Consciousness, at least to each of us individually, is demonstrably real.
Consciousness is a perception and perceptions are not illusions, even if we misunderstand what we are perceiving.
If I send you a message that says "I am not sending you a message", we can argue about what it means, but not that you got a message from me, no matter how much you trust (Edit: Or distrust) what I say to you.
Even if you don't believe you have consciousness, if you perceive you disbelieve in consciousness, then too bad: you have it.
--
In contrast, free will is a completely different and easily explained kind of phenomena.
Questions and opinions about free will predate any discovery of evidence for such a thing. (There is no evidence yet!) That is a critical clue.
Free will is just a typical case of motivated reasoning. We believe some things without any rational support because they make us feel better about ourselves, the universe, allow us to focus on more practical matters. Not because they are true, or even a valid concept.
But understanding that free will is a product of motivated reasoning suggests that explaining free will is just evidence-free motivated reasoning will not settle the issue. Because people will continue to be motivated to want it to be true, they will find it hard to simply label it as self-serving, often-useful irrationality and move on.
That’s just an illusion to me. The word conscious is a subjective construct and awareness has always been associated with it as a necessary role in expressing consciousness exists. Well if a person is just metaphorically a domino like everything encompassing his/her existence and there can be conflict between the parties to a significant degree. Then it’s arguable that neither person is truly aware but just similar to a character in a cutscene of a video game. All of us just acting out without any control to what the story entails. Similar for the discussion at hand. I think it’s a philosophical issue and where human language attempts at making it seem more possible than it being an illusion but is in fact not the case.
Your domino reference suggests you continue to confuse free will with consciousness.
Free will is the idea that out minds might somehow have a self-generated non-deterministic ability to make decisions that is unmoored or constrained from causes that others can see or investigate.
This is either trivially not true (as in the "many worlds" deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics), or trivially true in a weak sense (quantum mechanics non-deterministic interpretation) i.e. our decisions are controlled by quantum randomness, but not by any special property of our minds.
There is zero evidence of "free will" and yet people have conjectured they might have it for as long as we have records of people's introspection. This phenomenon is easy to understand: it is a typical example of motivated reasoning. We have a biological imperative to desire freedom of action and though. "Free will" is the ultimate fantasy of freedom of thought. So regardless of all lack of evidence, people will be drawn to, and depending on rationality, adopt a strong belief, in their "free will".
So we can dispense with that self-motivated "illusion" based on good science.
In that sense, there is an illusion as you say.
---
That leaves your point (if this rephrasing of your point is acceptable to you) that self-awareness in a functional sense does not necessarily imply an entity has the qualia of self-awareness, i.e. consciousness.
I also agree with that. Somewhere between us and a deck of cards saying things like "I am conscious" is a mechanism we could build that had some level of self-referential ability, could say things to you or me that looked like consciousness to us, but which didn't really understand itself. And therefore could not actually be conscious.
We can agree that their can be an illusion of consciousness. But note the illusion is to external observers. The limited entity itself has no subjective awareness of the illusion or anything else.
---
Which is why consciousness cannot be an illusion to an entity that experiences it. It is one of the very few (the only?) completely direct experience we have, with no intermediary.
If you have the qualia of self-awareness, then you have it. There is no illusion of having it. If you don't have consciousness, you cannot experience the qualia of an illusion of consciousness.
I appreciate you writing all that for me. I'm now uncertain where I fall with my position. I don't really think I'm aware because everything is predetermined and even if randomness is thrown into the equation it doesn't matter. I know you think I'm mixing free will with consciousness but I just think a person cannot be aware if they're always going to process a certain way because of the starting point of the universe. It just seems like I'm a sim in a video game. Where everything is completely programmed out for whatever to happen and I cannot say that either a character in a video game or I, would be resembling what consciousness means for me. In any case I'm undecided now.
Consciousness is a perception and perceptions are not illusions, even if we misunderstand what we are perceiving.
If I send you a message that says "I am not sending you a message", we can argue about what it means, but not that you got a message from me, no matter how much you trust (Edit: Or distrust) what I say to you.
Even if you don't believe you have consciousness, if you perceive you disbelieve in consciousness, then too bad: you have it.
--
In contrast, free will is a completely different and easily explained kind of phenomena.
Questions and opinions about free will predate any discovery of evidence for such a thing. (There is no evidence yet!) That is a critical clue.
Free will is just a typical case of motivated reasoning. We believe some things without any rational support because they make us feel better about ourselves, the universe, allow us to focus on more practical matters. Not because they are true, or even a valid concept.
But understanding that free will is a product of motivated reasoning suggests that explaining free will is just evidence-free motivated reasoning will not settle the issue. Because people will continue to be motivated to want it to be true, they will find it hard to simply label it as self-serving, often-useful irrationality and move on.