> But this illusion is good enough to allow us to act in the world. We don't call it illusion, we just call it the world.
I like calling it a "world model". Optical illusions proof that this "world model" can be consistently tricked for a wide range of humans. Now the "illusion of consciousness" is a categorization error: You apply your "world model" to your own internal processes / consciousness. So far so good. But this does not give you the right to claim that consciousness is your "world model" view of it. If it was, then so could people who took LSD and had their "world model" believe they could swim in the sky, claim to change reality/ontology/the world for all of us.
The illusion is that your world model of consciousness does not equal consciousness in reality, as proven by science, despite how clearly it may appear to you (not that conscious experience itself is an illusion).
> Most of the time I act as a single intelligent agent, not as a bunch of subsystems with no unifying goals.
This is the illusion. To you it seems that you act as a single intelligent agent, unaware of the thousands of majority votes by your senses/neurons that lead up to that point.
Both your view as a single acting agent and this illusion are still legit. But again, it is a categorization error to conclude that your experience validates that humans are all individually acting single intelligent agents. That's Descartes-era philosophy and the legacy that Dennett was railing against: "I think therefor I am" becomes "I think that I am a single agent, therefor I am such".
You can compare "hunger" with "consciousness". Disease can make one feel not hungry, while medical investigation shows that the body is in desperate need of sustenance, or vice versa. Now is it an illusion/delusion to say: "I am hungry" when your body is already full? Maybe. But it becomes a mistake when you declare "I feel hungry, therefor my body needs more sustenance". That seemingly logical conclusion is the result of an illusion.
> becomes "I think that I am a single agent, therefor I am such"
No, it's "Most of the time I act as a single agent, therefore my perception of myself as a single agent is not an illusion, but a simplified model". It doesn't matter how many neurons are voted, if I'm doing what I was thinking I'm going to do. Experiments can poke at edge-cases where self-model is incorrect, but that's expected.
In a case of a brain, my self-model also runs on brain's neurons and is a part of what brain is doing. It makes it even less illusionary, than an internal model of the world.
I sometimes think I am like a storm glass or barometer. If there is a huge storm brewing that meter is going up or down. From my perspective I am doing exactly what I am thinking about doing, this storm really wants to make me go up or down. Of course, I have a limited view on reality, I may not even notice the storm itself.
But cognitive science, only through study of brain lesions and experiments, can offer glimpses of what is out there. What the weather really is like.
But what if the very act of categorization was an error to begin with? Causal inference poses problems like: Does the barometer change cause the storm, or does the storm cause the barometer change? These can be better solved by saying: The pressure in the barometer changing _is_ (part of) the storm. Instead of saying: If I go up, I cause the storm to follow ("If I am thinking I am a single agent, my consciousness must be singular").
In the end you are free, and I encourage you to, call it a simplified model, not an illusion. But to discard all of Dennett's consciousness philosophy on the basis of a poorly chosen word, is not a valid or fruitful conclusion. You'll miss the memetic good sauce that cures Naive Realism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism
I myself, personally, prefer RAW's Maybe Logic approach to consciousness, though that it arguably less academically sound (though not less wise for it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7N6TOFyrLg
I like calling it a "world model". Optical illusions proof that this "world model" can be consistently tricked for a wide range of humans. Now the "illusion of consciousness" is a categorization error: You apply your "world model" to your own internal processes / consciousness. So far so good. But this does not give you the right to claim that consciousness is your "world model" view of it. If it was, then so could people who took LSD and had their "world model" believe they could swim in the sky, claim to change reality/ontology/the world for all of us.
The illusion is that your world model of consciousness does not equal consciousness in reality, as proven by science, despite how clearly it may appear to you (not that conscious experience itself is an illusion).
> Most of the time I act as a single intelligent agent, not as a bunch of subsystems with no unifying goals.
This is the illusion. To you it seems that you act as a single intelligent agent, unaware of the thousands of majority votes by your senses/neurons that lead up to that point.
Both your view as a single acting agent and this illusion are still legit. But again, it is a categorization error to conclude that your experience validates that humans are all individually acting single intelligent agents. That's Descartes-era philosophy and the legacy that Dennett was railing against: "I think therefor I am" becomes "I think that I am a single agent, therefor I am such".
You can compare "hunger" with "consciousness". Disease can make one feel not hungry, while medical investigation shows that the body is in desperate need of sustenance, or vice versa. Now is it an illusion/delusion to say: "I am hungry" when your body is already full? Maybe. But it becomes a mistake when you declare "I feel hungry, therefor my body needs more sustenance". That seemingly logical conclusion is the result of an illusion.