Re:Toward a Mature Science of Consciousness
by hackinthebochs on Tuesday June 26, 2018 @07:03PM
(#17404651)
"Entailments of perception" is too broad and so doesn't pick out the right target here. My immediate perception entails that there is a red cup a short distance in front of me. Entailments about the outside world can certainly be false (e.g. that red is a property of the cup that lives in the outside world).
But what does the perception of a red cup entail about my inner state? Nothing that I can tell, except that I am having a perception of a specific kind. What does it mean to say that my perception of a specific kind is an illusion? It's hard to say. The perception gives me certain powers of discrimination that entail the necessary veracity of those aspects of the perception (i.e. I can tell red from blue, red from pain, red from pitch, etc). Are there aspects of perception that don't play a role in any kind of discrimination? Not that I can tell. And so perceptions themselves just don't seem like the kinds of things that can be properly called illusions.
I don't see how. An illusion is a perception entailing a false conclusion when taken at face value. The perception clearly exists, but what it entails is the illusion.
Qualia would then fall under the same category as other perceptive illusions, like optical illusions:
https://pixabay.com/en/pencil-bent-pencil-pencil-in-water-24...
Just so we're clear, when you say "appearance of phenomenal experience", I read, "the entailment of a perception". And it seems perfectly sensible to say that the entailments of perceptions can and often are false.