Hey Lance, you have expressed doubt or even outright denial about phenomenal consciousness and “what-it-is-like” being meaningful. My question to you would then be…
when someone in pain or who is suffering would perhaps feel that their suffering is being undermined, they might say “you don’t know what’s like”. do you understand what that means?
I anticipate that you will respond, as you have done before, that
“I don’t think we can move from colloquial, ordinary uses of terms to the presumption that if the phrases in question are meaningful in those everyday contexts that therefore they’re meaningful in philosophical contexts”
and my answer here would just be: why the heck not? presumably there are many words, or set of words, you're using in colloquial contexts the same way in philosophical contexts, so then why can’t you do the same with ‘what-it-is-like’? how is it disanalogous?
The “illusion” involves the mistaken notion that our experiences include certain properties that they do not in fact include. Illusionism does not hold that people are “not conscious.” This is ambiguous. The illusionist holds only that people are not phenomenally conscious, where phenomenal consciousness is a form of consciousness characterized by phenomenal states. There is no good reason to exclude “phenomenal” from one’s description of the kind of consciousness illusionists deny.”
Illusionism is about phenomenal consciousness. We’re talking about phenomenal consciousness here. That’s a very good reason to exclude “phenomenal” from one’s description of the kind of consciousness illusionists deny. It’s obvious one is talking about phenomenal consciousness when one says illusionists hold that people are not conscious. The conversation in which that kind of statement would be made is about phenomenal consciousness.
“Failure to make this explicit is a misleading because the claim that “consciousness itself” is an illusion could be mistakenly interpreted to imply that the illusionist doesn’t think people have experiences,”
the illusionist doesnt think people have experiences. the view is or obviously implies phenomenal consciousness or qualia don’t exist. what is experience but in instance or set of instances of phenomenal consciousness or qualia?
“ or mental states, or feel happiness or pain, or see red, or have emotions, or any of a variety of other notions that could taken to be implied by such a remark, when an illusionist may very well maintain that we do have experiences, feel happiness and pain, and so on, and may simply disagree about the nature of these phenomena.”
from my point of view that’s contradictory because to maintain that we do have experiences but deny that we have phenomenal experiences is just to maintain that we have experiences and deny that we have experiences. i dont know of any sense of experience other than phenomenal experience, and i’d be really curious to see someone try to define or convey any other sense of experience but phenomenal experience.
“Illusionism is a technical position which involves the rejection of certain phenomena distinguished by certain technical terms. Shifting over to the use of semi-colloquial or at least philosophically ambiguous and underspecified terms like “consciousness” without qualification is misleading. It’s sufficiently misleading that I think it would be fair to call it irresponsible for a philosopher to bluntly assert that illusionists think consciousness is an illusion.
A philosopher might maintain that phenomenal consciousness is the only genuine form of consciousness, and that to deny it is to deny consciousness, full stop. But even if one holds such a view, an illusionist isn’t obligated to agree, and probably wouldn’t. Baking your own preconceptions or views into your characterization of opposing views that would probably dispute that characterization is not a good way to describe other people’s positions.
Why can't critics of illusionism even begin with a clear, accurate, and unambiguous characterization of the view? “
i don't agree that there is any reasonable degree of ambiguity here. again, the whole context of the conversation is phenomenal consciousness. obviously that’s what’s being talked about.
“Spencer Case offered a reply which reflects what I consider to be one of the weakest objections to illusionism”
I consider it a knock down argument against illusionism.
“The rough idea here seems to be that you can't be subject to an "illusion" of conscious experience, because this illusion would itself be a conscious experience.”
and there is the knock down argument.
“Pointing out that conscious experience does not involve phenomenal states (or "qualia") does not mean that one denies that people are conscious in any respect at all, “
but i dont people are objecting to the proposition that people are not conscious in any respect at all. i think they are objecting to the proposition that people are not phenomenally conscious.
“”Illusion” as a term, merely reflects the view that people think that things are one way, but they are really some other way. The notion of being mistaken about what’s true, in this respect, as with any other, does not require that one believe that the “illusion” people are subject to is itself presented to people phenomenally. “
i think it might actually require that. what does illusion mean if not that things seem one way but are actually another way? and what is seeming other than a way something is like from someone’s point of view? that’s qualia and phenomenal states or phenomenal consciousness. hence the illusion is presented to people phenomenally... as with any illusion.
“So the illusionist is such a profound idiot that it didn’t occur to them that the only proper sense of “illusion” presupposed the very thing they denied."
well, yeah, unless there is some sense of illusion other one that just cashes out in terms of phenomenal states or phenomenal consciousness. but is there any such sense of illusion that doesnt just cash out in terms of phenomenal states or phenomenal consciousness?
“Of course illusionists don’t think this, and of course “illusion” as a term is merely a label, a term of art adopted to serve as a rough analogical characterization of the kind of mistake they believe is occurring. That they think people are making this mistake, and have opted to call it an “illusion” does not carry, in itself, any weighty philosophical substance.”
don’t they mean that people mistakenly believe they are phenomenally conscious or have phenomenal states in virtue of some illusion?
“The invocationof the term illusion, in other words, is’t staking ground on the nature of illusions.
Of course, a critic could insist that they only meaningful sense in which something could be an “illusion” would be in the phenomenal sense, but an illusionist could (a) simply deny this and (b) it really wouldn’t be relevant. The illusionist can drop the term “illusion” and analogies to illusions from their account and characterize the position without reference to illusions, e.g., “
//That’s a very good reason to exclude “phenomenal” from one’s description of the kind of consciousness illusionists deny. It’s obvious one is talking about phenomenal consciousness when one says illusionists hold that people are not conscious.//
That's not a "very good" reason. It may be obvious to some people in some contexts, but it won't be obvious to everyone, and dropping the single word immediately results in ambiguity and lack of clarity. It isn't hard to include the word and to be precise. There's no harm in including it, but risk and harm in not including it. So no, I don't think there is any good reason to exclude the use of the term "phenomenal." The primary reason to do so is to confuse nonspecialists and people who don't pick up on the full context or have adequate background knowledge.
It's the same as a moral realist dropping "objective" or "stance-independent" when talking about moral facts, and then saying "antirealists think there are no moral facts." This is needlessly misleading.
//the illusionist doesnt think people have experiences//
I have to disagree with you. I think it's a very good reason indeed. The relevant context necessarily is phenomenal consciousness. That's what we're talking about. That's what illusionists are talking about (or deny the existence of). That's the relevant context. Of course we're still talking about phenomenal consciousness when we say illusionists think consciousness is an illusion! If this is not obvious to someone, that would be rather strange considering illusionism is talking about the term phenomenal consciousness.
"the illusionist doesnt think people have experiences//
Yes we do."
From my point of view that sounds contradictory because i dont know of any sense of experience other than phenomenal experience. So to me that just seems like a contradiction on your view, which would be: phenomenal consciousness both does and doesn’t exist.
But of course, you would probably deny that youre using the word experience in the sense of phenomenal experience. But then i wonder what sense of experience you think you are talking about when you refer to experience that you think people have.
>"to get back in form for posting weekly comments on philosophy Twitter"
(CW: Unsolicited advice!)
If you are going to do this, consider writing at least some of these comments on tweets expressing insights that you fundamentally agree with. I can certainly sympathize with the impulse to react to people who are WRONG on the internet, but healthy intellectual discourse needs a sufficient quantity of "Yes, and..." to balance out the negativity.
I don't particularly disagree with anything you say in that post, but if the eventual goal of demolishing old intellectual structures is to "step out of the confines of a narrow method to discover, and deploy, whole new methods," then I would really like to hear more about those new methods and what we can expect to learn from them.
As for "Philosophy Twitter," I tend to agree with Justin Smith-Ruiu:
"The only appropriate use of social media, beyond simple announcements of personal milestones or professional engagements, is shitposting. [...] Social media are to rational deliberation and to civic participation what Grand Theft Auto is to chasing stolen cars: social media are a deliberation-themed video game in literally the same respect that GTA is a car-chase-themed video game. Anyone who mistakes it for the real thing is operating under a simple illusion."
There's nothing wrong with playing GTA, if you're into that sort of thing. But if your eventual goal is to develop new methods that will revolutionize the field of automotive crime, some reflection is needed on the issue of how exactly your GTA sessions are going to help you make progress towards that goal.
I've spent enough time reflecting on how I like to approach philosophy and the work I do to know what my interests and goals are. And my interest and goal is in critique. I could spend my entire lifetime doing critique and it would only scratch the surface.
I understand if you'd prefer I do something else, but my commentary, and my work, is an extension of who I am as a person. There are many things I don't like about myself, but my emphasis (even an almost exclusive focus) on critique isn't one of them.
I've had people try to encourage me to do something else in the way you suggest for as long as I can remember. I don't know whether to be grateful or angry about it. Why are you making these suggestions? Why should I change what I do and how I approach things?
Earlier, you said, "healthy intellectual discourse needs a sufficient quantity of "Yes, and..." to balance out the negativity."
The discourse is already sick, and there aren't nearly enough people out there cauterizing the wounds.
>"Why are you making these suggestions? Why should I change what I do and how I approach things?"
My motivations here are mostly selfish. I see you as an intelligent writer who has an unusual combination of intellectual interests and experience, and thus has the potential to offer unique insights that I'd like to read about. And when I see you responding to J. P. Andrew, I look up his Twitter feed and think "Why is Lance wasting his time feeding this troll?"
Obviously you don't owe me anything. I can certainly see it getting annoying if you are happy with your current approach and keep getting these sorts of suggestions.
Well, I still think you are underestimating your own potential for making positive contributions alongside your criticisms. You know more philosophy than most psychologists and more psychology than most philosophers; there is a lot of work to be done figuring out what the relationship between these fields should be, and you would seem to be in a good position to think through the relevant issues. It's a difficult problem, and whatever you come up with is probably going to be wrong! But there is a lot of value in presenting clear thoughts on an important issue, even if those thoughts end up being wrong — especially if you manage to be wrong in new and non-obvious ways.
But perhaps you feel you are more temperamentally suited to demolition rather than construction. Fair enough — you're obviously in a better position to judge than me. In that case, my main hope would be for you to select worthy targets. It can be worth responding to someone who has thought through the issues and presents interesting arguments for their mistaken positions (e.g. Chalmers, Goff, Enoch, Cuneo). It can sometimes be worth responding to someone who is a poor thinker if they happen to have gained a wide audience (e.g. Jordan Peterson). And of course, it can also be worth responding to someone just because they are willing to talk and you enjoy the conversation! But as far as I can tell, J.P. Andrew doesn't seem to meet any of those criteria (at least in his Twitter persona — I have no idea what he is like in his more thoughtful moments). Responding to published work is generally going to be more fruitful than responding to tweets, but even if you find value in engaging with Twitter, you can probably find better targets.
The funny thing about the claim that "consciousness is an illusion" is that this is a perfectly apt statement of the thesis of illusionism within philosophical contexts. Words like "illusion" and "hallucination" are given technical meanings in philosophy of mind. "Illusion" is taken to mean that you see an ordinary object in front of you, but you misperceive some of its properties, like perceiving a white wall as pink due to the pink lightbulb that's illuminating the room. "Hallucination" is taken to mean that you don't see any ordinary object in front of you at all, but instead see something completely "in your mind," like a mirage in a desert or a dream while you're sleeping.
"• Fully successful cases of perception – cases in which an object is seen and seen correctly or “as it is” – will be termed perception or sometimes veridical perception.
• In contrast, “illusion” refers to cases in which something is seen, but seen incorrectly or “as it is not”. Illusions includes cases in which a round object is seen to be oval, a blue object is seen to be green, or a tall object is seen to be short.
• Finally, the term “hallucination” refers to cases in which it seems to the subject as though something is seen, but where in fact nothing is seen. Classic examples include Macbeth’s hallucination of a dagger and Hamlet’s hallucination of his father."
The above is from page 15 of Philosophy of Perception by William Fish.
"In an illusion, it seems to S that something has a sensible quality, F, which the ordinary object supposedly being perceived does not have."
"The assumption that hallucinations are possible means that you could have an experience which is subjectively indistinguishable—that is, indistinguishable by you, “from the inside”—from a veridical perception of a snow-covered churchyard, but where there is in fact no churchyard presented or there to be perceived."
Above quotes are from The Problem of Perception SEP entry.
So saying that "consciousness is an illusion" in a philosophical context means that there is something there - consciousness, but we misperceive some of its properties - which is effectively synonymous with the central claim of illusionism, that introspection is unreliable and affords us a mistaken view of the properties of consciousness. The real absurdity would be to claim that consciousness is a hallucination, because you would be denying that you are conscious but are still perceiving something, and presumably perception is in part constitutive of what it means to be conscious.
Also worth noting that representationalism is the most popular view among philosophers according to the Philpapers survery (https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/4894), and the entire point of representationalism is to oppose the "there is no appearance-reality distinction in consciousness" dogma by allowing for nonexistent intentional objects, giving an account of misrepresentations (illusions and hallucinations), etc. As you might be able to tell, this view is entirely compatible with illusionism. So philosophers are also displaying their lack of familiarity with the bulk of work done in philosophy of mind over the past half century when they think "consciousness is an illusion" is some sort of self own, in conjunction with the ridiculous reading-the-name-of-the-view-and-critiquing-what-you-think-it-means style they're going for.
Yes, you are absolutely correct. The terms have distinctive uses and illusionists explain those uses. It's alarming that critics nevertheless respond as if the illusionist has said something manifestly stupid and self-contradictory. It's bizarre and more than a little embarrassing that critics of illusionism nevertheless persist in lazy "gotchas."
And I think it's also important to emphasize that an illusion is an illusion of something, and that is the thing we take to be consciousness. So insisting we don't think consciousness exists is ridiculous. It's like if I told you a magician's stage tricks aren't real magic, you responded by saying "oh my god, you don't think there's a magician on the stage doing tricks?"
*This* is what critics of illusionism often sound like to me. And it's so ridiculous I don't know what to make of it. We're accused of being confused, and yet the criticisms are themselves strike me as so manifestly misguided it's hard to take such accusations all that seriously. If our critics say "you're confused" then proceed to wildly misrepresent your views, I'd at least agree that somebody is confused.
When you say “So the illusionist is such a profound idiot that...” I’m inclined to just agree. Not “idiot” but very confused with a mix of biases. I really don’t know. The view seems crazy to me.
You're welcome to think that, but an illusionist or someone with views like mine (qualia quietism + meta-illusionism) can simply point out that we think that people who *aren't* illusionists (or something similar, like me) are "very confused with a mix of biases."
Indeed, the view is *illusionism* after all. The whole point is that we think (at least some) other people are mistaken or confused about what their experiences are like, and that would probably include you. It doesn't get anyone very far in a dialectic to declare one's opposition confused or biased. If you want to convince me or illusionists, you'd have to *demonstrate* that we are subject to confusions or biases, and not the other way around.
The view doesn't seem implausible to me. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that illusionism and views like it are quite literally the *only* plausible views on offer. It is views which take the hard problem seriously that strike me as absurd.
Hey Lance, you have expressed doubt or even outright denial about phenomenal consciousness and “what-it-is-like” being meaningful. My question to you would then be…
when someone in pain or who is suffering would perhaps feel that their suffering is being undermined, they might say “you don’t know what’s like”. do you understand what that means?
I anticipate that you will respond, as you have done before, that
“I don’t think we can move from colloquial, ordinary uses of terms to the presumption that if the phrases in question are meaningful in those everyday contexts that therefore they’re meaningful in philosophical contexts”
and my answer here would just be: why the heck not? presumably there are many words, or set of words, you're using in colloquial contexts the same way in philosophical contexts, so then why can’t you do the same with ‘what-it-is-like’? how is it disanalogous?
The “illusion” involves the mistaken notion that our experiences include certain properties that they do not in fact include. Illusionism does not hold that people are “not conscious.” This is ambiguous. The illusionist holds only that people are not phenomenally conscious, where phenomenal consciousness is a form of consciousness characterized by phenomenal states. There is no good reason to exclude “phenomenal” from one’s description of the kind of consciousness illusionists deny.”
Illusionism is about phenomenal consciousness. We’re talking about phenomenal consciousness here. That’s a very good reason to exclude “phenomenal” from one’s description of the kind of consciousness illusionists deny. It’s obvious one is talking about phenomenal consciousness when one says illusionists hold that people are not conscious. The conversation in which that kind of statement would be made is about phenomenal consciousness.
“Failure to make this explicit is a misleading because the claim that “consciousness itself” is an illusion could be mistakenly interpreted to imply that the illusionist doesn’t think people have experiences,”
the illusionist doesnt think people have experiences. the view is or obviously implies phenomenal consciousness or qualia don’t exist. what is experience but in instance or set of instances of phenomenal consciousness or qualia?
“ or mental states, or feel happiness or pain, or see red, or have emotions, or any of a variety of other notions that could taken to be implied by such a remark, when an illusionist may very well maintain that we do have experiences, feel happiness and pain, and so on, and may simply disagree about the nature of these phenomena.”
from my point of view that’s contradictory because to maintain that we do have experiences but deny that we have phenomenal experiences is just to maintain that we have experiences and deny that we have experiences. i dont know of any sense of experience other than phenomenal experience, and i’d be really curious to see someone try to define or convey any other sense of experience but phenomenal experience.
“Illusionism is a technical position which involves the rejection of certain phenomena distinguished by certain technical terms. Shifting over to the use of semi-colloquial or at least philosophically ambiguous and underspecified terms like “consciousness” without qualification is misleading. It’s sufficiently misleading that I think it would be fair to call it irresponsible for a philosopher to bluntly assert that illusionists think consciousness is an illusion.
A philosopher might maintain that phenomenal consciousness is the only genuine form of consciousness, and that to deny it is to deny consciousness, full stop. But even if one holds such a view, an illusionist isn’t obligated to agree, and probably wouldn’t. Baking your own preconceptions or views into your characterization of opposing views that would probably dispute that characterization is not a good way to describe other people’s positions.
Why can't critics of illusionism even begin with a clear, accurate, and unambiguous characterization of the view? “
i don't agree that there is any reasonable degree of ambiguity here. again, the whole context of the conversation is phenomenal consciousness. obviously that’s what’s being talked about.
“Spencer Case offered a reply which reflects what I consider to be one of the weakest objections to illusionism”
I consider it a knock down argument against illusionism.
“The rough idea here seems to be that you can't be subject to an "illusion" of conscious experience, because this illusion would itself be a conscious experience.”
and there is the knock down argument.
“Pointing out that conscious experience does not involve phenomenal states (or "qualia") does not mean that one denies that people are conscious in any respect at all, “
but i dont people are objecting to the proposition that people are not conscious in any respect at all. i think they are objecting to the proposition that people are not phenomenally conscious.
“”Illusion” as a term, merely reflects the view that people think that things are one way, but they are really some other way. The notion of being mistaken about what’s true, in this respect, as with any other, does not require that one believe that the “illusion” people are subject to is itself presented to people phenomenally. “
i think it might actually require that. what does illusion mean if not that things seem one way but are actually another way? and what is seeming other than a way something is like from someone’s point of view? that’s qualia and phenomenal states or phenomenal consciousness. hence the illusion is presented to people phenomenally... as with any illusion.
“So the illusionist is such a profound idiot that it didn’t occur to them that the only proper sense of “illusion” presupposed the very thing they denied."
well, yeah, unless there is some sense of illusion other one that just cashes out in terms of phenomenal states or phenomenal consciousness. but is there any such sense of illusion that doesnt just cash out in terms of phenomenal states or phenomenal consciousness?
“Of course illusionists don’t think this, and of course “illusion” as a term is merely a label, a term of art adopted to serve as a rough analogical characterization of the kind of mistake they believe is occurring. That they think people are making this mistake, and have opted to call it an “illusion” does not carry, in itself, any weighty philosophical substance.”
don’t they mean that people mistakenly believe they are phenomenally conscious or have phenomenal states in virtue of some illusion?
“The invocationof the term illusion, in other words, is’t staking ground on the nature of illusions.
Of course, a critic could insist that they only meaningful sense in which something could be an “illusion” would be in the phenomenal sense, but an illusionist could (a) simply deny this and (b) it really wouldn’t be relevant. The illusionist can drop the term “illusion” and analogies to illusions from their account and characterize the position without reference to illusions, e.g., “
but that would just be to shift the claim.
//That’s a very good reason to exclude “phenomenal” from one’s description of the kind of consciousness illusionists deny. It’s obvious one is talking about phenomenal consciousness when one says illusionists hold that people are not conscious.//
That's not a "very good" reason. It may be obvious to some people in some contexts, but it won't be obvious to everyone, and dropping the single word immediately results in ambiguity and lack of clarity. It isn't hard to include the word and to be precise. There's no harm in including it, but risk and harm in not including it. So no, I don't think there is any good reason to exclude the use of the term "phenomenal." The primary reason to do so is to confuse nonspecialists and people who don't pick up on the full context or have adequate background knowledge.
It's the same as a moral realist dropping "objective" or "stance-independent" when talking about moral facts, and then saying "antirealists think there are no moral facts." This is needlessly misleading.
//the illusionist doesnt think people have experiences//
Yes we do.
I have to disagree with you. I think it's a very good reason indeed. The relevant context necessarily is phenomenal consciousness. That's what we're talking about. That's what illusionists are talking about (or deny the existence of). That's the relevant context. Of course we're still talking about phenomenal consciousness when we say illusionists think consciousness is an illusion! If this is not obvious to someone, that would be rather strange considering illusionism is talking about the term phenomenal consciousness.
"the illusionist doesnt think people have experiences//
Yes we do."
From my point of view that sounds contradictory because i dont know of any sense of experience other than phenomenal experience. So to me that just seems like a contradiction on your view, which would be: phenomenal consciousness both does and doesn’t exist.
But of course, you would probably deny that youre using the word experience in the sense of phenomenal experience. But then i wonder what sense of experience you think you are talking about when you refer to experience that you think people have.
>"to get back in form for posting weekly comments on philosophy Twitter"
(CW: Unsolicited advice!)
If you are going to do this, consider writing at least some of these comments on tweets expressing insights that you fundamentally agree with. I can certainly sympathize with the impulse to react to people who are WRONG on the internet, but healthy intellectual discourse needs a sufficient quantity of "Yes, and..." to balance out the negativity.
I appreciate the feedback. Have you seen my blog post on how I focus on negative and critical commentary?
This one?
https://www.lanceindependent.com/p/the-positive-in-the-negative
I don't particularly disagree with anything you say in that post, but if the eventual goal of demolishing old intellectual structures is to "step out of the confines of a narrow method to discover, and deploy, whole new methods," then I would really like to hear more about those new methods and what we can expect to learn from them.
As for "Philosophy Twitter," I tend to agree with Justin Smith-Ruiu:
"The only appropriate use of social media, beyond simple announcements of personal milestones or professional engagements, is shitposting. [...] Social media are to rational deliberation and to civic participation what Grand Theft Auto is to chasing stolen cars: social media are a deliberation-themed video game in literally the same respect that GTA is a car-chase-themed video game. Anyone who mistakes it for the real thing is operating under a simple illusion."
There's nothing wrong with playing GTA, if you're into that sort of thing. But if your eventual goal is to develop new methods that will revolutionize the field of automotive crime, some reflection is needed on the issue of how exactly your GTA sessions are going to help you make progress towards that goal.
I've spent enough time reflecting on how I like to approach philosophy and the work I do to know what my interests and goals are. And my interest and goal is in critique. I could spend my entire lifetime doing critique and it would only scratch the surface.
I understand if you'd prefer I do something else, but my commentary, and my work, is an extension of who I am as a person. There are many things I don't like about myself, but my emphasis (even an almost exclusive focus) on critique isn't one of them.
I've had people try to encourage me to do something else in the way you suggest for as long as I can remember. I don't know whether to be grateful or angry about it. Why are you making these suggestions? Why should I change what I do and how I approach things?
Earlier, you said, "healthy intellectual discourse needs a sufficient quantity of "Yes, and..." to balance out the negativity."
The discourse is already sick, and there aren't nearly enough people out there cauterizing the wounds.
>"Why are you making these suggestions? Why should I change what I do and how I approach things?"
My motivations here are mostly selfish. I see you as an intelligent writer who has an unusual combination of intellectual interests and experience, and thus has the potential to offer unique insights that I'd like to read about. And when I see you responding to J. P. Andrew, I look up his Twitter feed and think "Why is Lance wasting his time feeding this troll?"
Obviously you don't owe me anything. I can certainly see it getting annoying if you are happy with your current approach and keep getting these sorts of suggestions.
What is it that you suggest that I do?
Well, I still think you are underestimating your own potential for making positive contributions alongside your criticisms. You know more philosophy than most psychologists and more psychology than most philosophers; there is a lot of work to be done figuring out what the relationship between these fields should be, and you would seem to be in a good position to think through the relevant issues. It's a difficult problem, and whatever you come up with is probably going to be wrong! But there is a lot of value in presenting clear thoughts on an important issue, even if those thoughts end up being wrong — especially if you manage to be wrong in new and non-obvious ways.
But perhaps you feel you are more temperamentally suited to demolition rather than construction. Fair enough — you're obviously in a better position to judge than me. In that case, my main hope would be for you to select worthy targets. It can be worth responding to someone who has thought through the issues and presents interesting arguments for their mistaken positions (e.g. Chalmers, Goff, Enoch, Cuneo). It can sometimes be worth responding to someone who is a poor thinker if they happen to have gained a wide audience (e.g. Jordan Peterson). And of course, it can also be worth responding to someone just because they are willing to talk and you enjoy the conversation! But as far as I can tell, J.P. Andrew doesn't seem to meet any of those criteria (at least in his Twitter persona — I have no idea what he is like in his more thoughtful moments). Responding to published work is generally going to be more fruitful than responding to tweets, but even if you find value in engaging with Twitter, you can probably find better targets.
The funny thing about the claim that "consciousness is an illusion" is that this is a perfectly apt statement of the thesis of illusionism within philosophical contexts. Words like "illusion" and "hallucination" are given technical meanings in philosophy of mind. "Illusion" is taken to mean that you see an ordinary object in front of you, but you misperceive some of its properties, like perceiving a white wall as pink due to the pink lightbulb that's illuminating the room. "Hallucination" is taken to mean that you don't see any ordinary object in front of you at all, but instead see something completely "in your mind," like a mirage in a desert or a dream while you're sleeping.
"• Fully successful cases of perception – cases in which an object is seen and seen correctly or “as it is” – will be termed perception or sometimes veridical perception.
• In contrast, “illusion” refers to cases in which something is seen, but seen incorrectly or “as it is not”. Illusions includes cases in which a round object is seen to be oval, a blue object is seen to be green, or a tall object is seen to be short.
• Finally, the term “hallucination” refers to cases in which it seems to the subject as though something is seen, but where in fact nothing is seen. Classic examples include Macbeth’s hallucination of a dagger and Hamlet’s hallucination of his father."
The above is from page 15 of Philosophy of Perception by William Fish.
"In an illusion, it seems to S that something has a sensible quality, F, which the ordinary object supposedly being perceived does not have."
"The assumption that hallucinations are possible means that you could have an experience which is subjectively indistinguishable—that is, indistinguishable by you, “from the inside”—from a veridical perception of a snow-covered churchyard, but where there is in fact no churchyard presented or there to be perceived."
Above quotes are from The Problem of Perception SEP entry.
So saying that "consciousness is an illusion" in a philosophical context means that there is something there - consciousness, but we misperceive some of its properties - which is effectively synonymous with the central claim of illusionism, that introspection is unreliable and affords us a mistaken view of the properties of consciousness. The real absurdity would be to claim that consciousness is a hallucination, because you would be denying that you are conscious but are still perceiving something, and presumably perception is in part constitutive of what it means to be conscious.
Also worth noting that representationalism is the most popular view among philosophers according to the Philpapers survery (https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/4894), and the entire point of representationalism is to oppose the "there is no appearance-reality distinction in consciousness" dogma by allowing for nonexistent intentional objects, giving an account of misrepresentations (illusions and hallucinations), etc. As you might be able to tell, this view is entirely compatible with illusionism. So philosophers are also displaying their lack of familiarity with the bulk of work done in philosophy of mind over the past half century when they think "consciousness is an illusion" is some sort of self own, in conjunction with the ridiculous reading-the-name-of-the-view-and-critiquing-what-you-think-it-means style they're going for.
Yes, you are absolutely correct. The terms have distinctive uses and illusionists explain those uses. It's alarming that critics nevertheless respond as if the illusionist has said something manifestly stupid and self-contradictory. It's bizarre and more than a little embarrassing that critics of illusionism nevertheless persist in lazy "gotchas."
And I think it's also important to emphasize that an illusion is an illusion of something, and that is the thing we take to be consciousness. So insisting we don't think consciousness exists is ridiculous. It's like if I told you a magician's stage tricks aren't real magic, you responded by saying "oh my god, you don't think there's a magician on the stage doing tricks?"
*This* is what critics of illusionism often sound like to me. And it's so ridiculous I don't know what to make of it. We're accused of being confused, and yet the criticisms are themselves strike me as so manifestly misguided it's hard to take such accusations all that seriously. If our critics say "you're confused" then proceed to wildly misrepresent your views, I'd at least agree that somebody is confused.
When you say “So the illusionist is such a profound idiot that...” I’m inclined to just agree. Not “idiot” but very confused with a mix of biases. I really don’t know. The view seems crazy to me.
You're welcome to think that, but an illusionist or someone with views like mine (qualia quietism + meta-illusionism) can simply point out that we think that people who *aren't* illusionists (or something similar, like me) are "very confused with a mix of biases."
Indeed, the view is *illusionism* after all. The whole point is that we think (at least some) other people are mistaken or confused about what their experiences are like, and that would probably include you. It doesn't get anyone very far in a dialectic to declare one's opposition confused or biased. If you want to convince me or illusionists, you'd have to *demonstrate* that we are subject to confusions or biases, and not the other way around.
The view doesn't seem implausible to me. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that illusionism and views like it are quite literally the *only* plausible views on offer. It is views which take the hard problem seriously that strike me as absurd.
Fair enough, it’s long to get into and I didn’t expect my comment to change minds, was just reporting my view.