Illusion of consciousness: what if our consciousness is a fiction created by the brain?
Is the phenomenon of consciousness a fiction created by our brain, or is it a reality that helps us think? And how does our consciousness control the influence that the world has on us? We figure it out with the philosopher and writer
Keith Frankish, a visiting fellow at the Open University and professor of the Brain and Mind Program at the University of Crete.
In The Matrix (1999), Morpheus offers Neo a red pill. If he accepts it, then it will be revealed to him that this reality, as he knows, is an illusion created by the rulers of the machines in order to keep people in slavery.
Kate Frankish offers us another pill that - if it works - will convince us that our own consciousness is some kind of illusion, a fiction created by your brain to help you track its actions. This point of view, which can be called illusionism, is even considered absurd in wide circles - for example, the British analytical philosopher and literary critic, working mainly on the philosophy of mind and metaphysics, Galen Strawson called it
"the most stupid statement ever put forward."... But it also has defenders, including the American philosopher and cognitive scientist, whose research lies in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology Daniel Dennett. Is this theory absurd or can it still be true? Are we ready to see how deep the rabbit hole goes?
First, you need to clearly define the definitions and understand what we are talking about. The term "consciousness" is used in different ways, and the statement that it is illusory is offered by the author in only one specific sense. Let's look at an example. Suppose you have good eyesight and are focusing on a red apple in front of you in good light. You are now in a certain mental state, let's call it, the conscious visual experience of observing an apple. You would not be in this state if you were unconscious or asleep (although, if you were asleep, for example), or if you didn't notice the apple, or only noticed it in passing, without stopping your close attention on it. Our life is constantly filled with similar experiences and experiences, and no one assumes that they are not real.
So what is involved with consciously experiencing the apple? In fact, a lot of things. You get a lot of information about an apple - details of its shape, color, texture, location, distance, and so on. You will find out what kind of object it is - a solid object, fruit, apple, red in color, of a certain taste, and form the corresponding beliefs (that this is exactly such an object in front of you). You will learn how you can interact with the apple, as well as the opportunities or threats it offers - what psychologists call its asset. You will learn that an apple is something that you can take, juggle, eat, cook, or do something else with it that is possible in your understanding of the world to do with an apple. You are also preparing to react. You form expectations about the apple (that it will not move, for example) and options for responding to it (you may feel the urge to grab it and take a bite). Recollecting past experiences and associations, possibly affecting your mood or thoughts. Of course, you obviously do not think about all these things, but you would report many of them if you asked them, and it is known from experiments that during conscious experience many feelings and associations arise that prompt us to respond to future stimuli and collectively determine meaning. experience for us. and it is known from experiments that during conscious experience many feelings and associations arise that prompt us to respond to future stimuli and collectively determine meaning. experience for us. and it is known from experiments that during conscious experience many feelings and associations arise that prompt us to respond to future stimuli and collectively determine meaning. experience for us.
Neuroscientists are investigating the processes in the brain that underlie all of this. When you pay attention to what you see, this visual information is transmitted to the mental systems involved in memory, reasoning, emotion and decision making, generating many effects. This process is called access consciousness because it makes sensory information available to the rest of the mind and thus to “you” the person formed by these embodied mental systems. Again, I am not denying the reality of consciousness in this sense.
So far, we only have a schematic understanding of access to consciousness, and there are many contradictions over the details of the neural systems involved, but over time, this picture will be scientifically filled. However, many philosophers would say that even then we will not have a complete understanding of consciousness. For there is always something else going on, along with all this information processing. This is similar to how we see an apple. You experience visual sensations of its color, brightness, brilliance, each of which has its own quality. They seem to be complementary aspects of the experience to all experiences, and we can imagine the rest based on what we've all seen apples before. It could have been “everything… dark inside” in a phrase by David Chalmers in his book The Conscious Mind (1996).
The matter, of course, is not limited to sight. We also have conscious experiences that include our other senses. Consider listening carefully to a flute, sniffing a rose, tasting wine, or feeling a velvety fabric. Also think about how you are going through a bodily experience: a bruised leg, a migraine, or a surge of euphoria. In each case, we can tell a story similar to the one we had about vision. This experience includes gaining information (about sounds, substances, textures, or the state of one's body), identifying objects, forming beliefs, perceiving opportunities for action, generating expectations and reactive tendencies, and triggering memories, associations, and emotions. Again, this involves access to consciousness. Sensory signals are sent to special areas of the brain, and then the information retrieved is transmitted to other systems, which cause various effects. And, again, there seems to be more to it than all these feelings and reactions. Every experience seems to have a peculiar sensory quality. For example, the experience of a pricked finger carries information about bodily injury and will cause a lot of negative associations and reactions, but it also has a qualitative aspect - this is pain.
At this point, you might want to argue (rightly, I think) that these sensory qualities are not features of our experience, but the sensations we experience. When you contemplate the apple, the red color that you see seems to be a characteristic feature of the apple, which triggers color identification reactions in you, ie you believe the apple is red because it looks red. Likewise, the sound seems to be in the air, the taste of wine, the pain in the toe, and so on. But this cannot be true. After all, science tells us that objects do not have such qualitative properties, just complex physical properties described by physics and chemistry. The atoms that make up the shell of an apple are not red. Considered as properties of external things, colors are the reflective properties of a surface, sounds are vibrations in the air, tastes and smells are chemical compounds, and pain in a toe is damage to cells. Thus, it turns out that the qualities of color, sound, pain, etc. exist only in our minds, as properties of our experience. Philosophers call these subjective qualities of experience "qualia" or "phenomenal properties," and they say that the beings who have them are phenomenally conscious.
If our sensations are non-physical characteristics, then they have no effect, even on our own thoughts.
Keith Frankish believes this phenomenal consciousness is illusory. After all, science still does not find such a quality in our brain, as well as in the external world. The atoms in our brain are not colored and they do not make up a colorful inner image, and even if they did, they do not have an inner eye to see it. Nor do they have any other quality properties. There are no internal sounds, smells, tastes and pains, and there is no internal observer to experience them, if there were any. It is true that cognitive scientists talk about the presence of representations in the brain. But by this they do not mean internal pictures or plots that we observe, instead of observing the world directly. They mean neuron firing patterns, which respond to specific features of the world and which the brain uses to build models of its environment. Representations in this sense are not things that we know about; rather, they are parts of a mechanism that makes us aware of things. By modeling the world, your brain creates a sensitivity and inclination that puts “us” - a human - in direct contact with the world. Such representations should not share properties with the things they represent. The mental picture of redness does not have to be red, more than the word "red" or the number for red in a paint-by-number set. your brain creates a sensitivity and inclination that puts “us” - a human - in direct contact with the world. Such representations should not share properties with the things they represent.
If you cannot shake your conviction that phenomenal consciousness is real, then there are two options. We can say that phenomenal consciousness is an optional feature of the brain, in addition to the physical properties described by science - this approach is called property dualism, since it claims that the brain has dual properties, physical and non-physical. The big problem with this view is that it threatens to render phenomenal consciousness ineffective. There is absolutely no reliable evidence for non-physical effects in the physical world - there is no confirmed case where a non-physical characteristic deflects an electron, triggers a chemical reaction, fires neurons, or causes any other physical change. In reality, such changes would violate the basic principle of energy conservation. If our sensations are non-physical, then they do not seem to affect anything, not even our own thoughts and reactions. We would think and act in exactly the same way (including the belief that we are phenomenally conscious) if we did not have them or we had completely different ones. This is a strange conclusion.
Another realistic approach is to say that, in spite of “appearances,” phenomenal consciousness is a purely physical process. Phenomenal conditions, such as the interpretation of a color as red, the smell of a rose, or pain in a bruised toe, are nothing more than brain conditions that, in principle, can be observed by other people. The surgeon can literally see your pain, it is a form of physicalism. Advocates of this view argue that the reason our sensations do not appear to be brain states is because we have a special perspective on them. We can get to know them "from the inside" through introspection. By this they mean not the inner eye, but the internal monitoring system that records information about the state of our brain. When you look at an apple, your introspective mechanisms detect the emerging state of the brain and make information about it available to other mental systems, thereby informing "you" about it. But introspection gives you very limited information about your current state. He does not represent it as a state of the brain, but simply as something happening in you, which you can only describe as a "sensation" when you see the color red. This is the orthodox physicalist view of phenomenal consciousness. This runs into a problem, however. For it is not only introspection that cannot present sensations as states of the brain; he positively presents them as completely different states of the brain, and this intuition does not disappear, even if one is firmly convinced that these must be states of the brain. thereby informing "you" about it. But introspection gives you very limited information about your current state. He does not represent it as a state of the brain, but simply as something happening in you, which you can only describe as a "sensation" when you see the color red. This is the orthodox physicalist view of phenomenal consciousness. This runs into a problem, however. For it is not only introspection that cannot present sensations as states of the brain; he positively presents them as completely different states of the brain, and this intuition does not disappear, even if one is firmly convinced that these must be states of the brain. thereby informing "you" about it. But introspection gives you very limited information about your current state. He does not represent it as a state of the brain, but simply as something happening in you, which you can only describe as a "sensation" when you see the color red. This is the orthodox physicalist view of phenomenal consciousness. This runs into a problem, however. For it is not only introspection that cannot present sensations as states of the brain; he positively presents them as completely different states of the brain, and this intuition does not disappear, even if one is firmly convinced that these must be states of the brain. but simply as something happening in you, which you can only describe as a "sensation" when you see the color red. This is the orthodox physicalist view of phenomenal consciousness. This runs into a problem, however. For it is not only introspection that cannot present sensations as states of the brain; he positively presents them as completely different states of the brain, and this intuition does not disappear, even if one is firmly convinced that these must be states of the brain. but simply as something happening in you, which you can only describe as a "sensation" when you see the color red.
This brings us to illusionism. Illusionists agree with other physicalists that our sense of rich phenomenal consciousness is due to introspective mechanisms. But they add that these mechanisms distort their goals. Consider watching a movie. In fact, your eyes see a series of still images, rapidly replacing each other. But your visual system presents these images as a single moving moving image. Movement is an illusion. Likewise, as the illusionists claim, your introspective system distorts complex patterns of brain activity as simple phenomenal properties. Phenomenality is an illusion.
What happens to the perception in our minds, according to the author of the original article, is something like this. Access consciousness processes can operate without higher level monitoring, which allows us to respond quickly and flexibly to our environment. However, it is useful for us to have an overview or, as Dennett put it, an "edited collection" of these processes - a sense of the general form of our complex, dynamic interaction with the world. When we talk about what our experience is like, we mean this meaning, this edited collection, a collection of already lived and reflected feelings. It works like this. Introspective mechanisms control access consciousness by tracking high-level patterns of activity that encode the properties and capabilities of perceived objects, as well as associations, expectations, emotions, and primary effects. which they call. But they do not represent them accurately and in detail. Rather, they represent them in schematic, cartoonish terms as simple phenomenal properties that express the general form of the multidimensional impact that perceived objects have on us. Of course, these concepts are not phenomenal. These are not small glowing pictures or bright recordings in the brain. As noted earlier, mental representations are not facts or events that we know about, but part of a mechanism that makes us aware of other phenomena. Rather, they are neuron firing patterns that signal the presence of phenomenal properties in much the same way that written words signal the presence of things. Of course, they falsely report these properties, but they also help us track real physical features. But they do not represent them accurately and in detail. Rather, they represent them in schematic, cartoonish terms as simple phenomenal properties that express the general form of the multidimensional impact that perceived objects have on us. Of course, these concepts are not phenomenal. These are not small glowing pictures or bright recordings in the brain. As noted earlier, mental representations are not facts or events that we know about, but part of a mechanism that makes us aware of other phenomena. Rather, they are neuron firing patterns that signal the presence of phenomenal properties in much the same way that written words signal the presence of things. Of course, they falsely report these properties, but they also help us track real physical features. But they do not represent them accurately and in detail. Rather, they represent them in schematic, cartoonish terms as simple phenomenal properties that express the general form of the multidimensional impact that perceived objects have on us.
The idea is that introspection tracks the impact of objects on us. The quality of the red color that you identify is an expression of your reaction to the sight of an apple - actively "reddening" its image in your mind, as described by psychologist Nicholas Humphrey in his book Seeing Red (2006). However, introspection does not represent phenomenal properties as properties of us, but as the ability of objects to create this impact. Color is presented as the power of surfaces that affects us in a certain way, the smell of a rose is as the power of substances in the air that affect us in a different way, stabbing pain is the ability of a part of the body to affect us in another way, and so on. In each case, the nature of the represented entity corresponds to the nature of the impact on us. Compare the aesthetic properties, such as beauty. Our judgments about beauty reflect our reaction to things, but we believe that beauty is a property of things themselves. It makes sense in design. The easiest way for us to remember, recall, and communicate significant experiences is to select the objects that evoke them. Our minds represent objects adorned with illusory quality properties that emphasize their meaning to us. This point of view is not so different from common sense. Conventional wisdom says that qualitative properties are powerful, mind-independent attributes, and illusionists believe that representations of qualitative properties track just such characteristics. remembering and imparting significant experience is choosing the objects that evoke it. Our minds represent objects adorned with illusory quality properties that emphasize their meaning to us. This point of view is not so different from common sense. Conventional wisdom says that qualitative properties are powerful, mind-independent attributes, and illusionists believe that representations of qualitative properties track just such characteristics. remembering and imparting significant experience is choosing the objects that evoke it. Our minds represent objects adorned with illusory quality properties that emphasize their meaning to us. This point of view is not so different from common sense.
Illusionists agree that conscious experience is more than the consciousness of access: there is a level of self-control that includes the illusion of phenomenality. We might call this pseudo-phenomenal consciousness. Access consciousness binds us directly to the world, linking us to it in a complex web of feelings and reactions. Pseudo-phenomenal consciousness adds a new level of awareness by emphasizing how attached we are to the world and allowing us to respond to the interaction itself. This is a real process that does important work. We are only mistaken when we take it too literally, mistaking the figurative representations of complex physical properties for the correct representations of simple non-physical ones. In Consciousness Explained (1991), Dennett compares a computer's user interface to its icons for files, folders, trash cans and so on. This is fiction, created for the benefit of the user ("user illusion"). By operating the icons, we can easily control the computer without knowing anything about its programming or hardware. Likewise, concepts of phenomenal properties are simplified, schematic representations of basic reality that we can use for self-control purposes. We should no longer expect to find phenomenal properties in our brains than trash cans in our laptops. which we can use for self-control purposes. We should no longer expect to find phenomenal properties in our brains than trash cans in our laptops. which we can use for self-control purposes. We should no longer expect to find phenomenal properties in our brains than trash cans in our laptops. By operating the icons, we can easily control the computer without knowing anything about its programming or hardware. Likewise, concepts of phenomenal properties are simplified, schematic representations of basic reality that we can use for self-control purposes. We should no longer expect to find phenomenal properties in our brains than trash cans in our laptops. which we can use for self-control purposes. We should no longer expect to find phenomenal properties in our brains than trash cans in our laptops. which we can use for self-control purposes.
Why should you adopt an illusionist view? Well, for starters, he offers a new approach to the problem of consciousness that respects the positions of both sides. Illusionists agree with dualists that consciousness seems to have non-physical features, and with physicalists that all effects of consciousness can be explained physically. By focusing on representations of phenomenal properties, he reconciles these statements. There are more specific arguments in favor of illusionism. Consider three.
The first concerns simplicity of explanation. If we observe something that science cannot explain, then the simplest hypothesis is that it is an illusion, especially if it can only be observed from one specific point of view. This is exactly the case with phenomenal consciousness. Phenomenal properties cannot be explained in standard scientific ways and can only be observed from a first-person point of view - the position “no one but me can experience my sensations”. This does not show that they are not real. We may need to fundamentally rethink our science, but, as Dennett says, the theory that they are illusory is the obvious default theory.
The second argument concerns our awareness of phenomenal properties. We are only aware of the features of the natural world if we have a sensory system that can detect them and generate representations of them for use by other mental systems. This applies equally to the features of our own minds (which are parts of the natural world), and it also applies to phenomenal properties if they were real. We need an introspective system that can detect them and get an idea of them. Without this, we would not be aware of the phenomenal properties of our brains more than their magnetic properties. In short, if we were aware of phenomenal properties, it would be through a mental concept of them. But then it would not matter whether these representations were accurate. Illusionary representations will have the same effects as plausible ones. If introspection distorts us as having phenomenal properties, then subjectively it is as good as having them. Since science shows that our brains are not phenomenal, the obvious conclusion is that our introspective ideas about them are illusory.
There is also a specific argument in favor of the preference of illusionism over dualism - consider it the third. In general, if we can explain our beliefs about something without mentioning the thing itself, then we must drop the beliefs. For example, if we can explain people's beliefs about the paranormal psychologically without mentioning the actual paranormal, then we have no reason to trust those beliefs. But if phenomenal consciousness is not physical, then the same applies to it. As mentioned, there is good reason to believe that all of our mental processes, including the processes of forming beliefs, can be fully explained in a physical sense. We would have exactly the same beliefs about phenomenal consciousness - that it is real, alive, and undeniable - even if we didn't actually have it.
By now, you are probably torn by objections. I will answer a few that I often hear. First, isn't consciousness the only thing that cannot be an illusion? Isn't this the basis of all our knowledge of the natural world? All we can be sure of perceiving is that we have such and such experiences (say, apple-shaped red spots). From this we conclude about the existence of external objects.
This is a widespread opinion, but the author of the original article believes that everything is going completely wrong and encourages you to think about it from an engineering point of view. If you were building an autonomous robot, you would start by equipping it with sensors for important characteristics of the outside world and critical states of its own body so that it can perform tasks, obtain the resources it needs, and protect itself from harm. Only later can you think of adding introspective systems so that they can control their own sensory processes and exercise complex forms of self-control.
It would be surprising if evolution did not follow the same path with us. It is true, in a sense, pseudo-phenomenal consciousness is basic. We may find that we react as if there was an apple in front of us, even when it is not there, as when we hallucinate. But this does not mean that we determine the presence of real apples by our reactions. Since we introspectively control our perceptual processes, we tend to think that monitoring is necessary for perception, but it is doubtful that this is true. We often complete complex tasks such as driving a car without paying attention to what we are doing. It is also true that we have a hard time doubting what introspection tells us. But this may be because there is no easy way to test its accuracy. It does not follow from this that it is infallible. (We have the last word on our conscious experience, but that might be the wrong word.) In fact, there is reason to believe that introspection is unreliable. For example, it can be shown experimentally that we have much less awareness of objects at the periphery of our vision than we think. And, of course, if we could observe our own brain processes from the outside, as a neuroscientist does, we would not observe any phenomenal properties.
It is tempting to assume that there is such a "boss system" as a person that all other mental systems communicate to each other.
Isn't the very idea of illusionism confusing us? To be under the illusion of seeing an apple is to experience the same as seeing an apple, although there is no apple. How then can we be in the illusion of experiencing? If you have a pain-like experience, then you are in pain. As the philosopher John Searle writes in The Mystery of Consciousness (1997), when it comes to consciousness, phenomenon is reality. This sounds like a serious objection, but it's actually easy to deal with. The properties of the experiences themselves cannot be illusory in the described sense, but they can be illusory in a very similar way. When illusionists say that phenomenal properties are illusory, they mean that we have introspective beliefs like we would if our experience had phenomenal properties. And we can have such ideas even if our experience is not phenomenal. Of course, this assumes that the representations themselves are not phenomenal. But, representations do not have to have the properties that they represent. The idea of color does not have to be red, and the idea of phenomenal properties does not have to be phenomenal.
But how does a state of the brain represent a phenomenal property? It's a difficult question. I think the answer is to focus on the consequences of the state. A brain state is a specific property if it elicits thoughts and responses that would be appropriate if that property were present. Attempts to develop this answer are out of place here. For not only illusionists have to solve this problem. The concept of mental representation is central to modern cognitive science, and explaining how the brain represents things is a challenge that all parties have to do. Indeed, even realists about phenomenal consciousness must explain how we mentally represent phenomenal properties if they are to take into account the fact that we think and speak about them. There is a problem here for illusionism, but no objection.
Finally, who is the subject of this illusion? Does not an illusion presuppose a conscious subject who is experiencing this illusion? My answer is this: a subject is a person as a whole, an autonomous developed organism, consisting of interacting biological subsystems. "We know about something if information about it reaches enough of our neural subsystems so that we can think and act flexibly in relation to it - use it, remember it, tell others about it, and so on." Imagine a large organization with many departments, each responsible for one function, but sharing information with each other. If a sufficient number of departments own and use certain information, then the organization as a whole can be said to be aware of it. The same goes for biological organisms, like us. If a sufficient number of mental systems receive and use representations of a certain property, then we can say that the organism itself is aware of this property. And if the representations are illusory, then the organism is in illusion. It is tempting to assume that there is some kind of "boss system" as a person that all other mental systems report about, and that we are aware of something only if this system knows about it. But this boss system would be an illusion in itself. This is a different story, however. which is reported by all other mental systems, and that we are aware of something only if this system knows about it. But this boss system would be an illusion in itself. This is a different story, however. which is reported by all other mental systems, and that we are aware of something only if this system knows about it. But this boss system would be an illusion in itself. This is a different story, however.
The subjective world of phenomenal consciousness is fiction written by our brains to help us track down the impact the world has on us. Calling it a fiction does not mean demeaning her. Fiction can be beautiful, enhancing and making life more fulfilling and interesting, which reveals deep truths about the world and can be more convincing than reality. Unlike Neo in The Matrix, we shouldn't avoid this fictional world - it's soft, created by evolutionary processes to help us thrive. But we also shouldn't take this as reality.
