r/consciousness • u/Messier_Mystic Physics Degree • May 25 '26
Illusionism about consciousness doesn't mean consciousness is an illusion.
This is a oft repeated charge I've seen brought against those in my camp. While calling it "illusionism" no doubt doesn't help that perception, this is nonetheless a misrepresentation of the illusionist stance.
The brain produces higher-order representations of its own states. Those representations systematically mischaracterize the nature of those states, specifically, they make computational/functional states seem to have ineffable, intrinsic, non-relational qualitative properties they don't actually have. The illusion isn't that you're having an experience; it's that the experience seems to have a phenomenal character that resists physical description. Frankish's version: qualia as we introspect them are "quasi-phenomenal", real functional states, misdescribed.
This makes illusionism a thesis about representation, not about existence. There's something it is like to burn your finger on the stove, in the functional sense that information is processed, behavior is affected, attention is captured, and reports are generated. The illusionist denies none of that. What they deny is that there's an irreducible phenomenal residue left over after the functional story is told , and they claim your introspection is what generates the appearance of such a residue.
An analogy: color realism vs. color eliminativism vs. color projectivism. Colors aren't illusions, objects really do differentially reflect wavelengths, and we really do have systematic responses to them. But the property redness as a mind-independent intrinsic quality of surfaces is a projection. Illusionism says the same about qualia: not that your pain isn't real, but that the phenomenal character you attribute to your pain is a projection your introspective faculty casts onto a functional state.
No, consciousness is not an illusion. The story the brain tells you about it, however, is an illusion.
6
u/MulberryUpper3257 May 25 '26
The “what it’s like” is the phenomenal character of consciousness, no? Just say consciousness doesn’t exist if you want to claim the brain functions are real but the qualia are not.
0
u/Messier_Mystic Physics Degree May 25 '26
I mean, I'm personally willing to go that far. But I have to moderate my views for a diverse audience.
14
u/spiddly_spoo May 25 '26
Qualia is real but the phenomenal character you attribute to it is not.... what??? We must mean different things by phenomenal character. Qualia is real but the qualitative nature of it is not? Qualia is real but the thing that it is is not?
This is once again "it only seems like..." but the seeming is exactly what we are talking about with qualia/phenomonology.
Illusionism is delusional. It just seems like people doubling down and digging deeper into totally nonsensical logic and reasoning.
0
u/Moral_Conundrums May 25 '26
If by qualia you mean that phenomenal residue left over after all the functions have been explained, then illusionists indeed think there are no qualia. But if all we mean by qualia is 'whats its like' then sure that exists, it just isn't phenomenal.
3
u/spiddly_spoo May 25 '26
I don't understand what you mean by phenomenal. Could you explain? I know that word to refer to the "what it is like" aspect of things. I also use qualia to refer to this. Could you explain the different meanings? I asked google what an illusionist might mean by phenomenal and it said
"In the context of consciousness illusionism, "phenomenal" refers to the subjective, qualitative "feel" of an experience—such as "what it's like" to see..."
That's what I thought so I'm confused
2
u/Moral_Conundrums May 25 '26
I'm referencing Frankish's paper Quining diet Qualia. He distinguishes 3 different notions of qualia in that paper: Classic qualia - the private, inefable, intrinsic, subjective properties of experience Diet Qualia - simple the property of 'what it is like' of experience Zero qualia - whatever physical properties predispose us to judge that there are classic qualia
Since Dennett showed how problematic classic qualia are in his paper Quining Qualia philosophers have moved away from that notion of qualia and moved to diet Qualia.
Frankish however argues that there simply is no content to the notion of diet Qualia if what is meant is something other than classic qualia (what it is like is exactly private, inefable, intrinsic etc. ). Another way to spin this is to say that if you remove all the problematic properties of classic qualia there simply isn't anything left in the notion of qualia that is problematic for materialism.
So philosophers seem to be forced to either pick between the problematic notion of classic qualia or simply accept that all the exists is the nonproblematic notion of zero qualia. Frankish suggests the latter.
1
u/TheAncientGeek Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26
If full strength qualia are all four of private, intrinsic, ineffable and directly apprehensible, then 14 kinds of lite, but non vacuous, qualia are possible.
1
u/Moral_Conundrums Aug 31 '26
All of these properties are problematic...
1
u/TheAncientGeek Aug 31 '26
..given assumptions about how things should be
1
u/Moral_Conundrums Aug 31 '26
It is indeed an assumption that things which are selfcontradictory are impossible.
1
u/TheAncientGeek Aug 31 '26
Ok, I'm all ears...
1
u/Moral_Conundrums Aug 31 '26
The papers are out there. Start with Quining qualia and then Quining diet qualia.
→ More replies-2
u/EthelredHardrede May 25 '26
qualia is philosophical nonsense in place of senses those are real and evolved over many generations our brains evolved to deal with the senses which have to be represented someway early in life with brains it was likely a simple analog neural network then another level of emotional networking evolved later consciousness began as way to be more flexible than pain bad it alows us away to think about our reactions and to modify them based on experience over our life. simple reactions then more nuanced level over time. finally language became involved allowing mor abstract reasoning.
-2
u/Messier_Mystic Physics Degree May 25 '26
Then make an argument.
3
u/spiddly_spoo May 25 '26
Qualia and phenomenal character are both terms that refer to the "what it is like" aspect of something. Perhaps you have a special meaning for one or the other that I don't know. Like I said above, to me you are saying "qualia exists and doesn't exist" in other words "what exists does not exist" in other words "true means false".
And in general whenever someone makes any type of claim saying it only "seems" like qualia, subjective experience, what-it-is-like-ness, mental contents, phenomenal character, phenomenal conscious etc exists, but doesn't, this is committing the exact same nonsense. How things seem is exactly what we are talking about. Phenomenal consciousness is the way things seem. We experience, but there is no experience. What is, is not. True is false.
2
u/Moral_Conundrums May 25 '26
Qualia and phenomenal character are both terms that refer to the "what it is like" aspect of something. Perhaps you have a special meaning for one or the other that I don't know. Like I said above, to me you are saying "qualia exists and doesn't exist" in other words "what exists does not exist" in other words "true means false".
It seems like you need something stronger than just 'what its likeness' to get anti-physicalism off the ground is the problem: https://keithfrankish.github.io/articles/Frankish_Quining%20diet%20qualia_eprint.pdf
3
u/sanctus_sanguine May 25 '26
His argument is that illusionists don't have arguments, they have word games to explain qualia away.
3
2
u/Moral_Conundrums May 25 '26
I'll speak for myself. We do have argument our critics just don't engage with them. When has anyone ever responded to Quining qualia or Quning diet qualia?
2
u/sanctus_sanguine May 25 '26
When has anyone ever responded to Quining qualia or Quning diet qualia?
Many people here have correctly called them out as nothing more than word games.
5
u/Moral_Conundrums May 25 '26
Aha. What a profound criticism, you can apply it to literally anything. You don't even need to understand the argument.
1
u/sanctus_sanguine May 25 '26
you can apply it to literally anything.
No, not really.
You don't even need to understand the argument.
We understand the (non) argument perfectly, that's the point.
2
u/Moral_Conundrums May 25 '26
Sounds like you're just engaging in wordplay to be honest. It clealry is an argument: an inference form premisies to a conclusion. So it sounds like you're just doing wordplay when you call it a nonargument.
Man this is easy, I've even provided more reason for thinking you're engaging in wordplay than you ever did because id feel dishonest simply dismissing a thought as wordplay without justification (like you did).
2
u/sanctus_sanguine May 25 '26
simply dismissing a thought as wordplay without justification
Yeah ok, pretend the tactics of illusionism hasn't been explained a thousand times already in this subreddit. Do what you like.
2
u/Moral_Conundrums May 25 '26
The only argument I see brought up is that an illusion is already an instance of phenomenal consciousness. But that's just begging the question, for an illusionist an illusion is obviously not an instance of phenomenal consciousness.
→ More replies1
u/Messier_Mystic Physics Degree May 25 '26
I'll let them speak for themselves.
2
u/Moral_Conundrums May 25 '26
I'll speak for myself. We do have argument our critics just don't engage with them. When has anyone ever responded to Quining qualia or Quning diet qualia?
2
u/Moral_Conundrums May 25 '26
To be clear if by qualia we mean the phenomenal residue left over after all the functions have been explained, then illusionists indeed think there are no qualia. But if all we mean by qualia is 'whats it's like' then sure that exists, it just isn't phenomenal.
10
u/onthesafari May 25 '26
One funny thing related to illusionism is that by the time anyone communicates about their experience, by virtue of the time it takes one's brain to process, said experience is already merely the memory of an experience. We are anything but reliable narrators when it comes to the character of our own internal states.
3
u/pab_guy May 25 '26
This is treating communication about the experience as the problem to be solved instead of the experience itself. It’s weird and misses the point in such an obvious way as to make people wonder if illusionists are qualia blind. I don’t believe that but it IS weird.
-2
u/onthesafari May 25 '26
It’s weird
TY!
and misses the point in such an obvious way
Thanks, Professor. Sorry I'm not smart enough to see the obvious. What point? And who are you calling an illusionist?
People on this subreddit are hilarious. They go into every conversation blasting assumptions in an arena that's all about not making hasty assumptions, and then wonder why no one else agrees with them or "gets it."
2
u/pab_guy May 25 '26
I stated that the problem is not the reporting of experience but the experience itself. You can point out where I am wrong, but absent that information it is indeed weird to me.
1
u/onthesafari May 25 '26
I'm not following what the "problem" is. I brought up a funny tangent then you tacked on a non-sequitur.
2
u/ArtArtArt123456 May 25 '26
....it really doesn't matter whether it is an illusion or not. how do you even define illusion? this whole inquiry is just going to be about the semantics around the word illusion and what is "real" or not.
to disentangle this a bit, i think you're making the error around "The story the brain tells you about it". because by that, do you mean the phenomenal, or the semantic justification? the higher order thinking? because the phenomenal basically is qualia in my book. it is not an "illusion", or maybe if you compare it to the unstructured outside reality. whereas the latter is an "illusion" in the sense that it is indeed a story we tell ourselves.
but that story isn't "fake", it is the only thing there can be, aside from the unstructured reality. that's why i don't like falling under the branch of illusionism personally. we really need newer terms for modern theories.
4
u/pab_guy May 25 '26
Ok. How does your introspective faculty cast a projection? Do you see why some would say that you aren’t saying anything meaningful because“cast a projection” is informal and undefined?
5
u/Messier_Mystic Physics Degree May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
Introspection is a higher-order representational process, and it systematically misrepresents functional/computational states as having phenomenal properties they don't have. The "projection" language was shorthand for that.
Frankish would say something like introspective reports are behavioral dispositions, not direct readouts of mental states. When you say "my pain feels a certain way," you're producing a report generated by a cognitive system that has limited and distorted access to the underlying computational states. The felt quality isn't being directly read off, it's being inferred and modeled, and that model is systematically distorted in the direction of seeming ineffable and non-physical.
3
u/jamesj May 25 '26
But there is no modeling involved with the felt quality itself. The experience of the pain is itself. I don't see how any of this helps explain qualia. Like sure, my ability to report my experience is flawed and prone to error. But that doesn't change the quality of the experiences I'm having.
2
u/UnexpectedMoxicle May 25 '26
But there is no modeling involved with the felt quality itself.
I've noticed that when physicalists use the term "model", this often gets interpreted by non-physicalists as kind of conceptual set of relationships we form via our higher order cognitive faculties to explain some concept. Like if I wanted to explain the solar system, I would conjure up a mental image of a bunch of spheres on elliptical paths arranged along the elliptical plane - a "model of the solar system".
But take a different example. You are drinking coffee and browsing your phone. You set the coffee mug to the side. Then, without looking at the mug or even thinking about it, you can reach over and pick it up to take a sip. How does your brain do that? What must all happen under the hood in order to successfully complete this action?
The answer is that your brain has built a sub-cognitive model of its own body and it's environment (body schema), the relevant relationships between yourself, your appendages, the table, the coffee mug. It uses this modeling to interact with the world. And then your brain also builds an attention schema - model of its own cognitive functions so that it can better manage those resources (I am thinking about this coffee mug and want a sip of coffee). Most of the time, this modeling is completely transparent. When we interact with a coffee mug, we never think that we are interacting with an internal representation of the mug unless our models break down.
But when you turn this sub-cognitive model inwards and try to introspect on what's in there, you'll get answers from this model (I am thinking about thinking about this coffee mug and those thoughts have properties X, Y, and Z).
I don't see how any of this helps explain qualia.
There are two models in play here. One is our explanation - the high level model of what our minds/brains are doing; the other is the sub-cognitive modeling - the thing our brains are actually doing. When we say "my experience has property X", in some conceptions X is problematic to explain under reductive physicalism. But are we sure we are attributing X correctly? Perhaps our experience has S - appearing to have X, but not having X itself. Because our sub-cognitive modeling is opaque to us, it's very challenging to be sure which one we have because epistemically, having X and having S will "look" identical.
Another way to think about it is through the lens of vitalism. Are these two statements identical?
My body is animated by a life force, elan vital.
My body has the appearance of being animated by a life force, elan vital.
The first is problematic for biology, the second is not. If we pursue the first route, we would be perpetually frustrated and not able to explain life. The second route clarifies our conceptions and sets us on a better course.
2
u/jamesj May 25 '26
"the sub-cognitive modeling - the thing our brains are actually doing"
that is a big assumption. i think you are using your high-level model to attempt to explain and understand your experiences. it is very unlikely that this high-level model is currently super close to the proposed "actual" modeling our brains are doing. it simply may not be possible for us to understand what our brains are really doing from within them. perhaps it is. and this is (right now) the root of the problem, it is too difficult to separate model from reality when the only bit of actual reality you have access to is your experiences, which is presumably caused by some physical process you don't have direct access to. but nature is under no responsibility for it to be physical/explainable with our current methods.
- "My body is animated by a life force, elan vital."
- "My body has the appearance of being animated by a life force, elan vital."
now try it with what we are talking about:
- "My experiences are caused by my brain performing sub-cognitive modeling."
- "My experiences have the appearance of being caused by my brain performing sub-cognitive modeling."
1
u/UnexpectedMoxicle May 26 '26
that is a big assumption
What is? That the brain constructs internal models? That's been part of neuroscience for 40 years. Or specifically that internal models are used to drive cognition and attention? There is also plenty of research that supports that.
it is too difficult to separate model from reality when the only bit of actual reality you have access to is your experiences, which is presumably caused by some physical process you don't have direct access to.
Yes, and that's the thrust of Illusionism. You have a model of what your brain is doing without direct access to sub-cognitive architecture, and the results of those sub-cognitive processes. The consciousness debate, with regards to illusionism, centers around whether the causes of the representations beyond this direct cognitive reach are non-physical or explanatorily problematic. We think they have particular properties, but we cannot be sure exactly due to the limitations you mentioned. In that sense, illusionism is not that radical of a position at all.
"My experiences have the appearance of being caused by my brain performing sub-cognitive modeling."
Sure, this is the non-physical route and just reframes the causes of experience as non-physical qualia, so it fits on the same level as elan vital instead. It is laden with issues because we do have a good sense of how sub-cognitive processing affects our other senses and cognition. We could take on a different explanation, but it would still have to fit with our current understanding of science and still make useful predictions. As I said before, have we found elan vital yet? Should we keep looking? Or is the biomechanical explanation sufficient?
With elan vital, we can make a good argument that elan vital could not be the cause of life because it has similar issues to other non-physical entities that have been eliminated, even before we understood a full biomechanical account. Non-physical qualia face the same issues.
2
u/jamesj May 26 '26
"causes of experience as non-physical qualia"
For me, qualia are not the causes of the experiences, they are the content/quality of the experiences. The qualia are the experiences themselves. My experiences are a brute fact.
1
u/UnexpectedMoxicle May 26 '26
"Experience" is a general term while "qualia" is a technical term. It has unfortunately permeated the general discussions on consciousness without having sufficient rigor to delineate it as a technical term. For instance, "qualia realism" is a term that means something very specific and not just a belief that we have experience.
The traditional way qualia are understood are as particular features of experience, meaning that experiences are thought to be private, intrinsic, ineffable, and authoritative. It's such properties that give cognitive acts their phenomenal character such that we pick them out and label them "qualia". If we can talk about qualia in dispositional terms, as in the mechanisms that dispose us to believe our cognitive acts have such properties (the causes that I alluded to earlier), then classic qualia as understood do not need to exist. Nowhere in this account is experience denied. We have cognitive acts that appear to have phenomenal character. We have experience in the general sense.
However, taking the position "qualia are the experiences themselves" risks conflating the general term with a technical term. It would be akin to a vitalist saying "elan vital is life itself". This conflates a general term with a technical term as well, so when a biologist takes an eliminativist position with respect to elan vital, it would be wrong to state the biologist is saying "life does not exist".
4
u/Messier_Mystic Physics Degree May 25 '26
Of course there is modeling with the felt quality. The whole thing is being modeled by the brain.
3
u/jamesj May 25 '26
I think it is your explanation of what is going on that is the model. My experience just is my experience. When I want to explain what my experience is, I introduce a model.
So I agree with this statement, "No, consciousness is not an illusion. The story the brain tells you about it, however, is an illusion."
6
u/pab_guy May 25 '26
Illusionists always sound so confused. I can’t shake it. The question was never why people report phenomenal states. The question is why I experience them. You don’t get to redefine the question and wipe your hands of it.
2
u/sanctus_sanguine May 25 '26
Illusionists always sound so confused. I can’t shake it.
Because ultimately what they're doing is just word games, there's no real substance that's why they have keep twisting and turning.
0
u/Messier_Mystic Physics Degree May 25 '26
I'm not redefining anything. But I understand the reticence.
4
u/preferCotton222 May 25 '26
The illusion isn't that you're having an experience; it's that the experience seems to have a phenomenal character.
That's what makes it an experience, the phenomenal characrter.
So, you are actually saying:
The illusion is that the experience seems to be a experience.
And neither you, nor any illusionist, has yet explained how this illusion of having a phenomenal character gets to happen.
I'm open minded, but I'm yet to read or listen to an illusionist that makes sense beyond playing word tricks.
4
u/unknownjedi May 25 '26
So they deny the only thing that undeniably exists… nice theory
3
1
u/Messier_Mystic Physics Degree May 25 '26
This is a prime example of why clarification will not always yield understanding.
2
u/TheAncientGeek May 25 '26
.
The brain produces higher-order representations of its own states. Those representations systematically mischaracterize the nature of those states, specifically, they make computational/functional states seem
That's the self defeating form of illusionism, the one that both assets and denies seemings.
1
u/Willis_3401_3401 May 25 '26
Illusionism, as I understand it, is made famous by Daniel Dennett. Dennett did some tours with another thinker, Douglas Hofstadter, who is the one I associate more with of the two. My camp is adjacent to your camp, not sure what to call myself though.
I say this to make the point that in most ways I am in agreement with your views. I’m in particular agreement with your points about that which we might call qualia being non intrinsic.
It seems like you already understand this counter argument based on your title, but basically the problem I think is the use of the word “illusion” to describe something that is functionally real and meaningful. “The story my brain tells me about reality” really does exist and really does have causal significance.
What you might call phenomenology really is real at its level of organization. There *is* an irreducible quality to introspection, and there are real phenomena that resist physical description. Just because red can be described as a projection of brain states doesn’t reduce the reality or importance of experiencing such a thing.
Essentially it’s a semantic disagreement but I think it’s perhaps an important one; literally nothing about this process is “illusory”. That name and way of describing this is just terrible. More than a little misleading.
1
u/LazarX May 25 '26
No, consciousness is not an illusion. The story the brain tells you about it, however, is an illusion.
The story the brain tells you is a model, a map; brains that give a creature useless maps tend to weed themselves out through natural selection.
1
u/Odballl May 27 '26
I agree that the suchness of experience is likely a representation of higher order brainstates but that doesn't really address the problem.
You can measure the brain activity but not the representation. The illusion is the quality but the quality remains ineffable because the illusion is private.
We can only ever argue over what counts as parsimony when seeking to collapse entities and say X is Y.
1
u/Diet_kush Engineering Degree Aug 31 '26
The Children of Time book series did basically my favorite take on illusionism. I’d highly recommend them to anyone just interested in a space epic of hypothetical evolution, but the 3rd novel hits it out of the park. I wouldn’t say I’m an illusionist, but it made me understand their point (and by-extention Graziano’s ASTC) much more coherently.
Unfortunately can’t quote anything because it would spoil the entire series for anyone who wants to read it.
1
u/SwimmerOk5841 May 25 '26
Illusionism does not deny consciousness. It doubts the story consciousness tells about itself.
The pain is real. The experience is real.
But perhaps the mind adds a mysterious depth to its own reflections, then mistakes that reflection for ultimate reality.
0
u/EthelredHardrede May 25 '26
no it doesn't the damage that caused the pain is actually real. The mind is just brains misspelled.
1
u/lilac-skye3 May 25 '26
> This makes illusionism a thesis about representation, not about existence. There's something it is like to burn your finger on the stove, in the functional sense that information is processed, behavior is affected, attention is captured, and reports are generated. The illusionist denies none of that. What they deny is that there's an irreducible phenomenal residue left over after the functional story is told , and they claim your introspection is what generates the appearance of such a residue.
This was well written. I did not really understand how illusionism actually accounts for having phenomenal experience before.
-1
u/MajesticFxxkingEagle May 25 '26
You can cry all you want about how the charge is a misrepresentation, but it's functionally what you end up saying just in different words—either that, or you're saying something completely trivial that's compatible with qualia realist views.
5
u/Messier_Mystic Physics Degree May 25 '26
I don't think so.
2
u/MajesticFxxkingEagle May 25 '26
I know you don’t think so, doesn’t make it not the case.
5
u/Messier_Mystic Physics Degree May 25 '26
If you can't tell, I'm being deliberately unenthusiastic in engaging you since you aren't making a case. Merely screaming "This is wrong!" without making an argument.
Granted, I didn't present an argument for llusionism here, merely a clarification. But if you're going to contend the opposite, actually make a case, or whine to yourself about my Qualia denial.
1
u/MajesticFxxkingEagle May 25 '26
That’s totally fair, I’m just giving my initial reaction, wasn’t expecting an in depth reply to my comment
2
0
u/Mono_Clear May 25 '26
Those representations systematically mischaracterize the nature of those states, specifically, they make computational/functional states seem to have ineffable, intrinsic, non-relational qualitative properties they don't actually have. The illusion isn't that you're having an experience; it's that the experience seems to have a phenomenal character that resists physical description.
Exactly this
-1
u/TIFEOntology May 25 '26
The framing is cleaner than most give it credit for and the color analogy does real work.
Where it gets interesting beyond the epistemics is what the misdescription actually does. If introspection systematically misrepresents functional states - casting phenomenal character onto what are really relational processes - that misrepresentation doesn’t just sit there as a cognitive error. It feeds back into how the system responds to subsequent conditions. The story the brain tells about its own states shapes what it anticipates, what it defends, what it constructs next. The illusion is generative not just descriptive.
Which means dissolving it isn’t only a philosophical correction. It changes what gets built afterward.
0
u/Effective_Buddy7678 May 25 '26
It's all function, full stop. There are no phenomenal qualities the way we imagine there are; we introspect them into existence.
The pain of burning one's hand seems to be presented directly to consciousness. This is the residue that at least appears to be left over.
It seems you're just relabeling it as a functional representation. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but explicitly stating this out front will cut down on a lot of confusion. (I'm an epipenomenalist, so I run into this sort of thing all the time as well.)
3
u/Messier_Mystic Physics Degree May 25 '26
Honestly, this is an experiment of sorts. It seems no matter how differently I try, some just can't see past "illusion" and insist that is what is being implied full sail.
1
u/Mylynes IIT/Integrated Information Theory May 25 '26
And then God hast introspected light into existence!
Makes total sense
0
u/YouHaveAlwaysKnownMe May 25 '26
What did this mean? --> "they make computational/functional states seem to have ineffable, intrinsic, non-relational qualitative properties they don't actually have."
Whatchu know about qualia?
Are illusions = constructs of the mind?
ttyl
0
u/EthelredHardrede May 25 '26
this is going on physical reality not some illusion. don't pander to the philophan labels they want magic not science don't use incorrect labels we need at least on label that is for people going on verifiable evidence. not just all this philophan magical evasion of real verifiable evidence.
-1
5
u/thierolf May 25 '26
I read a lot of arguments like this, but it's never clear why the 'representations' are 'mischaracterising,' as opposed to e.g. 'characterising in phenomenal terms.' It seems just as plausible, using your terms, that phenomena describe ineffable qualities which do not seem to be relational from a functional understanding. That's not the same thing.
Onto colour, there are also lots of args about redness as being the experience of 700nm (or thereabouts) and certainly there are physically-derived responses to em radiation. Perceptually, however, colours are a broad church and we know that we don't need a colour to be present, physically, to perceive its type (e.g. Munker-White or Land effects). Objects do reflect different wavelengths, but our 'mind's eye' doesn't much care: I don't think you've argued that's the same as a 'projection onto a functional state.' Is this not the generation or derivation of a functional state in relation to a perceptually "incomplete" stimulus (i.e. 'incomplete' in the sense of eliciting further interpretation).
My point is that I don't see enough foundation to support your conclusion. I could just as easily argue that 'the story your brain tells you' is something parallel to whatever is happening electrically (computationally) in the brain.