You don't seem to agree that consciousness is an illusion, do you? What alternative perspectives do you have in mind?

Personally, the idea of consciousness as an illusion makes sense to me. If it's not an illusion, then it's something that exists in physical world. Something that we can point to in time and space and maybe even touch it. But that doesn't seem to be the case to me.

Maybe I need an example. Let's say we have a film strip with a movie on it. We can use a movie projector to show that movie. One could argue that the film strip is a physical thing that exists in the physical world, but the movie is an illusion created by projecting that film strip. The movie exists and it carries some meaning, but it's not a physical thing. That's why we can call it an illusion.

We could think of consciousness as a movie. The brain cells act as a hardware to project consciousness. I think Dennett bases a lot of his ideas on studying the inner workings of the brain, and how those ideas are used to create functioning AIs. It's not easy to see consciousness in individual brain cells, but all cells combined seem to project consciousness. Is this consistent with your world view?

Consider some definitions of illusion:

- an instance of a wrong or misinterpreted perception of a sensory experience
- a deceptive appearance or impression
- a false idea or belief

Notice that all of these definitions assume consciousness to exist, as illusions comprise something erroneously interpreted or misunderstood. So even if a theory about consciousness is wrong, no theory can plausibly argue that consciousness is an illusion, because illusions are conscious phenomena.

One could argue that the film strip is a physical thing that exists in the physical world, but the movie is an illusion created by projecting that film strip. — pfirefry

The movie is the reason the film strip has any signficance. Otherwise it would simply be celluloid with chemicals on it.

Consider some definitions of illusion — Wayfarer

I see! I didn’t use the word illusion in a negative sense, just neutral. Hope you can see what I mean. For example, this comment is not me, but an illusion of me talking to you. Does it mean that any one of us is deceived in a negative sense? I don’t think so. Is there a better word than “illusion” that we could use to avoid negative connotation?

Is there a better word than “illusion” that we could use to avoid negative connotation? — pfirefry

If you mean a more accurate synonym, then no. We can definitely be fooled by illusions or be trapped by delusions, but again it's only possible because we're conscious beings to begin with. The fact of our conscious experience can't be an illusion - just as Descartes said. Even if we're wrong about everything, there can be no doubt that there is a subject who is wrong.

Dennett does indeed say that what we normally understand the mind to be is a consequence of the combined actions of millions of cellular processes which individually are unconscious. This gives rise to what he calls 'unconscious competence' or 'competence without comprehension'. It is this kind of view which reviewer David Bentley Hart describes as 'so preposterous as to verge on the deranged'.

It's an illusion like time is an illusion, existing in a broader sphere than we can possibly comprehend.

I loathe it when people say we're just here to spread our genes. People are and aren't their genomes, and it's completely ignorant of the fact of personhood, that life is overwhelmingly regarded as worth it.

Genes may be predisposed to valuing the human experience, but why?

Is Dennett claiming not that consciousness is an illusion, but the human experience is?

That's how it would seem to me, but I regard the human experience as the most indivisible thing we can know. And, if it's not eternal, that doesn't mean it's an illusion.

So I think we must parse this word "consciousness" from "the human experience," which we all know to be real and more profound than words spoken.

I suppose Dennett would argue it's less profound, but that's really juvenile, to me. Even if this all ended tomorrow, the story would be just as incredible. Imagine all the strokes of luck that have gotten us to this point.

But I digress: to explain consciousness requires a comprehensive explanation of both the brain and the environment in which it exists. The whole universe, in other words, including Time.

Anything less sophisticated than that is truly milquetoast: a placeholder for a lack of a much grander perspective.

The alternative is like saying "clouds produce water"; i.e. it's true, but isn't a description of water.

And, furthermore, to be human is an authentic mode of behavior. So, I think what Dennett says is that it's based on a lack of perspective, which is utterly true, but, in my view, that makes it no less real or authentic. Surely not a complete illusion, incomplete as our perspective is.

If genes hold this all together they're as loaded a word as "love" at least. If you're going to reduce everything, why not to the formal expression of its results?

Even if we're wrong about everything, there can be no doubt that there is a subject who is wrong. — Wayfarer

What if the subject that you're talking about is not an atomic thing? What if it can be divided into multiple parts? Some studies suggest that if we split the two halves of the brain, each half will act independently from another. Do we end up with two subjects, or still one subject, or perhaps no subject at all? If we start removing brain cells one at a time, undoubtably we will begin with a subject but end up with none. If the subject is not an illusion, then what would happen to it once we disconnect all the brain cells?

What if it can be divided into multiple parts? — pfirefry

The subjective unity of perception is a topic in its own right. It is true there have been studies on patients with split-brain operations, but firstly they're extremely rare cases, and secondly they're hardly typical of human experience.

The bottom line here is that Dennett, in particular, wants to account for everything about human nature in objective, third-person terms. He generates these massive (and highly repetitive) books about it, but that's really all it is, and I've said all I'm going to say about it.

What if the subject that you're talking about is not an atomic thing? What if it can be divided into multiple parts? Some studies suggest that if we split the two halves of the brain, each half will act independently from another. Do we end up with two subjects, or still one subject, or perhaps no subject at all? — pfirefry

Consciousness - as in that conscious awareness of our own selves we’re inimitably acquainted with via memories, beliefs, values, intentions, and so forth - is neither atomic nor indivisible. As to its being non-atomic, it wouldn’t dismantle/diffuse upon descent into sleep if it were atomic. As to its being divisible, another rather complex exemplification of its fragmentation is that of multiple personality disorder. That the conscious us which we know ourselves to be via direct acquaintance with our multiple memories, beliefs, values, intentions, etc. is atomic and indivisible can well be expressed as a delusion maintained for the pragmatic purposes of going about life as best we can. And, in this respect, this understanding of our own conscious self’s nature as being permanent is an illusion.

But whether addressing split-brain patients, patients with multiple personality disorder, patients with schizophrenia, or other examples, the question remains: can there be anything experienced without there being a first-person point of view that experiences – irrespective of how diffused or acute this point of view might be? Experientially for you and me, the answer, I presume, is a resounding no. Split-brain patients will in many a way exhibit different personalities pertaining to the same body, very differently so from patients of multiple personality disorder. I can’t definitively answer for whether split-brain patients have two first-person points of view that simultaneously operate; I can find this conceivable but, so far, noncredible. I find it more likely that the condition is more akin to multiple personality disorder with two personalities which, as condition, comes about via physical damage to the brain - rather then via what can be at least presumed to be resultant of psychological coping mechanisms in response to severe stressors during onset in people with certain innate mental predispositions, this as can be argued to be the case for multiple personality disorder.

In all these cases, however, the same issue remains: Can the occurrence of a first-person point of view be an illusion to the very first-person point of view in question? The question isn’t if it’s atomic or indivisible but, instead, whether a first-person point of view can be wrong about its own ontic being as such while it occurs. Thereby resulting in the conclusion that the very occurrence of a first-person point of view is illusory; i.e., that no first-person point of view in fact occurs.

Don’t know about Dennett, I haven’t read him, but when I hear that “consciousness is an illusion” I interpret the statement to affirm that “an occurring first-person point of view holds the illusion of its own occurrence and, thereby, in fact does not occur”. An absurdity to me, rationally if not also experientially. If all that Dennett intends to affirm is that “a permanent conscious self is an illusion”, Buddhist for example had beaten him to the punch many ages ago: nothing new and nothing shocking.

Edit: Come to think of it, yes, atomic means indivisible. My bad for that. I'll leave the post as is, though.

Dennett often utilizes language in a conflationary sense. Here, he's not saying so much that consciousness doesn't exist, as that it does exist, but has the nature of an illusion. But the whole concept of illusion makes sense only with respect to subjective experience. So he's trying to sneak consciousness in by the back door, in order to dismiss it. Consider this excerpt from Foucault, on the inherent reality of the illusive:

Insofar as it is of the essence of the image to be taken for reality, it is reciprocally characteristic of reality that it can mimic the image....If illusion can appear as true as perception, perception in its turn can become the visible, unchallengeable truth of illusion. (Madness & Civilization)

Illusions are real only insofar as they are perceived. An atmospheric condition in the desert only becomes a mirage when it is seen. So if consciousness is in some sense illusory, it is also the reality which substantiates the illusion.

That's a well-articulated post, thank you! Your terminology is much sharper than mine, and agree with everything that you said.

In a humble enough way, thanks. Interesting for me is that if our consciousness can dismantle/diffuse itself upon falling asleep, then by the same token our consciousness can reassemble itself into a unified whole upon awakening. Its clear that a person as body can hold different first-person points of view as the culminating awareness of the body: multiple personality disorder as example. It's also relatively clear that we all deem a singular unified, hence unitary, awareness (re: a culminating awareness of the body) to be indicative of psychological health. Also evident is that our total, relatively healthy minds are constituted of a plurality of first-person points of view: that of ourselves as a conscious self and those pertaining to our unconscious. Our conscience as one example of such sub/unconscious first-person point of view: it holds the same awareness of facts as we consciously do despite holding different perspectives and intentions in relation to said facts - and we in some ways interact with it at times when it occurs. The background noise of the mind that some people attest to as another example of different agencies co-operating within the same, relatively healthy mind - for the conscious self doesn't will the background noise to be nor its intricate details of manifesting. At our best, when we’re “in the zone”, all these unconscious first-person points of view are fully unified with that of our conscious self. We become one in relation to our total being as persons. To me this is in many a way reminiscent of the Latin saying, “e pluribus unum” - and I find it an interesting interpretation of consciousness's etymology "together knowing" (however inaccurate this interpretation might be historically).

All this to propose that if consciousness holds the capacity to divide into lesser parts, it can also the hold the capacity unify from lesser parts. For instance, in a split-brain scenario, supposing the knowhow to re-bridge the two hemispheres and the implementation of this, one then would obtain two conscious parts (be they multiple personalities that operate the body at different times or, else, two first-person points of view that operate the body simultaneously) that become unified into one conscious whole.

Phenomenology sounds like quite a fellow. What assures him, if anything, that he's not just writing poetry? Is it interaction? Confirmation?

Community is experienced differently by each participant in it — Joshs

Perhaps. And perhaps babies are made of applesauce. What grounds the intelligibility of this sign 'experience' in the first place?

taking community as primary is incoherent. — Joshs

I don't think so. Recall that we're talking about Language, Consciousness, and Human Culture. It's only 'consciousness', a largely incoherent hideout (given its function), that isn't explicitly social.

To be clear, I'm not denying that people have different experiences, but that kind of statement is hopelessly fuzzy. If we aren't just writing poetry in our journals, we have to ask how we could know that our experience varies and how 'experience varying' can gather utility as a sign. If you spin a top, it'll go be itself for awhile. And if you spin up a culture in a child, that child can surprise you with a poem you wouldn't have wrote yourself. Granted. But we're all (the interesting bits) mostly inherited patterns, both DNA and culture. The 'time-binding animal' is made of second-hand information, second-hand habit.

I think this might contribute to the thread.

Scientists are just as vulnerable to wishful thinking, just as likely to be tempted by base motives, just as venal and gullible and forgetful as the rest of humankind. Scientists don't consider themselves to be saints; they don't even pretend to be priests (who according to tradition are supposed to do a better job than the rest of us at fighting off human temptation and frailty). Scientists take themselves to be just as weak and fallible as anybody else, but recognizing those very sources of error in themselves and in the groups to which they belong, they have devised elaborate systems to tie their own hands, forcibly preventing their frailties and prejudices from infecting their results. — Dennett

Critical thinking is social. If a hundred fools and mediocrities are properly organized, they can function together as if a genius.

User Illusion (consciousness)

The way I see it Dennett's position is what we experience as consciousness is processed data: for instance, light data is picked up by the eyes, relayed to the visual cortex of the brain, processed, and finally displayed...as consciousness. It's kinda like mental models of the real world - the models don't exist per se, they're just there to make life simpler/easier. Consciousness is an illusion.

It comes down to how reality is viewed and what one means by illusion' in viewing consciousness in that way. Illusion is generally taken to mean that something which is only imaginary and not real. However, the question is whether one gives any significant to the imagination, or whether it is seen as having no importance because it is not physical. Is only that which is physical real?

That is where Dennett' s statement is that of materialism. The implications is that physical reality is all there is or all that is important. Okay, physical matter is observable, although particles are not clearly visible and are in constant movement. It may be that the self and consciousness are processes, but are processes not real? As human beings our meaning is connected to experience, and we experience life as subjects and the basis of our meanings are bound up with our subjective experiences in relation to other beings and objects. To say that consciousness is an illusion is stating that the experiences of consciousness is insignificant simply because it cannot be grasped in the same way as the physical world, which may be the basis for physical reality.

All I can say at the moment is that consciousness is information extracted from raw data and as such is rather ethereal and subjective (re infrared images seen by some of our reptilian brethren) i.e. there's nothing objectively definitive to consciousness (cf. Apple GUIs to Microsoft GUIs), it can't be pinned down as a specific kind of experience and we haven't even begun discussing whether it's possible to, as you said, "compare notes".

But are you and your experience, whether as Agent Smith or the Madfool? It may be about naming of identity, to describe experience, or does the experience in itself have more to say about the nature of consciousness? Each of us is an individual aspect of consciousness, and what does this mean?

But are you and your experience, whether as Agent Smith or the Madfool? It may be about naming of identity, to describe experience, or does the experience in itself have more to say about the nature of consciousness? Each of us is an individual aspect of consciousness, and what does this mean? — Jack Cummins

Yes, consciousness is something that can be known only through first-hand experience; it can't be taught to you from a book (re Mary's room, re Wittgenstein). This is what David Chalmers refers to in his hard problem of consciousness (subjective nature of consciousness, the first-person perspective).

Does this (vide supra) warrant a nonphysical interpretation (of consciousness)? Taste is subjective, so is art, but nobody claims these are nonphysical.

I have a feeling that we're confusing verbs with nouns here. The mind is, at the end of the day, a verb (thinking/thoughts), but we seem to mislabeling it as a noun (a mind which allegedly thinks).

Does a verb exist in the same sense as a noun? Can I say walking exists? If I can, does it exist in the same sense as legs do? To the extent nouns and verbs have been mixed up, consciousness is an illusion.

I don't think that taste, such as art taste is purely physical. The pieces of art are physical objects but this is interconnected with representation or the mental states of those who created them. I see mind as real, even if relies on physical structures as a basis.

I've engaged you and others with the intent of discovering what Daniel Dennett actually means when he claims that consciousness is an illusion. It hasn't been easy.

Here I am, in a room, I'm awake, reading/typing, I see my cell phone's screen - this awake state, this state of awareness (of my self, and the not-self, my cell phone) is what consciousness is to me.

I'll be hitting the sack in the coming few hours - blackout i.e. I'll lose consciousness (sleep).

There's a differnce between awake and asleep which is consciousness. I wonder what Dennett has to say about this.

Perhaps, for Dennett, consciousness is what we consider to be superconsciousness (God-level awareness; it's no secret that we aren't fully aware of everything that's going on outside of us and inside of our bodies). In other words, compared to God, relatively speaking, we're less than even the stone in a garden somewhere.

I hope that you sleep well. I do struggle to get to sleep frequently. I will look up what Dennett thinks about sleep and get back to you. My own thinking is that it does seem that identity continues in sleep to a large extent because in dreams we are usually the same person as in waking consciousness. I once dreamt that I climbed out of my body and into that of the body of a drummer playing in a rock band. But, I never went on to learn to play the drums, so maybe that was my long lost vocation...

To,
Daniel Dennett,
Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy,
Tufts University

Dear Sir,

There's no difference between me, asleep, and me, awake!

Thanking you (for this marvelous insight),

Yours faithfully,

Agent Smith
(Member, The Philosophy Forum)

To Agent Smith and Mr Daniel Dennett,

You are still you and exist as consciousness, and not an illusion, while asleep, even if part of you goes into the astral dimension.

Yours faithfully,
Mr Jack Cummins

Some may see consciousness as an illusion, as Dennett does, — Jack Cummins

This seems to be one of the most persistent misunderstandings, seemingly almost impossible to correct in those who hold it. Dennett does not see consciousness as an illusion; he sees the common notion of consciousness, the "folk" conception of consciousness, as being an illusion.

There's no difference between me, asleep, and me, awake! — Agent Smith

Of course there is a difference; when you are awake, you are awake, and when you are asleep you are asleep. This is basic.

Of course there is a difference; when you are awake, you are awake, and when you are asleep you are asleep. This is basic. — Janus

Tautology.

Tautology. — Agent Smith

Not merely a tautology; two different states of being.

two different states of being. — Janus

This is precisely what Dennett's saying is the illusion of consciousness.

I don't agree. Why would you say that? Do you really believe Dennett would deny that being awake and being asleep are different states? He's not so stupid.