Illusionism doesn’t deny consciousness, but instead denies that consciousness is phenomenal. Whatever consciousness turns out to be could still play the same role in ethics. This wouldn’t specifically require a move towards desire satisfactionism.
However, one way to motivate desire satisfactionism is that desires — if understood broadly enough to mean any appearance that something matters, is good, bad, better or worse, etc., including pleasure, unpleasantness, more narrowly understood desires, moral views, goals, etc. — capture all the ways anything can “care” about or be motivated by anything. I discuss this a bit more here. They could also ground a form of morally relevant consciousness, at least minimally, if it’s all gradualist under illusionism anyway (see also my comment here). So, then they could capture all morally relevant consciousness, i.e. all the ways anything can consciously care about anything.
I don’t really see why we should care about more narrowly defined desires to the exclusion of hedonic states, say (or vice versa). It seems to me that both matter. But I don’t know if Carl or others intend to exclude hedonic states.
Illusionism doesn’t deny consciousness, but instead denies that consciousness is phenomenal. Whatever consciousness turns out to be could still play the same role in ethics. This wouldn’t specifically require a move towards desire satisfactionism.
However, one way to motivate desire satisfactionism is that desires — if understood broadly enough to mean any appearance that something matters, is good, bad, better or worse, etc., including pleasure, unpleasantness, more narrowly understood desires, moral views, goals, etc. — capture all the ways anything can “care” about or be motivated by anything. I discuss this a bit more here. They could also ground a form of morally relevant consciousness, at least minimally, if it’s all gradualist under illusionism anyway (see also my comment here). So, then they could capture all morally relevant consciousness, i.e. all the ways anything can consciously care about anything.
I don’t really see why we should care about more narrowly defined desires to the exclusion of hedonic states, say (or vice versa). It seems to me that both matter. But I don’t know if Carl or others intend to exclude hedonic states.