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In summary, according to Shani a relative subject is grounded, on the one hand,
in the intrinsic sentience and core-subjectivity of cosmic consciousness as a whole and, on the other hand, in the local patterns of phenomenal activity taking place in the
particular segment of cosmic consciousness associated with the relative subject. The question now is: what are these local patterns of phenomenal activity that give rise to a private qualitative field, inaccessible to other relative subjects, as required
by Coleman (2014)?
Shani posits that the smallest cohesive elements of nature corres­pond to the revealed appearance of micro-level relative subjects (2015, pp. 415–16). In other words, he returns to the bottom-up pan­psychist view that elementary particles are
subjects. Shani motivates this with a metaphor:

A relative [subject] is a ‘vortex’ surging from the oceanic background [of cosmic consciousness]. It is a cohesive system. (ibid.)
He uses the image of a vortex to refer to localization of phenomenal activity. Consider… the most elementary ‘vortices’. [Their corresponding] localization process consists, then, in the intensification of experience, as well as in the concentration of focus, within limited and relatively well-defined boundaries… which
serves to separate the system’s inner reality from the inner reality of the ocean surrounding it… The result is an individual self (however primitive) engulfed in its own experiences and concerns while being ignorant of the deeper
layers which bind
it to the ground of all things… [T]he theory implies that simple [vortices] are veritable subjects. (ibid., p. 418, emphasis added)
Having effectively returned to the idea of micro-level phenomenal ultimates, Shani then argues that macro-level relative subjects, such as you and me, are formed by micro-level relative subjects coming together. The rather technical core of his argument â
€” which I shall not reproduce here, for it is not relevant to this paper — is that, by grounding the micro-level relative subjects in cosmic consciousness, he circumvents Coleman’s (2014) attack on bottom-up panpsychism.

Even if the latter point is valid — and I have no reason to believe otherwise
— I see multiple problems with this move. For one, once one starts from cosmic consciousness, it seems unnecessary and rather convoluted to descend all
the way down to
micro-level subjects, just to turn around again and go up to macro-level subjects. The only motivation I see for doing so is the arguably flawed notion,
discussed earlier, that the ‘pixels’ discernible on the screen of perception must be the building
blocks of the experiencer, as opposed to the experi­ence. By making a concession to this physicalist intuition, Shani forces two problems upon himself: he has to explain (a) how the cosmic subject seemingly breaks up into myriad micro-level relative
subjects, and then (b) how these micro-level relative subjects come together again to form macro-level relative subjects.
Moreover, recall that, as per Coleman’s definition, subjects entail ‘a point of view annexed to a private qualitative field’ (Coleman, 2014,
p. 30). So micro-level relative subjects must have private phenomenal fields inaccessible to other subjects. To tackle the decombination problem, one must explain how these private fields form within the ocean of cosmic consciousness.


But Shani seems to address this only in a vague, tangential manner. For starters, it is unclear how or why a mere ‘localization process’ in the ocean of cosmic consciousness would lead to local ‘intensification of experience’ and ‘concentration
of focus’ (Shani, 2015, p. 418). But even if we grant that it somehow does, a
‘concentration of focus within limited and relatively well-defined boundaries’ does not seem sufficient ‘to separate the system’s inner reality from the inner reality
of the ocean surrounding it’ (ibid.). By way of analogy, while my visual focus right now rests on the characters I am writing, I am not unaware of, or separate from, the contents of my peripheral vision; I still have direct — that is, experi­ential â
€” access to them. Moreover, it is hard to imagine that an electron could have sufficiently rich phenomenal properties to become ‘engulfed in its own experiences and concerns’ (ibid.). It seems highly unlikely that there is enough cognitive
complexity — if there can be cognition at all — at that microscopic level to justify such an appeal to mere self-absorption as the mechanism behind the separation of the electron’s inner reality.

I do think Shani is on the correct general path here, but a more elaborate, explicit, and precise case, with stronger empirical sub­stantiation, seems to be necessary to tackle the decombination problem.

7. The Key Questions to Be Answered
The principle of parsimony implies that, of the two interpretations of cosmopsychism discussed above, idealist cosmopsychism is more economical and, therefore, should be preferred if it can account for all relevant facts. I shall thus take idealist
cosmopsychism as my starting point and then attempt to address each of its problems and limitations. The goal is to account for all relevant facts with cosmic consciousness alone in the reduction base. Because I do not feel the need to invent new names
for ideas that have historically established names, I shall call the resulting ontology simply idealism.
Specifically, here are the key problems of, and questions not sufficiently or explicitly addressed by, idealist cosmopsychism that I now set out to tackle: a) Grounding experience in cosmic consciousness: how do myriad, ephemeral experiential qualities arise in one enduring cosmic consciousness?
b) The decombination problem: how do private phenomenal fields form within
cosmic consciousness? Why can I not read your thoughts by simply shifting the focus of my attention?
c) Reducing perception: how can the revealed order of nature (the physical
world we measure) be explained in terms of its con­cealed order (its underlying thoughts)? Why are the respective qualities so different?
d) Explaining the correlations between brain function and inner experience: if
brain function does not constitute or generate phenomenality, why do they correlate so well?
e) Explaining a seemingly shared, autonomous world: if the world is imagined in
consciousness, how can we all be imagining essentially the same world outside the control of our personal volition?

8. Experiences as Excitations of Cosmic Consciousness
The first step is to clarify the relationship between cosmic conscious­ness and experience. After all, the two are not interchangeable: cosmic consciousness is, ex hypothesi, something relatively enduring and stable, whereas experiences are relatively
ephemeral and dynamic. Yet, idealism posits that cosmic consciousness is nature’s sole ontol­ogical primitive, so how does the variety and dynamism of experience come into the picture?
I submit that (a) experiences are patterns of self-excitation of cosmic consciousness and that (b) cosmic consciousness has the inherent dis­position to self-excitation. As such, experiences are not ontologically distinct from cosmic consciousness, just
as a dance is not distinct from the dancer. There is nothing to a dance but the
dancer in motion. In an analogous way, there is nothing to experience but cosmic conscious­ness ‘in motion’.

Particular experiences correspond to particular patterns of self-excitation of cosmic consciousness, just as particular choreographies correspond to particular patterns of self-excitation of the dancer. These patterns can evolve
in time and differ across
different segments of cosmic consciousness. It is the variety and dynamics of excitations across the underlying ‘medium’ that lead to different experiential qualities. (One must be careful at this point: by referring to cosmic consciousness as a ‘
medium’ I may appear to be objectifying it. Language forces me into this dilemma. But cosmic consciousness is subjectivity itself, not an object.) This way, even if the ‘medium’ is eternal and immutable, its self-excitations can come and go in
myriad patterns.
This notion is entirely analogous to, and consistent with, how modern physics attempts to reduce the variety and dynamics of natural phenomena to an enduring
primary substrate: quantum field theory, for instance, posits that all fundamental particles are
particular modes of self-excitation of a quantum field, which is inherently disposed to self-excitation. Superstring theories posit essentially the same, but now the self-excited substrate is hyper-dimensional strings. Finally, according to M-theory the
patterns of nature consist of modes of self-excitation of a hyper-dimensional membrane. Idealism, as I am formu­lating it here, essentially entails porting the evolving mathematical apparatus of modern physics to cosmic consciousness itself, as opposed
to an abstract conceptual object. This should require but a straightforward and
seamless transposition, implying no loss of pre­dictive power.

9. Tackling the Decombination Problem
Cosmic consciousness comprises a variety of phenomenal contents — experiences, patterns of self-excitation — such as thoughts and feel­ings. If we take the human psyche as a representative sample of how cosmic consciousness operates — which is the
best we can do, really
— we can infer that, ordinarily, these phenomenal contents are internally integrated through cognitive associations: a feeling evokes an abstract idea, which triggers a memory, which inspires a thought, etc. These associations are logical, in the sense
that, for instance, the memory inspires the thought because of a certain implicit logic linking the two. Ordinary phenomenal activity in cosmic consciousness can thus be modelled as a connected directed graph. See Figure 1a. Each vertex in the graph
represents a particular phenomenal content and each edge a cognitive association logically linking contents together. Every phenomenal content in the graph of Figure 1a can be reached from any other phenomenal content through
a chain of cognitive
associations.

Figure 1. A connected graph (a) illustrating normal integration of phenom­enal
contents, and a disconnected graph (b) illustrating dissociation and the corresponding formation of an alter (inner subgraph in grey).
Each vertex in Figure 1 represents a particular pattern of self-excitation of cosmic consciousness. Each edge represents thus an association between two patterns of self-excitation, each pattern with its particular constituent harmonics. When the two
patterns of self-excitation are concurrently present — that is, when the two associated phenomenal contents are experienced together — the association can
be seen as a combination of the respective harmonics, like in a musical chord wherein multiple
notes are played at the same time. When the association unfolds in temporal sequence — as e.g. in the case of a thought that fades away to make room for the experience of the memory it evokes — it can be visualized as a transition
from the first to
the second pattern of self-excitation, like notes played in sequence in a melody.

However, we know from the psychiatric literature that sometimes ‘a disruption
of and/or discontinuity in the normal integration’ of phenomenal contents can
occur in the human psyche (Black and Grant, 2014, p. 191). This is called dissociation and is
well recognized in psychiatry today (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Dissociation entails that some phenomenal contents cease to be able to evoke others. A person suffering from a particularly severe form of dissociation, called Dissociative
Identity Disorder (DID), exhibits multiple ‘discrete centers of self-awareness’ (Braude, 1995, p. 67) called alters. Each alter corresponds thus to a particular segment of the psychic space wherein it forms.

Dissociation can be visualized as what happens when the graph in Figure 1a becomes disconnected, such as shown in Figure 1b. Some phenomenal contents can then no longer be reached from others. The inner subgraph is thus a representation of an alter,
corresponding to a particular segment of the originally integrated psychic space.
There is compelling empirical evidence that different alters can remain concurrently conscious. In Morton Prince’s well-known study of the ‘Miss Beauchamp’ case of DID, one of the alters ‘was a co­conscious personality in a deeper sense. When
she was not interacting with the world, she did not become dormant, but persisted and was active’ (Kelly et al., 2009, p. 318). Braude’s more recent work (1995) corroborates the view that alters can be co-conscious. He points to the struggle of
different alters for executive control of the body and the fact that alters ‘might intervene in the lives of others [that is, other alters], intentionally interfering with their interests and activities, or at least playing mischief on them’ (ibid.,
p. 68). It thus appears that alters can not only be concurrently conscious, but
that they can also vie for dominance with each other.

Clearly, the evidence indicates that different alters entail — to para­phrase Coleman (2014) again — different co-conscious points of view annexed to private qualitative fields, these private qualitative fields being carved out by virtue of
dissociation. In other words, different alters are different subjects. The connected subgraph of phenomenal contents associated with an alter (see Figure 1b again) represents its private qualitative or phenomenal field. Moreover, alters form within a
single overarching psyche, so the process of their formation entails a decomposition of an original subject into multiple lower-level subjects.

I submit that dissociation in cosmic consciousness is what leads to the formation of relative subjects. Each relative subject is thus an alter of cosmic consciousness, its private qualitative field corresponding to a segment of the latter’s self-
excitatory ‘medium’.
By virtue of corresponding to a segment of cosmic consciousness, each alter retains — as Shani (2015) posited — the intrinsic features of sentience and
core-subjectivity. But the local pattern of dissociative phenomenal activity in
its respective
segment is what bestows an alter its specific character, its unique perspective. In other words, the pri­mary sense of I-ness of all alters is that of cosmic consciousness itself; the very consciousness of the alters, as an ontological ‘medium’, is
cosmic consciousness. But the particular phenomenal field of an alter, which defines its identity as a seemingly separate individual, is demarcated by a local dissociative process — analogous to DID — in the corresponding segment of the ‘medium’.
Naturally, because alters are fully grounded in cosmic consciousness, it is incoherent to say that they become separated from it; only an illusion of separation arises as a particular phenomenal content in the alter’s dissociated qualitative field.

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