Curt Jaimungal announces a 3 way conversation between himself, Hoffman, and Kastrup is coming!

[Eugene I]

Yes - I can't really follow this argument. Hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water, a different substance - what am I missing here? Is it because gases and liquid are still "matter", whereas consciousness is not ? (but then...matter is really just an aspectual appearance of consciousness viewed from across a dissociative boundary).

He is referring to the "subject combination problem". Let's say, H and O atoms are conscious and each have their own private experiences of some qualia (even though extremely primitive ones), each from their distinct subjective perspectives. When they combine into H2O, a new subjective perspective of H2O is now formed, but what happens with the subjective perspectives of H and O and their conscious experiences? Variants of the answer:

- They disappear. But that contradict the premise of panpsychism that the nature is conscious down to elementary particle level.
- They remain, but are their conscious experiences subsumed by the encompassing experience of H2O, or is H2O has it's own qualia and is not experiencing the qualia of H and O?
- The latter answer is a possibility, but the question is: if there is nothing to H2O in addition to H and two Os, where would those additional qualia come from? (variant of the answer: from the structure of their combination).
- The former answer runs into the subject combination problem: each quale of H (as well as of O) experience is now appears to be experienced from two subjective perspectives simultaneously - from H's perspective, and from H2O's perspective. How is that possible? The same quale cannot be experienced from two subjective perspectives, each quale of conscious experience inseparably belongs to the unified field of experiences of only one particular subjective perspective.

There is one variant of solution that I'm leaning towards: the subject combination problem disappears if we assume that a "separate subjective perspective" is only an "illusion", there is only conscious experiences of qualia (or, as people say here, of "ideas" ) in one MAL and any "subjective perspective" is really only a mental concept fabricated in the alters "islands" of conscious activity. There is actually no separate subjective perspective pertaining to each alter, but only a "local" dissociated flow of conscious experiences.

Another solution is to keep the subjective perspective (the "experiencer") but pose that there is only one subjective perspective in the whole world of the MAL, and each alter's perspective is actually one and the same "global" MAL's perspective. But then the question is: how com we alters do not experience the experiences of qualia of other alters and of the MAL if there is only one subjective perspective and one "experiencer"? How is on "experiencer" being "divided" while remaining "one"?

[Ben Iscatus]

Thank you, Eugene - your potential solutions are interesting. The example of Hydrogen and oxygen suggest that the original molecules are subsumed but still available for expression (e.g. electrolysis releases them again). I'm reminded of the various "sub-personalities" we have which have not been properly integrated and become "unconscious" or orphaned- the work of Thomas Zinser's Soul Centred Healing.