I think illusionists haven’t worked out the precise details, and that’s more the domain of cognitive neuroscience. I think most illusionists take a gradualist approach,[1] and would say it can be more or less the case that a system experiences states worth describing like “frustration of a desire” or “negative attitude of a dislike”. And we can assign more moral weight the more true it seems.[2]
We can ask about:
how the states affect them in lowish-order ways, e.g. negative valence changes our motivations (motivational anhedonia), biases our interpretations of stimuli and attention, has various physiological effects that we experience (or at least the specific negative emotional states do; they may differ by emotional state),
what kinds of beliefs they have about these states (or the objects of the states, e.g. the things they desire), to what extent they’re worth describing as beliefs, and the effects of these beliefs,
how else they’re aware of these states and in what relation to other concepts (e.g. a self-narrative), to what extent that’s worth describing as (that type of) awareness, and the effects of this awareness.
I think illusionists haven’t worked out the precise details, and that’s more the domain of cognitive neuroscience. I think most illusionists take a gradualist approach,[1] and would say it can be more or less the case that a system experiences states worth describing like “frustration of a desire” or “negative attitude of a dislike”. And we can assign more moral weight the more true it seems.[2]
We can ask about:
how the states affect them in lowish-order ways, e.g. negative valence changes our motivations (motivational anhedonia), biases our interpretations of stimuli and attention, has various physiological effects that we experience (or at least the specific negative emotional states do; they may differ by emotional state),
what kinds of beliefs they have about these states (or the objects of the states, e.g. the things they desire), to what extent they’re worth describing as beliefs, and the effects of these beliefs,
how else they’re aware of these states and in what relation to other concepts (e.g. a self-narrative), to what extent that’s worth describing as (that type of) awareness, and the effects of this awareness.
Tomasik (2014-2017, various other writings here), Muehlhauser, 2017 (sections 2.3.2 and 6.7), Frankish (2023, 51:00-1:02:25), Dennett (Rothman, 2017, 2018, p.168-169, 2019, 2021, 1:16:30-1:18:00), Dung (2022) and Wilterson and Graziano, 2021.
This is separate from their intensity or strength.