Panpsychism versus Panprotopsychism and the Subject-Summing Problem

A family of difficulties known as the combination problem challenges Russellian monism, which holds that consciousness is fundamental to reality. Panprotopsychism risks collapsing into noumenalism, the view that humans cannot understand matter's concrete nature. Panpsychism faces the subject-summing problem: how micro-level conscious subjects combine into macro-level ones. A solution to the subject-summing problem is proposed, and panpsychist forms of Russellian monism are argued to be preferable on grounds of simplicity and elegance.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This is the first of two chapters discussing the most notorious problem facing Russellian monism: the combination problem. This is actually a family of difficulties, each reflecting the challenge of how to make sense of everyday human and animal experience intelligibly arising from more fundamental conscious or protoconscious features of reality. Key challenges facing panpsychist and panpsychist forms of Russellian monism are considered. With respect to panprotopsychism, there is the worry that it collapses into noumenalism: the view that human beings, by their very nature, are unable to understand the concrete, categorical nature of matter. With respect to panpsychism, there is the subject-summing problem: the difficulty making sense of how micro-level conscious subjects combine to produce macro-level conscious subjects. A solution to the subject-summing problem is proposed, and it is ultimately argued that panpsychist forms of the Russellian monism are to be preferred on grounds of simplicity and elegance.