Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

We're discussing the ontological status of phenomenal experience, so its illusory nature is very much relevant to this question.

No one, not even eliminative materialists, would deny that people have what they believe to be phenomenal experience. See Frankish [1]:

> Does illusionism entail eliminativism about consciousness? Is the illusionist claiming that we are mistaken in thinking we have conscious experiences? It depends on what we mean by ‘conscious experiences’. If we mean experiences with phenomenal properties, then illusionists do indeed deny that such things exist. But if we mean experiences of the kind that philosophers characterize as having phenomenal properties, then illusionists do not deny their existence. They simply offer a different account of their nature, characterizing them as having merely quasi-phenomenal properties. Similarly, illusionists deny the existence of phenomenal consciousness properly so-called, but do not deny the existence of a form of consciousness (perhaps distinct from other kinds, such as access consciousness) which consists in the possession of states with quasi-phenomenal properties and is commonly mischaracterized as phenomenal.

[1] https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/k0711/kf_articles/blob/m...




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: