prospects of physicalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shoemaker, Sydney. 1990. ‘Qualities and Qualia: What’s in the Mind?’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 50, 109–131. Reprinted in Shoemaker, S., 1996, The First-Person Perspective and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 97–120).
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I would like to express my thanks to an anonymous reviewer, who stimulated several improvements to this paper.
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Robinson, W.S. Dis-Illusioning Experiences. Rev.Phil.Psych. 14, 1219–1236 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-022-00630-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-022-00630-4