Johan Largo

When we perceive, there is something we perceive. When we think, there is something we think of. When we dream, something is dreamt. These seem all platitudes: obvious and unproblematic truths. And, given that the things perceived, thought of, or dreamed are what philosophers call the mental contents of our states, few things should seem as obvious and unproblematic as the existence of mental contents. And yet, I shall here argue that, when closely examined, mental contents appear to be illusions. Just like the proverbial sawn-in-half assistant on the magician stage, they merely appear to exist, without actually existing. To substantiate this view I will first fix the reference of “mental content” and “illusion” in an innocent, theory neutral manner - that is, by relying on paradigmatic positive and negative examples of them (Sects. 2 and 3). I will also show that such paradigmatic examples allow us to extract a list of features that such examples allow us to identify features that paradigmatically identify contents and illusions as such, enabling us to recognize them. With these features at hand, I will thus argue that mental contents bear all the features that paradigmatically identify illusions. Otherwise put, I will argue that mental contents are anomalous, causally insulated, systematic, persistent and bound to a single mode of access in the same way paradigmatic examples of illusions are (Sect. 4). Having argued for my main claim, I will defend it from a couple of intuitive objections; namely that it is too silly to be taken seriously, given that mental content is given in a way that does not permit to seriously doubt of its existence (Sect. 5), and that my claim is incoherent (Sect. 6). I’ll show that, intuitive as they are, the objections are not compelling, and indeed they can be easily answered. Lastly, I will conclude the paper sketching the possible developments of an illusionistic view of content (Sect. 7).