Dis-Illusioning Experiences

In his defense of Illusionism, D. Pereboom quotes S. Shoemaker as finding it mysterious how we can represent properties that are nowhere instantiated in our world. This paper begins by detailing the problem, clarifying its relation to Illusionism, and explaining the inadequacy of Pereboom’s response...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inReview of philosophy and psychology Vol. 14; no. 4; pp. 1219 - 1236
Main Author Robinson, William S.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.12.2023
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Cognitive Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Education
Epistemology
Illusionism
Neurosciences
Philosophy
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Science
D. Pereboom
Quality spaces
F. Kammerer
K. Frankish
Illusionism
S. Shoemaker
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Summary:In his defense of Illusionism, D. Pereboom quotes S. Shoemaker as finding it mysterious how we can represent properties that are nowhere instantiated in our world. This paper begins by detailing the problem, clarifying its relation to Illusionism, and explaining the inadequacy of Pereboom’s response. It then examines papers by K. Frankish and F. Kammerer, and finds that they face the same problem. With this background, it becomes plausible that representation of uninstantiated properties is an endemic problem for illusionism. Responding by making such representation a sui generis relation amounts to abandoning the physicalism that is typically cited as a reason for accepting illusionism about experiences. Appeal to quality spaces may seem to provide a way to solve the problem without admitting a sui generis relation, but careful reflection reveals this to be a subtle version of the sui generis response. There is thus strong reason to think that Illusionism harbors a problem to which it can give no physicalistically acceptable solution.
ISSN:1878-5158
1878-5166
DOI:10.1007/s13164-022-00630-4