Open AccessAgainst Phenomenal Bonding
Author(s) -
Saket Siddharth
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
european journal of analytic philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1849-0514
pISSN - 1845-8475
DOI - 10.31820/ejap.17.1.3
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , epistemology , consciousness , subject (documents) , miller , relation (database) , philosophy , physicalism , cognitive science , psychology , computer science , medicine , ecology , metaphysics , database , library science , biology
Panpsychism, the view that phenomenal consciousness is possessed by all fundamental physical entities, faces an important challenge in the form of the combination problem: how do experiences of microphysical entities combine or give rise to the experiences of macrophysical entities such as human beings? An especially troubling aspect of the combination problem is the subject-summing argument, according to which the combination of subjects is not possible. In response to this argument, Goff (2016) and Miller (2017) have proposed the phenomenal bonding relation, using which they seek to explain the composition of subjects. In this paper, I discuss the merits of the phenomenal bonding solution and argue that it fails to respond satisfactorily to the subject-summing argument.