Özet:

Illusionism argues that phenomenal consciousness does not exist. Accordingly, the phenomenal features attributed to consciousness are only deceptive appearances. The subjective experience is a mere illusion. So, we do not have any kind of subjective experience, just an illusive perception of it. Since phenomenal consciousness is not real, what needs to be explained about consciousness is not how a physical organism comes to be conscious, but why we perceive ourselves to be phenomenally conscious though we are not. The question to be answered is not how we have phenomenal experience, but why we seem to have phenomenal experience. When we ask the question in this way, the hard problem of consciousness leaves its place to the problem of illusion. Illusionism has been proposed as a theoretical framework for research on consciousness. This idea argues that trying to make the physical explanation of the phenomenal experience within a theoretical framework that it is just an illusion will save the problem from its paradoxical structure. In this article, we will reveal the internal structure of illusionism through the examination of illusionist arguments and some theoretical approaches. Thus, we will try to reach an understanding of how illusionism deals with the enigma that we call consciousness paradox. On the other hand, we will explain that reductive physicalist approaches have similar features to those of illusionism in terms of their structural characteristics. Consequently, it will be explained that the hard problem of consciousness is characteristically paradoxical and illusionism’s point of view on consciousness has common aspects with Zeno’s convictions about motion and time.

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