Adventures in Super Moorean Land

1.0 Introduction

I called myself an illusionist for a long time. Strong illusionism is the view that phenomenal consciousness doesn’t exist, but we operate under the mistaken impression (i.e.,the illusion) that it does (Frankish, 2016). One might opt for a more modest form which holds that phenomenal consciousness does exist, but isn’t quite what we suppose; it might be missing some key characteristics ordinarily thought to be part of phenomenal consciousness. I endorsed the former. 

However, my views gradually shifted away from this position, only not in the direction one might suppose. Many philosophers regard illusionism as “radical,” “absurd,” “extreme,” or “preposterous”. I’ve even heard people suggest that the view is so ridiculous that nobody could seriously endorse it. After all, the manifest fact that we have phenomenally conscious states is self-evident. It is, perhaps, the one thing we couldn’t doubt. So one might think I’d announce some deconversion story, where I saw the li…