Haitian Epistemology, Phenomenological Structuralism, and Resolving the Binding and Hard Problems of Consciousness

Abstract

The hard problem of consciousness, introduced in the discourse of consciousness constitution by David Chalmers (1995), seeks to understand how and why sentient beings have phenomenal experiences or felt states like pain, excitement, heat, etc. This latter problem is tied to the binding problem, which seeks to understand what accounts for the unity of experience. The understanding here is that the solution to the latter will resolve the problem of the former. In this work I explore the nature of the hard and binding problems of consciousness in Paul C. Mocombe’s structurationist theory of phenomenological structuralism. The author utilizes the concept of the nanm in Haitian epistemology as constituted in his theory of phenomenological structuralism to resolve both problems of consciousness. Mocombe concludes that what accounts for the unity of experience is the psychion, subatomic particle, of an emergent psychonic/panpsychic subatomic field of the multiverse that has phenomenal properties, which gets embodied as neuronal particles of the aggregated brain, which experiences a material resource framework as an “I” whose phenomenal properties following matter disaggregation either returns back to the field or collapses in other worlds where the same matter exists.