Monadic panmentalism, the hard problem of consciousness, and the ingredient problem
Synthese July 10, 2026 Savvas Ioannou
The hard problem of consciousness asks why physical processes give rise to subjective experience. Panpsychism, which says fundamental particles have their own forms of consciousness, struggles with the ingredient problem: we cannot understand how micro-level conscious properties combine into human-level conscious experience. This paper proposes panmentalism, the view that every micro-object has an ability to be conscious. This ability, together with physical properties, produces phenomenal properties. To avoid issues with unmanifestable dispositions, the author argues that only simple, fundamental entities possess both the ability to be conscious and phenomenal properties. Panmentalism thus claims to solve both the hard problem and the ingredient problem.