FOS COMMISSION: JOHN TAYLOR 7

For those who don’t know, the binding problem is a central mystery in cognitive psychology that concerns explaining the unity of conscious experience. More specifically the problem, in its pre-theoretical form, asks how the brain can take different sensory inputs and integrate them into a single coherent perception of reality. 

In this essay, I will explicate the binding problem and develop what I understand to be its deeper resolution: namely, irreducible wholeness (IW). I will achieve this goal in three parts. First, in part 1, I will outline the “functional formulation” of the binding problem and survey its contemporary solutions. Second, in part 2, I will present what Smith calls the authentic binding problem before exploring its initial resolution: the soul. Additionally, I will also argue that the soul can resolve the binding problem only when understood as an irreducible wholeness. If the soul is conceived as anything less than an IW, a further unresolved difficulty emerges; one which I will refer to as the “meta-binding problem.”

Finally, in Part III, I will explore Smith’s account of consciousness as a Nomen Dei. In doing so, I will argue that IW constitutes a “Divine thread” flowing from God to the various forms of consciousness.

Part I: The Functional Binding Problem and its Contemporary Solutions

Considering that the five senses are physically separate from each other, it should come as no shock, to those reasonable, that an explanation is needed for how sensory inputs can be physically unified by disconnected neurons and chunks of brain matter.

This physicalist puzzle is, in essence, the binding problem according to its functional, meaning physical, formulation.[1] 

This problem, I might add, is made a thousand times worse by the fact that the brain physically processes sensory inputs using different neuronal centres. To this end, there are specialised centres for shapes, sounds, colours, emotions, and for thoughts etc.[2] However, the outputs from these distinct centres must somehow be physically unified.[3] We know that they must, because we do not experience colours, shapes, sounds, emotions, and thoughts as disjointed fragments. Instead, we perceive them as components of a unified conscious experience, however subjective that unity may be.[4] 

Consequently, if one adopts the physicalist Weltanschauung that all mental phenomena, including those subjective, are reducible to physical processes, the most natural inference from this, is that there exists a physical mechanism, or set of mechanisms, responsible for binding these distinct neural outputs into unified conscious experiences.[5]

That said, the functional binding problem is commonly divided into three further sub-problems. These are:

1) The feature binding-problem: How do we correctly associate different features (e.g. colours, shapes, motion) with an object?[6] For example, how do we perceive a red ball as a red ball and not as a separate roundness and as a separate redness?

2) The temporal binding-problem: How do we integrate information arriving at different times to the brain into a coherent perception?[7] For example, how do we choreograph sounds arriving at different times to the brain, and light arriving at different times to the brain, into a coherent picture of outside events, such as a door being closed?

3) The consciousness binding-problem: How do we combine various sensory inputs, such as thoughts, memories, and emotions into a single, unified conscious experience?[8] For example, when we see a friend’s face how do we associate it with a whole myriad of different emotions, thoughts, and memories?

In answer, cognitive psychologists have proposed a range of physical explanations. While I cannot possibly review all of them, the four principal solutions can be summarized as follows:

1) Temporal Synchrony: Proposes, that different neurons, located in different centres of the brain, fire in harmony so that the different aspects of experience can be unified. This synchronous firing allows for different features of objects to become bound together.[9] 

2) Convergence Zones: Proposes there are unique zones of the brain where information from different regions gets fused together.[10] 

3) Global Neuronal Workspace Theory: Proposes, that there exists a “global workspace” of widely distributed connected neurons, which act as a terrain where different aspects of conscious experience bind together.[11] 

4) Integrated Information Theory (IIT): This explanation is perhaps the most unique and compelling of the materialist explanations of functional binding. Since it admits that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. 

According to IIT consciousness corresponds to “integrated information”, often denoted by the symbol Φ (phi).[12] In this framework, “information”, refers to Shannon information, which I introduced in essay 4, while “integration” refers to the extent to which that information is generated by the system as a unified whole rather than by its individual parts collaborating.[13] Put otherwise, a system possesses high “integrated information” when its causal interactions produce states that cannot be reduced to the sum of its separate components.[14] According to IIT, the functional binding problem is resolved because conscious experience is unified by virtue of this integration of information across interconnected networks of neurons.[15]

Although these explanations and approaches may suggest that binding is merely a materialistic problem, that conclusion is in fact misleading. Since, in reality, there are two distinct binding problems, and the materialist solutions examined thus far can, at best, address only one of them. 

The second or “authentic” problem, which remains unresolved by these explanations, will become the central focus of Part II. As will become apparent an immaterial entity is needed to solve the second binding problem—devising more and more physical theories will not be enough.

Part II: The Authentic Binding Problem and its Smithian Resolution

Unlike the functional binding problem, the authenticor phenomenal problem of binding does not concern the coordination of neural activity, as such, but rather the subjective unity of conscious experience.[16]In other words, this second problem concerns how the diverse qualitative components of experience: such as colours, sounds, shapes, thoughts, and feelings, can be given as a single unified phenomenality.[17] As we have already seen these qualitative components can be creatively interlaced in such a way that they are subjectively inseparable. For example, the noise of a hammer and the sight of a hammer, hitting a nail, are perceived as a subjective wholeness that transcends a summation of these two qualities.

Like the hard problem of consciousness, the phenomenal binding problem cannot, on this view, be resolved by any materialist account, even in principle. The difficulty lies in the intrinsically subjective character of phenomenal unity, which cannot be explained solely in terms of physical processes or neural mechanisms. Consequently, any adequate solution must appeal to a genuinely immaterial principle. Wolfgang Smith identifies this principle as the soul, writing the following:

There is thus, most assuredly, an authentic “binding problem”; and though that problem may be at variance with the formulation generally imposed by neuroscientists, it proves to be no less profound and no less intractable under Cartesian auspices. Even from the perspective of Bennett and Hacker, moreover, there must, in the final count, be a unifying principle to “bind” the multitude of neurons—inclusive of their on/off positions—failing which the entire neuronal mechanism would evidently be irrelevant to visual perception. Or to put it another way: if indeed the brain acts as a computer—which hardly anyone doubts—there must be something or someone, in effect, to “read” that computer: to bring into unity what, on the level of the physical brain, is fragmented into a myriad of microscopic components. But that “principle” is something our scientists are de facto unable to conceive, for it happens to be the very conception excluded from our Weltanschauung by the Cartesian Ansatz itself. I wish, however, to point out that the restoration of that crucial component—its reintegration into our worldview—can in fact be effected with ease: one need actually look no further than the ontology of St. Thomas Aquinas, which refers to that element as a “substantial form.”

This fact should come as no surprise. After all, the substantial form of an animate being is none other than what is traditionally termed a soul:5  and there was a time, not so very long ago, when every child knew that each of us has one. But getting back to the binding problem: it is evidently the soul that “binds” not only the neurons in the visual cortex, but every discernible component of the body into the unity of the living organism. Is it any wonder that—having jettisoned this crucial component—we should face a “binding problem”!

The question arises, of course, how the soul or substantial form itself can accomplish the seemingly miraculous feat of “uniting” an unspeakably vast multitude of entities—be they neurons, “atomic particles,” or what you will—into a single living organism; and let me emphasize that the formal re-introduction of substantial forms in itself hardly resolves the mystery.

It proves to be the bounds of space and time, I maintain: for whereas the corporeal domain is evidently subject to both space and time, the intermediary (sometimes termed the “astral” plane) is subject to time alone, while the spiritual is subject to neither. The essential point, now, regarding “souls” is that they pertain to the intermediary domain, which is to say that they are subject to time but not to space. And here at last we have the “missing” piece of the puzzle: for it is by virtue of being “supra-spatial,” precisely, that the soul has the capacity to “bind” into one substance, one living organism, a multitude of spatially separated components—billions of neurons, for instance, in the visual cortex of the brain. No wonder the neuroscientists are baffled; for it happens that the binding problem is in fact insoluble on the corporeal plane.[18]

As Smith's statement suggests, only the soul is capable of unifying the countless neural processes underlying perception into the single, coherent field of phenomenal consciousness. 

However, Smith’s formulation in stating this is somewhat misleading. Since,  strictly speaking, neurons are not themselves the bearers of phenomenal experience. As physical entities governed by mechanical and electrochemical processes, they can possess no intrinsic qualitative character themselves.

So, if not, neurons what then are the elements which the soul unifies to produce phenomenal consciousness?

Well, a more plausible reading is that Smith is not saying the soul unifies neurons as such, to produce phenomenal homogeneity, but rather that it unifies the distinct qualitative components of experience that neurons represent. Consider, for example, the phenomenal components of sound, colour, thoughts and emotions. On this interpretation, the soul serves as the principle that resolves the phenomenal binding problem by integrating these distinct experiential qualities into a unified conscious whole. That said, in unifying these qualitative constituents, the physical neurons that represent them are inevitably implicated in that act of unification. This is because the soul is the "principle of life,"[19]which means that every aspect of a living being (including its physical dimensions) must participate in the soul's irreducible wholeness. In turn, neurons are not excluded from this unity but are inevitably caught up in it.

In fact, in the fifth chapter of Science and Myth, Smith elaborates on this solution by introducing a Vedantic anthropology of the soul, stating that:

One needs in the first place to understand that, according to Vedanta, man possesses, not just one, but three bodies corresponding to the three principal degrees of manifestation: the sthula-sarira or "gross" body, the sukshma-sarira or "subtle" body, and the karana-sarira or "causal" body. There is also however another triadic division that needs to be recalled: a division, namely, of the sukshma-sarira itself, said to be comprised of kosas, the so-called sheaths or "coverings" of Purusha, the indwelling Self.[20] 

Putting jargon aside, Smith's central point about Vedanta is that it conceives of the human person as being comprised of three bodies. These are: (1) the gross body, (2) the subtle body, and (3) the causal body.

I will now explain this threefold Vedantic account of the body before explaining how the Thomistic tradition divides the soul into distinct parts and sub-parts that breathe life into the subtle body.

Firstly, the gross body simply refers to the corporeal body considered as a corpse unanimated by life.[21]In doing so, it encompasses the body's physical (SX) nature, including neurons and brain matter, but more importantly the body as it appears in the realm of sensible perception.[22]For instance, our arms, legs, and other bodily parts, insofar as they are perceivable and thereby corporeal.

Secondly, the subtle body comprises three different capacities of the human person: intellectual, mental, and vital.[23]These capacities are referred to as “sheaths” or “coverings”.[24]The first sheath, the intellectual capacity, encompasses the powers of reason and intuition. The second sheath, the mental capacity, include thoughts, emotions, imagination, and feelings. The third sheath, the vital capacity, refers to the life principle—or elan vital—that animates the gross body, taking it from a lifeless corpse to a lively animal.[25]

Finally, the causal body is the most elusive of the three bodies. Within the Vedantic tradition, it refers to the Atman, the deepest principle of reality—often considered to be the true self.[26]However, in Christian terms my conjecture is that the causal body can be understood as corresponding to the soul's original logos as eternally known to the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity prior to being stored in aeviternity. Since a full development of this idea would require substantial theological overview, I cannot say much more on this proposal.

However, it is important to note that the Vedantic threefold distinction does not describe the soul qua soul, which Smith identifies as the true solution to the binding problem. Instead, it concerns the composite that results from the union of the soul with what would otherwise be inanimate matter. As noted earlier, the soul is "the principle of life." Meaning, it is the substantial form whose proper function is to animate what would otherwise be a lifeless corpse.

To carry out this proper function, the soul must give life to the body. According to the Thomistic tradition, the soul does this through its three principal parts, together with their subparts.[27]First, through the intellective part, which contains the subparts of reason and intuition. Second, through the vegetative part, which contains the subparts of nutrition, growth, and reproduction. Third, through the sensitive part, which contains the subparts of the external senses and the internal senses: such as imagination, memory, and the emotions.[28]

Thereby, in light of the Vedantic anthropology, the Thomistic division of the soul acts as the organizing principle of the subtle body through animating its three different sheaths. Accordingly, the vegetative part of the soul corresponds to and orders the vital sheath, the sensitive part the mental sheath, and the intellective part the intellectual sheath.

With this organization established, the soul is now capable of not only receiving sensory inputs but also of binding them together through co-operation of its different parts and sub-parts. In this way, the soul is able to solve the phenomenal binding problem in its many different presentations. 

Consider, for example, the consciousness binding problem. Its resolution requires the coordinated activity of the sensitive part of the soul in both its external and internal subparts. The external senses perceive the corporeal object, while the internal senses generate the corresponding affective responses. These distinct operations are then unified by the soul into a single, coherent act of consciousness, yielding emotions that are irreducibly bound to their perceived corporeal objects.

Although this ontology appears, prima facie, to resolve the binding problem, it nevertheless gives rise to what I take to be a second-order, or meta-binding, problem. A problem which can only be solved by admitting that the soul is an IW.

In short, the meta-binding problem arises from the fact that the soul is composed of subparts responsible for binding qualitative components into unified, irreducible experiences. However, what unifies the soul's own subparts into a single, coherent whole, enabling it to confer irreducible experiential unity onto these components in the first place? This question is crucial because, unless the soul possesses an irreducible unifying principle, its internal structure would remain fragmented. As a result, perception could never achieve genuine unity, leaving the original phenomenal binding problem unresolved.

Evidently, the only plausible solution to the meta-binding problem is something fundamentally irreducible: an irreducible wholeness that is. Any attempt to resolve the meta-binding problem through reductive means would simply generate an infinite regress, leaving the original problem perpetually unresolved. Consequently, the irreducible wholeness of the soul is necessary for solving the phenomenal binding problem and much more besides. As the following section will argue, irreducible wholeness, instantiated by the soul, constitutes a divine thread that runs through every level of consciousness, from God to all the way to neurons.

Part III: Consciousness as a Nomen Dei and the Divine Thread of Irreducible Wholeness

The phrase Nomen Dei is Latin for "Name of God," and as Catholics we are deeply familiar with these names. Included among them are Love, Justice, Truth, Father, Lord and according to Wolfgang Smith Consciousness.[29] Importantly the divine names refer to God only in a mystical sense. Just as the whole must transcend the sum of its parts so too the divine names must transcend their earthly referents in speaking about Him!

According to Aquinas, the divine names are arranged organically in a hierarchy by their appropriateness in speaking about God.[30]At the summit of this hierarchy stands Being,[31]which, in Smithian terms, is basically irreducible wholeness.[32]All other divine names, including consciousness, derive their capacity to refer to God through their participation in this supreme name.[33]

For me, the supremacy of Being as a Nomen Dei, together with its equivalence to irreducible wholeness, carries a remarkable implication for the relationship between IW, consciousness, and God. Since, it suggests that irreducible wholeness is the “divine thread” which connects consciousness across its every level of reality. Let me explain how and why I think this is the case.

Firstly, as a Nomen Dei, consciousness can refer to God only through its participation in irreducible wholeness. Therefore, it is by virtue of IW that consciousness receives its fullest and highest meaning as a name of God. 

Secondly, IW trickles down into the various forms of consciousness we have discussed relative to the binding problem. 

For example, in phenomenal consciousness our awarenesses are basically subjective continua—thereby exuding irreducible wholeness on a truly phenomenal level! Similarly in physical definitions of consciousness IW also rears its head. It does so in two keyways.

First as a “grounding-to-emergence” in non-reductive physical theories of consciousness. Most notably, in integrated information theory, which measures consciousness as the extent to which information can be integrated in a manner that transcends summation. Thus, IW is present in such a physical theory as a grounding-to-emergence.

The second is in a more subtle way. As I argued in Essay 1 sums of parts grow from IW. In fact, I would go a step further and say that there are no sums of parts, there are only sums of parts within IWs. Just as a hole can only exist within a surface, so too can a sum of parts only exist against the backdrop of IW, as it is IW which bestows onto them their power to exist in the first place. Therefore, when it comes to reductive theories of consciousness, such as Neural Synchrony, these too contain the thread of IW—albeit in a roundabout way.

Irreducible wholeness, therefore, is the divine thread connecting all forms of consciousness: from God to the physical.

Conclusion:

Let the above suffice as some reflections on the binding problem and consciousness. In the next essay I will investigate extra-sensory perception. A fascinating phenomenon which has so much to do with irreducible wholeness, it is a wonder that Wolfgang Smith did not investigate the topic more himself!

Bibliography: 

Aquinas, T. (1920). Summa Theologiae (Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Trans.). New Advent. https://www.newadvent.org/summa/ 

Aristotle, (1984). On the Soul. In Jonathan Barnes, The Complete Works: The Rev. Oxford Translation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. pp. 641-692.

Contemplative Interbeing. (n.d.). The binding problem. https://contemplativeinterbeing.org/the-binding-problem/ 

Garson, J. W. (2001). (Dis)solving the binding problem. Philosophical Psychology, 14(4), 381–392. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515080120088076

Wolfgang Smith. Science & Myth: With a Response to Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design. (2012). First Edition. Angelico Press. San Rafael, California.

Wolfgang Smith. Physics: A Science in Quest of an Ontology. (2023). [PSQ] Second Edition. Philos-Sophia Initiative Foundation. Camarillo, California.

Wolfgang Smith, Do we Perceive the Corporeal World? (2019). Philos-Sophia Initiative Foundation (PSIF). https://philos-sophia.org/perceive-corporeal-world/?srsltid=AfmBOorKZeP3t5pEKChavXj2jhZlRBMB_Xo1GPSvgKhfCTf034bBMCOd 

Vas, A. (n.d.). Bhagavad Gita – Lesson 17. Yes Vedanta. How Three Bodies? https://www.yesvedanta.com/bg/lesson-17/ 

Wu, Wayne and Jorge Morales, "The Neuroscience of Consciousness", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP] (Summer 2025 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2025/entries/consciousness-neuroscience/ 

[1] Garson, 2001, P.381-392

[2] Smith, Science and Myth, P.102-103

[3] Smith, Science and Myth, P.114-115

[4] Smith, Science and Myth, P.114-115

[5] Contemplative Interbeing, The Binding Problem

[6] Contemplative Interbeing, The Binding Problem

[7] Contemplative Interbeing, The Binding Problem

[8] Contemplative Interbeing, The Binding Problem

[9] Contemplative Interbeing, The Binding Problem

[10] Contemplative Interbeing, The Binding Problem

[11] Contemplative Interbeing, The Binding Problem

[12] SEP, The Neuroscience of Consciousness, Chapter 3

[13] SEP, The Neuroscience of Consciousness, Chapter 3

[14] SEP, The Neuroscience of Consciousness, Chapter 3

[15] SEP, The Neuroscience of Consciousness, Chapter 3

[16] Garson, 2001, P.381-392

[17] Garson, 2001, P.381-392

[18] Smith, 2019, Do we Perceive the Corporeal World?

[19] Aristotle, On The Soul, Chapter I, Book I 

[20] Smith, Science and Myth, P.118-119

[21] Vas, 2018, How Three Bodies?

[22] Vas, 2018, How Three Bodies?

[23] Smith, Science and Myth, P.119

[24] Smith, Science and Myth, P.119

[25] Smith, Science and Myth, P.119

[26] Vas, 2018, How Three Bodies?

[27] Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 78

[28] Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 78

[29] Smith, PSQ, P.133

[30] Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 13

[31] Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 13

[32] Smith, PSQ, P.29

[33] Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 13