Combining Minds

<p>This explores the possibility of composite consciousness: phenomenally conscious states</p><p>belonging to a composite being in virtue of the consciousness of and relations among its parts. We</p><p>have no trouble accepting that a composite being has physical properties entirely in virtue of the</p><p>physical properties of and relations among its parts. But a long-standing intuition holds that</p><p>consciousness is different: my consciousness cannot be understood as a complex of interacting</p><p>component consciousnesses belonging to parts of me. I ask why: what is it about consciousness that</p><p>makes us think it so different from matter? And should we accept this apparent difference?</p><p>'Combinationism' - the thesis that intelligibly constitutive composition is possible in the</p><p>experiential realm - bears on many debates in the metaphysics of mind. Constitutive panpsychism's</p><p>need for combinationism is at the centre of recent criticism of the theory but physicalists also need</p><p>an account of how the consciousness or lack thereof in two cerebral hemispheres and a whole brain</p><p>or a human being and their head or a social group and its individual members can be intelligibly</p><p>related. And further back in history the supposed simplicity of the soul was held to rule out any</p><p>form of materialism in a tradition of argument stretching from Plotinus to Brentano. With an eye to</p><p>this diversity of debates I examine the prospects for combinationists with a range of different</p><p>background views about the nature of consciousness the ontological status of the subject the</p><p>behaviour of the physical part-whole relation and the notions of constitution and explanation</p><p>themselves.</p>