<p>if consciousness is a illusion, well it allows us to do some very interesting things! Like the perception of color is an illusion, for example, but that doesn’t make it any less real, somehow; or maybe it does make it less real, but it doesn’t make it less important. It still reflects something fundamental about our universe it turns out. In fact, the Illusion of color helped us learn what it was that it reflected (that color was actually the projection of a photons of varying wavelengths).</p>
<p>So to, maybe, can the illusion of consciousness help us discover what consciousness is the projection or reflection of.</p>
<p>
If consciousness was an illusion, we would not be conscious. We would not be. Cogito Ergo Sum, or, in xkcd words, Cogito Ergo Cogito. If I am conscious, consciousness cannot be an illusion. It is not simply something I perceive, for if it were so, there would be no “I” to perceive it.</p>
<p>Consciousness is not an illusion, but the way we experience it misleads our speculation about it. Just like how the feeling of earth being still led people to assume nothing other than that (that it didn’t spin). The feeling of being still exists, but it is an illusion; we are not really still. The feeling of conscious experience exists, but it is an illusion; we are not really conscious in the way we think we are.</p>
<p>I said it was an illusion, but I didn’t really mean that obviously. As I have said, there is something behind it. What I meant is consciousness is a deceptive phenomenon. Do you understand?</p>
<p>No; and metaphors will fall flat in such complex situations. Are you saying that while we enjoy being conscious, we don’t understand why we are?</p>
<p>our experience of consciousness is misleading in terms of how it leads us to speculate about consciousness, that is what I am saying. Many aspects to the universe have been deceiving (i.e that time is invariant of motion); I think this is one such aspect.</p>