So let’s circle back to the combination problem for panpsychism, that got me on this topic in the first place. Despite reading and writing a lot about it, I’m still never quite sure what counts as ‘solving’ the combination problem. Often I read papers that say ‘here’s the combination problem’ …
In the last post we took physical systems (organisms, brains, solar systems) that contained each other as parts, and asked which were conscious. But some philosophers think this is misguided from the get-go: no physical system, whatever its features, can strictly be a subject of consciousness, but can only ‘support’ …
Consider a contrast. The solar system contains my brain as a part; my brain is conscious; the solar system is not conscious (at least in any everyday sense – let’s set panpsychism aside for now). That’s enough to show that having conscious parts is not enough, all by itself, to …
Combining Minds aims to persuade you that minds can indeed combine. But first, we need to work out what that claim even means and why you might think they can’t. So here’s a little bit of intellectual autobiography on that topic. In the last few decades, philosophers interested in the …
