Abstract
According to the Phenomenal Unity Thesis (“PUT”) – most prominently defended by Tim Bayne and David Chalmers – necessarily, any set of phenomenal states of a subject at a time is phenomenally unified. The standard formulation of this thesis is unacceptably vague because it does not specify what it is to be a subject. In this paper, I first consider possible meanings for ‘subject’ as used in PUT and argue that every plausible candidate definition renders the thesis trivially true. I consider and reject Tim Bayne’s proposal that ‘subject’ means ‘human being’. Then I argue, contra Bayne and Chalmers, that PUT is not incompatible with any major theory of consciousness, and contra Michael Tye, that split-brain patients do not provide evidence against PUT. I close by considering some nontrivial alternatives to PUT.
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Notes
Ibid., 510. “[I]t is nontrivial that there will be something it is like to be in the conjunctive state. This can be seen from the fact that some philosophers deny the total unity thesis, or at least entertain its denial.”
Tye 2003, 126–29.
Bayne and Chalmers 2010, 510–11.
Ibid., 509.
Ibid.
Bayne and Chalmers themselves confirm this at Ibid., 503.
Ibid., 510.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “subject” Other definitions are obviously inapplicable since they refer to ‘subject’ in its legal (e.g. citizen), linguistic (e.g. the thing of which a property is predicated), or topical (the matter of thought or inquiry) senses.
Indeed, Bayne later claims that “phenomenal consciousness” is pleonastic because all consciousness is phenomenal. See Bayne 2010, 7.
Bayne and Chalmers 2010, 537.
Ibid., 538.
Thanks to the anonymous reviewer for this Journal for pressing this objection.
I should note here that I am happy to grant arguendo the possibility of such disunity in human beings. Certainly, I do not see any compelling reason to rule out its possibility for humans a priori. But whether this kind of partial unity is possible or conceivable in human beings is not relevant for the discussion at hand, which is about phenomenal unity in subjects. As I argue below (section IV), a phenomenal unity thesis about human beings is substantive but very different from PUT. Thanks to the anonymous reviewer for this Journal for pressing this objection. 1996.
See, e.g., Sydney Shoemaker
Ibid.
Roelofs 2016, within Subjects and between Subjects.”
Ibid., 3214–18; See also Roelofs 2018
Using ‘subject’ as ‘bearer of a conscious state’ without adding (meta)physical content to the concept is no solution, since it will be just as impossible to individuate ‘bearers’ of conscious states in a principled way as it is to do this for minds.
Bayne, The Unity of Consciousness, 16.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., 17.
Ibid., 16.
Ibid., 17: “I do not claim that it is a conceptual or metaphysical truth that our conscious states are always unified; indeed, I do not even claim that the unity of consciousness is grounded in the laws of nature. Perhaps there are surgical innovations or evolutionary developments that could bring about a division in the stream of consciousness; perhaps there are other species in which the unity of consciousness can be lost.”
See, e.g., Rosenthal 2003
Bayne and Chalmers 2010, 532.
Of course, this solution remains vulnerable to the standard objections to HOT-theory, in particular that on this account consciousness requires implausibly extensive mental resources. But whether or not this objection is successful, it does not show that HOT-theory is incompatible with PUT.
Rosenthal 2003, 328–29.
Tye 2003, 25–35.
Tye 2003, 36.
For this response to Tye’s account of split-brain patients as an objection to PUT see also Alter 2010.
For a concise overview see The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich, s.v. “person.”
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Eric Lormand for many helpful discussions on the topic of this paper, and to Jacob Berger and the anonymous reviewer for this Journal for their thorough and helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Duindam, G. On Bayne and Chalmers’ Phenomenal Unity Thesis (or: Much Ado about Nothing). Philosophia 48, 935–945 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00115-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00115-2