Illusionist Researchers on AI Consciousness

Illusionists argue that phenomenal consciousness, the raw felt quality philosophers call qualia, is not what introspection makes it look like. Daniel Dennett’s Multiple Drafts Model replaced the idea of a single stream of experience watched by an inner self with parallel, competing processes and no central theater. Keith Frankish sharpened this into illusionism proper, the claim that the sense of ineffable, private qualia is itself a representational error the brain makes about its own processing, not evidence of an extra ingredient science has failed to find.

For AI, the position reframes the entire debate. If phenomenal consciousness were never the kind of thing dualists describe, asking whether a language model has it becomes a category error rather than an open empirical question. For the wider family of positions this sits within, see illusionism on the consciousness theories index; for the full researcher directory, see all consciousness researchers.

• Daniel Dennett The Multiple Drafts Model, the Cartesian Theater critique, and heterophenomenology
• Keith Frankish Illusionism about phenomenal consciousness