Like most articles about "consciousness", they're going to have to define consciousness more precisely. > Neuroscientists and philosophers of consciousness hav

Like most articles about "consciousness", they're going to have to define consciousness more precisely. > Neuroscientists and philosophers of consciousness have recently coined a new term – the global state of consciousness – to describe the structural properties of experience that varies between ordinary wakefulness, dreaming, the psychedelic state and the minimally conscious state. These states are called ‘global’ because the whole of conscious experience is altered, not just a particular element. Well, which is it; consciousness that's altered, or conscious experience? It would seem that a change in conscious experience doesn't necessarily make any difference to consciousness itself - i.e. consciousness isn't altered by the experiences and sensations it's observing and conscious of, it's a buffer in which sensations are known and experienced. As someone who previously wrestled with depression, dabbled in psychedelics, and has a long-term insight meditation practice, it doesn't matter whether I was severely depressed or tripping balls, my consciousness of those experiences remained the same. That's actually one of the insights that psychedelics quickly revealed. Experience comes and goes, and consciousness itself doesn't seem to be coloured by it. If the headline said that "depression is a change in mental states and perceptions", well that's obvious, we've known that for probably centuries. Throw the "consciousness" buzzword in and ooh, it's exciting now! But kind of meaningless imo. I don't really see how the article differentiates between "consciousness" and "mental states and perceptions".