To whom is it an illusion? And, what are the properties of this illusion? Can we make artificial minds that are also suffering from the same illusion?
The very fact that there is (let's suppose) such an illusion requires an explanation. Suppose the brain has somewhere encoded the idea of consciousness, but no "actual" consciousness. Why do we require the extra step of "actual" consciousness rather than mere "illusory" consciousness?
Of course the real explanation of consciousness will be both profound (beautiful, unexpected) and mundane (non supernatural).
The expectation of something does not guarantee its existence. Words are created to define the expectation of something unexplained, only to be discarded when the expectation is unmet.
Take the word "miasma". At some point in history, a belief was born that all diseases came from gaseous poisons emitted by rot. Then the miasma theory got definitely discarded when we got the ability to view germs, which are simply distant cousins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory
Take the word "aether". Since waves on the sea were carried by water and sound waves by air, it was assumed that interplanetary space was filled with a substance that light (assumed to be just a wave back then) was carried through. It was called aether. It turns out the real explanation of aether is not profound nor mundane: there is nothing, and that nothing expands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theories
I don't really understand why it is hard to accept that there is no after-life, that all our activities are the sole result of chemical transmission of signals in our brains... that there is no point of view, just local chemical storage of information.
But it was hard for our ancestors to fathom that humans were part of a phylogenetic tree encompassing all Earth life forms, that we as a species were not special. It was hard for them to fathom that space is relative, that there is no center. I suppose it is always hard to accept that there is no reference point in the universe.
You have just restated the problem of consciousness, except as an assertion that it doesn't exist.
The problem of reductionism is that it doesn't stop; just as there aren't really points of view, there aren't really any chemicals, and there isn't really such a thing as (classical, let's say) information. All of these things are "just" emergent phenomena.
The explanations which made "aether" and "miasma" obsolete are beautiful, unexpected at the time (in a trivial sense), and of course, not supernatural.
I agree with you about the afterlife. However consider this: if the universe is infinite, isn't it likely that there will be copies of you which arise spontaneously, in all conceivable circumstances? The older you get, the less likely you are to be in a place or time that is causally connected to your birth, because most causal chains involve your death. (This is just a specific case of a Boltzmann Brain[1])
Of course, this sort of nonsense thought experiment runs afoul of the Measure Problem [2]. But this is precisely the kind of problem that I hope the explanation of consciousness would help to resolve.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_problem_(cosmology)
Things that don't exist are rarely problematic. But in fairness, I cannot guarantee that there is no consciousness, just as I cannot guarantee that gravity exists — it could be part of a simulation in which I was put since birth, and the real world could have very different laws of physics. Nothing new here, it is Occam's razor.
> it doesn't stop; just as there aren't really points of view, there aren't really any chemicals, and there isn't really such a thing as (classical, let's say) information.
There is such a thing as a point of view. I object to the notion of consciousness solely because of how it is used. Plants have points of view too; jellyfish do too, without the need for a brain. They react intelligently to their environment. Are those conscious? It is clearer to talk about "brains" and "points of view" than it is to talk about "consciousness".
> The explanations which made "aether" and "miasma" obsolete are beautiful, unexpected at the time (in a trivial sense), and of course, not supernatural.
I suppose that's up to each of us to judge. I don't find the idea that throughout my body, millions of tiny unicellular parasites are having a snack, particularly beautiful. Similarly, the idea that there is an invisible energy pulling everything apart always felt supernatural to me.
> if the universe is infinite, isn't it likely that there will be copies of you
The probability is above zero, but given that space is overwhelmingly empty, and given how much information defines my identity (including my average DNA, which is inherited from millions of years of evolution in extremely specific circumstances), it seems unlikely. If there is a copy of me in the universe, the most probable location would be on Earth, extremely close to where I sit.
For example, you could find out that consciousness is a real phenomenon but that it's experienced by more matter than we think, but without as much depth or ability to express itself as the human neocortex. Or perhaps each of us has multiple consciousnesses within, but we can't sense it because they all share the same memories and have essentially the same desires and feelings. Who knows! But it could be substantially different than how we frame a singular, soul-like consciousness
You're not far from the truth. Every piece of your brain still alive works roughly as the whole, even when cut off from the rest. Every part of it can make complex decisions (although past a certain size, it's not going to be very smart).
See experiments on a patient with a severed corpus callosum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx53Zj7EKQE
The question is, which laws of physics, and are the interaction between those laws of physics, interactions we already know, or new ones we have not discovered yet?
Otherwise we might as well say consciousness follows the will of God.
Why? The engineering definition of deterministic implies predictable outcomes given a known internal state. Are you suggesting that we're already at the level where we can accurately and fully measure a human brain's internal state?
That does not mean that we cannot discuss the likelihood of each explanation, keeping in mind that both explanations could be incorrect. We have Drake's Equation even though, for all we know, nobody has ever seen an extraterrestrial life-form. We have flight because nature demonstrated flight to us: nature continuously demonstrates the capability to evolve quantum machines (e.g. the nose and various other organic processes[1]).
Finally, the engineering definition of determinism is not the only definition.[2]
[1]: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160715-organisms-might-be-q... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterministic_system_(philosop...
Would be happy if someone more knowledgeable could elaborate.