Mental Chemistry: Combination for Panpsychists
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Panpsychism, an increasingly popular competitor to physicalism as a theory of mind, faces a famous difficulty, the ‘combination problem’. This is the difficulty of understanding the composition of a conscious mind by parts (the ultimates) which are themselves taken to be phenomenally qualitied. I examine the combination problem, and I attempt to solve it. There are a few distinct difficulties under the banner of ‘the combination problem’, and not all of them need worry panpsychists. After homing in on the genuine worries, I identify some disputable assumptions that underlie them. Doing away with these assumptions allows us to make a start on a working conception of phenomenal combination.
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Why panpsychism doesn’t help us explain consciousness
Goff, P. (2009) · dialectica · doi:10.1111/j.1746-8361.2009.01196.x · Cited by 163 · see citing works
Rosenberg, G. H. (2004) · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195168143.001.0001 · Cited by 122 · see citing works
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Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism
Chalmers, D. J. (2016) · Panpsychism · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199359943.003.0002 · Cited by 432 · see citing works
The Combination Problem for Panpsychism
Chalmers, D. J. (2016) · Panpsychism · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199359943.003.0008 · Cited by 231 · see citing works
Beyond Combination: How Cosmic Consciousness Grounds Ordinary Experience
SHANI, I., & KEPPLER, J. (2018) · Journal of the American Philosophical Association · doi:10.1017/apa.2018.30 · Cited by 91 · see citing works
- Authors
- Coleman, S.
- Corresponding author
- Coleman, Sam
- ORCID
- Coleman, Sam
- Venue
- Dialectica
- Publisher
- Verein philosophie.ch
- Published
- 2012
- Volume
- 66
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 137-166
- ISSN
- 0012-2017 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2556812628
- Cited by
- 94
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 27 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 2
- FWCI
- 3.43
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- dialectica (publishedVersion)
- University of Hertfordshire Research Archive (University of Hertfordshire) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Embodied and Extended Cognition
- Keywords
- panpsychism, combination problem, physicalism, consciousness, qualia, theory of mind
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