In this book Fabian Klinge develops a novel approach for explaining phenomenal consciousness.
He defends a version of panpsychism that is the theory that (some of) the fundamental
physical entities exhibit consciousness. However in contrast to standard conceptions of the
view the author does not take human consciousness to be grounded in but emergent from the
consciousness of elementary particles. In this form he argues panpsychism can overcome the
doctrine's Achilles' heel the combination problem without running into similarly severe
problems-thus rendering panpsychism a strong contender to its problem-ridden rivals physicalism
and dualism. In addition the author provides a thorough analysis of the poorly studied concept
of metaphysical emergence. He argues that by refining some of the major contributions in the
literature emergence can be made intelligible enough to serve as a basis for a credible
solution proposal to the mind-body problem.
