If qualia are the atoms of consciousness then the question arises as to how they combine to form the rich multidimensional consciousness we know as being in the world - this is known as the binding problem. On the other hand consciousness tends to be defined in distinction from qualia by this very ability to achieve binding, the power to unify raw mental contents, and indeed this was recognised by Kant in his transcendental unity of apperception. Giving it a name, however, does no more than recognise the problem. This problem seems to arise from the treatment of consciousness as positive, as being somehow some definite thing which is decomposable into parts each of which is of essentially the same positive nature. There is also a confusion between the contents of consciousness and the fact or event of consciousness, or the simple being present which it entails. Consider that unification is wholly of the experiencer and not of the experienced or what is unified. The experienced has no power to do anything, it is merely experienced and is only what it is. Say that all of positivity is on the side of the experienced, so the experiencer is the not-positive. To avoid treating this as some subtle mode of positivity it can hardly be named, and certainly the rules governing positivity do not apply to it. If these rules are arithmetic, or set-theory then the experiencer is zero or the empty set in the sense that every positive formation is in exactly the same relation to it as any other. As if to say that only because zero plus zero is identically zero can one plus one be two. Or the radical emptiness of the experiencer is what makes the binding of positives to freely arise.