Eliminative materialism, defended by Patricia and Paul Churchland (1981, 1989), centrally targets the propositional-attitude categories of folk psychology, especially belief and desire, as theoretical posits an adequate neuroscience may replace. It should not be treated as automatically eliminating qualia or the conscious subject in every version; those stronger denials belong to distinct eliminativist or illusionist positions. The propositional attitudes, on the Churchlands' line, are theoretical posits of an inadequate framework, to be replaced by mature neuroscience as phlogiston was replaced by oxidation. Frankish's (2016) illusionism, anticipated by Dennett ("Quining Qualia," 1988; *Consciousness Explained*, 1991), presses a related line: phenomenal consciousness is an illusion. There seems to be a what-it-is-like-ness to experience (Nagel's 1974 term for the felt qualitative character of having an experience), but the seeming is itself a representational state that does not require any phenomenal character to be what it represents.

Both positions are aimed at the hard problem ([§4.3.1](<4.3.1 The Hard Problem of Consciousness.md>)). They dissolve it by denying that what the hard problem is about exists.

The argument does not turn on the existence of phenomenal consciousness. It turns on the conditions for any process, including the process of formulating eliminativism, processing neural states, generating illusory representations of consciousness. Eliminativism is a position. Positions have content. Content is distinguishable from other content. The distinction obtains across moments, across substrates, across thinkers. T, S, and Φ are the conditions on which any content (including the content of eliminativism) is what it is.

A targeted observation. Eliminativism does not in fact succeed in eliminating consciousness; it eliminates the folk-psychological vocabulary for consciousness in favor of a neuroscientific vocabulary. The neuroscientific vocabulary still distinguishes one neural state from another, one organism's processing from another's, one moment's representation from a later moment's. What was phenomenal consciousness becomes neural information processing. The vocabulary changes; the conditions do not.

Illusionism is in a slightly different position. The illusionist concedes that something seems to be the case and contends that the seeming is mistaken. But the seeming itself is a state: a representation, a process, an event. Whatever its ultimate nature, it occurs in time, distinguishes itself from the world it represents, and persists long enough to be analyzed. The structural conditions are not features of the represented; they are features of the representing. Illusionism reduces what is represented; it does not reduce the conditions of representation.

*A note on consistency with [§4.3.1](<4.3.1 The Hard Problem of Consciousness.md>).* The deflationary stance just stated may read in tension with the positive thesis of [§4.3.1](<4.3.1 The Hard Problem of Consciousness.md>) that experience is structural self-modeling encountered from inside. The two sections operate at different argumentative levels. Interiority is identified at [§4.3.1](<4.3.1 The Hard Problem of Consciousness.md>) as what self-modeling is when encountered from within: a structural-identification claim about the explanandum eliminativism and illusionism deny. This section engages those positions at the level of the conditions on any representational activity, including their own: any content, including the eliminativist's denial and the illusionist's diagnosis, instantiates T, S, and Φ. The defensive claim that structural conditions are conditions on representing rather than on what is represented does not commit the framework to denying that there is anything to represent; what is represented in the case at issue is the inside-aspect of structural self-modeling that [§4.3.1](<4.3.1 The Hard Problem of Consciousness.md>) identifies positively and Chapter 8 develops. The two sections divide labor: the earlier one names what is being denied and identifies it positively; this section marks the conditions any denial of it must instantiate.

The meta-problem move (Chalmers, "The Meta-Problem of Consciousness," 2018; cf. Frankish, *Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness*, 2016) presses a methodological reframe: instead of asking why phenomenal consciousness exists, explain why reflective people *say* the hard problem is hard. The meta-problem strategy is that explaining the *impression* of a hard problem (why introspective mechanisms represent cognitive processes as having irreducible phenomenal character they do not possess) dissolves the first-order question without answering it on the hard problem's own terms. The structural reply: the meta-problem move is itself a structural exercise. Explaining why people report a hard problem requires an account of how introspective mechanisms represent their own outputs, how that representation diverges from the process it represents, and how the sense of seeming arises as a feature of sophisticated self-monitoring. That account requires T (the temporal succession of the introspective act and the report it generates), S (the relational distinction between the introspecting state and the state it represents), and Φ (the persistence of the self-modeling system across the introspective act).

*What is established.* The hard-problem dispute is, on the present argument, downstream of the structural conditions. Whether phenomenal consciousness is real, illusory, or eliminable is a question for philosophy of mind. T, S, and Φ are required either way.


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← [4.3.1 The Hard Problem of Consciousness](<4.3.1 The Hard Problem of Consciousness.md>) | [4.3.3 Russellian Monism](<4.3.3 Russellian Monism.md>) →
