Illusionism and its place in contemporary philosophy of mind
Keith Frankish, Katarína Sklutová
Human Affairs July 1, 2022 DOI: 10.1515/humaff-2022-0023 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Interview Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Key points | Presents Keith Frankish's "illusionist" theory, which holds that phenomenal consciousness is an introspective illusion produced by the limitations of introspection. The interview covers the theory's main hypotheses, its response to the "hard problem of consciousness", and its answers to other problems in consciousness research. |
Abstract
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 of several books, including Mind and Supermind (2007), co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science (2012) and The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence (2014), and editor of Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness (2017). In the philosophy of mind, Frankish is best known for his “illusionist” theory of consciousness, according to which phenomenal consciousness in an introspective illusion – that it is an artefact of the limitations of introspection (Frankish 2017, 22). This view is not a new one and it has many powerful defenders, pre-eminently the American philosopher Daniel Dennett. In the following interview, we are discussing illusionism as one of the theoretical approaches to the problem of consciousness. Specifically, we are focusing on the main hypotheses of illusionism, its response to the so-called “hard problem of consciousness”, as well as its answer to other problems related to philosophical and scientific research on consciousness.
Comparable studies
Other qualitative studies on philosophy of mind, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qualitative thematic analysis of the phenomenology of near-death experiences Cardiac arrest survivors | 2018 | Qualitative study | n = 34 |
| Phenomenology and Sequelae of 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine Use Psychiatrists who had taken MDMA | 1992 | Qualitative study | n = 20 |
| A phenomenology of meditation-induced light experiences: traditional buddhist and neurobiological perspectives American Buddhist practitioners | 2014 | Qualitative study | |
| Evoking the ineffable: The phenomenology of extreme sports. Extreme sports participants across three continents, including BASE jumping, big wave... | 2017 | Qualitative study | n = 15 |
| Phenomenology and content of the inhaled N, N-dimethyltryptamine (N, N-DMT) experience. Naturalistic inhaled N,N-DMT experiences posted to the r/DMT Reddit community | 2022 | Qualitative analysis | n = 3,778 |