Illusionism and the Disappearance of Reality
In February of 2022, Keith Frankish, an Illusionist philosopher, took part in a Twitter exchange regarding a criterion of Reality. I found the thread revealing. Frankish begins the discussion by offering the following criterion:
“A thing is real if you can interact with it in a robust way. You can affect it, and it can affect you. Real is as real does….Real things are things that interact causally with each other in reliable ways.” (Frankish)
Shortly thereafter, Frankish was rightfully challenged by a fellow philosopher:
“One problem Keith faces here is that if he doesn’t rephrase it [to be] “really causally interacts,” then he can’t screen out Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker—who causally interact—but even if he does so rephrase [it] he invites circularity.”
Remarkably, in light of this obvious objection, Frankish holds fast to his “causal” criterion:
“Can’t I just say that it is representations of [Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker] that do the interacting?” (Frankish)
Taking a step back, and reviewing the exchange, I am tempted to quote a well-known remark from C.D. Broad, but I can’t say that Frankish deserves to be considered as being of the same caliber as F.H. Bradley. Let’s continue. Frankish’s interlocutor responds:
“Maybe? Are you building representation independence into “real,” then?”
Frankish continues:
“I just mean that representation tokens qualify as real by the causal criterion and that we can translate claims about the causal powers of fictional characters into claims about the causal powers of representations of them.” (Frankish)
Thankfully, Frankish’s interlocutor alludes to the absurdity of the response:
“Darth Vader cut off Luke’s hand, but I doubt that entails Darth Vader representation tokens did anything to Luke Skywalker representation tokens.”
Nevertheless, Frankish persists—going so far as to introduce a “make believe” operator to patch the void in his “causal” criterion:
“They are effects within a fictional world. We do a make believe operator and proceed as normal within it.” (Frankish)
Frankish goes on:
“Well, it matters what’s real, doesn’t it? And if it does, then we need a criterion of reality, at least of a rough and ready kind….At least the causal things offers a criterion.” (Frankish)
The conversation ended here. I would like to conclude with the following suggestion: To all those who maintain that “phenomenal consciousness” is “illusory,” I only ask that you damn-well know what it means for something to be Real.