This explores the possibility of composite consciousness: phenomenally conscious statesbelonging to a composite being in virtue of the consciousness of, and relations among, its parts. Wehave no trouble accepting that a composite being has physical properties entirely in virtue of thephysical properties of, and relations among, its parts.

But a long-standing intuition holds thatconsciousness is different: my consciousness cannot be understood as a complex of interactingcomponent consciousnesses belonging to parts of me. I ask why: what is it about consciousness thatmakes us think it so different from matter? And should we accept this apparent difference?'Combinationism' - the thesis that intelligibly constitutive composition is possible in theexperiential realm - bears on many debates in the metaphysics of mind.

Constitutive panpsychism'sneed for combinationism is at the centre of recent criticism of the theory, but physicalists also needan account of how the consciousness, or lack thereof, in two cerebral hemispheres and a whole brain,or a human being and their head, or a social group and its individual members, can be intelligiblyrelated. And further back in history, the supposed simplicity of the soul was held to rule out anyform of materialism, in a tradition of argument stretching from Plotinus to Brentano.

With an eye tothis diversity of debates, I examine the prospects for combinationists with a range of differentbackground views about the nature of consciousness, the ontological status of the subject, thebehaviour of the physical part-whole relation, and the notions of constitution and explanationthemselves. .