INTRODUCTION 5
nature, and that the representational content of such a state exhausts its phenomenal
character. A feature of consciousness which intuitively supports representationalism is the
transparency of experience. When one tries to direct attention to experiential components
of one’s current consciousness, one seems only to find the world. One sees colours and
shapes, which are worldly, and smells odours, of things in the world, etc. Chapter 10 is
devoted to exploring the advantages of representationalism and countering some standard
objections. Chapter 11 is more focused on problems facing this approach. Of special impor-
tance is the nature of representation itself which forces a bifurcation in representational
approaches. The most common versions opt for a kind of externalist theory of representa-
tion, but I argue that in the realm of consciousness externalism leads to deep problems.
These considerations lead to a peculiar threat I call the anti-Cartesian catastrophe which
is the breakdown in self-knowledge that stems from adopting an externalist representation-
alist account of consciousness. Chapter 12 delves into this issue. A number of lines of
argument suggest that an internalist representationalist is to be favoured over the exter-
nalist variety. Many of these stem from the bizarre, but nomologically possible, Swampman
thought experiment. Swampman is a perfect physical duplicate of some conscious subject
which is suddenly and accidentally produced by some quantum fluke. Swampman should be
a conscious being, but standard theories struggle to make him so. On the other hand, there
are powerful arguments in support of externalist accounts of representation. These latter
arguments largely stem from the assumption, usually implicit, of physicalist naturalism. The
seriousness of the difficulties which arise here, in concert with the problems for physicalism
discussed in the first chapter, suggest that consciousness may be a more radically strange
feature of the world than physicalism can recognize.
One philosopher who has developed a radical account of consciousness is David Chalmers.
Chapter 13 examines his naturalistic dualism , which holds that consciousness is a funda-
mental non-physical feature of the world, which is causally generated by functionally charac-
terized physical states. His account faces serious objections, many of which would suggest
that consciousness needs an even more radical treatment. For example, one might expect
that a fundamental feature of the world should be associated with simple entities rather than
the hugely complex functional architectures to which Chalmers assigns consciousness.
Chalmers considers a view in which information is ontologically fundamental and somehow
essentially connected with consciousness. Using some ideas from quantum theory, in partic-
ular the information-laden but non-causal links seemingly present in quantum entanglement,
Chapter 13 develops an information-based version of panpsychism, the view that mentality is
a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the world. A surprisingly interesting and theoretically
satisfying form of panpsychism can be formulated. The theory then faces a number of deep
objections of which perhaps the most serious is the combination problem: how can putatively
primitive and simple elements of consciousness be linked together to form the more complex
sorts of consciousnesses with which we are familiar?
Chapter 14 attempts a reply to the combination problem using the notion of combinatorial
infusion. It is conjectured that under the appropriate conditions, the basic conscious states
postulated by panpsychism can fuse into a new state that, so to speak, absorbs its precursors.
This suggests a possible mechanism of the aggregation of consciousness that avoids the