<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Questions about the nature of reality and consciousness remain unresolved in philosophy today, but not for lack of hypotheses. Ontologies as varied as physicalism, microexperientialism and cosmopsychism enrich the philosophical menu. Each of these ontologies faces a seemingly fundamental problem: under physicalism, for instance, we have the ‘hard problem of consciousness,’ whereas under microexperientialism we have the ‘subject combination problem.’ I argue that these problems are thought artifacts, having no grounding in empirical reality. In a manner akin to semantic paradoxes, they exist only in the internal logico-conceptual structure of their respective ontologies.</p></abstract>

Questions about the nature of reality and consciousness remain unresolved in philosophy today, but not for lack of hypotheses. Ontologies as varied as physicalism, microexperientialism and cosmopsychism enrich the philosophical menu. Each of these ontologies faces a seemingly fundamental problem: under physicalism, for instance, we have the ‘hard problem of consciousness,’ whereas under microexperientialism we have the ‘subject combination problem.’ I argue that these problems are thought artifacts, having no grounding in empirical reality. In a manner akin to semantic paradoxes, they exist only in the internal logico-conceptual structure of their respective ontologies.

The Quest to Solve Problems That Don’t Exist: Thought Artifacts in Contemporary Ontology

Studia Humana

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Questions about the nature of reality and consciousness remain unresolved in philosophy today, but not for lack of hypotheses. Ontologies as varied as...

The Quest to Solve Problems That Don’t Exist: Thought Artifacts in Contemporary Ontology

Published Online: Nov 01, 2017

Page range: 45 - 51

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/sh-2017-0026

Keywords
physicalism, panpsychism, cosmopsychism, idealism, hard problem of consciousness, subject combination problem

© 2017 Bernardo Kastrup, published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

The Quest to Solve Problems That Don’t Exist: Thought Artifacts in Contemporary Ontology

Published Online: Nov 01, 2017

Page range: 45 - 51

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/sh-2017-0026

Keywordsphysicalism, panpsychism, cosmopsychism, idealism, hard problem of consciousness, subject combination problem

© 2017 Bernardo Kastrup, published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
physicalism, panpsychism, cosmopsychism, idealism, hard problem of consciousness, subject combination problem