Hard Problem: Responses

No response to the hard problem is free. Each one keeps something you'd want to keep and gives up something you'd rather not. That pattern is the most useful thing to see about the debate, because it explains why the debate hasn't ended.

Consider the main options. Physicalism keeps science unified: everything, experience included, is part of one physical world. But it has to say why the physical story seems to leave experience out. Illusionism keeps physicalism by saying that experience only seems to have the special properties that make it hard to explain. The price is a claim that most people find hard to accept at first: that introspection misleads us about our own minds. Panpsychism keeps experience real and fundamental, but it spreads experience to the basic constituents of matter. It then faces the problem of how many tiny experiences could make up one unified mind. Dualism keeps experience irreducible to the physical, and it pays by having to explain how the two are related.

The research stakes are practical. A research program in consciousness science always adopts some answer to the hard problem, usually without saying so. A lab that looks for the neural correlates of experience may assume that finding them will explain experience. A theory that assigns consciousness to simple systems may be committed to something close to panpsychism. A model of how people come to judge that they're conscious may be doing illusionist work. If you can't see these commitments, you can't see what a program has assumed, or what would count against it. The same data can look like progress on the hard problem to one reader and like progress on an easy problem to another.

The debate is also public. In the last decade, two once-marginal positions have found wide audiences. Philip Goff has argued, in a book written for general readers, that panpsychism offers a better basis for a science of consciousness than physicalism does (Goff 2019). Keith Frankish has set out illusionism as a research program in its own right, not a denial of the obvious (Frankish 2016). Both have drawn strong criticism, and both are now standard reference points.

Knowing the price of each position lets you do something more useful than choosing a side. You can see which price a given author has paid, whether they've acknowledged it, and whether the objection they face is one their view can answer. This content reflects the field as of September 2026.

References

• Frankish, Keith. 2016. "Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness." Journal of Consciousness Studies 23 (11–12): 11–39.
  • Free: Author's eprint
  • Publisher: Ingenta Connect
• Goff, Philip. 2019. Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. New York: Pantheon.
  • Free: None.
  • Publisher: Penguin Random House
  • Free companion: SEP, "Panpsychism" (Allen-Hermanson)

Introduction

Physicalism is the default view in philosophy of mind and in most of neuroscience. The hard problem is the main argument against it. Physicalists have two broad ways of answering, and they disagree sharply with each other.

This reading explains the two main physicalist responses to the hard problem, type-A and type-B physicalism, and the phenomenal concept strategy that type-B physicalists use to explain the gap. This content reflects the field as of September 2026.

What Physicalism Claims

Physicalism is the view that everything that exists is physical, or is fixed by the physical facts. Applied to the mind, it says that once the physical facts about you are settled, the facts about your experience are settled too. There is no extra ingredient (Van Gulick 2014).

The hard problem challenges that claim. It says that even a complete physical and functional account leaves open why there is experience at all. Physicalists can respond in two ways. They can deny that anything is left open. Or they can grant that something seems left open, and explain why that appearance doesn't show that anything nonphysical exists.

Type-A Physicalism

Type-A physicalism is the view that there is no hard problem to solve, because once all the functions are explained, no further fact about experience is left to explain.

On this view, the sense that something is left over is a confusion. When you explain how a system discriminates colors, reports them, is affected by them, and so on, you've explained what seeing color consists in. The "further question" of why this is accompanied by experience has no content beyond the functional questions. It follows that zombies aren't really conceivable. A being that did everything you do, down to its judgments about its own states, would be as conscious as you are.

Daniel Dennett's work is the best-known example of this approach (Dennett 1991). He argues that the properties philosophers ascribe to experience, such as being ineffable, intrinsic, and private, don't exist as described. What exists is a complex of functions and dispositions, including our dispositions to judge that we have such properties.

The price is that type-A physicalism denies what most people take to be obvious: that explaining function leaves something unexplained. Its opponents say it changes the subject.

Type-B Physicalism

Type-B physicalism is the view that experience is identical to physical processes, though no reasoning from the physical facts alone can reveal the identity, so the explanatory gap is epistemic only.

Type-B physicalists grant that there is an explanatory gap. They accept that zombies are conceivable. What they deny is that conceivability shows possibility. Some identities are discovered, not deduced. That water is H₂O couldn't be worked out from the concept of water alone, but it is necessary all the same. Experience could be identical to a brain process in the same way: necessarily, but not knowably by reflection.

The shift here is from denying the gap to explaining it. Type-A says there's no gap in reality or in explanation. Type-B says there's a gap in explanation, but not in reality.

The Phenomenal Concept Strategy

That shift creates a new question. Why is there a gap in explanation at all, if experience is physical? Water and H₂O leave no lasting puzzle once the identity is known. Pain and a brain process do.

The phenomenal concept strategy is the type-B physicalist's explanation of the explanatory gap as a product of phenomenal concepts: special concepts we apply to our experiences from the inside, which aren't linked a priori to physical concepts (Van Gulick 2014). When you think of your pain as "this feeling," you use a concept that picks out the state by how it feels. When a neuroscientist thinks of it as a pattern of firing, they use a concept that picks it out by its physical role. Because the two kinds of concept work so differently, no reasoning connects them. The gap reflects our concepts, not two kinds of thing.

The price is that the strategy must explain why phenomenal concepts are special without appealing to anything nonphysical. Critics argue that any account of the concepts either leaves out what makes them phenomenal or brings the hard problem back.

Conclusion

Type-A physicalism denies there is a further fact to explain once the functions are explained, so zombies aren't conceivable. Type-B physicalism grants an explanatory gap but holds that experience is identical to physical processes, and uses the phenomenal concept strategy to explain the gap as a feature of our concepts.

Key Terms

• Physicalism: The view that everything that exists is physical, or is fixed by the physical facts.
• Type-A physicalism: The view that there is no hard problem to solve, because once all the functions are explained, no further fact about experience is left to explain.
• Type-B physicalism: The view that experience is identical to physical processes, though no reasoning from the physical facts alone can reveal the identity, so the explanatory gap is epistemic only.
• Phenomenal concept strategy: The type-B physicalist's explanation of the explanatory gap as a product of phenomenal concepts: special concepts we apply to our experiences from the inside, which aren't linked a priori to physical concepts.

References

• Dennett, Daniel C. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown.
  • Free: None.
  • Publisher: Hachette
• Van Gulick, Robert. 2014. "Consciousness." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https\://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/.

Introduction

Illusionism is often summed up as the claim that consciousness is an illusion, and then dismissed as absurd. The position its defenders hold is narrower and harder to dismiss. It doesn't deny that you're conscious. It denies that your experiences have the special properties that make consciousness seem impossible to explain.

This reading explains illusionism as Keith Frankish states it, its roots in Daniel Dennett's work, and the two main objections to it. Citations give section numbers of Frankish's article. This content reflects the field as of September 2026.

Realism and Its Rival

Start with what illusionists reject. Phenomenal realism is the view that phenomenal consciousness is real, with genuinely qualitative properties that a theory of consciousness must explain (Frankish 2016, sec. 1.1). Most parties to the hard problem are realists in this sense. Physicalists who try to explain phenomenal properties, and dualists who say they can't be explained physically, share the assumption that the properties are there to be explained.

Illusionism is the view that experiences don't really have phenomenal properties but only seem to, because introspection misrepresents them, so the task is to explain why they seem to have such properties (Frankish 2016, sec. 1).

The shift is in the target. Realists take phenomenal properties as the thing to be explained. Illusionists take the appearance of phenomenal properties as the thing to be explained.

What Illusionism Does Not Deny

Illusionists don't deny that you see, hear, feel pain, or taste coffee. They don't deny that there is something going on when you do, or that it matters to you. Frankish is explicit that illusionists accept a form of consciousness (Frankish 2016, sec. 1.6). What they deny is a specific theory of what that consciousness is: that it involves intrinsic, private, ineffable qualities that no physical account could capture.

On Frankish's account, experiences have quasi-phenomenal properties: in Frankish, physical properties of experiences that introspection misrepresents as phenomenal (Frankish 2016, sec. 1.2). Introspection presents these properties as if they were qualitative feels. That's the illusion.

The Illusion Problem

If illusionism is right, the hard problem is replaced. The illusion problem is Frankish's name for the problem of explaining why experiences seem to have phenomenal properties (Frankish 2016, sec. 1). Unlike the hard problem, it asks for an explanation of a representation, which cognitive science knows how to approach in principle.

Dennett's Precedent

The view has a long history. Dennett's Consciousness Explained (1991) argued that the properties philosophers call qualia don't exist as described, and that our conviction that they do is a product of how the brain represents its own states to itself (Dennett 1991). Frankish credits Dennett as the leading defender of the approach and gives it a name and a precise statement (Frankish 2016, sec. 1.3).

Two Objections

1. It denies the datum. The existence of experience seems to be the one thing you can't be wrong about. If it seems to you that you're in pain, you're in pain. Critics argue that illusionism denies the very datum it must explain. Illusionists reply that what can't be doubted is that something seems to be happening, not that it has the phenomenal properties it seems to have (Frankish 2016, sec. 3.1).
2. An illusion of what, to whom? An illusion is a way things seem to someone. Seeming, critics argue, is itself phenomenal, so an illusion of phenomenality would already be phenomenal. Frankish replies that "seeming" here means being represented, and that the audience is the whole organism, not an inner observer (Frankish 2016, sec. 3.3).

Neither exchange is settled. Critics hold that the replies redescribe the problem without removing it.

Conclusion

Illusionism rejects phenomenal realism. It holds that experiences have quasi-phenomenal properties that introspection misrepresents as phenomenal, and it replaces the hard problem with the illusion problem. It doesn't deny that we're conscious. Its critics object that it denies the datum it must explain and that illusions presuppose experience.

Key Terms

• Phenomenal realism: The view that phenomenal consciousness is real, with genuinely qualitative properties that a theory of consciousness must explain.
• Illusionism: The view that experiences don't really have phenomenal properties but only seem to, because introspection misrepresents them, so the task is to explain why they seem to have such properties.
• Quasi-phenomenal properties: In Frankish, physical properties of experiences that introspection misrepresents as phenomenal.
• Illusion problem: Frankish's name for the problem of explaining why experiences seem to have phenomenal properties.

References

• Dennett, Daniel C. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown.
  • Free: None.
  • Publisher: Hachette
• Frankish, Keith. 2016. "Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness." Journal of Consciousness Studies 23 (11–12): 11–39.
  • Free: Author's eprint
  • Publisher: Ingenta Connect

Introduction

For most of the twentieth century, panpsychism was treated as a curiosity. It is now defended in leading journals and in books for general readers. Its appeal is that it takes experience as seriously as the hard problem does, without adding a second kind of substance to the world.

This reading explains panpsychism, the combination problem it faces, and Russellian monism, the framework that motivates many current versions of it. This content reflects the field as of September 2026.

Panpsychism

Panpsychism is the view that experience, or something like it, is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality, present even in basic physical entities (Allen-Hermanson 2022).

The claim is often misheard. Panpsychists don't say that rocks think or that electrons have beliefs. They say that the basic constituents of matter have some very simple form of experience, and that complex experience, like yours, is built from or grounded in it.

Galen Strawson gives one influential argument (Strawson 2006). He defends realistic physicalism: in Strawson, a physicalism that takes experience to be real and wholly physical, which he argues entails panpsychism. The argument runs as follows. Experience is real, and it is physical. It can't emerge from the wholly non-experiential, because there's no intelligible way for experience to arise from what has no trace of it. So the physical, at its most basic level, must already involve experience.

Philip Goff argues along related lines (Goff 2019). Modern physics, he argues, succeeded by describing nature in purely quantitative terms and setting qualities aside. That was a sound method, but it means physics was never designed to capture consciousness. Panpsychism, he argues, puts experience back into our picture of matter.

The Combination Problem

Panpsychism's hardest objection is the combination problem: the problem, for panpsychism, of explaining how the experiences of many small entities combine to yield a unified experience such as a human's (Allen-Hermanson 2022).

Your experience is a single, unified point of view. Your brain is made of countless particles. If each particle has its own tiny experience, what makes it the case that there is one subject, you, rather than billions of tiny ones side by side? Adding experiences together doesn't obviously produce a new subject. Many philosophers regard the combination problem as the analogue, for panpsychism, of the hard problem for physicalism. The difficulty has moved from the gap between matter and experience to the gap between small experiences and large ones.

Russellian Monism

Many current panpsychists work within Russellian monism: the view that physics describes only the structure and dynamics of matter, and that experience, or its precursors, may be the intrinsic nature that fills in that structure (Pereboom 2023). The view is named for Bertrand Russell.

The idea turns on what physics tells us. Physics describes what things do: how mass responds to force, how charge attracts and repels. It says what a particle is disposed to do and how it's related to other things. It doesn't say what the particle is in itself. That is its intrinsic nature: what a thing is in itself, as opposed to the relations and dispositions that physics describes.

Russellian monists propose that this intrinsic nature is experiential or proto-experiential. If so, experience isn't something added to the physical world. It's what the physical world is, from the inside, while physics describes it from the outside.

The view offers a reply to the conceivability argument. A zombie world might copy our physical structure without its intrinsic nature. That would show only that structure doesn't fix experience, not that experience is nonphysical in the broader sense (Pereboom 2023). The combination problem still applies to the panpsychist versions of the view.

Conclusion

Panpsychism holds that experience is fundamental and ubiquitous. Strawson argues that realistic physicalism entails it, and Goff argues that it restores what physics set aside. Its hardest objection is the combination problem. Russellian monism supplies a framework: physics describes structure, and experience may be the intrinsic nature that structure leaves out.

Key Terms

• Panpsychism: The view that experience, or something like it, is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality, present even in basic physical entities.
• Realistic physicalism: In Strawson, a physicalism that takes experience to be real and wholly physical, which he argues entails panpsychism.
• Combination problem: The problem, for panpsychism, of explaining how the experiences of many small entities combine to yield a unified experience such as a human's.
• Russellian monism: The view that physics describes only the structure and dynamics of matter, and that experience, or its precursors, may be the intrinsic nature that fills in that structure.
• Intrinsic nature: What a thing is in itself, as opposed to the relations and dispositions that physics describes.

References

• Allen-Hermanson, Sean. 2022. "Panpsychism." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. https\://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/.
• Goff, Philip. 2019. Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. New York: Pantheon.
  • Free: None.
  • Publisher: Penguin Random House
  • Free companion: SEP, "Panpsychism" (Allen-Hermanson)
• Pereboom, Derk. 2023. "Russellian Monism." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. https\://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russellian-monism/.
• Strawson, Galen. 2006. "Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism." Journal of Consciousness Studies 13 (10–11): 3–31.
  • Free: None confirmed.
  • Publisher: reprinted in Strawson, Real Materialism and Other Essays (Oxford Academic chapter)
  • Free companion: SEP, "Panpsychism" (Allen-Hermanson)

Introduction

Dualism is usually associated with souls. The dualism most often defended in current philosophy of mind says instead that experience is a basic, nonphysical feature of the natural world, related to the physical by laws.

This reading explains property dualism, Chalmers's naturalistic dualism, and the interaction problem, then maps all the major responses to the hard problem side by side. This content reflects the field as of September 2026.

From Substance to Property Dualism

Classical substance dualism holds that there are two kinds of thing: minds and bodies. Property dualism is more modest. It holds that there is one kind of substance, but that some of its properties, such as phenomenal properties, are nonphysical and not fixed by the physical properties. Your brain is a physical thing, but the felt qualities of your experience aren't settled by its physical properties.

The motivation is the hard problem itself. If the zombie argument works, experience involves properties over and above the physical ones.

Naturalistic Dualism

David Chalmers calls his version naturalistic dualism (Chalmers 1996, ch. 4). It has three features.

1. Experience is fundamental. Like mass, charge, and spacetime in physics, it isn't explained in terms of anything more basic.
2. It is lawfully connected to the physical. Psychophysical laws link physical and functional states to experiences. These laws are contingent, like the laws of physics, so a world without them, a zombie world, is possible.
3. It is part of nature. The view posits nothing supernatural. It adds new fundamental properties and laws.

The shift from classical dualism is from a separate mind to a separate kind of property.

The Interaction Problem

Every dualism faces the interaction problem in some form. If experience is nonphysical, how does it affect the physical world? Physics appears causally closed: every physical event that has a cause has a sufficient physical cause. If so, nonphysical experience seems to have nothing to do.

Dualists have two broad options. They can deny that physics is closed, and hold that experience makes a causal difference physics hasn't found. Or they can accept that experience is causally inert, which is called epiphenomenalism. Then your pain plays no role in why you say "ouch," and even your judgments about experience have purely physical causes. Chalmers calls this second difficulty a paradox (Chalmers 1996, ch. 5).

A Map of Responses

The table maps the major responses to the hard problem (Van Gulick 2014; Dennett 1991; Frankish 2016; Strawson 2006; Goff 2019; Pereboom 2023; Chalmers 1996; Allen-Hermanson 2022).

Core Terms at a Glance

Conclusion

Property dualism holds that some properties of physical things, such as phenomenal properties, are nonphysical. Chalmers's naturalistic dualism makes experience fundamental and lawfully linked to the physical. Its hardest objection is the interaction problem, which pushes it toward epiphenomenalism.

Key Terms

• Type-A physicalism: The view that there is no hard problem to solve, because once all the functions are explained, no further fact about experience is left to explain.
• Type-B physicalism: The view that experience is identical to physical processes, though no reasoning from the physical facts alone can reveal the identity, so the explanatory gap is epistemic only.
• Phenomenal concept strategy: The type-B physicalist's explanation of the explanatory gap as a product of phenomenal concepts: special concepts we apply to our experiences from the inside, which aren't linked a priori to physical concepts.
• Illusionism: The view that experiences don't really have phenomenal properties but only seem to, because introspection misrepresents them, so the task is to explain why they seem to have such properties.
• Panpsychism: The view that experience, or something like it, is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality, present even in basic physical entities.
• Combination problem: The problem, for panpsychism, of explaining how the experiences of many small entities combine to yield a unified experience such as a human's.
• Russellian monism: The view that physics describes only the structure and dynamics of matter, and that experience, or its precursors, may be the intrinsic nature that fills in that structure.
• Property dualism: The view that there is only one kind of substance, but that some of its properties, such as phenomenal properties, are nonphysical and not fixed by the physical properties.

References

• Allen-Hermanson, Sean. 2022. "Panpsychism." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. https\://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/.
• Chalmers, David J. 1996. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Free: Only the introduction, on consc.net.
  • Free companion: SEP, "Zombies" (Kirk)
• Dennett, Daniel C. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown.
  • Free: None.
  • Publisher: Hachette
• Frankish, Keith. 2016. "Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness." Journal of Consciousness Studies 23 (11–12): 11–39.
  • Free: Author's eprint
  • Publisher: Ingenta Connect
• Goff, Philip. 2019. Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. New York: Pantheon.
  • Free: None.
  • Publisher: Penguin Random House
  • Free companion: SEP, "Panpsychism" (Allen-Hermanson)
• Pereboom, Derk. 2023. "Russellian Monism." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. https\://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russellian-monism/.
• Strawson, Galen. 2006. "Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism." Journal of Consciousness Studies 13 (10–11): 3–31.
  • Free: None confirmed.
  • Publisher: reprinted in Strawson, Real Materialism and Other Essays (Oxford Academic chapter)
  • Free companion: SEP, "Panpsychism" (Allen-Hermanson)
• Van Gulick, Robert. 2014. "Consciousness." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https\://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/.

Introduction

Frankish's "Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness" is the standard statement of illusionism, and its opening sections contain the view's key move. Frankish doesn't argue that consciousness is unreal. He argues that the thing realists set out to explain is the wrong target. This reading works through that move in four steps, pauses on its relation to Chalmers's meta-problem, flags a common misreading, and ends with a model paraphrase and the central objection.

Locating the Passage

The passage is sections 1 and 2 of the article, "Introducing illusionism" and "Motivating illusionism" (Frankish 2016, secs. 1–2). The author's eprint is free, so you can read along. It keeps the journal's section numbers. Short key phrases are quoted below. Everything else is paraphrased.

Before you start, note the setting. Frankish is introducing a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies devoted to illusionism, with responses from critics and allies. The article is a manifesto as much as an argument.

Walking Through the Argument

Step 1: Realism about phenomenal consciousness

Frankish begins by sorting approaches to phenomenal consciousness (Frankish 2016, sec. 1.1). He distinguishes two kinds of realist. Radical realists hold that phenomenal consciousness is real and can't be explained without radical theoretical innovation. He groups dualists, neutral monists, and others here. Conservative realists hold that it is real and can be explained physically, with the resources of current cognitive science or modest extensions of them.

Notice what both kinds share. They accept that there is something genuinely qualitative picked out by talk of phenomenal properties, and they adopt it as their explanandum: the thing a theory sets out to explain. They disagree about how hard it is to explain, not about whether it's there.

Step 2: The illusionist denial

The second move introduces a third approach. Illusionism holds that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion and aims to explain why it seems to exist (Frankish 2016, sec. 1).

Watch the scope of the denial. What's denied is that experiences have phenomenal properties in the realist's sense: intrinsic, qualitative, private properties. What's affirmed is that experiences exist and that they seem to have such properties. The shift is from "what are phenomenal properties?" to "why do experiences seem to have them?"

Frankish's analogy is a stage magician's trick (Frankish 2016, sec. 1.3). To explain a trick, you don't explain how real magic works. You explain how the appearance of magic is produced.

Step 3: Quasi-phenomenal properties

The third move says what introspection is getting wrong. Frankish introduces "quasi-phenomenal" properties (Frankish 2016, sec. 1.2). A quasi-phenomenal property is a non-phenomenal, physical property that introspection typically misrepresents as phenomenal.

Take seeing a red tomato. Something about your visual state carries information about the tomato's surface and has effects on your judgments, feelings, and memories. That something is quasi-phenomenal redness. When you introspect, you represent it as a private, ineffable quality. The misrepresentation is the illusion. The underlying property is real and physical.

Step 4: The illusion problem

The final move reframes the task. If illusionism is right, the hard problem, explaining how physical processes give rise to phenomenal properties, has no solution because it has no object. What needs explaining is the "illusion problem": why experiences seem to have phenomenal properties (Frankish 2016, sec. 1).

This problem is about representation. Cognitive science has tools for explaining how systems represent their own states, and how those representations can be systematically inaccurate. So the illusion problem is hard, but it has the form of an easy problem. Section 2 argues that this is a reason to prefer illusionism: realists face a problem they have no idea how to solve, while illusionists face one they know how to approach (Frankish 2016, sec. 2.3).

Callout: Illusionism and the Meta-Problem

Two years later, Chalmers posed the meta-problem: explaining why we judge that there is a hard problem (Chalmers 2018, sec. 1). The illusion problem and the meta-problem overlap. Both ask for an explanation of our reports and judgments about experience, and both can be pursued with the ordinary methods of cognitive science.

The difference is what each side expects the answer to show. For an illusionist, a full solution to the meta-problem would complete the theory of consciousness. For Chalmers, it would constrain a theory of consciousness but leave the hard problem standing (Chalmers 2018, sec. 3). The same research question serves opposed programs.

Key Considerations

Terms.

A common misreading. The most common misreading is that "illusionists say we aren't conscious."

• Frankish says the opposite. Illusionists don't deny a form of consciousness, consisting in states with quasi-phenomenal properties (Frankish 2016, sec. 1.6).
• What's denied is a theory of experience. It's the realist's account of what experience is, not the existence of seeing, hearing, and feeling.
• "Illusion" doesn't mean "nothing." A magician's trick is real. What's illusory is its appearance of being magic.

Summary

The passage sorts realists into radical and conservative, introduces illusionism as a third approach, identifies quasi-phenomenal properties as what introspection misrepresents, and replaces the hard problem with the illusion problem. Here is a model paraphrase to check your reading against:

Realists, whether radical or conservative, take phenomenal properties as real and set out to explain them. Illusionism holds instead that experiences only seem to have phenomenal properties. What they really have are quasi-phenomenal properties: physical properties that introspection misrepresents as private, qualitative feels. The task is not to explain phenomenal properties but to explain why experiences seem to have them. This illusion problem concerns how the brain represents its own states, so it can be approached with the tools of cognitive science (Frankish 2016, secs. 1–2).

The central objection follows directly. Critics argue that an illusion is a way things seem, and seeming is itself phenomenal. If so, the illusion of phenomenality presupposes the phenomenality it denies. Frankish replies that seeming, in his sense, is only representing, with the whole organism as the audience (Frankish 2016, sec. 3.3). Whether that reply removes the objection or restates it is the point on which the debate now turns.

References

• Chalmers, David J. 2018. "The Meta-Problem of Consciousness." Journal of Consciousness Studies 25 (9–10): 6–61.
  • Free: PDF on consc.net
• Frankish, Keith. 2016. "Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness." Journal of Consciousness Studies 23 (11–12): 11–39.
  • Free: Author's eprint
  • Publisher: Ingenta Connect