← See the axis · The enigma of consciousness

The combination problem

Billions of little subjects do not make one great subject: the single consciousness stays as mysterious as before, and the universe has been peopled with minds for nothing.

Objects to Dual-aspect monism

William James · The Principles of Psychology, I, ch. VI · 1890

1. The argument claims to be more economical than emergence: rather than having experience born from what has none, it assumes it already there, in miniature, in the elements we are made of.
2. But an experience is not an ingredient that adds up: it is always someone's experience, a subject's, a point of view on something. A hundred juxtaposed points of view make a hundred points of view, not one larger point of view.
3. One would then have to explain how micro-subjects merge into a single subject that finds in itself no trace of theirs: my consciousness does not present itself as a crowd whose voices I hear.
4. That passage from many to one is as unexplained as the passage from the non-experienced to the experienced one wanted to avoid. The argument charges its rivals with a miracle, and installs another in its place.

Therefore So panpsychism lacks the advantage it claims: it replaces an unexplained emergence with an equally unexplained composition, at the price of an inwardness lent to all matter.