4. A grand illusion

Is consciousness an illusion? If so, it isn’t that consciousness doesn’t exist, but that it isn’t what it seems. ‘A grand illusion’ considers change and inattentional blindness, challenging the way we think about our visual experiences. Traditional vision theories, with their detailed inner representations, cannot explain how or why those representations become conscious experiences or why we seem to be someone looking at those representations. Sensorimotor theory, proposed by psychologist Kevin O’Regan and philosopher Alva Noë, suggests vision means mastering sensorimotor contingencies. It turns the problem upside down, making the viewer into an actor and the visions into actions. This theory must now explain how actions can be subjective experiences.