> By this reasoning, everything we perceive, including physical reality is an "illusion" Yes and no. An illusion is technically a perception that does not corr

> By this reasoning, everything we perceive, including physical reality is an "illusion" Yes and no. An illusion is technically a perception that does not correspond to reality. So it's not an illusion to say there's a table in front of you, but some of the table's apparent properties might turn out to be illusions of sorts, eg. its solidity might suggests that it's solid all the way through, but we know it's 99% empty space and the perception of solidity arises from the exchange of photons. This is the kind of illusion that consciousness would end up being: some process that useful in evolutionary terms, but which reduces to something completely different and mechanical in terms of particle exchanges, and which at a high-level leaves us with the belief that we have subjective experience. For one possible model of how this would work, see: https://pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119 https://pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119