A Universe of Composite Subjectivity

This chapter introduces the topic of the book—composite subjectivity—and explains why it matters. This involves clarifying how the key term “combination” is used and how key ideas like “composition” and “consciousness” are understood, as well as reviewing the various reasons why philosophers have tended to deny or neglect the possibility of composite subjectivity, and the implications they have drawn from doing so. The chapter explains the significance of mental combination for panpsychism’s combination problem, for collective consciousness, and for a variety of other issues in the philosophy of mind, and sketches out the book’s plan of attack.