Consciousness

If we were convinced that the grand illusion theory

was correct, we might perhaps begin to experience

vision as a form of acting in the world, and maybe

then seeing would cease to seem like a stream of pic-

tures. In this way, escaping the illusion could really

change the way we see the world.

This possibility may be open to us in other areas too.

Other elements of our conscious experience, which

are equally crucial to our sense of who we are, may also

be subject to illusions. Later in this book we will tackle

the issue of free will (Chapter 9), which many people

consider essential to be what makes us human, and

to be what makes us good (not evil) and responsible

(not apathetic). We will see that there are strong argu-

ments for thinking about free will too as an illusion:

something which is not what it seems. And we hope

that as we work our way through these ideas, a thread

running through the whole book will become increas-

ingly clear: that the very construct everything seems

to pivot around, the idea of the conscious me, myself,

my self, might be illusory, too (Chapter 16).

Meanwhile, however, we will conclude with one

last thought about illusions. The very idea that it

might be possible to be mistaken about our own

consciousness is a tricky one. If we try to distinguish

sharply between ‘consciousness itself ’ and ‘how con-

sciousness seems to us’, we end up believing there

are two separate things to explain and then realising

that each must have effects on the other: how we think and talk about our con-

scious experience inevitably affects that experience. So maybe the very idea of

an illusion is itself mistaken because it requires there to be a reality of conscious

experience that we can be mistaken about. Maybe this is not so and, as many

illusionists believe, our ways of being mistaken are all there is.

‘Illusionists deny that

experiences have

phenomenal properties, and

focus on explaining why

they seem to have them’

(Frankish, 2016b, p. 14)

HOW MUCH AM

I SEEING NOW?

‘We can be Realists

about qualia, or else we

have to be Illusionists’

(Humphrey, 2017)

FIGURE 3.11 • Is the light always on inside the fridge?

their opinions, and gathered others online. the results are

shown in the table. those who chose outcome 1 are effec-

tively rejecting o’Regan and noë’s theory even if they

say they agree with it. those who choose outcome 2 are

making the strong – indeed, extraordinary – prediction

that it is possible for two normally sighted people who

receive identical visual input to have completely different

experiences. If true, this would suggest that our illusions

about vision are further-reaching than we thought. You

can read sue’s commentary on p. 977 of the 2001 paper,

and the authors’ response on p. 1020.

Sensorimotor theory

1 Can see 2 Is blind 3 Other

True 5 11 6

False 6 3 5

FIGURE 3.10D • Responses to the poster (Blackmore, 2007a).

As expected, the majority of those who think

sensorimotor theory is true think Kevin must be

blind, and those who do not think he can see. Yet

there are some who think it is true and still think

Kevin can see. This is only a thought experiment

but may be able to help us think about the

consequences of this counterintuitive theory.