A Universe of Composite Subjectivity

Abstract

This chapter introduces the topic of the book—composite subjectivity—and explains why it matters. This involves clarifying how the key term “combination” is used and how key ideas like “composition” and “consciousness” are understood, as well as reviewing the various reasons why philosophers have tended to deny or neglect the possibility of composite subjectivity, and the implications they have drawn from doing so. The chapter explains the significance of mental combination for panpsychism’s combination problem, for collective consciousness, and for a variety of other issues in the philosophy of mind, and sketches out the book’s plan of attack.

Lotze on Comparison and the Unity of Consciousness

“…The brains of two people R 1 and R 2 , are wired in such a way that the experience of one causes an experience of the other (and the other way around):For instance, when one of the participants perceives something, the signals received by the other may activate a memory of a similar thing perceived in the past, and the signals of this memory received by the first may then contextualize and color their perception of this new thing just as their own memories would. (Roelofs 2019, 281)Thomas’s and Tiresias’s brain could not be wired in such a way that Thomas’s perceiving scarlet activated episodic memory of a similar colour in Tiresias which then gave rise to similar memory in Thomas. Tiresias lacks episodic memories of colour perception.…”

“…For instance, when one of the participants perceives something, the signals received by the other may activate a memory of a similar thing perceived in the past, and the signals of this memory received by the first may then contextualize and color their perception of this new thing just as their own memories would. (Roelofs 2019, 281)…”

“… 12 Lotze’s argument from comparison has received very little attention in the literature after Russell. Lotze’s argument is briefly mentioned in Lennon and Stainton (2008, 4) and he gets a footnote in Roelofs (2019, 8n6). …”

Idealist Panpsychism and Spacetime Structure

“…Philosophers who defend or are sympathetic to idealist panpsychism include Chalmers (1996Chalmers ( , 2015Chalmers ( , 2020, Strawson (2006aStrawson ( , 2006bStrawson ( , 2015Strawson ( , 2020, Goff (2017Goff ( , 2019, Kastrup (2018), and Roelofs (2019), among others. I will argue that idealist panpsychism is false because there is an underdiscussed explanatory gap between the fundamental consciousness it posits and spacetime.…”