Strawson’s (2006b pp. 247, 248) “smallist” panpsychism has it that “simple or non-composite ... microsesmets, e.g. electron sesmets or string sesmets,” compose “macrosesmets, e.g. human sesmets”. The latter are phenomenally constituted phenomenal manifolds of
phenomenal properties, and assuming there is a universe-wide sesmet of the kind Strawson envisages, they will in turn be phenomenal constituents of this greater phenomenally constituted phenomenal manifold of phenomenal properties. Description of such sesmets as
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phenomenally constituted phenomenal manifolds of phenomenal properties might appear pleonastic, my emphasising that they are phenomenal manifolds, peculiar and unnecessary. On the contrary, that the relevant manifolds of properties are phenomenal manifolds is an important non-trivial point. If reality consists of nothing but individual ontologically discrete human and animal consciousnesses, inhabiting no shared medium short of reality itself, reality as a whole will be a phenomenally constituted manifold of phenomenal properties, but it won’t be a phenomenally constituted phenomenal manifold of phenomenal properties. It won’t meet Strawson’s criterion for being a sesmet, as it won’t be an experience. Rather, it will be several discrete experiences that aren’t co-experienced. The phenomenon of
manifoldness isn’t one and the same as the manifoldness of phenomena. A phenomenal manifold’s manifold nature is itself phenomenal, it is experienced. This is the fact Chalmers (2010 p. 509) and Bayne intend to capture with their “phenomenal unity thesis”, which has it that “necessarily, any set of phenomenal states of a subject at a time is phenomenally
unified”, where “two states are phenomenally unified when they have a conjoint phenomenology: a phenomenology of having both states at once that subsumes the
phenomenology of the individual states”.99 The phenomenal unity thesis appeals to the idea of an objective time slice of consciousness.100 Given that the objective temporality of experiences is currently contested, it would be preferable if this could be avoided. The
necessity the phenomenal unity thesis claims for itself might be thought questionable. For my current purposes, I will substitute the term ‘phenomenal manifold’ for the term ‘subject’, thereby evading the vexed issue of what constitutes a subject, and lose the ‘at a time’ bit. We
99 Notice this talk of the phenomenology of having phenomenal states makes the experiencing/having of
experiences something belonging to the experiences themselves. Even those who think it makes sense to talk of an experiencing of phenomenology that is logically distinct from the phenomenology of experiencing,
something like an act directed upon phenomenology by an extrinsic mind, must concede, so long as they are scrupulous robust realists, that there’s also something it’s like to co-experience all our phenomenology, and that this what-it’s-like-ness belongs to the phenomenal constitution of a phenomenal manifold.
100 Bayne (2010 p. 18) makes it very clear that “the temporal framework in question is that of clock-time, not
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are then left with an uncontroversially necessary definitional truth: “Necessarily, any set of phenomenal states of a phenomenal manifold is phenomenally unified”. That the states of a phenomenal manifold are phenomenally unified is what makes it a phenomenal manifold, a manifold the manifold nature of which is phenomenal.
Note that this modified version of the unity thesis allows for the inclusion of the
phenomenally temporal aspects of our phenomenal manifolds within their phenomenally unified nature, which in turn might be thought to allow for the possibility of the universe- wide sesmet being the co-experiencing of the entire four-dimensional spatiotemporal
universe. There is a line of thought that might be taken to confer a degree of credibility upon this idea.101 The fact that we experience temporal phenomena such as change, motion and sound has led some philosophers to follow William James’s (2008 p. 692) lead and speak of a phenomenal “specious present”, phenomenally comprising more than a mere instant, within which such temporal phenomena are experienced.102 From here it might be argued that inasmuch as there can be a phenomenal appearance of any temporal duration at all, as we supposedly know there can be from our own experiencing of a phenomenally constituted specious present, there seems to be no obvious logical bar upon there being a phenomenal appearance of an extremely, perhaps infinitely, long duration, though it is admittedly very hard, perhaps impossible, to imagine such a thing.
If Strawson’s universe-wide sesmet is a phenomenal manifold, it will be the co-experiencing of all the aspects of the dimensions it constitutes, including the sesmets within it and their various interactions. I emphasise that it constitutes these dimensions because Strawson’s (2006b p. 271) talk of the sesmet being universe-wide, and of “experience exist[ing] at every
101 I will soon argue that this line of reasoning to be specious, premised upon a mischaracterization of temporal
phenomena.
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point in the spatial universe”, could be construed as meaning that it merely occupies every point of a dimension or dimensions it doesn’t constitute. If this is what Strawson has in mind, then the arguments of the previous section will apply here. Strawson (2006b p. 244) writes “‘The universe consists of experience arrayed in a certain way.’ Plainly this view involves no logical contradiction”. But if consciousness is as robust realism dictates, ‘arrayed’ is taken non-metaphorically, as is presumably intended, and the dimensions of space aren’t
constitutively phenomenal, it has been decisively demonstrated that it does. The universe wide sesmet can’t be a vast spatiotemporal array of experience, only an experience of a vast spatiotemporal array. The view under consideration has our experiences embedded in space in much the same manner that object surface appearances are embedded in the visual space of our individual visual fields, by featuring in the appearance of a geometrically structured field, appearing both to intrinsically embody the geometry appropriate to that field, and appearing to occupy a finite location within it. They are in space, and perhaps time, solely by virtue of appearing to be so.
Chalmers (forthcoming b p. 17) has recently claimed that “a cosmopsychist view in which each of us is a distinct constituent of a universal consciousness ... suffers from a
decomposition problem that seems just as hard as the combination problem [for
pansychism]”. The combination problem is the problem of how micro-sesmets could ever constitutively yield macrosesmets. It arises given two background assumptions: that
microsesmets are the quiddistic realisers of microphysical properties, and, more importantly, that they are already located in space-time. If Chalmers is right, in arriving at cosmopsychism by way of a dialectic born of problems concerning phenomenal properties being located in space, I am here coming at the same problem from the opposite direction. Chalmers doesn’t elaborate upon his claim, but I think that the decomposition problem arises for this view. The problem, as I see it, is that of the doubtful possibility of a finite experience, an experiencing
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of only so much, being experienced with something else.103 The finitude of our phenomenal manifolds belongs to their phenomenal nature; only experiencing so much is an aspect of what it’s like to be us. Robust realism has it that the experienced nature of our phenomenal manifolds is their nature. If they are experienced to be finite, they are finite. It might not be immediately apparent that such phenomenal finitude rules against the possibility of our phenomenal manifolds being phenomenal components of a greater phenomenal manifold. The finitude of an entity usually doesn’t preclude its being a mereological part of something else. Yet straightforward part-whole mereology does not obtain in this case. The finitude of our experiences doesn’t disallow their being straightforward parts of a greater whole. If reality admitted of nothing but discrete phenomenally finite manifolds, each such manifold will be a partial constituent of reality. But we are considering a situation where such phenomenally finite manifolds are experienced to be parts of a greater experienced whole, one constituting the co-experiencing of their phenomenally finite natures. Such a state of affairs is impossible. To experiencing what I experience is to experience only so much, what I experience and nothing else. For something to be the experiencing of exactly what I
experience among other things is for it to experience what I experience and nothing else and something else, a manifest contradiction. A godlike mind can no more experience the finitude of our experiences without its phenomenal nature embodying that finitude than it can
experience the colours of our phenomenal manifolds without its phenomenal nature embodying those colours.
103 Phenomenal finitude affords experiences the “inherent boundaries” that form the basis for Rosenberg’s (2004
pp. 75-90) “boundary problem”. Rosenberg (2004 p. 81) takes it for granted that these are “middle-level boundaries”. I am arguing that on the current cosmopsychist view, they can’t be.
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