Иллюзионизм (не) против сентиентности

Омский научный вестник. Серия «Общество. История. Современность». 2026. Т. 11. № 1. С. 108–114.

Gorbachev M.

The article is devoted to the question of the compatibility between the illusionist theory of consciousness
and the widely accepted sentientist approach to the justification of moral status. Illusionism denies
the existence of phenomenal consciousness and qualia, claiming that we are disposed to believe that
they exist due to a systematic introspective distortion. If phenomenal consciousness does not exist, then
illusionism is not compatible with sentientism. This is exactly what Franзois Kammerer thinks, and therefore,
in one of his recent works, he offers a number of arguments against sentientism in order to show that
such a denial does not lead illusionism to counterintuitive ethical consequences. The article argues that
the conclusion about the incompatibility of illusionism and sentience is the result of using this concept in a
non-obvious, theoretically overloaded way. The author proposes three variants of understanding sentience
in connection with three types of qualia: K-, Z-, and D-sentience (classic, zero, and diet qualia), where only
the first variant turns out to be incompatible with illusionism. Z-sentience can be accepted by illusionists,
but, like the K-variant, turns out to be too heavy for the discussion about the justification of moral status. D-sentience is recognized as the most suitable variant of understanding sentience. It is compatible with
illusionism, which excludes the possibility of accusing the latter of undesirable ethical consequences. Also,
D-sentience does not face the problems of diet qualia: it is coherent if sentientism is not an attempt to
combine physicalism and phenomenal realism from another discussion; it is not empty, since the concept
of sentience is not supposed to be used in the discussion about the nature of phenomenal consciousness,
where diet qualia do not do any theoretical work.

Keywords: феноменальное сознание, квалиа, иллюзионизм, сентиентность, нормативный вызов

Publication based on the results of: Linguistic and cognitive diversity in formal models, computer tools, and educational resources (2025)