Monadic panpsychism

Panpsychism holds that consciousness is fundamental and everywhere, but faces the subject combination problem: how simple conscious subjects could combine into complex ones. Assuming that problem cannot be solved, this paper proposes a version of panpsychism that avoids talk of combination entirely. Inspired by Leibniz's monads, it offers a relational explanation of how simple subjects could constitute complex experiences without merging their subjectivity. Called monadic panpsychism, the view does not rely on emergence and thus avoids problems faced by emergentist accounts. The author argues monadic panpsychism is preferable to combinatory and emergentist versions because it faces a less worrisome set of objections and has tools to address other combination problems.

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Abstract

AbstractOne of the main obstacles for panpsychism, the view that consciousness is fundamental and ubiquitous, is the difficulty of explaining how simple subjects could combine to form complex subjects. Known as the subject combination problem, it poses a possibly insurmountable challenge to the view. In this paper, I will assume that this challenge cannot be overcome and instead present a version of panpsychism that completely avoids talk of combination. Inspired by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s metaphysics of monads, I will focus on a relational explanation of how simple subjects could constitute complex experiences, without them having to combine in virtue of their subjectivity. I call this view monadic panpsychism. Additionally, my proposal will not rely on emergence and so it will circumvent problems commonly faced by emergentist accounts. As I will argue, monadic panpsychism is preferable to combinatory and emergentist panpsychism because it faces a significantly less worrisome set of objections. Apart from being unaffected by the seemingly insuperable issue of subject combination, I will demonstrate that monadic panpsychism also has tools to address other kinds of the combination problem. That alone justifies the need for a new formulation of panpsychism, one which faces unique difficulties but also offers unique solutions.