Consciousness intuitions are illusory.

People's intuitions about whether consciousness is physical or non-physical shift depending on how the question is framed, similar to a visual illusion. In two experiments, when asked about a scenario where a person's body is duplicated, most people said the copy would not share the original's conscious states, reflecting a dualist view. But when asked about Mary, a neuroscientist who learns color for the first time, people expected her new color experience to appear on a brain scan, reflecting a physicalist view. This inconsistency is traced to two cognitive biases—intuitive Dualism and Essentialism—suggesting that such intuitions are unreliable guides to the nature of consciousness.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Philosophical discussions of the "hard problem" often invoke "problem intuitions", as consciousness intuitions and consciousness are believed to be "closely connected" (Chalmers, 2018). Here, I challenge this assumption. In two experiments, I demonstrate that consciousness intuitions are illusory-they shift across different "problem intuitions", akin to perceptual illusions. When presented with a duplication scenario, people do not view consciousness as physical (i.e., they believe that copying one's physical body will not copy one's conscious states). But when probed about a second scenario (that of Mary in the Black-and-White Room), consciousness now seems squarely physical, as people expect Mary's novel experience of color to "show up" in a brain scan. I trace this shift to two psychological biases-intuitive Dualism and Essentialism. The shift in consciousness intuitions demonstrates that consciousness judgments are illusory, and as such, they cannot be trusted to reflect what consciousness is.