Implications of illusionism in consciousness studies: the case of feeling pain in human and non-human animals

Abstract

From an epistemological standpoint, attributing sentience to non-human animals poses significant challenges. The apparatus that records the electrical activity of the brain can only demonstrate that a certain specific neurological state is taking place. It is impossible to empirically prove that an organism has subjective, qualitative consciousness. Whether an animal has this kind of consciousness is a matter of inference that requires assumptions beyond the methodological framework of science. In this article, I propose to simplify the methodology of judging sentience in animals by assuming illusionism – the view that phenomenal properties of sensations do not exist but are a type of brain-generated illusion. To demonstrate how this approach could work, I present a model of pain sensation based on illusionism. By adopting the given model, we do not have to make empirically unverifiable inferences, because the illusion of subjective consciousness is a fully physical process accessible to intersubjective observation. As a result, the animal world is no longer divided into those animals that are conscious and those that are not, because in a sense none of them are. The boundary of the breakthrough – the appearance of the “inner light” – also disappears. The research program about phenomenal consciousness is explanatorily complete.