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However, Coleman argues, ‘points of view cannot combine’ in this manner (2014, p. 32). If a first constituent lower-level subject sees, say, only blue,
and a second sees only red, then only the qualitative contents of their respective perspectives
can conceivably survive — possibly in altered form — as combined ingredients of the resulting higher-level subject’s phenomenal field (e.g. if
the latter sees purple). But the original constituent points of view cannot survive, for they entail
seeing only red and only blue, respectively. Since the resulting higher-level subject has, ex hypothesi, a single compound portal to reality, it cannot both see only red and only blue. At least one of the constituent lower-level points of view will thus
necessarily disappear
—
in fact, both will disappear if the higher-level subject sees purple

—
which is not consistent with combination in the physico-chemical sense.


One may argue that what happens instead is that the phenomenal state of the higher-level subject ‘is a novel state which in some way “absorbs” or supersedes the mental states of the constituents’ (Seager, 2010, p. 179). In this so-called ‘
combinatorial infusion’ (ibid.) scenario, the lower-level points of view cease to exist in the process of forming the compound higher-level one. By parting with combination in the physico-chemical sense, this scenario negates much of the force and
appeal of the bottom-up panpsychist argument. But the pan­psychist can be spared this regret, for — as Coleman argues — the scenario does not work anyway.

Coleman’s reasoning is that, to avoid the appeal to magic entailed by brute or strong emergence, ‘lower-level properties must contribute to their novel product in virtue of their metaphysical nature, or, other­wise put, while remaining true to what
they are’ (2014, p. 35, original emphasis). But ‘a set of points of view have nothing to contribute as such to a single, unified successor point of view. Their essential property defines them against it: in so far as they are points of view they are
experientially distinct and isolated’ (ibid., p. 37, original emphasis). So the resulting higher-level point of view cannot be explicated in terms of the lower-level constituent points of view.
In conclusion, bottom-up panpsychism fails because there is no explicit and coherent way to ground the existence of macro-level subjects in micro-level phenomenal ultimates. Subject combination arguably requires — just as mainstream physicalism does —
the appeal to magic entailed by brute or strong emergence. Yet, it was precisely this requirement that, in the case of mainstream physicalism, motivated the conception of bottom-up panpsychism as an alternative in the first place.

4. The Questionable Logical Bridge in Bottom-Up Panpsychism
Bottom-up panpsychism is motivated by the idea that, since physics only models the behaviour of physical entities and says nothing about their intrinsic nature (Russell, 2007), phenomenal consciousness may be this intrinsic nature. This is eminently
reasonable, since the only physical entity we are acquainted with ‘from within’ is our own nervous system, whose intrinsic nature surely seems to be phenomenal (Eddington, 1928). But bottom-up panpsychism then makes an extra claim: that phenomenal
consciousness has the same fragmented structure that matter has on the screen of perception. In other words, since our body is constituted by myriad elementary particles in so far as we can perceive it, our phenomenal inner-life
must itself be consti­
tuted by micro-level phenomenal parts — or so the argument goes.

This extra claim rests on a questionable logical bridge: it attributes to that which experiences a structure discernible only in the experi­ence itself. Allow me to elaborate.
The concept of elementary particles — ultimates — arises from experiments whose outcomes are accessible to us only in the form of conscious perception (even when delicate instrumentation is used, the output of this instrumentation
is only available
to us as conscious per­ception). Such experiments show that the images on the screen of per­ception can be divided up into ever-smaller elements, until we reach a limit. At this limit, we find the smallest discernible constituents of the images, which
are thus akin to pixels. As such, ultimates are the ‘pixels’ of experience,
not necessarily of the experiencer. The latter simply does not follow from the former.
Therefore, that human bodies are made of elementary particles does not necessarily say anything about the structure of the experiencer: a human body is itself an image on the screen of perception, and so will necessarily be ‘pixelated’ in so far as
it is perceived. Such pixelation reflects the idiosyncrasies of the screen of perception, not necessarily the structure of the human subject itself. As an analogy, the pixelated image of a person on a television screen reflects the idiosyncrasies of the
television screen; it does not mean that the person herself is made up of pixels.
As suggestive as it may be, the hypothesis that phenomenal con­sciousness is the intrinsic nature of the physical does not imply that the fragmented structure of matter on the screen of perception is the fundamental structure of
phenomenal consciousness
itself.

5. What Counts as a Fundamental Concrete Entity?
We have seen in the previous section that elementary particles are the building
blocks or ‘pixels’ of what is perceived, not necessarily of the subject that perceives. But we can ask a yet deeper question: are elementary particles fundamental
concrete entities on their own merit? Both mainstream physicalism and bottom-up
panpsychism, in taking ultimates to be the discrete building blocks of nature, seem to assume so.
There are, however, strong reasons to believe that at least the entire inanimate universe is one integrated whole without ultimate parts. Jonathan Schaffer, for instance, points out that
physically, there is good evidence that the cosmos forms an entangled system and good reason to treat entangled systems as irreducible wholes. Modally, mereology allows for the possibility of atomless gunk, with no ultimate parts for the pluralist to
invoke as the ground of being. (2010, p. 32, original emphasis)
Terry Horgan and Matjaž Potrc (2000) also contended that only the universe as a whole can be considered a concrete entity on its own merit, which they called
the ‘blobject’.

The physical substantiation for this line of thought is not recent. As early as
in the 1930s, John von Neumann (1996) reasoned that, when two inanimate quantum
systems interact, no measurement is actually performed but, instead, the two systems become
entangled with one another, forming an indivisible whole. If the resulting whole then interacts with a third system, they, too, become entangled, forming a new and larger whole; and so forth. These are the so-called ‘von Neumann chains’ and, since
everything in the universe ultimately is a quantum system, the entire inanimate
universe must constitute one single von Neumann chain — that is, one indivisible whole (von Neumann also remarked that observation by a conscious, living human being
clearly breaks the chain, since living humans demonstrably can perform a quantum measurement. Therefore, conscious living beings must be left out of the
present argument).
The implication is that, physically, there are arguably no such things as fundamental microscopic ultimates. Although this may violate popular assumptions and intuitions, it also points the way to a third avenue of enquiry
that holds some promise as an
alternative to both mainstream physicalism and bottom-up panpsychism.

6. The Whole Universe as a Unitary Conscious Entity
The idea that the (inanimate) universe may be an indivisible whole has proven tempting to those seeking an alternative to bottom-up pan­psychism, so to avoid the subject combination problem: they posit that ‘the cosmos as a whole
is the only
ontological ultimate there is, and that it is conscious’ (Shani, 2015, p. 408, original emphasis). With this, there is no longer any need to explicate how lower-level subjects combine to form higher-level subjects, for the highest-possible-level
subject is already the starting point.

This general outlook is called ‘cosmopsychism’ (Mathews, 2011; Jaskolla and
Buck, 2012; Shani, 2015; Nagasawa and Wager, 2016). The seminal insight that freed cosmopsychism from the limitations of bottom-up panpsychism was arguably that of Freya
Mathews (2011): she realized that, even under the hypothesis that phenomenal con­sciousness is the intrinsic aspect of the physical, there is no need to attribute the fragmented structure of matter to phenomenal conscious­ness itself. In her words, ‘
an extension of subjectivity to physical reality generally [i.e. “force fields and even space itself”], rather than its restriction merely to matter,
does seem to be required’ (ibid., p. 144).
Now the problem cosmopsychists face is the ‘decombination prob­lem’ (also called the ‘decomposition problem’ in Chalmers, 2016a): how do seemingly separate lower-level subjects — which, from now on, I shall follow Shani (2015, p. 415) in
referring to as ‘relative subjects’ — form within the conscious cosmos? To paraphrase Coleman (2014, p. 30), how do they acquire their private point of
view, whose associated qualitative field other relative subjects have no direct
— that is,
experiential — access to? After all, I cannot read your thoughts and, presumably, neither can you mine.

Before we address this problem, however, notice that there are at least two possible interpretations of cosmopsychism. The first one sticks to the bottom-up panpsychist view that a phenomenal ultimate has both phenomenal and non-phenomenal properties.
This way, whereas it takes the cosmos as a whole to be the sole phenomenal ultimate there is, this interpretation grants that the abstract relational properties of the cosmos are not phenomenal. For this reason, I shall call this
interpretation ‘dual-
aspect cosmopsychism’. According to it, the intrinsic aspect of the cosmos is
phenomenal, but its extrinsic aspect — the physical structure we can objectively measure in a scientific sense — is non-phenomenal and circumscribes the cosmos’s
phenomenal field. In a sense, the extrinsic, physical aspect of the cosmos bears phenomenality within in.
Another interpretation of cosmopsychism entails that the sole ontol­ogical primitive there is is cosmic phenomenal consciousness — or simply ‘cosmic consciousness’ for ease of reference. Nothing exists outside or independent of cosmic
consciousness. As such, under this interpretation one should say that the cosmos is constituted by phenomenality, as opposed to bearing phenomenality. In
other words, here the perceivable cosmos is in consciousness, as opposed to being conscious.

The latter interpretation is Shani’s (2015) position. Indeed, according to him the external, physical aspect of the cosmos is ‘its appearance as an exterior complement to… subjective realities’ (ibid.,
p. 412, emphasis added). Appearances are, of course, phenomenal in nature. I shall thus call this interpretation ‘idealist cosmopsychism’, since its reduction base is purely phenomenal.
Shani does still postulate a duality in cosmic consciousness to account for the
clear qualitative differences between the outer world we, as relative subjects,
perceive and measure and the inner world of our thoughts and feelings. He calls
it the ‘
lateral duality principle’ (ibid., p. 410) and describes it thus:
[Cosmic consciousness] exemplifies a dual nature: it has a concealed (or enfolded, or implicit) side to its being, as well as a revealed (or unfolded, or explicit) side; the former is an intrinsic dynamic domain of creative activity, while the latter is
identified as the outer, observable expression of that activity. (ibid., original emphasis)

What is important to emphasize, though, is that this duality does not entail or
imply two distinct ontological classes. Everything is still phenomenal.
Now, one must ultimately ground the revealed side of the cosmos in its concealed side, not only to eliminate what would otherwise be an arbitrary boundary, but also to accommodate the empirically undeniable causal links between the revealed order of the
physical world we perceive and the concealed order of thoughts and feelings. After all, revealed physical things and phenomena — think of psycho­active drugs, bodily trauma, electromagnetic fields, etc. — causally affect our concealed thoughts and
feelings. Causal links operating the other way around are also undeniable: our thoughts and feelings can lead to physical manifestations in the form of bodily
behaviours. If the revealed order were not grounded in the concealed, but constituted a
separate phenomenal domain instead, how could these cross­influences take place? Indeed, Shani acknowledges as much when he writes that ‘the revealed order of reality is grounded in the concealed’ (ibid., p. 416).

Yet, Shani is not explicit in regards to how this grounding works. He states that the physical world we perceive is the way the structural patterns of the creative activity of cosmic consciousness are repre­sented in relative subjects, such as you and
me (ibid., p. 412). This is fair enough as far as it goes, but what is the mechanism of representa­tion whereby concealed phenomenal activity translates into revealed order from the perspective of relative subjects? How does the forma­tion of a
relative subject lead to such a significant qualitative transi­tion as the representation of thoughts and feelings (the concealed order) in the form of perception (the revealed order)?
To tackle the decombination problem, Shani posits that the con­scious perspective or point of view of each relative subject has both a specific and a
generic character (ibid., p. 423). Since a relative subject corresponds to a segment of cosmic
consciousness, its specific character is derived from the local pattern of phenomenal activity taking place in that segment. Its generic character, in turn, is derived from the intrinsically subjective, perspectival nature of cosmic con­sciousness as a
whole. Let me unpack this.
Shani posits two intrinsic features of cosmic consciousness as con­stituents of the generic character of each relative subject: sentience and core-subjectivity (ibid., p. 426). In other words, each relative sub­ject is phenomenally conscious by virtue
of the fact that cosmic con­sciousness is itself intrinsically capable of experience. Also, each relative subject has ‘ipseity, or I-ness, by which is meant an implicit sense of self which serves as the dative… of experience, namely, as that to whom
things are given, or disclosed, from a perspective’ (ibid., original emphasis). The claim is then that the sense of I-ness of each relative subject is the sense of I-ness intrinsic to cosmic consciousness as a whole. One could argue that sentience and
core-subjectivity, so defined, are inextricable from one another. But even in this case, it is still useful to distinguish between these two cognitively salient aspects of what would admittedly be a single intrinsic feature of cosmic con­sciousness. So
I shall continue to speak of sentience and core-subjectivity.


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