The Phenomenal Unity of Consciousness

The chapter examines philosophical debates about the unity of consciousness, focusing on phenomenal unity—the way experiences feel connected. It critiques the dominant Unity Thesis, which claims all simultaneous experiences of a subject are phenomenally unified. The author argues against understanding unity as a type of oneness or singularity, instead proposing that phenomenal unity arises from connectivity conditions among experiences.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Philosophical interest in unity of consciousness goes back at least to Kant. A recent revival of interest among analytic philosophers of mind focuses on unity of consciousness, construed as phenomenal unity. This chapter will survey some of the issues and questions that have been central to this recent work before sketching an alternative to what may be seen as a dominant, though implicit, tendency in the recent literature on unity: to formulate the idea that phenomenal unity is a natural feature of consciousness in terms of what the chapter will term the Unity Thesis. According to this thesis, all synchronous experiences of a conscious subject at a moment are phenomenally unified with each other. The chapter then rebuts another trend in recent literature: the tendency to understand phenomenal unity as obtaining in virtue of a type of oneness or singularity. The chapter advances an alternative that sees phenomenal unity as obtaining in virtue of connectivity conditions over relations among phenomenal experiences.