11 papers in the library · 47 citations · publishing 2012-2026
Adaptive Behavior February 1, 2026 Keith Frankish
In A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness, Walter Veit sets out a Darwinian framework for understanding consciousness. He distinguishes various dimensions of consciousness, explores their distribution in different species, and traces their roots to an ancient system of hedonic valence, which evolved to solve complex problems of action selection in early animals. This approach...
Synthese June 12, 2025 Maxim Gorbachev, Keith Frankish
The illusionist theory of consciousness denies the existence of the ‘phenomenal’ properties widely thought to render experience conscious. Central to the illusionist approach is what we call the distortion thesis — the claim that introspective mechanisms systematically misrepresent neural processes in a way that strongly inclines us to judge that they have phenomenal properties, creating the...
Voprosy Filosofii August 1, 2024 Keith Frankish, Maxim Gorbachev
This is the second part of the article by Keith Frankish Quining Diet Qualia, which asks whether we can identify a neutral explanandum for theories of phenomenal consciousness, acceptable to all sides. The “classic” conception of qualia, on which qualia are intrinsic, ineffable, and subjective, will not serve this purpose, but it is widely assumed that a watered-down “diet” conception will. I...
Voprosy Filosofii July 1, 2024 Keith Frankish, Maxim Gorbachev
This is the first part of the article by Keith Frankish Quining Diet Qualia, which asks whether we can identify a neutral explanandum for theories of phenomenal consciousness, acceptable to all sides. The “classic” conception of qualia, on which qualia are intrinsic, ineffable, and subjective, will not serve this purpose, but it is widely assumed that a watered-down “diet” conception will. The...
Human Affairs July 1, 2022 Keith Frankish
Paul Stenner is not persuaded by the illusionist view presented in my interview with Katarína Sklutová. In fact, he thinks I am a trickster, who is not only defending a position I call ‘illusionism’ but perpetrating an intellectual illusion myself. He suggests that my arguments against qualia are a piece of misdirection, designed to deceive readers into accepting that we should eliminate the...
Human Affairs July 1, 2022 Keith Frankish, Katarína Sklutová
Keith Frankish is a British-Greek philosopher mainly specializing in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology. He is an Honorary Reader in philosophy at the University of Sheffield, UK, a Visiting Research Fellow with The Open University, UK, and an Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme at the University of Crete. Alongside many published papers, Frankish is the author...
Human Affairs July 1, 2022 Keith Frankish
things. Physical things and qualia. Because he frames the world in these wellestablished dualistic terms, these spooky metaphysical ‘abstract things’ leave him puzzled. His illusionist version of eliminativism repeats the long-established gesture of eliminating these puzzling things that to seem to him undeniably to exist and yet do not fit the materialist picture (because they seem to him not...
Voprosy Filosofii 2022 Keith Frankish, Maxim Gorbachev
This is the second part of the article devoted to the approach to the problem of consciousness, which is called illusionism. Illusionism claims that phenomenal consciousness is illusory, because conscious experience is misrepresented as having phenomenal properties. Illusionism replaces the hard problem of consciousness with the problem of illusion. In this part, special attention is paid to...
Supplementary volume - Aristotelian Society July 1, 2021 Keith Frankish
The problem of consciousness arises when we depsychologize consciousness—that is, conceptualize it in terms of phenomenal feel rather than psychological function. Panpsychism offers an elegant solution to the problem, which takes depsychologization seriously. In doing so, however, it also illustrates the perils of depsychologization. Nagasawa highlights one dead end for panpsychism, and I shall...
Consciousness and Cognition June 1, 2012 Keith Frankish 47 citations
This paper asks whether we can identify a neutral explanandum for theories of phenomenal consciousness, acceptable to all sides. The 'classic' conception of qualia, on which qualia are intrinsic, ineffable, and subjective, will not serve this purpose, but it is widely assumed that a watered-down 'diet' conception will. I argue that this is wrong and that the diet notion of qualia has no...
Keith Frankish preprint
The integrated information theory of consciousness (IIT) has recently been branded pseudoscience. Its methodology is certainly anomalous, but does that make it pseudoscience or an appropriately anomalous science of an anomalous phenomenon? This article considers the question and argues that the accusation of pseudoscience has merit. At best, IIT is a metaphysical theory mispresented as science.