Kadić's Monadic Panpsychism

Philosopher Nino Kadić proposes “monadic panpsychism,” according to which "a relational explanation of how simple subjects could constitute complex experiences, without them having to combine in virtue of their subjectivity.” His claim is that monadic panpsychism overcomes the notorious main obstacle for panpsychism (i.e., consciousness is fundamental and ubiquitous): “the difficulty of explaining how simple subjects could combine to form complex subjects. Known as the subject combination problem, it poses a possibly insurmountable challenge to [panpsychism].” Kadić assumes that this challenge cannot be overcome, and he instead seeks to circumvent it, by presenting “a version of panpsychism that completely avoids talk of combination” by recruiting Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s metaphysics of monads. Additionally, Kadić says that monadic panpsychism does “not rely on emergence and so it circumvents problems commonly faced by emergentist accounts…. [thus] monadic panpsychism is preferable to combinatory and emergentist panpsychism because it faces a significantly less worrisome set of objections.” Kadić admits that monadic panpsychism “faces unique difficulties” but also argues that it “offers unique solutions” (Kadić, 2024).

Microphenomenal Structuralism

Kadić states that explaining how fundamental microsubjects amalgamate to form a unified macrosubject is not merely difficult but likely "demonstrably incoherent" (Coleman, 2014). Consequently, he proposes an alternative ontology where "subjects do not combine in virtue of their subjectivity". Instead, the theory relies on a relational mechanism termed “microphenomenal structuralism” to account for complex human consciousness at the level of fundamental physics.

According to Kadić, microphenomenal structuralism “views phenomenal qualities as relational, at the level of fundamental simples, though it admits of the basic consciousness of microsubjects-in-isolation as well." Here, he says, he follows Michael Tye, who in his book Vagueness and the Evolution of Consciousness (Tye, 2021), distinguishes between consciousness as such (the sharp condition of whether or not experience is present in the first case) and representational consciousness (the contents of our experience). Thus, accepting this kind of basic consciousness is what makes the fundamental simples micro-subjects and the theory a form of panpsychism (Kadić, 2024).

Monadic Panpsychism

Kadić describes the “resulting form of panpsychism” as “monadic panpsychism,” which is “the claim that microsubjects exist and interact in a dynamic and interconnected way.” He then likens microsubjects to Leibniz’s monads, “which are simple mind-like substances, organised in a hierarchical manner in which one monad is dominant.” While Kadić rejects many of Leibniz’s complex metaphysics (e.g., one monad is the “soul” of the organism, orchestration by God), he takes inspiration from Leibniz’s defining monads as “encompassing a plurality within the unity or the simple, undergoing degrees of change, and possessing multiple affections and relations despite lacking parts.” Kadić says, “what renders my proposal Leibnizian in spirit is the idea that simples are individuated in virtue of their internal states, organised in a highly hierarchical structure with a dominant entelechy at the top, and capable of reflecting all other simples in an interconnected manner” (Kadić, 2024).

Three Versions of Monadic Panpsychism

Kadić presents three versions of monadic panpsychism: static, dynamic, and global monadic panpsychism. “All are committed to microphenomenal structuralism, where the phenomenal complexity that we associate with human consciousness is relationally constituted, without postulating any complex higher-level macrosubjects.” In each, “All microsubjects featuring in the relevant structure relationally determine the phenomenal character of only one particular microsubject in a way that gives it a full human experience.”

Here are the differences (Kadić, 2024):

Static monadic panpsychism: A particular microsubject plays the dominant role, and keeps its dominant role permanently:

Dynamic monadic panpsychism (DMP): One microsubject plays the dominant role, but which particular microsubject that is can change at any given time.

Global monadic panpsychism (GMP): All microsubjects featuring in the relevant structure relationally determine the phenomenal character of all other microsubjects that make up the structure, so that the phenomenal character of every single one of them is the full human experience.

Kadić dismisses the static version because it creates more problems and demands more explanations. “The obvious objection here is: what happens if the dominant microsubject stops being a part of the relevant structure, perhaps due to brain damage?”

In the dynamic version, “the dominant role can be played by any microsubject and switch dynamically, likely in a manner isomorphic to brain processes…

The conscious experience of the dominant microsubject is determined by its relation to other microsubjects. In case of the dominant microsubject being removed from the brain, any other microsubject could replace it in its dominant role and become the new endpoint for the relational constitution of a full human experience."

Static and dynamic versions of monadic panpsychism must face the issue of explaining the relationship between the dominant microsubject and non-dominant ones, both the metaphysics and epistemology of individuation.

According to Kadić, “The third version of the theory moves away from apparent similarities to Leibniz’s metaphysics. It is a more structural proposal that seeks to explain rich human consciousness primarily through interconnectedness. Specifically, it abandons the idea that only one microsubject plays the dominant role. The result is an exceptionally large number of microsubjects who all experience human-level consciousness.” Kadić admits, “this is the most difficult version of the theory to defend. When I am thinking, it is like saying ‘the cabinet is meeting to consider this proposal’ but everyone says the same thing, at the same time. The ‘me’ that I am referring to when I self-identify is like a layer of me(s) who are qualitatively the same. Because of this phenomenal sameness, I experience the many instantiations of ‘I’ as one” (Kadić, 2024). If they are all qualitatively identical, he says, the idea is that their overlap is not problematic (Roelofs 2024).

Core Distinction

The core distinction between monadic panpsychism and traditional combinatory or emergentist panpsychism lies in the rejection of the macrosubject as an ontological reality. Kadić argues that "no amalgamation of microsubjects necessitates the coming about of a new subject". To preserve the reality of complex experience without positing a new subject is what motivates Kadić to introduce microphenomenal structuralism, as noted, where "the phenomenal character of any given microsubject is determined by its relations to other microsubjects featuring in the same relevant causal structure. "Within this framework, a microsubject possesses intrinsic "consciousness-as-such"—understood as a bare perspective or point of view—while its rich qualitative content is constituted relationally. Kadić distinguishes the two frameworks: "The basic consciousness-as-such is intrinsic, sharp, and determinate, while our dynamic and ever-changing experience is relationally constituted, vague, and indeterminate."

Here, the microsubject, considered “in isolation,” does not possess rich human phenomenology; it is a “physical ultimate” bearing a “point of view” or “perspective,” understood as a condition for experience-as-such. The richness we associate with human consciousness is instead constituted relationally: because microsubjects have few intrinsic properties but “an indefinite range of relational properties,” a microsubject can have not only quark-type experience in isolation but also quark-type-experience-when-part-of-this causal structure, and so on. The metaphysical transformation of panpsychism is explicit: “Since all of this happens at the level of microsubjects, without any combination or aggregation, the subject-summing version of the combination problem is avoided.”

Evaporating the combination problem is the first major point of contrast with traditional panpsychism. Standard combinatory accounts seek a bridge principle by which micro-subjects compose a macro-subject (or at least yield macro-level unity). Kadić denies the bridge is coherent and instead treats the macro-level subject as dispensable: there are no non-fundamental subjects over and above microsubjects; what we call a human subject is explained via the way relationally constituted phenomenology is “packed” and presented at the micro-level.

The second major contrast is anti-emergentist. By not relying on emergence, Kadić foregrounds that his proposal “will not rely on emergence” and so “will circumvent problems commonly faced by emergentist accounts.”

The intended explanatory mechanism is not a novel macro-property popping into being, but a relational determination thesis coupled with the assumption that “phenomenal structure mirrors causal structure.”

Kadić notes the work of Siddharth and Bhojraj, who defend Leibnizian panpsychism (Siddharth and Bhojraj, 2024), which, Kadić says, is very similar to monadic panpsychism. They claim, according to Kadić, that there can be no sharp determination of the dominant microsubject in DMP and reject GMP, arguing instead that there is a causal neighbourhood, where many microsubjects have similarly rich consciousness, such that, for example, the one who is typing this right now might not necessarily even be the most complex one. It’s a sort of middle ground between DMP and GMP - no single dominant microsubject, but no multitude of qualitatively identical microsubjects either. Kadić says that the advantage of Siddharth and Bhojraj’s view is that it avoids having to posit a strong individuating principle like DMP, while avoiding the counterintuitive conclusion that there are many ’Ninos’ in my brain, all having strictly the same experience (Kadić, personal communication, 2026).

In summary, monadic panpsychism distinguishes itself from standard panpsychism programs in three ways: it treats subject-combination as a constraint to be avoided rather than a puzzle to be solved; it replaces emergence with relational constitution keyed to causal structure; and it explains our macroscopic unity via monad-like dominance (DMP) or pervasive qualitative identity (GMP), without positing a further macrosubject (Kadić's 2022 PhD dissertation; Kadić, 2024).