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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 10
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
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smcder
Paranormal Adept
Better (but you gotta get from "proto-consciousness" to consciousness - does consciousness "emerge" from p-c or do you have a combination problem here?
PS ... you gotta get consistent on your terminology!
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
The trick is using established terminology when possible, and avoiding having to coin new terms, while still accurately expressing my view.
I'm not under the illusion that what I have in mind hasn't already been thought of and explicated much better by others much, much more intelligent than I haha.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
In Chalmers paper of the combination problem, he seems to ground the problem in a conception of reality as fundamentally discreet:
http://consc.net/papers/combination.pdf
"Panpsychism, the view that fundamental physical entities have conscious experiences, is an excit- ing and promising view for addressing the mind–body problem."
On my view, this protoconsciousness ocean is analog and mind/subjective experience are discreet happenings within this analog substrate.
So rather than building a statue out of legos, youre carving a statue out of a block of stone.
http://consc.net/papers/combination.pdf
"Panpsychism, the view that fundamental physical entities have conscious experiences, is an excit- ing and promising view for addressing the mind–body problem."
On my view, this protoconsciousness ocean is analog and mind/subjective experience are discreet happenings within this analog substrate.
So rather than building a statue out of legos, youre carving a statue out of a block of stone.
Thanks, Steve. The pdf downloadable there provides an overview of perception-cognition research and downloadable links to the papers included in the Frontiers project pursuing this research. Those papers are also linked at this Frontiers page:
Linking Perception and Cognition
Here is an extract from Takka's paper from that project at Frontiers:
". . . One way of distinguishing conceptual and non-conceptual content appeals to a mental representation’s satisfaction of the systematicity requirement (Toribio, 2008; Camp, 2009). It has been argued that perceptual representations, specifically visual representations, do not satisfy the requirement of systematicity, and, hence, unlike cognitive representations, do not have conceptual content (Heck, 2007). The argument is based on the idea that visual representations have a pictorial nature. Pictorial theories equate visual representations to images or maps. Like images or maps, visual representations are spatially characterized: at each point in an image or map a specific trait (color, shape, etc.) occurs. Furthermore, like images or maps, visual representations have a holistic character. Unlike cognitive representations, there is no unique structured propositional representation that determines the content of a visual representation. There are many distinct possible decompositions of the same image, such that it is impossible to both identify which are its constituent parts and disentangle the role of these parts in the building up of the pictorial representation. Thus, visual representations, like maps, seemingly lack the syntactic structure of constituents typical of cognitive representations. The lack of a constituent structure entails that visual representations are not systematic. Satisfying systematicity is a necessary condition on satisfying the Generality Constraint. For the reasons above, visual representations do not seem to satisfy systematicity, and hence the Generality Constraint. Therefore, they have a content of a different kind than the content of cognitive representations: they have non-conceptual content.
If visual perception and cognition do indeed have different structural properties and content, then it becomes difficult to understand how perceptual representations are “translated” into cognitive representations. This is both an empirical and theoretical question. From the philosophical point of view, finding out the relationship between perception and cognition will be of benefit to explain phenomena as different as concept formation and acquisition, belief justification, and demonstrative thinking, each of which partly depends on perceptual information.
In this paper, I will focus on commonalities between visual perception and cognition that might help explain the communication between those systems. In the first part, I will show that the spatial recombination underlying visual object recognition satisfies the requirement of systematicity. The analysis will take into account the so-called Feature Integration Theory (Treisman and Gelade, 1980); a model that explains visual object representation by considering the spatial nature of visual representations. Although Feature Integration Theory characterizes visual representations as spatially organized, it differs from pictorial theories of visual representations, since it does not commit to the view that visual representations are holistic. In fact, visual representations can be seen as states of the visual system that can be neuronally specified, such that each part of an object representation can be spelled out by considering the different neuronal activations (Treisman and Gelade, 1980; Goldstone and Barsalou, 1998). Each neuronal activation roughly corresponds to a part, or primitive constituent, of the representation. Thus, one can decompose an object representation into its primitive constituents and analyze whether a systematic structure of constituents is displayed by visual spatial recombinations (Tacca, 2010). In the second part, I will argue against the claim that visual representations have non-conceptual content. Based on the analysis in the first part of the paper, I will propose that, if one takes systematicity to be a necessary requirement for having conceptual content, visual representations might be an early type of conceptual representations. I conclude that understanding the link between perception and cognition requires considering whether they satisfy common requirements in terms of structure and content. These similarities might be at the basis of the translation of perceptual representations into cognitive representation and elucidate the mechanism of their interaction.
Smolensky, 1990; Fodor, 1998). However, there is agreement that the primitive mental representations involved in thought and other cognitive processes, like belief and desire, are concepts. According to an atomistic perspective, concepts cannot be further decomposed into more primitive elements and as such they are the building blocks of thoughts (Fodor, 1975). However, others have argued that concepts can be further decomposed into their perceptual components (e.g., Barsalou, 1999). For example, the concept APPLE can be decomposed into its constituent concepts: COLOR, TEXTURE, SHAPE, etc. At the same time, each part can be further decomposed into more elementary constituents like GREEN, BROWN, SMOOTH, and ROUND. Those elementary constituents are taken to be symbolic perceptual representations stored at late perceptual stages that become part of cognitive recombinations. Therefore, they share with cognitive representations systematicity, compositionality, and productivity (Barsalou, 1999). In the following, I will show that intermediate visual representations that contribute to object perception but are not yet stored at late visual stages also display systematicity.
The hypothesis that concepts have a structure of constituents that involves perceptual representations is based on anatomical, physiological, and psychophysical evidence for the existence of distinct representations for primitive visual features. Neurobiological (Zeki, 1978; Livingstone and Hubel, 1988; Felleman and Van Essen, 1991) and psychophysical studies (Treisman and Gelade, 1980) report the existence in visual areas of so-called feature maps. Feature maps code for specific object features, like color, motion, and orientation. They are also topographically organized; namely, they represent a specific feature and the specific location in which the feature occurs in the visual field. Thus, any visual object we perceive is first decomposed into its primitive components and only later those components are recombined into a coherent object representation. But what makes color, motion, and orientation count as primitive features not further decomposable? To provide an answer to this question is important, since if we can show that there is an empirically reasonable standard for primitive recombinable features, then we can challenge one of the central motivation for thinking that visual perception does not display systematicity and that the content of visual representations is non-conceptual; namely, the claim of pictorial theories for which there is no unique decompositions of visual representations into a proper structure of constituents.
The definition of a primitive visual feature not further decomposable depends on experimental consideration (Wolfe, 1998). First, a primitive feature allows for efficient visual search when embedded in a cluttered scene of unlike distracters. The efficiency of visual search is indicated by the so-called “pop-out” of the target that is independent of how many items are present in the visual field. Second, a primitive feature supports effortless texture segregation. For example, a region of vertical lines in a field of horizontal lines will be immediately segregated from the background and perceived as a figure. Color, orientation, and motion justify the criteria of efficient search and effortless segmentation, and are, thus, primitive features. Furthermore, these features are represented by different visual cortical areas, each of which is retinotopically organized. Taken together, neurophysiological and psychophysical findings uncover the fact that visual features are the primitive constituents of visual object representations.
Once primitive visual features have been individuated, the subsequent main question is how those features are combined. In light of the complexity of natural visual scenes, it is striking that features are almost never miscombined in our perception. In fact, this is even remarkable for the simplest possible scenes, such as one with a red-horizontal bar and a green-vertical bar and another one with a green-horizontal bar and a red-vertical bar. These scenes contain identical features that are combined in different ways. The challenge consists in individuating objects by their unique combination of features, so as to distinguish, for example, the red-vertical bar from the green-horizontal bar. Jackson (1977) described the problem of feature recombination as the Many-Property problem. Research in vision science has approached this problem under the label of “binding problem” (Roskies, 1999). An example of what the binding problem involves comes from studies of visual conjunction search (Treisman and Gelade, 1980). A typical case of feature integration is to show a subject a scene in which red-vertical bars, red-horizontal bars, green-horizontal bars, and one green-vertical bar are presented together. The subject is asked to identify the green-vertical bar. In order to detect the right target, something like a comparison between the right orientation and the right color has to occur. It has been shown that in the case of identification of objects that share different features (orientation and color in the example case) selective attention is at play (Treisman, 1996). Further evidence for the binding problem being solved by an attentional mechanism comes from studies of illusory conjunctions in healthy subjects (Treisman and Schmidt, 1982) and patients suffering from Balint’s syndrome (Robertson, 2003). Healthy subjects are asked in a laboratory setting to report properties of visually presented stimuli under high attentional load. Results show that they report a high number of illusory conjunctions. For example, when shown a screen with blue squares and red triangles, they report wrong recombinations of presented features, e.g., a blue triangle. A high rate of illusory conjunctions occurs if similar experiments are performed with Balint’s syndrome patients. These patients suffer, among other things, from an attentional disruption, providing more evidence for the role of attention in successful binding.
The reported findings support the so-called Feature Integration Theory (Treisman and Gelade, 1980). Feature Integration Theory is one of the most influential models of visual feature binding that considers the role of attention and the spatial layout of feature maps as the basic ingredients for successful feature binding. Other influential models have been proposed for explaining the binding process, such as the hypothesis of binding by synchrony that considers synchronized neuronal mechanism as the basic binding mechanism (Engel et al., 1991). Furthermore, besides the spatial-attentional mechanism posited by Feature Integration Theory, also object-based attention might be necessary to integrate features (Blaser et al., 2000). The hypotheses of binding by spatial attention, synchrony, and of the role of object-based attention are not mutually exclusive (Tacca, 2010). It might be that all these factors are at play during the binding process. Indeed, empirical studies show the relation between spatial attention and synchrony (Fries et al., 2001) and between object-based and spatial attention (Scholl, 2009) in building up an object representation. Here, I will only focus on the role of spatial attention to bind features, in order to show that spatial representations display systematicity in a way similar to cognitive-sentential representations. . . . ."
ETA: In the interests of full disclosure, while I was copying the above extract from Takka, the opening exchange in the following post by @Soupie at the outset of Part 6 [September 2015] of this thread appeared in a balloon arising from the Paracast's background links as collected at the bottom of the posting screen. There @Soupie was critiquing @Pharoah's HCT paper as it was being developed by @Pharoah at that stage on the basis that HCT did not account for the nature of phenomenal experience:
Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 6
Re the last sentence, not 'shady' at all; good common sense based in the self-sensed complexity of consciousness in the world, further recognized in philosophy of mind both analytical and phenomenological.
Of what phenomena, then, would what-you-mean-by "mind/s" be conscious? You seem to want to divorce 'mind' from 'consciousness'. Further, if "all minds" are manipulated by an ontologically -- or metaphysically -- Singular Mind, what would be the purpose of the 'phenomenal consciousness' that minds seem to posses even in your hypothesis?
Agreed that "a perception of a body will not fully capture all aspects of a mind". Nor can perception capture all aspects of a body (one's own or anyone else's). But the major confusion in your hypothesis as summarized here is that "perception of a mind" -- any individual mind or the Great Totalized Mind you imagine -- is possible. Your categories fail to account empirically for that which grounds anything sensed or reflected on or eventually conceptualized by beings-in-the-world -- i.e., experience, which is widely recognized now to refer to phenomenal experience in and of a physical, sensible, and thinkable world. Indeed, the tendency of most of your thinking about consciousness, mind, and world has appeared to me to be geared toward erasing both world and consciousness in the attempt to overcome the Mind-Body problem.
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"I love Hameroff's metaphor of proto-consciousness being an ocean (my "pond") and consciousness (my "subjective experience") being discreet waves (my "whirlpools")."
I followed the link to the Sand Conference beneath the brief Hameroff video to see if I could find an attached text or transcript of his whole presentation, but I found that that conference won't take place until August of this year. I hope papers from this conference become available.
I have the impression that Hameroff does think of consciousness in terms of subjective experience, so ultimately the meaning he attempts to express through this metaphor might not approximate the meaning you want to use it for.
The Chalmers paper you linked will probably be helpful to anyone here who is interested in pursuing panprotopsychism, but in that paper Chalmers recommends that readers first read this "companion paper" of his:
Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism
http://consc.net/papers/panpsychism.pdf
Extract: "...Panpsychism is sometimes dismissed as a crazy view, but this reaction on its own is not a serious objection. While the view is counterintuitive to some, there is good reason to think that any view of consciousness must embrace some counterintuitive conclusions. Furthermore, intuitions about panpsychism seem to vary heavily with culture and with historical period. The view has a long history in both Eastern and Western philosophy, and many of the greatest philosophers have taken it seriously. It is true that we do not have much direct evidence for panpsychism, but we also do not have much direct evidence against it, given the difficulties of detecting the presence or absence of consciousness in other systems. And there are indirect reasons, of a broadly theoretical character, for taking the view seriously.
In this article I will present an argument for panpsychism. Like most philosophical arguments, this argument is not entirely conclusive, but I think it gives reason to take the view seriously. Speaking for myself, I am by no means confident that panpsychism is true, but I am also not confident that it is not true. This article presents what I take to be perhaps the best reason for believing panpsychism. A companion article, “The Combination Problem for Panpsychism”, presents what I take to be the best reason for disbelieving panpsychism....."
ETA: Note 3 in this paper is interesting:
"3 For more on the notion of grounding, see Schaffer 2009 and Fine 2012. The notion of grounding at play here is what is sometimes called “full grounding”, involving a “wholly in virtue of” relation, as opposed to “partial grounding”, which involves a “partly in virtue of” relation. The latter is inappropriate for defining materialism, as the definition would then allow a nonmaterialist view on which truths about consciousness obtain in virtue of physical truths along with some other nonphysical truths)."
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Randall
J. Randall Murphy
The massive amounts of rehashed documentation that goes on in this thread is reminiscent of the Gish Gallop debate tactic, but in this case I don't think it's intentional. It just seems that the thread has just become an exercise in philosophical origami. It's interesting and sometimes fun to take the same square flat 2D concepts and bend and fold them into entertaining, but otherwise pointless shapes. We might as well be doing crossword puzzles. Here's one: https://philopractice.org/web/philo-games/philosophy-crossword-puzzle-july-2017.
smcder
Paranormal Adept
Stone ... Or green Velveeta?
C talks about "structural mismatch"(es) ... how does Soupian Conscious Realism (SCR) address SMs?
I have an idea of how it might. I think.
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smcder
Paranormal Adept
404 dead link ... :-(
I like the phrase philosophical origami!
With my illness, the thread is a life-saver and keeps me connected.
I'm grateful to @Constance for the perspective she brings and the great links, I follow up on these and they have expanded my view ... I often think "so that's what she's been saying ALL along ..." and I admire @Soupie 's tenacity and originality.
Sometimes the best I can do is download a PDF for later review (but I almost always get back to them - even if I don't read all of them in depth) and I feel like I've learned a lot over the past few years. The wording is very important, terms of art are often ad hoc and don't just stand out - so I'm reluctant to paraphrase - a lot goes on offline for me and I know for the others - that isn't brought explicitly to the thread ... but it's in there. Short of becoming a professional, coping with all the material out there is overwhelming, impossible but one begins to get a general feel of the landscape over time, with much effort ... so make of it what you will and what you can!
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
The Five Marks of the Mental. - PubMed - NCBI
"The mental realm seems different to the physical realm; the mental is thought to be dependent on, yet distinct from the physical. But how, exactly, are the two realms supposed to be different, and what, exactly, creates the seemingly insurmountable juxtaposition between the mental and the physical? This review identifies and discusses five marks of the mental, features that set characteristically mental phenomena apart from the characteristically physical phenomena. These five marks (intentionality, consciousness, free will, teleology, and normativity) are not presented as a set of features that define mentality. Rather, each of them is something we seem to associate with phenomena we consider mental, and each of them seems to be in tension with the physical view of reality in its own particular way. It is thus suggested how there is no single mind-body problem, but a set of distinct but interconnected problems. Each of these separate problems is analyzed, and their differences, similarities and connections are identified. This provides a useful basis for future theoretical work on psychology and philosophy of mind, that until now has too often suffered from unclarities, inadequacies, and conflations."
"The mental realm seems different to the physical realm; the mental is thought to be dependent on, yet distinct from the physical. But how, exactly, are the two realms supposed to be different, and what, exactly, creates the seemingly insurmountable juxtaposition between the mental and the physical? This review identifies and discusses five marks of the mental, features that set characteristically mental phenomena apart from the characteristically physical phenomena. These five marks (intentionality, consciousness, free will, teleology, and normativity) are not presented as a set of features that define mentality. Rather, each of them is something we seem to associate with phenomena we consider mental, and each of them seems to be in tension with the physical view of reality in its own particular way. It is thus suggested how there is no single mind-body problem, but a set of distinct but interconnected problems. Each of these separate problems is analyzed, and their differences, similarities and connections are identified. This provides a useful basis for future theoretical work on psychology and philosophy of mind, that until now has too often suffered from unclarities, inadequacies, and conflations."
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
I would love to hear your ideas.Stone ... Or green Velveeta?
C talks about "structural mismatch"(es) ... how does Soupian Conscious Realism (SCR) address SMs?
I have an idea of how it might. I think.
Of course this issue is a major hurdle, both conceivably (it seems impossible for the mind and brain/body to be one and the same) and conceptually.
However, as you understand, I think there are several pathways leading to this incredible conclusion.
I think there is an isomorphism between the mind and body, but only in the informal sense:
"Informally, an isomorphism is a map that preserves sets and relations among elements. Google)
This is due to Scientific Direct Realism and the understanding that our perception of reality is not veridical. So we shouldn't expect to obtain a strong isomorphism between our perception of the mind and the mind in-itself.
Also, again, Chalmers is grounding this argument in a view of a reality that is fundentwlly descreet. On my view, I don't know at which scale subjective experience will emerge, but it may not be at the scale of electrons and quarks, but only at the scale of cellular interactions.
So the weak isomorphism between mind and body may be at the scale of the nervous system and not at the scale of electrons and quarks.
In other words, if we're looking for an isomorphism between mind and body, then if we are considering the subjective experience of perceiving a busy city street, the isomorphism will be between the state (structure) of the nervous system and the structure of the perceptual subjective experience.
The state/structure of electrons and quarks may not factor in.
Said differently, and you might not follow, when we are carving the statue out of stone, are we carving at the particular, molecular, or cellular, or even cellular network level?
I'm still agnostic about which level of the physical that SE emerges.
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
I imagine this will be met with howls, but I post it only to show why I'm don't expect the mind and our perception of the mind to be geometrically identical.
What if … The universe is an illusion?
What if … The universe is an illusion?
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Randal, I also like the phrase 'philosophical origami'.
I do think it's too bad that you don't enjoy and find compelling interest in the increasingly ramifying questions, hypotheses, and theories that continue to develop in consciousness studies. Other subjects that interest me pale in comparison with this one. Of course, to each his or her own.
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@Soupie, very glad to have this link to the Chalmers paper on "The Combination Problem for Panpsychism" and will read it first among the new links posted since yesterday.
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From that paper:
"Panprotopsychism is the thesis that fundamental physical entities have protophenomenal properties. Protophenomenal properties are special properties that are not themselves phenomenal (there is nothing it is like to have them) but that can collectively constitute phenomenal properties. To rule out standard forms of materialism from counting as panprotopsychism, these special properties must be (i) distinct from the structural/dispositional properties of microphysics and (ii) their constitutive relation to phenomenal properties must reflect an a priori entailment from protophenomenal to phenomenal truths.
Constitutive panprotopsychism is the thesis that macrophenomenal truths are grounded in truths about the protophenomenal properties of microphysical entities. Russellian panprotopsychism is the thesis that protophenomenal properties serve as quiddities. Constitutive Russellian panprotopsychism is perhaps the most important form of panprotopsychism, for the same reasons as in the case of constitutive Russellian panpsychism."
@Soupie, I'm beginning to catch the direction of your thinking now.
"Panprotopsychism is the thesis that fundamental physical entities have protophenomenal properties. Protophenomenal properties are special properties that are not themselves phenomenal (there is nothing it is like to have them) but that can collectively constitute phenomenal properties. To rule out standard forms of materialism from counting as panprotopsychism, these special properties must be (i) distinct from the structural/dispositional properties of microphysics and (ii) their constitutive relation to phenomenal properties must reflect an a priori entailment from protophenomenal to phenomenal truths.
Constitutive panprotopsychism is the thesis that macrophenomenal truths are grounded in truths about the protophenomenal properties of microphysical entities. Russellian panprotopsychism is the thesis that protophenomenal properties serve as quiddities. Constitutive Russellian panprotopsychism is perhaps the most important form of panprotopsychism, for the same reasons as in the case of constitutive Russellian panpsychism."
@Soupie, I'm beginning to catch the direction of your thinking now.
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
I don't find the questions "increasingly ramifying". I find them increasingly reiterated using layers of jargon adds a fine-grained veneer, but a veneer nonetheless. There's nothing wrong with that if it's just what you enjoy doing. Like some people enjoy playing the blues. That's basically the same old song done a thousand different ways, and it gives the musicians a sense of enjoyment to participate in its making. But we're just not making any progress and no amount of verbose PDF, hardcover, softcover, digital download, ebook, YouTube, audiobook, special-effects on the lecture-hall microphone seem to be getting us any closer to figuring it out. I'd give-up and join the New Mysterians if it didn't have its own problems.
Maybe we need a new name for this like, Post Mysterianism ( You heard it here first ), which we might define as a philosophical position whereby consciousness can only be comprehended from an experiential position that is incomprehensible in non-experiential terms.
I think the poetry and music you've posted probably comes the closer to it than pretty much anything else here. I mean we all know what we're talking about. We just don't know what we're talking about
.I don't find the questions "increasingly ramifying". I find them increasingly reiterated using layers of jargon adds a fine-grained veneer, but a veneer nonetheless. There's nothing wrong with that if it's just what you enjoy doing. Like some people enjoy playing the blues. That's basically the same old song done a thousand different ways, and it gives the musicians a sense of enjoyment to participate in its making. But we're just not making any progress and no amount of verbose PDF, hardcover, softcover, digital download, ebook, YouTube, audiobook, special-effects on the lecture-hall microphone seem to be getting us any closer to figuring it out. I'd give-up and join the New Mysterians if it didn't have its own problems.
Maybe we need a new name for this like, Post Mysterianism ( You heard it here first ), which we might define as a philosophical position whereby consciousness can only be comprehended from an experiential position that is incomprehensible in non-experiential terms.
I think the poetry and music you've posted probably comes the closer to it than pretty much anything else here. I mean we all know what we're talking about. We just don't know what we're talking about
You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but from what I have seen in your posts in this thread over these two or three years, you have not seriously engaged in reading enough of the papers and books we have linked and discussed here to be capable of evaluating the progress of contemporary consciousness studies and the reflection of that development in our discussions in the forum.
Other subjects likely interest you more, and I'm not faulting you for your limited research in this demanding interdisciplinary subject matter. But I do think that if you are not willing to engage more fully with it yourself, the value of your critiques of what the rest of us are doing here is in doubt.
Coming back to the Chalmers paper "The Combination Problem for Panpsychism," C breaks the combination problem into "at least three subproblems," which I think would be helpful for us to explore and discuss in sequence:
"3 The many combination problems
The combination problem for panpsychism is: how can microphenomenal properties combine to yield macrophenomenal properties? The combination problem for panprotopsychism is: how can protophenomenal properties combine to yield macrophenomenal properties? I will concentrate especially on the problem for panpsychism, but I will address both.
The combination problem can be broken down into at least three subproblems, reflecting three different aspects of phenomenal states: their subjective character (they are always had by a subject), their qualitative character (they involve distinctive qualities), and their structural character (they have a certain complex structure). These three aspects yield what we might call the subject combination problem, the quality combination problem, and the structure combination problem.
The subject combination problem is roughly: how do microsubjects combine to yield macrosubjects? Here microsubjects are microphysical subjects of experience, and macrosubjects are macroscopic subjects of experience such as ourselves.
An especially pressing aspect of the subject combination problem is the subject-summing problem. One can pose this problem by an extension of James’ reasoning in the passage quoted earlier. Given 101 subjects, it seems that the existence of the first 100 does not necessitate the existence of 4 the 101st. More generally, given any group of subjects and any further subject, it seems possible in principle for the first group of subjects to exist without the further subject. If so, then no group of microsubjects necessitates the existence of a macrosubject. . . . ."
"3 The many combination problems
The combination problem for panpsychism is: how can microphenomenal properties combine to yield macrophenomenal properties? The combination problem for panprotopsychism is: how can protophenomenal properties combine to yield macrophenomenal properties? I will concentrate especially on the problem for panpsychism, but I will address both.
The combination problem can be broken down into at least three subproblems, reflecting three different aspects of phenomenal states: their subjective character (they are always had by a subject), their qualitative character (they involve distinctive qualities), and their structural character (they have a certain complex structure). These three aspects yield what we might call the subject combination problem, the quality combination problem, and the structure combination problem.
The subject combination problem is roughly: how do microsubjects combine to yield macrosubjects? Here microsubjects are microphysical subjects of experience, and macrosubjects are macroscopic subjects of experience such as ourselves.
An especially pressing aspect of the subject combination problem is the subject-summing problem. One can pose this problem by an extension of James’ reasoning in the passage quoted earlier. Given 101 subjects, it seems that the existence of the first 100 does not necessitate the existence of 4 the 101st. More generally, given any group of subjects and any further subject, it seems possible in principle for the first group of subjects to exist without the further subject. If so, then no group of microsubjects necessitates the existence of a macrosubject. . . . ."
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