2023: Theme: "Is Consciousness Fundamental?" Winner of the prize: Dr. Yanssel Garcia, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Nebraska-Omaha for his paper, "Against the Irreducibility of Subjects." You can read his paper here.
Against the Irreducibility of Subjects
Panpsychism has a problem. We are subjects of experience, and according to panpsychism, we are also somehow the combination of the smaller subjects of experience that comprise us. But we have a seemingly unshakeable intuition that we are irreducible. If this is so, then combination is impossible, and panpsychism fails. The question, then, is: why believe that subjects are irreducible? A number of arguments have been offered in defense of the irreducibility of subjects. I consider five. The primary purpose of this paper is to show that none of them clearly succeed. For each argument, at least one premise is either false, likely false, or in serious need of defense. I end the paper by attempting to nudge us away from the intuition that we are neither reducible nor combinable through the use of a fanciful thought experiment.