But that resolves absolutely nothing. It's like saying "a rock is illusory because the phenomenal experience is superfluous to a scientific explanation of a rock, that the phenomenal experience arises from the very complex physical processes happening in the universe rather than being something ontologically irreducible or special."

The world "illusory" in the context of OP's article is fluff, nothing else. Like with the rock you can argue its case, but it holds absolutely no value. If you removed the word "illusory" nothing would change. And please, stop it with "the public", as if this is a debate between unknowing laymen and the learned. I'm a psychologist myself and I think this whole pop-science thing about "illusory consciousness" is mostly a nice one-liner that sells books and lectures.

But, it gets worse. You see, what they really want to say is that consciousness is well understood by "reductionist models of interactions in the brain", and this is what people think when they hear the fluff about "illusion". But they can't, because they know we are not there yet. The brain is well understood on the macro level, well understood on the micro-level but the study of its whole as interaction between constituent parts is in infancy as science. Some high-school Newtonian physics model of the brain's workings might very well not be enough to understand exactly how consciousness ticks.

You seem to be agreeing with me but with a weirdly combative tone.

Why is a 'pure' machine interested to simulate the world?
Why does it simulate a self?
Can consciousness not exist even if self should be an illusion?
Do we know that neurons exist? Are we aware of them? The assumptions that we make about neutrons can we use them? Can we communicate those assumptions?
If there is no magic behind physics why do the so called 'living organisms' try to stay alive? Why does it matter to them? When there is no magic behind physics, why do we think that something tastes good? What is taste? Isn't taste a tool to recognize what is good for our organism and what is not good? Good? Why is there a difference between good and bad for no-magic-organism? If there is no magic it should be absolutely indifferent to its status, shouldn't it?

Right on. Also, why does the boulder roll down a hill when it might as well choose to roll upwards. Magic, obviously.

And yeah, neurons. I mean, nobody has seen those. It's a silly as carbon monoxide, nobody has seen that either, why on earth should we believe car exhaust to be deadly in enclosed spaces.

Than hear the unheard what you cannot find in any book and what no philosopher or scientist can disprove with reasonable logic:
First there must be restlessness than animation. If animation were first than we wouldn't know fear. We were like robots, highly complex robots but without emotions. The first organisms to be precise should not be called animate organism but restless organism. The restlessness in humans (if we wouldn't feel restless we wouldn't move) which leads to their animation did already exist in the first micro organisms. The restlessness forces animation and not vice versa.
As atheists and scientists like mathematics and probability: At the very least this is highly more probable.

BTW: Even if the micro organisms did develop to highly complex forms of life, one thing didn't ever change: Just like the first micro organisms we still feel all the time restless.

Didn't you just question the existence of neurons because we aren't intuitively aware of them? Yet you get to say what comes first in the evolution (or lack thereof) of life. That's a pretty big gap in what standard of evidence you hold for yourself versus what you hold for everyone else.

I mean, yeah... the universe is very easy to explain when you get to decide every aspect of evidence and do not hold yourself to a uniform standard. I mean, I can say the universe is an apple and argue that those that disagree can't disprove me and besides they don't have neurons anyway. The problem is that I'm left with no way of determining if my explanation is crap.

An explanation is crap when it is not logically reasonable. Although logic is by no means enough to find the ultimate truth but it is our only guide to find out what is nonsense and what is not.
Imagine an automated car which drives better than a human. It is non sense to say it has emotions or will develop emotions because it is animated. What I mean is: animation can work without any emotions. When there is something death and becomes animated it is "nearly" (nearly because logic is not enough to find the ultimate truth) impossible that it develops feelings, thinking, understandable communication etc. It would all work without any kind of consciousness and feelings. Just like a robot that one sends to mars to take photos (or just imagine a perfect robot). Without any "magic" I don't say there were no humans which hunt but they were indifferent to its outcome (at least this is highly more probable as they developed out of lifeless phenomenons). They would just hunt like a perfect robot emotionless.
On the other hand restlessness needs moving, needs animation and if it is not successful it needs farther improvement in its animation (something like evolution). It is restless because it needs a change. It needs a change because it is not indifferent to its state.
So it is highly more probable that restlessness (or the state of not being indifferent) did exist before animation.
So if you now can prove with logic that restlessness doesn't need animation than my logic failed. It did also fail if you can prove that animation needs feelings (=the state of not being indifferent).

Isn't this just an expression of hard determinism, and what the Dr. is really denying is free will. Nothing new here.

No, I don't need to "prove" that restlessness doesn't need animation. I don't have the burden of proof, you do.

As for your logic...

... it defeats itself.

Another perspective on this "illusion" is historical as from remote times mankind has had an atavistic consciousness which displays a penetration of the human being within the external world. In the ancient Egyptian, or chaldanean, or ancient Indian consciousness it was seen that the external world was the sense bound perception of a spirituality.

There was no doubt of the existence of the spiritual world for each man was immersed , to a greater or lesser extent, within that world. When the shepherd laid down a night the images of the stars appeared to him and he knew these images, or specifically beings, were real and the underpinning of the sense bound realities were these very beings.

This was the world of the gods of the hearth, or the fields or "little people" etc..to which names were given to these beings whose outward projection was our sense bound impressions. To the ancient man, all to which he was immersed was the outward projection of the Divine . the sun was perceived as the sense bound manifestation of the Sun God Ra or Ahura Mazda with names appropriately given through a revelatory consciousness.

And so, the Ancient Indian had a term for these sense bound impressions called "Maya" or the "great illusion" . I suspect that the modern philosophers referenced in this thread, having no consideration for the Divine, perforce placed this "illusion" within man himself, an error of the most inappropriate logic, the logical failure.

Its true that what we see is an "illusion" or "Maya" for the reality is that very spiritual world to which our senses do not manifest. Up to the 15th century of our era there was a marginal appreciation of this spiritual world so that there was no doubt of divinity manifesting within and without the human soul.

We, since the intellect has gained strength within each man (15th century), have no appreciation of the Divine but we have still worked the sense bound realities which are semblance, no more or no less than a semblance. And so we project atoms as the underlying materiality always projecting what we can weigh and measure into our outward realities. Its still a semblance.

The fascination of this semblance has actually improved man, for a time, as it is impossible to error within this semblance and the consequence is that the individual man is becoming or has become "free" for in working within this semblance he is becoming individual for there is no error in this realm.

The human soul is becoming a "free being" which not given to ancient man for in truth this "atavistic consciousness" was such that the human soul was still guided within the spiritual world where freedom is not evident within the individual man. When a man dies he is taken up into the spiritual world and is ensconced within higher beings who care for his progression. Man becomes a "free being" only on the earth, his schooling, so to speak. He can go from right to left, and sit or run, or jump for in this semblance there are no restrictions as to this basically free activity, the schooling of man.

"Freedom" and "semblance" go hand in hand for once within the world of the spirit man is a spiritual being who is progressing into an individual "free man" which will carry into the spiritual world as the human being brings "freedom' to the hierarchical beings with its concomitant "Love".

There is no human freedom within the spiritual world as each being acts within its particular manifestation, this "freedom" is the work of Man. We live within "illusion" because we cannot see the reality of the spirit to which our sense bound presentations are nothingness, the only reality being the spirit.

I'll go one more and state that the great "Fall of Man" from the world of the spirit via Lucifer began the world of our senses for the senses see "illusion', that Luciferic temptation but paradoxically it is the means for mankind to traverse into a higher being the Human Being all accomplished through recurrent lives. Lifting weights can be painful but strength and big biceps are the result.

Somebody asked me once: When a thought leaves, where does it go?

I think we've become accustomed to thinking in terms of points and fixed values. Our mathematics, logic and even language is very much based on it. And from that we get these binary propositions, things "start", "end","existed","will exist" and whatnot.

I think a lot of things makes more sense if you consider the world to be analogue rather than digital. Instead of fixed values and points, perhaps states don't just pop into other states, perhaps they shift seamlessly into one another. Such a system could of course be modeled quite successfully by a digital method, but it would fail to catch some nuances.

So, in danger of sounding like some demented new age Buddhist, perhaps that thought just flows along... changing some of the things it touches as it passes and being morphed itself along the way. And then, when we apply the word "is" (or "leaves" or "goes) to that thought, we're making it to be some kind of cemented thing that doesn't really apply (though it could model it for us).

Probably bears mention that this is of course unfalsifiable fluff (but somewhat pretty maybe). A digital system can be modeled by an analogue one and vice versa, but you would have no way of actually telling if the parent system was analogue or digital by using the respective models.

"Thought" is spaceless, and is "being" and in that sense it is ever present. and so, the question doesn't fit but one can say that the conscious activity of man leaves its focus into myriad directions ( metaphor) and loses sight of a particular "thought'.

The other point is that the thought which is experienced within the human soul is more of an "abstracted" impression of a "living thought" which, due to the nature of our times the human being could not withstand the full "living thought".

Prior to birth the human soul was ensconced and appertained to these "living thoughts" but the human body became the "corpse" of that living thinking to which he was within prior to birth and following death.

I think, therefore I'm an illusion.

Reminds me.. Westworld finale tomorrow!

If I don't think but just play, am I still an illusion?

More like a semblance;consider that you can feel the object but its total expression is not available to you. You can't reach an appreciation with our senses and if this were to happen "new senses" have to develop; the stuff of yogi's or the efforts of conscious meditative practice.

Thinking or thoughts are the doorway to higher consciousness or the appreciation of a "thought being", an appreciation of higher worlds or higher consciousness.

Yada, yada, yada

Two books:

The "Philosophy of Freedom" and "Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment" both by Rudolph Steiner.

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/...004_index.html

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA010/...010_index.html

RGT

An illusion always ends, human consciousness is still going strong after a few million years. Seems like a very long magic trick, don't you think?

A few million years??