Katalin Balog

Illusionism about consciousness is on the march: the view that our beliefs about consciousness are illusory is spreading from the halls of academia to popular media. This view is an attack on the last vestige of the premodern concept of the mind. I propose to write a book about how modernity led us away from thinking of ourselves as immortal souls created by God to be free and creative in ways no mere mechanism could be, to rule nature and be exempt from the laws of nature, to an understanding of the mind stripped of just about every feature that once assured us of our unique role and importance, one that denies the reality of even the most intimately known, and central feature of the mind, consciousness. I will argue that the developments in science that led to a radical change in our view of ourselves do not justify this last step. Consciousness denial is not only wrong on theoretical grounds but is morally harmful.

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