Consciousness intuitions are illusory.
Consciousness and Cognition June 5, 2026 DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2026.104078 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Experimental study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Participants in two experiments |
| Keywords | Consciousness Dualism |
| Key findings | Consciousness intuitions shift across different problem scenarios, demonstrating that they are illusory and cannot be trusted to reflect what consciousness is. |
Abstract
Philosophical discussions of the "hard problem" often invoke "problem intuitions", as consciousness intuitions and consciousness are believed to be "closely connected" (Chalmers, 2018). Here, I challenge this assumption. In two experiments, I demonstrate that consciousness intuitions are illusory-they shift across different "problem intuitions", akin to perceptual illusions. When presented with a duplication scenario, people do not view consciousness as physical (i.e., they believe that copying one's physical body will not copy one's conscious states). But when probed about a second scenario (that of Mary in the Black-and-White Room), consciousness now seems squarely physical, as people expect Mary's novel experience of color to "show up" in a brain scan. I trace this shift to two psychological biases-intuitive Dualism and Essentialism. The shift in consciousness intuitions demonstrates that consciousness judgments are illusory, and as such, they cannot be trusted to reflect what consciousness is.