For instance, if all the individual atoms and cells in my brain are conscious, how do those separate spheres of consciousness merge to form the consciousness “I’m” experiencing? What’s more, do all the smaller, individual points of consciousness cease to exist after giving birth to an entirely new point of consciousness? This is referred to as “the combination problem,” which the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes as “the hardest problem facing panpsychism,” noting: The problem is that this is very difficult to make sense of: “little” conscious subjects of experience with their
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