Humphrey’s Magical-Compelling User Illusion

Nicholas Humphrey’s theory of consciousness is widely considered a form of illusionism and is also well compatible with eliminativism, because he argues that phenomenal consciousness—what it's like to feel inner experience—is not what it seems to be. Rather than revealing a deep metaphysical reality, consciousness is a user-illusion evolved to enhance our survival. He says, “Phenomenal consciousness is a magical mystery show that the brain lays on for itself” (Humphrey, 2006).

Consciousness as Evolutionary Illusion

Humphrey offers the idea that we are victims of a kind of self-deception, engineered by evolution to make subjective experiences seem much richer and more mysterious than they really are. He continues: “The illusion is not a mistake. It’s a feature, not a bug. It’s the way consciousness works to enchant us” (Humphrey, 2006; Frankish, 2016).

Humphrey’s distinctive approach to Eliminativism/Illusionism frames consciousness through the lens of evolution, or evolutionary psychology, a biological adaptation that creates a model of the self that seems rich, engaging, and compelling, even though this richness does not correspond to anything ontologically real. “Consciousness has evolved to fool us—to create a simulation of something that isn’t really there.”

This is hard-core illusionism: we are tricked by evolution into thinking that there is something ‘extra’ in experience—qualia—but this ‘extra’ is an adaptive fiction (Humphrey, 2006).

Theatrical Self-Model and Social Role

Humphrey’s distinctive evolutionary defense of Illusionism is that consciousnesses evolved to play a key role in creating a self-model that promotes survival by enriching our sense of personal significance. According to Humphrey, it is not that consciousness evolved to amplify or appreciate perception or action per se, but to make us feel special and important, for purposes of self-preservation and social cohesion. “Consciousness is not a property that was selected for its practical utility. Rather, it is a piece of performance art” (Humphrey, 2011).

All this implies eliminativism about intrinsic phenomenal properties—there are no such things as qualia (as normally conceived). What really exists, Humphrey argues, is a representation of qualia that misleads us. “Consciousness is a self-model, but one constructed in such a way as to give us the illusion of being in touch with intrinsic properties of experience.”

Thus, our rich first-person quality of experience is not an ontological fact but a psychological artifact. He portrays the point with a theatrical metaphor: “Consciousness is a kind of inner performance that the brain stages for itself—a show with no audience but the self” (Humphrey, 2011).

Humphrey's way of thinking qualifies him as both an eliminativist and an illusionist. On the former, he denies the ontological reality of qualia (eliminativist). On the latter, he explains why we believe in qualia despite their nonexistence, using an evolutionary, narrative, or self-representational theory (illusionist).

“It’s not just that we think we are conscious,” Humphrey reflects, “it’s that we think our consciousness means something” (Humphrey, 2011). This illusion, then, catalyzes humans treating others as beings with inner lives, which, in turn, empowers sociality, standardizes moral intuitions, and even induces religious belief.