The Result of Consistent Physicalism: The Illusionism of Keith Frankish. Frankish, K., Ed. 2017. Illusionism: As A Theory Of Consciousness. Luton, Bedfordshire: Andrews UK

Философия. Журнал Высшей школы экономики. 2023. Vol. 7. No. 1. P. 421–435.

Gorbachev M.

The current paper is the review of the book on illusionism by Keith Frankish. Illusionism is gaining popularity today as another option to consider phenomenal consciousness and address the hard problem of consciousness. In the target article of the book Frankish introduces his version of illusionism: provides its core ideas, arguments in support of it and responds to some common objections to prove the attractiveness of this position. He concludes that we should replace the hard problem of consciousness with the illusion problem, as the phenomenal consciousness as well as phenomenal properties are not real and built up with non-veridical misrepresentations of our experience. Along with that, the book consists of a number of commentaries made by researches of a wide range of views on the illusionism. This supports the contribution to the philosophy of mind discussion made by the target article, offering extra advantages and disadvantages of illusionism. As a result, we have an excellent book, which provides us with new ideas and an approach needed to be considered as one of the options to understand the nature of consciousness. If illusionism is right, it will lead us to the solution of a number of problems – especially one of the most mysterious one – the hard problem. If it is not, we can reject it only after a serious consideration and development.

Keywords: physicalism, hard problem of consciousness, Illusionism, Keith Frankish

Publication based on the results of: Phenomenological Trends in Philosophy in the 20th and 21st centuries: Origins, Influences, Development (2023)