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    Sceptical Alternatives: Strong Illusionism versus Modest Realism
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 25 (9-10): 209-227. 2018.
    Daniel Dennett and others have suggested that qualia and introspectible phenomena do not exist. Dennett's account of consciousness, along with several related approaches, has been called illusionism by Keith Frankish. Frankish's analysis is helpful and provocative. As currently presented, however, his 'strong' version of illusionism suffers from several basic confusions, particularly regarding its relationship to eliminative materialism. This paper contrasts strong illusionism with an alternativ…Read more
  •  79
    Illusionism Helps Realism Confront the Meta-Problem
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 27 (5-6): 166-173. 2020.
    Chalmers (2018) maintains that even if we understood every physical process in the brain we could still wonder why these processes give rise to conscious experience. The meta-problem is the challenge of explaining why we think this 'hard problem' exists. This response to the target paper endorses illusionist accounts of three 'problem intuitions' about consciousness: duality, presentation, and revelation. Subject–object duality is explained in terms of a clash between two compelling but contradi…Read more