There is something it is like to have a headache – the experience of having a headache has a certain phenomenal character. There is also something it is like to be you overall as you’re having it, your overall conscious experience (at a time) also has a phenomenal character. The ‘local’ phenomenal experience of having a headache contributes to the character of your overall, or ‘global’, experience, but it does not exhaust it: other local experiences also contribute. Somehow, some or all of the local experiences you enjoy at any one time combine into a global experience. This talk concerns the question: how?

I describe three very different models of how combination takes place, argue that given what we know about experience, neither model is excluded, and that it matters which is the correct one, because some high-profile views about consciousness and justification hinge on adopting one and not another of the models.