Introspection in Group Minds, Disunities of Consciousness, and Indiscrete Persons

The article argues that some possible minds, like the 'ancillary mind' from Ann Leckie's science fiction novel Ancillary Justice, occupy a grey zone between a single mind and a communicating group, making them neither clearly one person nor many. This challenges standard conceptions of personal identity and subject individuation. The authors suggest that if such minds defy discrete countability, some actual minds on Earth might similarly blur the line between introspection and communication. They propose extending Kammerer and Frankish's research programme to study not only possible forms of introspection but also mental activity that lies intermediate between introspection and communication.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Kammerer and Frankish (this issue) challenge us to expand our conception of introspection beyond neurotypical human cases. This article describes a possible 'ancillary mind' modelled on a system envisioned in Leckie's (2013) science fiction novel Ancillary Justice. The ancillary mind constitutes a borderline case between a communicating group of individuals and a single, spatially distributed mind. It occupies a grey zone with respect to personal identity and subject individuation, neither determinately one person or subject nor determinately many persons or subjects, and thus some of its processes might be neither determinately introspection within a mind nor determinately communication between minds. If ancillary minds defy discrete countability, the same might be true for some actual minds on Earth. Kammerer and Frankish's research programme can be extended to include not only the study of possible forms of introspection, but also the study of possible mental activity intermediate between introspection and communication.