Materialism and Mental Manyism
Ergo, An Open Access Journal of Philosophy May 27, 2025 Aaron Segal
Materialism—the view that human beings are material objects—leads to Mental Manyism, the claim that there are millions of conscious human subjects where we thought there was just one. This paper argues that two prominent solutions to the ordinary Problem of the Many, supervaluationism and vague objecthood, do not resolve the Mental Problem of the Many, even if they work for clouds, chairs, and trees. Consciousness is a special case that resists these standard fixes, so materialism genuinely implies that we are vastly outnumbered by conscious beings.