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Summary

In contemporary analytic philosophy of mind panpsychism is interpreted as the thesis that ‘all fundamental entities are conscious’: whatever the fundamentalia are, there is something which it is like to be them. This view has evolved as a response to the problem of the place of consciousness in nature, and to the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. The combination problem is the most significant and pressing problem for the panpsychist. Stated generally, the combination problem is the problem of how precisely the fundamental conscious minds come to compose, constitute, or give rise to some further, additional conscious mind (especially our own). The reason this problem is so pressing is that it threatens to undermine any theoretical advantage that panpsychism may have had over dualism or physicalism, i.e. the combination problem undermines panpsychism as a response to the ‘hard problem’ and the place of consciousness is nature. The combination problem has been presented in several ways and broken down into more specific problems and arguments over the years. It is usually taken to be the case that every aspect of mentality can ground some form of combination problem. A recent taxonomy suggests there is: the subject combination problem, grounded in the observation that experiences are had by subjects; the quality combination problem, grounded in the fact that experience involves a certain qualitatively; the structure combination problem, grounded in the observation that conscious experience has a complex structure. Some of these aspects of mentality generate more pernicious combination problems than others, and it is generally accepted to be the case that the ‘subject summing’ problem is the most pernicious problem facing contemporary panpsychists. Not all forms of the combination problem have the general form ‘how do the mental entities Xs constitute some mental entity Y’, asking how some mental entities add up. Many others ask ‘how could some mental entity Y be composed of some mental entities Xs’, the problem here being that many of the features of our mental lives seem to be unanalysable, simple, or non-decomposable. All forms of the combination problem require responses from the panpsychist, but not all responses will be combinatorial in nature. Non-combinatorial form of panpsychism (viz. ‘emergent’ or ‘identity’ forms of panpsychism) will not face combination problems.

Key works

Most key texts on panpsychism mention the combination problem, at least in passing. There are, however, fuller and more detailed treatments of it. The following are some of those treatments. William James’ ‘The Principles of Psychology’ James 1890 contains a highly-cited treatment of the combination problem.  William Seager Seager 1995 cites James as the source of the problem, at the same time coining the name ‘the combination problem’ and bringing it back into mainstream discourse. James, however, also gives an extensive discussion in his ‘A Pluralistic Universe’ James 1909. In this later text James claims that the problem is insoluble, and he also focuses on what are often called ‘de-combination problems’ too – James’ focus was absolute idealism as well as mind-dust theory. Timothy Sprigge also gives an extensive treatment of the combination problem in his 1983 work ‘The Vindication of Absolute Idealism’ Sprigge 1983. Here Sprigge goes over James’ discussions in more detail and also introduces some solutions and new problems himself. Michael Lockwood’s paper ‘the Grain Problem’ Lockwood 1993 is another treatment of the combination problem, however Lockwood’s focus is on the structural and qualitative combination problems. Recent discussions of the combination problem include David Chalmers’ paper Chalmers 2016, along with Philip Goff’s chapters 7 and 8 in Goff 2017, and Luke Roelof’s Roelofs 2019.

Introductions

Chalmers’ Chalmers 2016 paper focusing on the combination problem is a very good introduction and sets the scene for most of the contemporary debate. Along with outlining the problem, it also outlines some potential solutions for the panpsychist and assesses their viability. Michael Lockwood’s Lockwood 1993 is also a good introduction to the problem, along with chapters 7&8 in Philip Goff’s Goff 2017. Luke Roelofs Roelofs 2019 introduces many of the combination problems, along with assessing their basis in intuition and potential solutions to them. David Skrbina’s Skrbina 2005 history of panpsychism also contains many introductory passages on the combination problem, seen at different stages within history and in the hands of different philosophers.

 

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55 found
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  1. Pan(proto)psychism and the Relative-State Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.Yu Feng - manuscript
    This paper connects the hard problem of consciousness to the interpretation of quantum mechanics. It shows that constitutive Russellian pan(proto)psychism (CRP) is compatible with Everett’s relative-state (RS) interpretation. Despite targeting different problems, CRP and RS are related, for they both establish symmetry between micro- and macrosystems, and both call for a deflationary account of Subject. The paper starts from formal arguments that demonstrate the incompatibility of CRP with alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics, followed by showing that RS entails Russellian pan(proto)psychism. (...)
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  2. Panpsychism and AI consciousness.Marcus Arvan & Corey J. Maley - 2022 - Synthese 200 (3):1-22.
    This article argues that if panpsychism is true, then there are grounds for thinking that digitally-based artificial intelligence may be incapable of having coherent macrophenomenal conscious experiences. Section 1 briefly surveys research indicating that neural function and phenomenal consciousness may be both analog in nature. We show that physical and phenomenal magnitudes—such as rates of neural firing and the phenomenally experienced loudness of sounds—appear to covary monotonically with the physical stimuli they represent, forming the basis for an analog relationship between (...)
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  3. A Reply to S Siddharth’s ‘Against Phenomenal Bonding’.Gregory Miller - 2022 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 18 (1):(D1)5-18.
    In this journal S Siddharth has recently argued that the phenomenal bonding response to the subject summing argument for panpsychism is question begging, therefore we should reject constitutive forms of panpsychism. The argument specifically focuses on the proposals of Goff and Miller. In this reply, I show that the argument is unsound.
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  4. Russellian Physicalism and its Dilemma.Lok-Chi Chan - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178:2043-2062.
    Russellian monism – an influential doctrine proposed by Russell (1927/1992) – is roughly the view that the natural sciences can only ever tell us about the causal, dispositional, and structural properties of physical entities and not about their categorical properties, and, moreover, that our qualia are constituted by categorical properties. Recently, Stoljar (2001a, 2001b), Strawson (2008), Montero (2010, 2015), Alter and Nagasawa (2012), and Chalmers (2015) have attempted to develop this doctrine into a version of physicalism. Russellian monism faces the (...)
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  5. What it Might Be like to Be a Group Agent.Max F. Kramer - 2021 - Neuroethics 14 (3):437-447.
    Many theorists have defended the claim that collective entities can attain genuine agential status. If collectives can be agents, this opens up a further question: can they be conscious? That is, is there something that it is like to be them? Eric Schwitzgebel argues that yes, collective entities, may well be significantly conscious. Others, including Kammerer, Tononi and Koch, and List reject the claim. List does so on the basis of Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory of consciousness. I argue here that (...)
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  6. The Decombination Problem for Cosmopsychism is not the Heterogeneity Problem for Priority Monism.Gregory Miller - 2021 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 28 (3-4):112-115.
    In this paper I look at a recent proposal from Yujin Nagasawa and Khai Wager to avoid the de-combination problem for the view called ‘cosmopsychism’. The pair suggest that the de-combination problem can be solved in the same way that the problem of heterogeneity for Schaffer’s priority monism can be solved. I suggest that this is not the case. They are not the same problem and the solutions to the heterogeneity problem do not work for the de-combination problem.
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  7. Panpsychism and the First-Person Perspective: The Case for Panpsychist Idealism.Brentyn Ramm - 2021 - Mind and Matter 19 (1):75-106.
    In this paper, I argue for a version of panpsychist idealism on first-person experiential grounds. As things always appear in my field of consciousness, there is prima facie empirical support for idealism. Furthermore, by assuming that all things correspond to a conscious perspective or perspectives (i.e., panpsychism), realism about the world is arguably safeguarded without the need to appeal to God (as per Berkeley’s idealism). Panpsychist idealism also has a phenomenological advantage over traditional panpsychist views as it does not commit (...)
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  8. Against phenomenal bonding.S. Siddharth - 2021 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 17 (1):(D1)5-16.
    Panpsychism, the view that phenomenal consciousness is possessed by all fundamental physical entities, faces an important challenge in the form of the combination problem: how do experiences of microphysical entities combine or give rise to the experiences of macrophysical entities such as human beings? An especially troubling aspect of the combination problem is the subject-summing argument, according to which the combination of subjects is not possible. In response to this argument, Goff (2016) and Miller (2017) have proposed the phenomenal bonding (...)
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  9. Panpsychism and the Combination Problem.Rodrigo Coin Curvo - 2020 - Dissertation, Ku Leuven
    The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining the existence of subjective experience in a world that is purely physical. As the usual theories fail to provide an adequate explanation, many philosophers started looking for alternatives. One of such alternatives is panpsychism, which has been increasingly gaining attention in the past few decades. Panpsychism is the view that fundamental entities of the world—fundamental particles, for example—have some form of very simple consciousness. And, in the theory, it is that (...)
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  10. The Reality of Free Will.Claus Janew - 2020 - Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research 11 (1):1-16.
    The uniqueness of each standpoint, each point of effect, can only be "overcome" by the standpoint changing to other standpoints and returning. In such alternation, which can also appear as constant change, lies the unity of the world. The wholeness of an alternation, however, is a structure of consciousness due to the special relationship between the circumscribing periphery and the infinitesimal center. This process structure unites determinacy and indeterminacy also totally in every place. Therefore, everywhere we are dealing with forms (...)
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  11. Panpsychism and Non-standard Materialism: Some Comparative Remarks.Daniel Stoljar - 2020 - In William Seager (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism. New York, NY, USA:
    Much of contemporary philosophy of mind is marked by a dissatisfaction with the two main positions in the field, standard materialism and standard dualism, and hence with the search for alternatives. My concern in this paper is with two such alternatives. The first, which I will call non-standard materialism, is a position I have defended in a number of places, and which may take various forms. The second, panpsychism, has been defended and explored by a number of recent writers. My (...)
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  12. On the Phenomenon of Unification.Cosmin Visan - 2020 - Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research 11 (3):263-280.
    One of the aspects of consciousness is the fact that it is formed from unifications of qualia. In this paper, unification will be shown to be a phenomenon that works based on the unformal nature of self-reference. Self-reference being an unformal entity, it is no-thing and every-thing both at the same time. These unformal properties will be shown to play an essential role in the existence and manifestation of unification. The best exemplification of the unformal workings of unification will be (...)
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  13. Panpsychism, The Combination Problem, and Plural Collective Properties.Einar Duenger Bohn - 2019 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (2):383-394.
    I develop and defend a version of panpsychism that avoids the combination problem by appealing to plural collective properties.
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  14. Panpsychism’s Combination Problem Is a Problem for Everyone.Angela Mendelovici - 2019 - In William Seager (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism. London, UK: Routledge. pp. 303-316.
    The most pressing worry for panpsychism is arguably the combination problem, the problem of intelligibly explaining how the experiences of microphysical entities combine to form the experiences of macrophysical entities such as ourselves. This chapter argues that the combination problem is similar in kind to other problems of mental combination that are problems for everyone: the problem of phenomenal unity, the problem of mental structure, and the problem of new quality spaces. The ubiquity of combination problems suggests the ignorance hypothesis, (...)
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  15. Is the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness Compatible with Russellian Panpsychism?Hedda Hassel Mørch - 2019 - Erkenntnis 84 (5):1065-1085.
    The Integrated Information Theory is a leading scientific theory of consciousness, which implies a kind of panpsychism. In this paper, I consider whether IIT is compatible with a particular kind of panpsychism, known as Russellian panpsychism, which purports to avoid the main problems of both physicalism and dualism. I will first show that if IIT were compatible with Russellian panpsychism, it would contribute to solving Russellian panpsychism’s combination problem, which threatens to show that the view does not avoid the main (...)
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  16. Combining Minds: How to Think about Composite Subjectivity.Luke Roelofs - 2019 - New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
    This book explores a neglected philosophical question: How do groups of interacting minds relate to singular minds? Could several of us, by organizing ourselves the right way, constitute a single conscious mind that contains our minds as parts? And could each of us have been, all along, a group of mental parts in close cooperation? Scientific progress seems to be slowly revealing that all the different physical objects around us are, at root, just a matter of the right parts put (...)
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  17. Mind and Matter: Panpsychism, Dual-Aspect Monism, and the Combination Problem.Jiri Benovsky - 2018 - Cham: Springer Verlag.
    In this book, Jiri Benovsky takes a stand for a variant of panpsychism as being the best solution available to the mind-body problem. More exactly, he defends a view that can be labelled 'dual-aspect-pan-proto-psychism'. Panpsychism claims that mentality is ubiquitous to reality, and in combination with dual-aspect monism it claims that anything, from fundamental particles to rocks, trees, and human animals, has two aspects: a physical aspect and a mental aspect. In short, the view is that the nature of reality (...)
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  18. Normativity all the way down: from normative realism to pannormism.Einar Duenger Bohn - 2018 - Synthese 195 (9):4107-4124.
    In this paper, I provide an argument for pannormism, the view according to which there are normative properties all the way down. In particular, I argue for what I call the trickling down principle, which says that if there is a metaphysically basic normative property, then, if whatever instantiates it has a ground, that ground instantiates it as well.
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  19. The Universe in Consciousness.Bernardo Kastrup - 2018 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 25 (5-6):125-155.
    I propose an idealist ontology that makes sense of reality in a more parsimonious and empirically rigorous manner than mainstream physicalism, bottom-up panpsychism, and cosmopsychism. The proposed ontology also offers more explanatory power than these three alternatives, in that it does not fall prey to the hard problem of consciousness, the combination problem, or the decombination problem, respectively. It can be summarized as follows: there is only cosmic consciousness. We, as well as all other living organisms, are but dissociated alters (...)
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  20. Can Subjects Be Proper Parts of Subjects? The De‐Combination Problem.Gregory Miller - 2018 - Ratio 31 (2):137-154.
    Growing concern with the panpsychist's ostensive inability to solve the ‘combination problem’ has led some authors to adopt a view titled ‘Cosmopsychism’. This position turns panpsychism on its head: rather than many tiny atomic minds, there is instead one cosmos-sized mind. It is supposed that this view voids the combination problem, however I argue that it does not. I argue that there is a ‘de-combination problem’ facing the cosmopsychist, which is equivalent to the combination problem as they are both concerned (...)
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  21. Beyond Combination: How Cosmic Consciousness Grounds Ordinary Experience.Itay Shani & Joachim Keppler - 2018 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 4 (3):390-410.
    The aim of this paper is twofold. First, our purpose is to propose and motivate a novel and scientifically informed variant of cosmopsychism, namely, the view that the experiences of ordinary subjects are ultimately grounded in an all-pervading cosmic consciousness. Second, we will demonstrate that this approach generates promising avenues for addressing familiar problems of phenomenal constitution. We use stochastic electrodynamics (SED) as the physical bedrock of our approach, supplementing it with key insights about the nature of consciousness long emphasized (...)
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  22. Philip Goff: Consciousness and Fundamental Reality. [REVIEW]Daniel Stoljar - 2018 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 1.
    This is a review of Philip Goff's *Consciousness and Fundamental Reality*.
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  23. Consciousness and Fundamental Reality.Philip Goff - 2017 - New York, USA: Oup Usa.
    The first half of this book argues that physicalism cannot account for consciousness, and hence cannot be true. The second half explores and defends Russellian monism, a radical alternative to both physicalism and dualism. The view that emerges combines panpsychism with the view that the universe as a whole is fundamental.
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  24. Against deflation of the subject.Nesic Janko - 2017 - Filozofija I Društvo 28 (4):1102-1121.
    I will argue that accounts of mineness and pre-reflective self-awareness can be helpful to panpsychists in solving the combination problems. A common strategy in answering the subject combination problem in panpsychism is to deflate the subject, eliminating or reducing subjects to experience. Many modern panpsychist theories are deflationist or endorse deflationist accounts of subjects, such as Parfit’s reductionism of personal identity and G. Strawson’s identity view. To see if there can be deflation we need to understand what the subject/self is. (...)
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  25. The Quest to Solve Problems That Don’t Exist: Thought Artifacts in Contemporary Ontology.Bernardo Kastrup - 2017 - Studia Humana 6 (4):45-51.
    Questions about the nature of reality and consciousness remain unresolved in philosophy today, but not for lack of hypotheses. Ontologies as varied as physicalism, microexperientialism and cosmopsychism enrich the philosophical menu. Each of these ontologies faces a seemingly fundamental problem: under physicalism, for instance, we have the ‘hard problem of consciousness,’ whereas under microexperientialism we have the ‘subject combination problem.’ I argue that these problems are thought artifacts, having no grounding in empirical reality. In a manner akin to semantic paradoxes, (...)
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  26. Building minds: solving the combination problem.Pat Lewtas - 2017 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 60 (7):742-781.
    Any panpsychism building complex consciousness out of basic atoms of consciousness needs a theory of ‘mental chemistry’ explaining how this building works. This paper argues that split-brain patients show actual mental chemistry or at least give reasons for thinking it possible. The paper next develops constraints on theories of mental chemistry. It then puts forward models satisfying these constraints. The paper understands mental chemistry as a transformation consistent with conservation of consciousness rather than an aggregation perhaps followed by the creation (...)
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  27. Forming a Positive Concept of the Phenomenal Bonding Relation for Constitutive Panpsychism.Gregory Miller - 2017 - Dialectica 71 (4):541-562.
    Philip Goff has recently argued that due to the ‘subject-summing problem’, panpsychism cannot explain consciousness. The subject-summing problem is a problem which is analogous to the physicalist's explanatory gap; it is a gap between the micro-experiential facts and the macro-experiential facts. Goff also suggests that there could be a solution by way of a ‘phenomenal bonding relation’, but believes that this solution is not up to scratch because we cannot form a positive not-merely-role-playing concept of this relation. In this paper, (...)
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  28. The Combination Problem: Subjects and Unity.Kevin Morris - 2017 - Erkenntnis 82 (1):103-120.
    Panpsychism has often been motivated on the grounds that any attempt to account for experience and consciousness in organisms in purely physical, nonexperiential terms faces severe difficulties. The “combination problem” charges that attributing phenomenal properties to the basic constituents of organisms, as panpsychism proposes, likewise fails to provide a satisfactory basis for experience in humans and other organisms. This paper evaluates a recent attempt to understand, and solve, the combination problem. This approach, due to Sam Coleman, is premised on a (...)
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  29. “An Analytic Perspective on Panpsychism”: Book Review of Brüntrip & Jaskolla’s (eds.) *Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives. [REVIEW]Gregory Michael Nixon - 2017 - Metascience 26 (3):471-474.
    This is an important collection in that it fleshes out the vague postulate of panpsychism with a detailed analysis of how it might be understood (if not exactly what it might mean). For the many skeptics who simply dismiss the very idea as ridiculous, there is much here to demonstrate that a good deal of serious thought has gone into this ancient proposal. There are many ways to interpret panpsychism, and they are well represented in this group of philosophers, each (...)
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  30. The Combination Problem for Panpsychism.David Chalmers - 2016 - In Godehard Brüntrup & Ludwig Jaskolla (eds.), Panpsychism. Oxford University Press.
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  31. Panpsychism and Neutral Monism: How to make up One's Mind.Sam Coleman - 2016 - In Jaskolla Brüntrup (ed.), Panpsychism. Oxford University Press.
  32. The Phenomenal Bonding Solution} to the Combination Problem.Philip Goff - 2016 - In L. Jaskolla (ed.), Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives. Oxford University Press. pp. 283--302.
  33. Avoiding Perennial Mind-Body Problems.Mostyn W. Jones - 2016 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 23 (9-10):111-133.
    Russell argued that we can’t know what brains are really like behind our perceptions of them, so minds can conceivably reside in brains. Physicalist-leaning Russellians from Feigl to Strawson try to avoid physicalist and dualist issues with this Russellian idea. Strawson also tries to avoid emergentist issues through panpsychism. Yet critics feel that these Russellians don’t really avoid these issues, but just recast them in new forms. For example, dualist issues arguably remain because it’s hard to see how private pains (...)
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  34. Neuroelectrical approaches to binding problems.Mostyn W. Jones - 2016 - Journal of Mind and Behavior 2 (37).
    How do separate brain processes bind to form unified, conscious percepts? This is the perceptual binding problem, which straddles neuroscience and psychology. In fact, two problems exist here: (1) the easy problem of how neural processes are unified, and (2) the hard problem of how this yields unified perceptual consciousness. Binding theories face familiar troubles with (1) and they do not come to grips with (2). This paper argues that neuroelectrical (electromagnetic-field) approaches may help with both problems. Concerning the easy (...)
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  35. Panpsychism and Priority Cosmopsychism.Yujin Nagasawa & Khai Wager - 2016 - In Godehard Brüntrup & Ludwig Jaskolla (eds.), Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 113-129.
    A contemporary form of panpsychism says that phenomenality is prevalent because all physical ultimates instantiate phenomenal or protophenomenal properties. According to priority cosmopsychism, an alternative to panpsychism that we propose in this chapter, phenomenality is prevalent because the whole cosmos instantiates phenomenal or protophenomenal properties. It says, moreover, that the consciousness of the cosmos is ontologically prior to the consciousness of ordinary individuals like us. Since priority cosmopsychism is a highly speculative view our aim in this chapter remains modest and (...)
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  36. Mind and Being: The Primacy of Panpsychism.Galen Strawson - 2016 - In Godehard Brüntrup & Ludwig Jaskolla (eds.), Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives. Oxford University Press. pp. 000-00.
    I endorse a 12-word metaphysics. [1] Stoff ist Kraft ≈ being is energy. [2] Wesen ist Werden ≈ being is becoming. [3] Sein ist Sosein ≈ being is qualit[ativit]y. [4] Ansichsein ist Fürsichsein ≈ being is mind. [1]–[3] are plausible metaphysical principles and unprejudiced consideration of what we know about concrete reality obliges us to favor [4], i.e. panpsychism or panexperientialism, above all other positive substantive proposals. For [i] panpsychism is the most ontologically parsimonious view, given that the existence of (...)
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  37. Against Constitutive Russellian Monism.Philip Goff - 2015 - In Yujin Nagasawa (ed.), Consciousness and the Physical World. Oxford University Press.
  38. Combining Minds: A Defence of the Possibility of Experiential Combination.Luke Roelofs - 2015 - Dissertation, University of Toronto
    This thesis explores the possibility of composite consciousness: phenomenally conscious states belonging to a composite being in virtue of the consciousness of, and relations among, its parts. We have no trouble accepting that a composite being has physical properties entirely in virtue of the physical properties of, and relations among, its parts. But a long­standing intuition holds that consciousness is different: my consciousness cannot be understood as a complex of interacting component consciousnesses belonging to parts of me. I ask why: (...)
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  39. What panpsychists should reject: on the incompatibility of panpsychism and organizational invariantism.Miguel Ángel Sebastián - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (7):1833-1846.
    Some philosophers, like David Chalmers, have either shown their sympathy for, or explicitly endorsed, the following two principles: Panpsychism—roughly the thesis that the mind is ubiquitous throughout the universe—and Organizational Invariantism—the principle that holds that two systems with the same fine-grained functional organization will have qualitatively identical experiences. The purpose of this paper is to show the tension between the arguments that back up both principles. This tension should lead, or so I will argue, defenders of one of the principles (...)
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  40. Cosmopsychism: A Holistic Approach to the Metaphysics of Experience.Itay Shani - 2015 - Philosophical Papers 44 (3):389-437.
    This paper introduces cosmopsychism as a holistic alternative to atomistic panpsychism, and as a general perspective on the metaphysics of consciousness. I begin with some necessary background details concerning contemporary panpsychism and the problems it faces, and then proceed to the theory itself. The starting point of the theory is the assumption that an all pervading cosmic consciousness is the single ontological ultimate. From this assumption, a panpsychist ontology of mind with distinct holistic overtones is developed. In particular, I argue (...)
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  41. Panpsychism and Causation: A New Argument and a Solution to the Combination Problem.Hedda Hassel Mørch - 2014 - Dissertation, Oslo
    Panpsychism is the view that every concrete and unified thing has some form of phenomenal consciousness or experience. It is an age-old doctrine, which, to the surprise of many, has recently taken on new life. In philosophy of mind, it has been put forth as a simple and radical solution to the mind–body problem (Chalmers 1996, 2003;Strawson 2006; Nagel 1979, 2012). In metaphysics and philosophy of science, it has been put forth as a solution to the problem of accounting for (...)
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  42. Phenomenal Blending and the Palette Problem.Luke Roelofs - 2014 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 3 (1):59-70.
    I discuss the apparent discrepancy between the qualitative diversity of consciousness and the relative qualitative homogeneity of the brain's basic constituents, a discrepancy that has been raised as a problem for identity theorists by Maxwell and Lockwood (as one element of the ‘grain problem’), and more recently as a problem for panpsychists (under the heading of ‘the palette problem’). The challenge posed to panpsychists by this discrepancy is to make sense of how a relatively small ‘palette’ of basic qualities could (...)
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  43. Panpsychism without Subjectivity? A Brief Commentary on Sam Coleman’s ‘Mental Chemistry’ and ‘The Real Combination Problem’.Michael Blamauer - 2013 - Disputatio 5 (37):299-309.
    Blamauer, Michael_Panpsychism without Subjectivity.
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  44. The Real Combination Problem: Panpsychism, Micro-Subjects, and Emergence.Sam Coleman - 2013 - Erkenntnis 79 (1):19-44.
    Taking their motivation from the perceived failure of the reductive physicalist project concerning consciousness, panpsychists ascribe subjectivity to fundamental material entities in order to account for macro-consciousness. But there exists an unresolved tension within the mainstream panpsychist position, the seriousness of which has yet to be appreciated. I capture this tension as a dilemma, and offer advice to panpsychists on how to resolve it. The dilemma is as follows: Panpsychists take the micro-material realm to feature phenomenal properties, plus micro-subjects to (...)
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  45. Do the Primary and Secondary Intensions of Phenomenal Concepts Coincide in all Worlds?Robert Schroer - 2013 - Dialectica 67 (4):561-577.
    A slew of conceivability arguments have been given against physicalism. Many physicalists try to undermine these arguments by offering accounts of phenomenal concepts that explain how there can be an epistemic gap, but not an ontological gap, between the phenomenal and the physical. Some complain, however, that such accounts fail to do justice to the nature of our introspective grasp of phenomenal properties. A particularly influential version of this complaint comes from David Chalmers (1996; 2003), who claims, in opposition to (...)
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  46. Raymond Ruyer, la biologie et la théologie naturelle [Raymond Ruyer, biology, and natural theology].Philippe Gagnon - 2012 - In Ronny Desmet & Michel Weber (eds.), Chromatikon VIII: Annales de la philosophie en procès — Yearbook of Philosophy in Process. Louvain-la-Neuve: Éditions Chromatika. pp. 157-176.
    This is the outline: Introduction : le praticien d’une science-philosophie; Épiphénoménisme retourné et subjectivité délocalisée; Dieu est-il jamais inféré par la science ?; La question du panthéisme; Le pilotage axiologique et la parabole mécaniste; L'unité domaniale comme ce qui reste en dehors de la science.
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  47. Review of Consciousness and its Place in Nature. [REVIEW]Barry Dainton - 2011 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (1):238-261.
  48. Omnipresent Consciousness and Free Will.Claus Janew - 2011 - Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research 2 (6):868-876.
    This article is not an attempt to explain consciousness in terms basically of quantum physics or neuro-biology. Instead I should like to place the term "Consciousness" on a broader footing. I shall therefore proceed from everyday reality, precisely where we experience ourselves as conscious beings. I shall use the term in such a general way as to resolve the question whether only a human being enjoys consciousness, or even a thermostat. Whilst the difference is considerable, it is not fundamental. Every (...)
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  49. It Must be True – But How Can it Be? Some Remarks on Panpsychism and Mental Composition.Pierfrancesco Basile - 2010 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 67:93-112.
    Although panpsychism has had a very long history, one that goes back to the very origin of western philosophy, its force has only recently been appreciated by analytic philosophers of mind. And even if many still reject the theory as utterly absurd, others have argued that it is the only genuine form of physicalism. This paper examines the case for panpsychism and argues that there are at least good prima facie reasons for taking it seriously. In a second step, the (...)
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  50. Panpsychism, aggregation and combinatorial infusion.William Seager - 2010 - Mind and Matter 8 (2):167-184.
    Deferential Monadic Panpsychism is a view that accepts that physical science is capable of discovering the basic structure of reality. However, it denies that reality is fully and exhaustively de- scribed purely in terms of physical science. Consciousness is missing from the physical description and cannot be reduced to it. DMP explores the idea that the physically fundamental features of the world possess some intrinsic mental aspect. It thereby faces a se- vere problem of understanding how more complex mental states (...)
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