ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the numerous senses of unity beginning with some historical background. The notion of the “unity of consciousness” is a highly ambiguous expression. Perhaps most common is the general notion that, from the first-person point of view, we experience the world in an integrated way and as a single phenomenal field of experience. In addition to “information,” some theories of consciousness rely on the notion of “integration,” which itself suggests a kind of unity. For example, Tononi's information integration theory of consciousness explicitly appeals to the integration of contents, and information integration is an important aspect or function of consciousness. However, again, the problem here is that split-brain patients sometimes reach for different objects with their left and right hands at the same time. At the least, there is a question about whether split-brain patients are at least sometimes acting as if they are two different subjects with different intentions.
