The unity of the experienced world and the experienced self have puzzled humanity for centuries. How can we understand this and related types of phenomenal (i.e., experienced) unity? This book develops an interdisciplinary account of phenomenal unity. It focuses on examples of experienced wholes such as perceived objects (chairs and tables, but also groups of objects), bodily experiences, successions of events, and the attentional structure of consciousness. As a first step, the book investigates how the unity of consciousness can be characterized phenomenologically: what is it like to experie ... More

The unity of the experienced world and the experienced self have puzzled humanity for centuries. How can we understand this and related types of phenomenal (i.e., experienced) unity? This book develops an interdisciplinary account of phenomenal unity. It focuses on examples of experienced wholes such as perceived objects (chairs and tables, but also groups of objects), bodily experiences, successions of events, and the attentional structure of consciousness. As a first step, the book investigates how the unity of consciousness can be characterized phenomenologically: what is it like to experience wholes, what is the experiential contribution of phenomenal unity? This raises conceptual and empirical questions. In addressing these questions, connections are drawn to phenomenological accounts and research on Gestalt theory. As a second step, the book suggests how phenomenal unity can be analyzed computationally, by drawing on concepts and ideas of the framework of predictive processing. The result is a conceptual framework, as well as an interdisciplinary account of phenomenal unity: the regularity account of phenomenal unity. According to this account, experienced wholes correspond to a hierarchy of connecting regularities. The brain tracks these regularities by hierarchical prediction error minimization, which approximates hierarchical Bayesian inference.