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How to approach loss of consciousness is one of the problems I have with non-materialist theories of consciousness like dualism and panpsychism. If consciousnes

by simonh 4y ago

How to approach loss of consciousness is one of the problems I have with non-materialist theories of consciousness like dualism and panpsychism. If consciousness is not generated by my physical brain, how come physical chemicals can manipulate my conscious state? If the brain is a receiver for consciousness, surely my consciousness should exist independently of my brain? Interfering with a radio doesn’t change what’s happening in the recording studio. Why does the state of my brain affect my conscious state at all? If consciousness is fundamental, how can it ever stop? It just seems that the brain is a physical system, and consciousness is a result of its physical processes. If you change the operation of those processes then you change states of consciousness. All the attempts to explain it otherwise seem inconsistent with the behaviour we observe.

bowsamic 4y ago
The Buddhist answer is that all of physical reality is also in the mind. Rather than physical and mental being separate, physical reality itself is constructed by the mind
- 2snakes 4y ago
  Right. In Kastrup's idealism, a scalpel, for example, is actually a transpersonal mental process. So it modifies brain-consciousness much like an emotion or thought modifies other thoughts.
  - bowsamic 4y ago
    No, the scalpel doesn’t actually exist except as an idea in the mind that is attached to, thus it can’t be said to really exist in any way. It is empty of self existence (svahbhava), as is our own mind. Nothing has fundamental essence or identity
    - 2snakes 4y ago
      Sorry, I'm not a subjective idealist or a solipsist. I believe god consciousness is the final arbiter. And that we can expand our human consciousness to god consciousness. So I'm partial to objective idealism instead.
      - bowsamic 4y ago
        Yeah sorry, I am a subjective idealist/solipsist
lend000 4y ago
Not taking one position or the other, but you can't make any conclusions about whether a separate consciousness exists from anesthesia, only that no memories were formed that can be accessed by that consciousness (even if it did experience qualia during that time).
- TuringTest 4y ago
  If qualia are not remembered, do they make a sound?
  - MomoXenosaga 4y ago
    Consciousness trying to make up reasons why consciousness can survive death. That's what religion is all about.
    - 0xdeadbeefbabe 4y ago
      How about unconsciousness trying to make up reasons for consciousness? I see it in the comments, and it even looks like a religious belief.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    The sound of one hand clapping.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- simonh 4y ago
  Understood, but I don't think that view is consistent with the evidence we have of brain activity during conscious and unconscious states, and memory formation.
- layer8 4y ago
  Maybe you actually have a thousand consciousnesses, but only remember one, and the other 999 consciousnesses are just helplessly experiencing your physical body? You can’t disprove that, but why entertain any such notion?
samarendramh 4y ago
> If consciousness is not generated by my physical brain, how come physical chemicals can manipulate my conscious state? If the brain is a receiver for consciousness, surely my consciousness should exist independently of my brain? Interfering with a radio doesn’t change what’s happening in the recording studio. Why does the state of my brain affect my conscious state at all? If consciousness is fundamental, how can it ever stop? I loved your analogy. So using the same analogy, is it possible that the radio's frequency tuning is changed (if the brain is a receiver for consciousness) or going under anasthesia is an interference that stops it from receiving things at all (if chemicals can manipulate the conscious state) ?
downboots 4y ago
Reducing the brain to a more complicated version of a pocket calculator doesn't change the platonic ideal of number.
- pas 4y ago
  Sure, but isn't the question that which one do we actually have for a mind?
  - downboots 4y ago
    I'm not sure I understand your question. Disclaimer: not an expert. Trying to unravel a thought. I tried to make the analogy simpler. For thought experiment assume the brain is essentially a pocket calculator. Its lcd screen output is conscious state. It's a state, anyways. Just because you can alter the state you get after "1+2=" (pressing buttons, throwing acid onto the circuit board, etc) doesn't invalidate the number 3. We can agree on the concept of 3 and point to instances of 3. We can output 3 in different instances of calculators, even the human brain (in this experiment, at least, but I've heard even ants can count). The kicker for me is with a big enough lcd screen like one of those fancy graphing calculators you can output not just 3, but a picture of any such ideal, including a picture of the idea of a pocket calculator! Self reference. So what's up with that 3 and always running out of batteries? Hard to say anything else at this point. Curious about what people may suggest. I'm sure it's not new.
    - pas 4y ago
      Very good analogy, though I'm completely lost what is what, but it's probably because it's too early here :D Can we all agree on the concept of 3 though? :) I mean PhD dissertations are written and successfully defended each day pro-and-contra 3. Do we have a shared concept? Is 3 the same for a research mathematician and a 5 year old? In practice if it works it works. The same with colors, or music, or ... well, any sort of thing and associated qualia. After all when you say 1/3 + 2/3 most people will say 1 (hopefully, though I have no idea how well known fractions are), but those pesky programmers might just laugh and say that you can't even represent them accurately. This shows that integers (and the natural numbers) and basic arithmetical are so old in our culture that they truly are probably shared with 99.9% of humans (or let's say English speakers). But if we step a little bit outside of that by taking 4 and 8, then you might like them because they are nice powers of 2, but some Chinese people might not like 4 because it's association with death (but do like 8 because it's association with wealth & success). And so the question is: the mind that wakes up is the same as the one that went unconscious? Is there even an abstract concept of our minds? (How tied minds are to their physical representation?) Solipsism states that despite everything indicating that there are things independently (materially or not) outside of our mind it doesn't matter because our mind is truly the only thing we have, we are, we'll ever have. (It can be a complete simulation, it can be just a dream, we can never know!) Joscha Bach's "computationalism" (maybe he doesn't call it that) says that consciousness is evolution's answer to "how to regulate the organism in relation to other self-regulating organisms", so it's a self-directed attention of intelligence (which is also a model of things that we pay attention to). In this regard consciousness is just as part of the population as the genome, so while there are definitely you and me, but at the same time it's the same "evolutionary software" just running on a big shared pool of brains. (Which also means that we could compare every concept via computation - eg. enumerating its properties (and so on the properties required for those properties of course, so infinite regress creeps in), and this means that we can have a shared concept of 3, if it's computationally equivalent.)
prollings 4y ago
Perhaps consciousness is just an observer of those physical systems that exist in the brain, and under anaesthetic the interface between consciousness and those systems is interfered with. I don't know what I'm getting at.
pas 4y ago
Isn't panpsychism orthogonal to materialism? Isn't the trivial solution in the non-material case just regular mumbo jumbo? Ie. the connection between the consciousness and the body is severed by propofol while it's active, and so memories are not formed to keep you sane, or whatever? It stops when it gets to Nirvana, etc? All the attempts to explain it with non-materialism seems to very bluntly fail Ockham's razor. Sure, before fMRI and anesthesia it was a lot easier to compare the two theories and not see the huge extra burden for proof of any kind of non-materialism.
- newusertoday 4y ago
  there was same problem earlier as well with deep sleep.
- bowsamic 4y ago
  Occam's razor = the theory with the fewest parameters should be preferred, or often interpreted as the simplest theory. Do you think that humans universally or even have historically interpreted physicalism as a simpler theory than a non-materialist one? I don't think so I think you speak from an already materialist perspective, in that you accept the physical world as something that really exists out there, and that your own subjective being is less tangible or somehow illusory compared to that. That is the opposite way round from how Buddhists felt it obvious to consider it, which was to always frame everything from the first person, human experience (the five skandhas, the eight consciousnesses, etc.) Personally, I think it's simpler and more obvious to have that first person explanation from the point of view of where I actually seem to be, rather than an explanation that everything I see is real but somehow I am not. Why would I see my immediate experience of reality as less real than the objects that I perceive to be external to me?
  - kubanczyk 4y ago
    > Occam's razor = the theory with the fewest parameters should be preferred, or often interpreted as the simplest theory. > Do you think that humans universally or even have historically interpreted physicalism as a simpler theory than a non-materialist one? I don't think so Backtracking a bit from that little word "theory", it's foremost about being able to formulate predictions about the real world. So, designing a suspension bridge over there, how much steel do use per cable? 1 ton? 2 tons? 42? Use the eight consciousnesses, sure, but get the answer, build the bridge, and be the first one to cross it. If you don't have two competing theories that offer a prediction, there is nothing to apply the Occam's razor to. A theory which is a mix of physics (for steel bridges, etc.) and Buddhism (for this or that domain) does work for many predictions. It is also inherently much more complex than "only use physics".
danhau 4y ago
I'm not arguing for or against anything here, but regarding your comparison: > If the brain is a receiver for consciousness, surely my consciousness should exist independently of my brain? Interfering with a radio doesn’t change what’s happening in the recording studio. Interfering with a radio distorts the transmitted, outcoming sound. You could say your perceived consciousness is just that: something transmitted from an origin. The state of the brain could then very well mess with conciousness. It could add or remove harmonics, delay, EQ, filters, etc.
- muzani 4y ago
  Yeah, the radio is silent when it's off. The radio is needed to turn the signal into something.
- e_i_pi_2 4y ago
  I totally agree with the parent post but was coming here to say the same thing - the best argument I've heard along these lines is that the signal is still transmitting but "you" aren't receiving it. This kinda makes goes against the idea of consciousness where you're aware of stuff, so in this case it should be more like an out-of-body experience that you do remember, but I could easily see someone arguing that it's some sort of soul-plane thing where you can't form memories but do have experiences.
  - dsego 4y ago
    There are crazier theories out there. > There is only one reality per person. It is set up by the soul specifically to obtain experiences from. We do not share our reality with anyone. It only looks that way. > To facilitate educational growth, Souls create “Realities”. Realities are a classroom that Souls can grow through a surrogate “human” > Soul places an “interface” within the constructed “reality”. This is known as “consciousness”. > The universal template consists of every single human, and every possible action that they were involved in, from the earliest dates to the end of humanity. The soul selects individual realities out of this universal template. > Once the experiences, and the lessons, are finished the consciousness leaves the physical reality. It returns home to soul. > There are a (near) infinite number of world-lines that a consciousness (person) can experience. > Consciousness can migrate from one reality to another reality. This is commonly known as world-line travel. As such, these changes help to bring about desired experiences and lessons ... and so on https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/consciousness-migration-for-world-line-travel/ https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/consciousness-migration-...
newusertoday 4y ago
Your questions are right however you are assuming there is some state of conciousness there isn't it is the state of content of consciousness when all objects are removed from it than what is experienced is what you are calling loss of consciousness but that is not how spiritual text describe it or people who claim to be enlightened describe it unfortunately science has not progressed enough to solve "hard problem of conciousness" but the good news is you can still verify this claim experientially yourself and decide if its true or false for you.
EmilyHughes 4y ago
The radio-receiver metaphor doesn't go far enough as it still assumes a somewhat physical brain, but it helps at first untangeling yourself from materialism. If reality is nothing but a dream it would be no problem to dream up a brain that modulates the dream-content if it is manipulated. - Taking red paint and spraying it over your wall will modulate the dream in such that the wall appears red. - Taking a hammer and hitting your head will modulate the dream in more unpredicatable ways. What if these processes are the same? It's nothing but stuff made out of consciousness affecting consciousness.
- e_i_pi_2 4y ago
  I think it's fair to say we do know that we have a somewhat physical brain. Even if it's part of a dream then our definition of "physical" would be scoped to that dream and still be accurate
  - EmilyHughes 4y ago
    It's really not the same thing, its the complete opposite. It's brain->consciousness vs. consciousness->brain
    - e_i_pi_2 4y ago
      I was just talking about the physicality of the brain, so it'd be (physical brain)->consciousness vs. consciousness->("physical" brain). Either way in all ways that matter to us the brain is physical. I think of it similarly to how atoms are mostly empty space - we can know that's true but the main thing that matters most of the time is that you don't fall through the floor, so we reason about the world as if solid objects are actually solid
- layer8 4y ago
  What is this adding to the physical laws though? The simplest explanation is that your dream physics is actually the same as our hard-science physics, and you’re effectively just relabeling things.
stubish 4y ago
If the brain is a receiver for consciousness, it does not imply that consciousness exists independently of your brain. The consciousness would require inputs, which come from the brain. You could assume that the consciousness is paused when those inputs stop. Our perception of time is after all subjective. Although this all kind of defeats the purpose of believing in a non-materialist theory of consciousness.
- simonh 4y ago
  Right, looking at it that way just leaves it without any job to do, with nothing to explain. At that point it's just wishing.
deleted 4y ago
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overlisted 4y ago
I'm a materialist myself, but I can think of one very fun theory that solves this. What if neurons are special antennas that can "connect" to your consciousness, and when you're, say, drunk, those antennas start receiving and transmitting wrong signals. Your consciousness is just fine in its world, but your body can't talk to it properly anymore. Obviously I'm just making stuff up, and I don't actually believe any of this.
- simonh 4y ago
  In that scenario, I don’t see why your body containing alcohol would change your conscious experience. Surely that would be like being fully alert and aware, but not able to fully control your body. If your body were in its own world, then there would be no reason for drunkenness to affect your awareness or decision making.
zelphirkalt 4y ago
How do we know there is a "loss" of consciousness? I had some dreams when I was anesthesized once. I do no longer clearly remember them, but I do remember telling the medical people there, that I did dream something. How could I dream without consciousness?
- simonh 4y ago
  The article discusses this. Some people who are given low doses of anaesthetic, usually due to potential risks, do report some awareness. On the flip side, even though during normal sleep we experience some semi-conscious dream states, there are other phases of sleep that are a complete blank. So conciseness seems to exist on a continuum from full alertness all the way down to nothing.
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    Consciousness is definitely not an all-or-nothing thing, though I suspect we only typically have access to very narrow band of potential levels of awareness (and can't control it "at will" anyway). But obviously there are some thresholds over which memories are simply not preserved in a sufficiently cohesive form for us to have any sense of maintaining consciousness, and in fact the point at which our brain stops being able to store recallable memories is surely the point at which our consciousness "stops". Having said that, clearly even in a dream state our brains have some ability to store memories, it's just that they're not memories guided by our normal capacity to process external stimuli, as are waking memories.
    - Ekaros 4y ago
      I'm not actually sure I would agree on not being able to store recallable memories being end of consciousness. Alzheimer and other medical conditions might very well result being unable to make new memories, but processing and reacting to stimuli based on old memories is still possible. Reasonably I think stop of consciousness is both not storing and not reacting to.
      - 4y ago
strogonoff 4y ago
Mind-body dualism strikes me as possibly the least elegant and magic-leap-proof alternative to physicalism, so it’s unfortunate that people who explore this question get stuck on it. In fact, non-material monist views exist! See, for example, Kant and Schrödinger. Some of Wolfram’s ideas[0] at first approach seem to be interpretable from this angle. I’m not going to do the entirety of monism justice in a paragraph, but as one take: perhaps interacting with other conscious entities involves changes in yours and tends to manifest itself as physical changes within time-space, a lossy map constructed as a shortcut/interface to the otherwise overwhelming underlying territory? This does not require conjuring an entire universe, with its arbitrary laws and constants, to explain perception supplied by consciousness (the only thing we have direct access to, that physicalists nevertheless tend to treat as a magic side-effect of magically existing reality). [0] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2022/06/alien-intelligence-and-the-concept-of-technology/ https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2022/06/alien-intelligen...
- bowsamic 4y ago
  > In fact, non-material monist views exist! Also see Buddhist philosophy such as Yogacara
- TuringTest 4y ago
  > the only thing we have direct access to, that physicalists nevertheless tend to treat as a magic side-effect of magically existing reality Doesn't that perspective require a magically existing mind, which happens to magically discover an entire universe with consistent laws and constants as a side-effect of its experimental enquiries? Not much gained by the change of perspective, then?
  - strogonoff 4y ago
    It’s probably safe to assume that consciousness exists, as it’s what carries out this line of reasoning in the first place. And no, I don’t think an elegant explanation is one that magically conjures up the existence of an entire universe that’s not directly accessible except as a representation within said consciousness.
xenadu02 4y ago
You're close to the fundamental problem here but don't go far enough. All one needs to do is look at Oliver Sack's books to understand that either of these must be true: 1. Consciousness is a physical system. This is the simplest explanation and accounts for all observed phenomenon. 2. Consciousness (or "soul") is metaphysical but is such a blank slate or so dependent on the physical state of the brain that we can exclude all consideration of it. Memory is clearly physical otherwise brain damage wouldn't ruin only some memories or the ability to comprehend certain things (such as right-left agnosias where someone loses the concept of the left side of the world both currently and in recalled memories). Brain chemistry very _obviously_ influences mood. Mind-altering drugs can induce temporary personality changes. It goes way beyond simple "radio receiver" analogies like alcohol inducing distortions. Your ability to understand anything at all, your ability to remember anything at all, even your personality can be dramatically affected by brain chemistry and physical state. There are just so very many examples of real situations involving the brain that require extremely complicated hoop-jumping to maintain the idea that "you" are anything beyond the physical process happening in your brain. They all devolve into claims that the metaphysical essence is so dependent on and influenced by physical brain processes you can just cut out the metaphysical part with no loss. If a stroke or dementia can make me a much angrier or violent person then what need is there for a soul?
- feet 4y ago
  Isn't there some rule that we should usually go with the simplest explanation that covers all bases? Why even go beyond 1? It feels like people want there to be something more
  - tmountain 4y ago
    Occam's razor. In philosophy, a razor is a principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate ("shave off") unlikely explanations for a phenomenon, or avoid unnecessary actions. In essence, they provide guardrails to keep discussions centered within the realm of reason when venturing to the edge of our knowledge and beyond.
    - 4y ago
saiya-jin 4y ago
I can't grok why do people have so much issue with accepting the simplest explanation - physical laws still apply and our minds exist within them, as part of that grey goo inside of our skulls. Isn't it already amazing enough that something like that is possible? I mean we don't believe in fairies and santa claus anymore since we know how and why they were made up, but sure there is some utterly inexplainable magic that breaks all physical laws that we know... just to feel more special? Give our immortality a chance? I do believe a lot of weird, illogical and sometimes completely fucked up beliefs simply come from common utter dismay of most folks when confronted with their mortality and the very real and perfectly fine chance that once we die that's it, our version of this universe and all of our experiences, loves and fears will simply vanish, forever. Every single religion primarily address this fear, the rest are mostly rituals folks made up early enough for them to stick around and management political structures just like in any other office. For people brought up in religion this is simply unacceptable, whole world falling apart. Why any parent still does this to their children is completely beyond me, but I guess road to hell is often paved with good intentions. I may be wrong and most logical solution may not be the right one, and that would make me in fact very happy. But religious people are mentally cornered, they can't accept any other option without their world breaking apart in the seams. That's a position of weakness and fear on the most important topic in life.
otikik 4y ago
Pick 3 random stones and arrange them so that they form a straight line. Does the line "exist"? If you consider that only the atoms "count" for existing, then the line does not exist. (Neither do the stones, by the way - since they are constantly exchanging minor quantities of atoms and electrons with the rest of the environment, the set that defines what each stone is is constantly changing. But let's ignore that bit). The line is a "mathematical abstraction", layered on top of the "real" world. Now consider that you measure and define exactly where that line is, according to the system of coordinates that you prefer. Now imagine that you remove the three stones. Now there's no atoms "sustaining" that the line any more. But in a sense the line is "still there", it's defined by the coordinates you wrote. It can be argued that it has always "existed" - before you put the stones there, before Earth existed, that particular line in space already "was", in the same sense that numbers "are" - that the line has existed in some way or another since Space itself started existing. You now pick 3 bottle caps and put them on top of the line again. Now the line is again defined by 3 clumps of matter. Does it "exist" any more than it existed in the previous two cases? It all comes down to how we use the verb "exist" - it means several things depending on the context. "Exist" in the atoms world, or "exist" as information. I believe that mind and consciousness is a bit of the same thing, just many orders of magnitude bigger. Instead of 3 stones what defines a mind is trillions of neurons arranged in a certain way. I am materialistic, but I believe in the be encoding of information. To me this means that each mind, at some point in time, can absolutely be "encoded" into a big enough number (huge, billions of trillions of digits). So in that sense minds are "defined by atoms" but also "exist independently of atoms, and are eternal".
- simonh 4y ago
  It's an interesting way to view these things for sure. Marvin Minsky believed that it doesn't make sense to talk about the physical reality of our world, he thought it was a possible world and that's all that matters. I take my cue from the physics of information theory and computation. In that view a computation is a process physically performed by a system. The same applies to mathematical calculations. The result exist independently in some transcendent sense, but in order to actually obtain a result a physical system has to perform the process. That physical system exists independently of the abstract mathematics, and independently of any other system performing the same calculation, or computation. In the same way my brain can have a thought. I can perceive a colour. The pattern of activity might be extremely close to the activity associated with you perceiving the same colour. It might be identical with the pattern of an identical clone or twin of mine experiencing the same perception. Nevertheless they are separate, unconnected, completely independent activities that just happen to have similar interpretations. That's a strict physicalist view, and it's one I subscribe to as being the most plausible. Nevertheless I'm a human being, I have children, I care about my family and friends, and humanity generally. So clearly patterns matter to me as a person, but that's just in my nature. I don't see any reason to think it's fundamental to anything, because thinking that way IMHO leads to some very wooly thinking. just because gold is shiny and pretty, that doesn't mean I think there's something cosmically magical or special about those wavelengths of light. The experience and appreciation of things is important to us, but it doesn't define reality.
dwd 4y ago
I would highly recommend listening to Anil Seth or reading his book "Being You". He is also highly critical of dualism and panpsychism, and justifiably so. As one of the leading researchers on consciousness, I'm surprised he's not mentioned at all in this. He is extremely fascinated by how consciousness goes away under anesthesia.
- amkkma 4y ago
  Sounds like he's ultimately agnostic on the issue: " But I’m agnostic about whether at the end of this programme of trying to account in physical terms for properties of experience, there will still be some residue of mystery left, something more to explain." https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/21/neuroscientist-anil-seth-we-risk-not-understanding-the-central-mystery-of-life https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/21/neuroscienti...
  - dwd 4y ago
    Hedging his bets. He doesn't believe there is a "hard problem" as described by others and dismisses that as shorthand for there being something mysterious we don't get. In a chat with Sam Harris the two argue that one out in depth. I have heard him make the analogy to the Unifying Theory of Physics and admitting that even after all his work there could potentially be some aspect that could have weird quantum qualities, or is bound to dimensions of reality outside of perceivable 3d+t. And while he doesn't agree with Douglas Hoffman as to there being conscience agents outside of space/time, he is fully in agreement with reality as perceived and currently observable being a whole cloth construction with our senses serving to adjust our individual construct.
Hayarotle 4y ago
Some forms of panpsychism (such as panprotopsychism) aren't much different from emergent materialism. Emergent materialism states human consciousness originates from the state of a physical brain, while the constituent parts of the human brain (and its physical interactions) have nothing resembling consciousness. Some forms of panpsychism would argue the physical interactions between the parts are already proto-conscious, and your brain is simply in a state that aggregates these phenomena into human consciousness. The difference is purely ontological in this case. Both emergent materialism and this form of panpsychism would claim your aggregate consciousness has its origin in your brain and would stop if the parts of your brain were separated: both are compatible with physical reality. The difference is that the former would interpret this as a complete disappearance of such consciousness, while the latter would interpret it as a dis-aggregation of this consciousness into proto-conscious parts. There are also some versions of eliminative materialism that claim consciousness doesn't exist in the first place, and myriads of other positions.
- layer8 4y ago
  The problem of panpsychism is that it doesn’t explain anything. It postulates some sort of mechanism that builds up our consciousness based on what amounts to a dual realm of psychic mechanics, but it doesn’t explain at all how this nonphysical mechanism is supposed to be able to account for consciousness in a way that the known laws of physics allegedly can’t.
  - Hayarotle 4y ago
    That's a problem that affects all theories about the metaphysics of consciousness. All of them share the burden of explaining how a world where "consciousness" exists would be different from a world without it. The ones which claim a distinct consciousness does exist then also have to explain how this consciousness either originates from physical parts with limited or non-existent consciousness(emergent theories like panprotopsychism and emergent materialism), exists outside physical matter (dualism), or exists fully in the smaller parts, somehow getting combined into one (traditional panpsychism). That's part of why it can be attractive to leave aside concerns about metaphysical consciousness altogether.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
It's a sensitive topic for a lot of people (mainly because it contradicts world views they might have) but I don't think you are wrong. Consciousness, in so far it is definable at all, seems just an emergent property of our brain. We're pretty sure it resides in our brain and not for example your toes or other parts of your body since there are plenty of nasty accidents where people lose various parts of their body; or receive replacements for certain things without that really changing who they are or how they think. Also, doctors mess with it intentionally once in a while which definitely has all sorts of effects. As for anesthesia, that's just using chemicals to knock you out. I once had a mild anesthesia that messed with my short term memory while some unpleasant procedure was taking place. When I asked them when they were starting they informed me it was already done. I have no memory of the whole thing and was apparently "conscious" throughout. Great stuff; would have that again if the need arises. So, the medically correct answer is of course that a deep coma is virtually indistinguishable from being dead in the sense that there is not a lot going on in terms of brain activity. That kind of is the point of inducing such a level of unconsciousness. It frees up the doctors to mess with out bodies without creating a lot of psychological trauma that excruciating pain might otherwise cause.
- EMM_386 4y ago
  > I have no memory of the whole thing and was apparently "conscious" throughout. Great stuff; would have that again if the need arises. "Twilight anesthesia" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_anesthesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_anesthesia
kwoff 4y ago
This thread reminded me of Douglas Hofstadter's 'Who shoves whom around inside the careenium? OR What is the meaning of the word "I"?' https://jsomers.net/careenium.pdf https://jsomers.net/careenium.pdf

by simonh 4y ago

bowsamic 4y ago

The Buddhist answer is that all of physical reality is also in the mind. Rather than physical and mental being separate, physical reality itself is constructed by the mind

2snakes 4y ago
Right. In Kastrup's idealism, a scalpel, for example, is actually a transpersonal mental process. So it modifies brain-consciousness much like an emotion or thought modifies other thoughts.
- bowsamic 4y ago
  No, the scalpel doesn’t actually exist except as an idea in the mind that is attached to, thus it can’t be said to really exist in any way. It is empty of self existence (svahbhava), as is our own mind. Nothing has fundamental essence or identity
  - 2snakes 4y ago
    Sorry, I'm not a subjective idealist or a solipsist. I believe god consciousness is the final arbiter. And that we can expand our human consciousness to god consciousness. So I'm partial to objective idealism instead.
    - bowsamic 4y ago
      Yeah sorry, I am a subjective idealist/solipsist

lend000 4y ago

Not taking one position or the other, but you can't make any conclusions about whether a separate consciousness exists from anesthesia, only that no memories were formed that can be accessed by that consciousness (even if it did experience qualia during that time).

TuringTest 4y ago
If qualia are not remembered, do they make a sound?
- MomoXenosaga 4y ago
  Consciousness trying to make up reasons why consciousness can survive death. That's what religion is all about.
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 4y ago
    How about unconsciousness trying to make up reasons for consciousness? I see it in the comments, and it even looks like a religious belief.
- ben_w 4y ago
  The sound of one hand clapping.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
simonh 4y ago
Understood, but I don't think that view is consistent with the evidence we have of brain activity during conscious and unconscious states, and memory formation.
layer8 4y ago
Maybe you actually have a thousand consciousnesses, but only remember one, and the other 999 consciousnesses are just helplessly experiencing your physical body? You can’t disprove that, but why entertain any such notion?

samarendramh 4y ago

> If consciousness is not generated by my physical brain, how come physical chemicals can manipulate my conscious state? If the brain is a receiver for consciousness, surely my consciousness should exist independently of my brain? Interfering with a radio doesn’t change what’s happening in the recording studio. Why does the state of my brain affect my conscious state at all? If consciousness is fundamental, how can it ever stop? I loved your analogy. So using the same analogy, is it possible that the radio's frequency tuning is changed (if the brain is a receiver for consciousness) or going under anasthesia is an interference that stops it from receiving things at all (if chemicals can manipulate the conscious state) ?

downboots 4y ago

Reducing the brain to a more complicated version of a pocket calculator doesn't change the platonic ideal of number.

pas 4y ago
Sure, but isn't the question that which one do we actually have for a mind?
- downboots 4y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your question. Disclaimer: not an expert. Trying to unravel a thought. I tried to make the analogy simpler. For thought experiment assume the brain is essentially a pocket calculator. Its lcd screen output is conscious state. It's a state, anyways. Just because you can alter the state you get after "1+2=" (pressing buttons, throwing acid onto the circuit board, etc) doesn't invalidate the number 3. We can agree on the concept of 3 and point to instances of 3. We can output 3 in different instances of calculators, even the human brain (in this experiment, at least, but I've heard even ants can count). The kicker for me is with a big enough lcd screen like one of those fancy graphing calculators you can output not just 3, but a picture of any such ideal, including a picture of the idea of a pocket calculator! Self reference. So what's up with that 3 and always running out of batteries? Hard to say anything else at this point. Curious about what people may suggest. I'm sure it's not new.
  - pas 4y ago
    Very good analogy, though I'm completely lost what is what, but it's probably because it's too early here :D Can we all agree on the concept of 3 though? :) I mean PhD dissertations are written and successfully defended each day pro-and-contra 3. Do we have a shared concept? Is 3 the same for a research mathematician and a 5 year old? In practice if it works it works. The same with colors, or music, or ... well, any sort of thing and associated qualia. After all when you say 1/3 + 2/3 most people will say 1 (hopefully, though I have no idea how well known fractions are), but those pesky programmers might just laugh and say that you can't even represent them accurately. This shows that integers (and the natural numbers) and basic arithmetical are so old in our culture that they truly are probably shared with 99.9% of humans (or let's say English speakers). But if we step a little bit outside of that by taking 4 and 8, then you might like them because they are nice powers of 2, but some Chinese people might not like 4 because it's association with death (but do like 8 because it's association with wealth & success). And so the question is: the mind that wakes up is the same as the one that went unconscious? Is there even an abstract concept of our minds? (How tied minds are to their physical representation?) Solipsism states that despite everything indicating that there are things independently (materially or not) outside of our mind it doesn't matter because our mind is truly the only thing we have, we are, we'll ever have. (It can be a complete simulation, it can be just a dream, we can never know!) Joscha Bach's "computationalism" (maybe he doesn't call it that) says that consciousness is evolution's answer to "how to regulate the organism in relation to other self-regulating organisms", so it's a self-directed attention of intelligence (which is also a model of things that we pay attention to). In this regard consciousness is just as part of the population as the genome, so while there are definitely you and me, but at the same time it's the same "evolutionary software" just running on a big shared pool of brains. (Which also means that we could compare every concept via computation - eg. enumerating its properties (and so on the properties required for those properties of course, so infinite regress creeps in), and this means that we can have a shared concept of 3, if it's computationally equivalent.)

prollings 4y ago

Perhaps consciousness is just an observer of those physical systems that exist in the brain, and under anaesthetic the interface between consciousness and those systems is interfered with. I don't know what I'm getting at.

pas 4y ago

Isn't panpsychism orthogonal to materialism? Isn't the trivial solution in the non-material case just regular mumbo jumbo? Ie. the connection between the consciousness and the body is severed by propofol while it's active, and so memories are not formed to keep you sane, or whatever? It stops when it gets to Nirvana, etc? All the attempts to explain it with non-materialism seems to very bluntly fail Ockham's razor. Sure, before fMRI and anesthesia it was a lot easier to compare the two theories and not see the huge extra burden for proof of any kind of non-materialism.

newusertoday 4y ago
there was same problem earlier as well with deep sleep.
bowsamic 4y ago
Occam's razor = the theory with the fewest parameters should be preferred, or often interpreted as the simplest theory. Do you think that humans universally or even have historically interpreted physicalism as a simpler theory than a non-materialist one? I don't think so I think you speak from an already materialist perspective, in that you accept the physical world as something that really exists out there, and that your own subjective being is less tangible or somehow illusory compared to that. That is the opposite way round from how Buddhists felt it obvious to consider it, which was to always frame everything from the first person, human experience (the five skandhas, the eight consciousnesses, etc.) Personally, I think it's simpler and more obvious to have that first person explanation from the point of view of where I actually seem to be, rather than an explanation that everything I see is real but somehow I am not. Why would I see my immediate experience of reality as less real than the objects that I perceive to be external to me?
- kubanczyk 4y ago
  > Occam's razor = the theory with the fewest parameters should be preferred, or often interpreted as the simplest theory. > Do you think that humans universally or even have historically interpreted physicalism as a simpler theory than a non-materialist one? I don't think so Backtracking a bit from that little word "theory", it's foremost about being able to formulate predictions about the real world. So, designing a suspension bridge over there, how much steel do use per cable? 1 ton? 2 tons? 42? Use the eight consciousnesses, sure, but get the answer, build the bridge, and be the first one to cross it. If you don't have two competing theories that offer a prediction, there is nothing to apply the Occam's razor to. A theory which is a mix of physics (for steel bridges, etc.) and Buddhism (for this or that domain) does work for many predictions. It is also inherently much more complex than "only use physics".

danhau 4y ago

I'm not arguing for or against anything here, but regarding your comparison: > If the brain is a receiver for consciousness, surely my consciousness should exist independently of my brain? Interfering with a radio doesn’t change what’s happening in the recording studio. Interfering with a radio distorts the transmitted, outcoming sound. You could say your perceived consciousness is just that: something transmitted from an origin. The state of the brain could then very well mess with conciousness. It could add or remove harmonics, delay, EQ, filters, etc.

muzani 4y ago
Yeah, the radio is silent when it's off. The radio is needed to turn the signal into something.
e_i_pi_2 4y ago
I totally agree with the parent post but was coming here to say the same thing - the best argument I've heard along these lines is that the signal is still transmitting but "you" aren't receiving it. This kinda makes goes against the idea of consciousness where you're aware of stuff, so in this case it should be more like an out-of-body experience that you do remember, but I could easily see someone arguing that it's some sort of soul-plane thing where you can't form memories but do have experiences.
- dsego 4y ago
  There are crazier theories out there. > There is only one reality per person. It is set up by the soul specifically to obtain experiences from. We do not share our reality with anyone. It only looks that way. > To facilitate educational growth, Souls create “Realities”. Realities are a classroom that Souls can grow through a surrogate “human” > Soul places an “interface” within the constructed “reality”. This is known as “consciousness”. > The universal template consists of every single human, and every possible action that they were involved in, from the earliest dates to the end of humanity. The soul selects individual realities out of this universal template. > Once the experiences, and the lessons, are finished the consciousness leaves the physical reality. It returns home to soul. > There are a (near) infinite number of world-lines that a consciousness (person) can experience. > Consciousness can migrate from one reality to another reality. This is commonly known as world-line travel. As such, these changes help to bring about desired experiences and lessons ... and so on https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/consciousness-migration-for-world-line-travel/ https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/consciousness-migration-...

newusertoday 4y ago

Your questions are right however you are assuming there is some state of conciousness there isn't it is the state of content of consciousness when all objects are removed from it than what is experienced is what you are calling loss of consciousness but that is not how spiritual text describe it or people who claim to be enlightened describe it unfortunately science has not progressed enough to solve "hard problem of conciousness" but the good news is you can still verify this claim experientially yourself and decide if its true or false for you.

EmilyHughes 4y ago

The radio-receiver metaphor doesn't go far enough as it still assumes a somewhat physical brain, but it helps at first untangeling yourself from materialism. If reality is nothing but a dream it would be no problem to dream up a brain that modulates the dream-content if it is manipulated. - Taking red paint and spraying it over your wall will modulate the dream in such that the wall appears red. - Taking a hammer and hitting your head will modulate the dream in more unpredicatable ways. What if these processes are the same? It's nothing but stuff made out of consciousness affecting consciousness.

e_i_pi_2 4y ago
I think it's fair to say we do know that we have a somewhat physical brain. Even if it's part of a dream then our definition of "physical" would be scoped to that dream and still be accurate
- EmilyHughes 4y ago
  It's really not the same thing, its the complete opposite. It's brain->consciousness vs. consciousness->brain
  - e_i_pi_2 4y ago
    I was just talking about the physicality of the brain, so it'd be (physical brain)->consciousness vs. consciousness->("physical" brain). Either way in all ways that matter to us the brain is physical. I think of it similarly to how atoms are mostly empty space - we can know that's true but the main thing that matters most of the time is that you don't fall through the floor, so we reason about the world as if solid objects are actually solid
layer8 4y ago
What is this adding to the physical laws though? The simplest explanation is that your dream physics is actually the same as our hard-science physics, and you’re effectively just relabeling things.

stubish 4y ago

If the brain is a receiver for consciousness, it does not imply that consciousness exists independently of your brain. The consciousness would require inputs, which come from the brain. You could assume that the consciousness is paused when those inputs stop. Our perception of time is after all subjective. Although this all kind of defeats the purpose of believing in a non-materialist theory of consciousness.

simonh 4y ago
Right, looking at it that way just leaves it without any job to do, with nothing to explain. At that point it's just wishing.

deleted 4y ago

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overlisted 4y ago

I'm a materialist myself, but I can think of one very fun theory that solves this. What if neurons are special antennas that can "connect" to your consciousness, and when you're, say, drunk, those antennas start receiving and transmitting wrong signals. Your consciousness is just fine in its world, but your body can't talk to it properly anymore. Obviously I'm just making stuff up, and I don't actually believe any of this.

simonh 4y ago
In that scenario, I don’t see why your body containing alcohol would change your conscious experience. Surely that would be like being fully alert and aware, but not able to fully control your body. If your body were in its own world, then there would be no reason for drunkenness to affect your awareness or decision making.

zelphirkalt 4y ago

How do we know there is a "loss" of consciousness? I had some dreams when I was anesthesized once. I do no longer clearly remember them, but I do remember telling the medical people there, that I did dream something. How could I dream without consciousness?

simonh 4y ago
The article discusses this. Some people who are given low doses of anaesthetic, usually due to potential risks, do report some awareness. On the flip side, even though during normal sleep we experience some semi-conscious dream states, there are other phases of sleep that are a complete blank. So conciseness seems to exist on a continuum from full alertness all the way down to nothing.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  Consciousness is definitely not an all-or-nothing thing, though I suspect we only typically have access to very narrow band of potential levels of awareness (and can't control it "at will" anyway). But obviously there are some thresholds over which memories are simply not preserved in a sufficiently cohesive form for us to have any sense of maintaining consciousness, and in fact the point at which our brain stops being able to store recallable memories is surely the point at which our consciousness "stops". Having said that, clearly even in a dream state our brains have some ability to store memories, it's just that they're not memories guided by our normal capacity to process external stimuli, as are waking memories.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    I'm not actually sure I would agree on not being able to store recallable memories being end of consciousness. Alzheimer and other medical conditions might very well result being unable to make new memories, but processing and reacting to stimuli based on old memories is still possible. Reasonably I think stop of consciousness is both not storing and not reacting to.
    - 4y ago

strogonoff 4y ago

Mind-body dualism strikes me as possibly the least elegant and magic-leap-proof alternative to physicalism, so it’s unfortunate that people who explore this question get stuck on it. In fact, non-material monist views exist! See, for example, Kant and Schrödinger. Some of Wolfram’s ideas[0] at first approach seem to be interpretable from this angle. I’m not going to do the entirety of monism justice in a paragraph, but as one take: perhaps interacting with other conscious entities involves changes in yours and tends to manifest itself as physical changes within time-space, a lossy map constructed as a shortcut/interface to the otherwise overwhelming underlying territory? This does not require conjuring an entire universe, with its arbitrary laws and constants, to explain perception supplied by consciousness (the only thing we have direct access to, that physicalists nevertheless tend to treat as a magic side-effect of magically existing reality). [0] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2022/06/alien-intelligence-and-the-concept-of-technology/ https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2022/06/alien-intelligen...

bowsamic 4y ago
> In fact, non-material monist views exist! Also see Buddhist philosophy such as Yogacara
TuringTest 4y ago
> the only thing we have direct access to, that physicalists nevertheless tend to treat as a magic side-effect of magically existing reality Doesn't that perspective require a magically existing mind, which happens to magically discover an entire universe with consistent laws and constants as a side-effect of its experimental enquiries? Not much gained by the change of perspective, then?
- strogonoff 4y ago
  It’s probably safe to assume that consciousness exists, as it’s what carries out this line of reasoning in the first place. And no, I don’t think an elegant explanation is one that magically conjures up the existence of an entire universe that’s not directly accessible except as a representation within said consciousness.

xenadu02 4y ago

You're close to the fundamental problem here but don't go far enough. All one needs to do is look at Oliver Sack's books to understand that either of these must be true: 1. Consciousness is a physical system. This is the simplest explanation and accounts for all observed phenomenon. 2. Consciousness (or "soul") is metaphysical but is such a blank slate or so dependent on the physical state of the brain that we can exclude all consideration of it. Memory is clearly physical otherwise brain damage wouldn't ruin only some memories or the ability to comprehend certain things (such as right-left agnosias where someone loses the concept of the left side of the world both currently and in recalled memories). Brain chemistry very _obviously_ influences mood. Mind-altering drugs can induce temporary personality changes. It goes way beyond simple "radio receiver" analogies like alcohol inducing distortions. Your ability to understand anything at all, your ability to remember anything at all, even your personality can be dramatically affected by brain chemistry and physical state. There are just so very many examples of real situations involving the brain that require extremely complicated hoop-jumping to maintain the idea that "you" are anything beyond the physical process happening in your brain. They all devolve into claims that the metaphysical essence is so dependent on and influenced by physical brain processes you can just cut out the metaphysical part with no loss. If a stroke or dementia can make me a much angrier or violent person then what need is there for a soul?

feet 4y ago
Isn't there some rule that we should usually go with the simplest explanation that covers all bases? Why even go beyond 1? It feels like people want there to be something more
- tmountain 4y ago
  Occam's razor. In philosophy, a razor is a principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate ("shave off") unlikely explanations for a phenomenon, or avoid unnecessary actions. In essence, they provide guardrails to keep discussions centered within the realm of reason when venturing to the edge of our knowledge and beyond.
  - 4y ago

saiya-jin 4y ago

I can't grok why do people have so much issue with accepting the simplest explanation - physical laws still apply and our minds exist within them, as part of that grey goo inside of our skulls. Isn't it already amazing enough that something like that is possible? I mean we don't believe in fairies and santa claus anymore since we know how and why they were made up, but sure there is some utterly inexplainable magic that breaks all physical laws that we know... just to feel more special? Give our immortality a chance? I do believe a lot of weird, illogical and sometimes completely fucked up beliefs simply come from common utter dismay of most folks when confronted with their mortality and the very real and perfectly fine chance that once we die that's it, our version of this universe and all of our experiences, loves and fears will simply vanish, forever. Every single religion primarily address this fear, the rest are mostly rituals folks made up early enough for them to stick around and management political structures just like in any other office. For people brought up in religion this is simply unacceptable, whole world falling apart. Why any parent still does this to their children is completely beyond me, but I guess road to hell is often paved with good intentions. I may be wrong and most logical solution may not be the right one, and that would make me in fact very happy. But religious people are mentally cornered, they can't accept any other option without their world breaking apart in the seams. That's a position of weakness and fear on the most important topic in life.

otikik 4y ago

Pick 3 random stones and arrange them so that they form a straight line. Does the line "exist"? If you consider that only the atoms "count" for existing, then the line does not exist. (Neither do the stones, by the way - since they are constantly exchanging minor quantities of atoms and electrons with the rest of the environment, the set that defines what each stone is is constantly changing. But let's ignore that bit). The line is a "mathematical abstraction", layered on top of the "real" world. Now consider that you measure and define exactly where that line is, according to the system of coordinates that you prefer. Now imagine that you remove the three stones. Now there's no atoms "sustaining" that the line any more. But in a sense the line is "still there", it's defined by the coordinates you wrote. It can be argued that it has always "existed" - before you put the stones there, before Earth existed, that particular line in space already "was", in the same sense that numbers "are" - that the line has existed in some way or another since Space itself started existing. You now pick 3 bottle caps and put them on top of the line again. Now the line is again defined by 3 clumps of matter. Does it "exist" any more than it existed in the previous two cases? It all comes down to how we use the verb "exist" - it means several things depending on the context. "Exist" in the atoms world, or "exist" as information. I believe that mind and consciousness is a bit of the same thing, just many orders of magnitude bigger. Instead of 3 stones what defines a mind is trillions of neurons arranged in a certain way. I am materialistic, but I believe in the be encoding of information. To me this means that each mind, at some point in time, can absolutely be "encoded" into a big enough number (huge, billions of trillions of digits). So in that sense minds are "defined by atoms" but also "exist independently of atoms, and are eternal".

simonh 4y ago
It's an interesting way to view these things for sure. Marvin Minsky believed that it doesn't make sense to talk about the physical reality of our world, he thought it was a possible world and that's all that matters. I take my cue from the physics of information theory and computation. In that view a computation is a process physically performed by a system. The same applies to mathematical calculations. The result exist independently in some transcendent sense, but in order to actually obtain a result a physical system has to perform the process. That physical system exists independently of the abstract mathematics, and independently of any other system performing the same calculation, or computation. In the same way my brain can have a thought. I can perceive a colour. The pattern of activity might be extremely close to the activity associated with you perceiving the same colour. It might be identical with the pattern of an identical clone or twin of mine experiencing the same perception. Nevertheless they are separate, unconnected, completely independent activities that just happen to have similar interpretations. That's a strict physicalist view, and it's one I subscribe to as being the most plausible. Nevertheless I'm a human being, I have children, I care about my family and friends, and humanity generally. So clearly patterns matter to me as a person, but that's just in my nature. I don't see any reason to think it's fundamental to anything, because thinking that way IMHO leads to some very wooly thinking. just because gold is shiny and pretty, that doesn't mean I think there's something cosmically magical or special about those wavelengths of light. The experience and appreciation of things is important to us, but it doesn't define reality.

dwd 4y ago

I would highly recommend listening to Anil Seth or reading his book "Being You". He is also highly critical of dualism and panpsychism, and justifiably so. As one of the leading researchers on consciousness, I'm surprised he's not mentioned at all in this. He is extremely fascinated by how consciousness goes away under anesthesia.

amkkma 4y ago
Sounds like he's ultimately agnostic on the issue: " But I’m agnostic about whether at the end of this programme of trying to account in physical terms for properties of experience, there will still be some residue of mystery left, something more to explain." https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/21/neuroscientist-anil-seth-we-risk-not-understanding-the-central-mystery-of-life https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/21/neuroscienti...
- dwd 4y ago
  Hedging his bets. He doesn't believe there is a "hard problem" as described by others and dismisses that as shorthand for there being something mysterious we don't get. In a chat with Sam Harris the two argue that one out in depth. I have heard him make the analogy to the Unifying Theory of Physics and admitting that even after all his work there could potentially be some aspect that could have weird quantum qualities, or is bound to dimensions of reality outside of perceivable 3d+t. And while he doesn't agree with Douglas Hoffman as to there being conscience agents outside of space/time, he is fully in agreement with reality as perceived and currently observable being a whole cloth construction with our senses serving to adjust our individual construct.

Hayarotle 4y ago

Some forms of panpsychism (such as panprotopsychism) aren't much different from emergent materialism. Emergent materialism states human consciousness originates from the state of a physical brain, while the constituent parts of the human brain (and its physical interactions) have nothing resembling consciousness. Some forms of panpsychism would argue the physical interactions between the parts are already proto-conscious, and your brain is simply in a state that aggregates these phenomena into human consciousness. The difference is purely ontological in this case. Both emergent materialism and this form of panpsychism would claim your aggregate consciousness has its origin in your brain and would stop if the parts of your brain were separated: both are compatible with physical reality. The difference is that the former would interpret this as a complete disappearance of such consciousness, while the latter would interpret it as a dis-aggregation of this consciousness into proto-conscious parts. There are also some versions of eliminative materialism that claim consciousness doesn't exist in the first place, and myriads of other positions.

layer8 4y ago
The problem of panpsychism is that it doesn’t explain anything. It postulates some sort of mechanism that builds up our consciousness based on what amounts to a dual realm of psychic mechanics, but it doesn’t explain at all how this nonphysical mechanism is supposed to be able to account for consciousness in a way that the known laws of physics allegedly can’t.
- Hayarotle 4y ago
  That's a problem that affects all theories about the metaphysics of consciousness. All of them share the burden of explaining how a world where "consciousness" exists would be different from a world without it. The ones which claim a distinct consciousness does exist then also have to explain how this consciousness either originates from physical parts with limited or non-existent consciousness(emergent theories like panprotopsychism and emergent materialism), exists outside physical matter (dualism), or exists fully in the smaller parts, somehow getting combined into one (traditional panpsychism). That's part of why it can be attractive to leave aside concerns about metaphysical consciousness altogether.

jillesvangurp 4y ago

It's a sensitive topic for a lot of people (mainly because it contradicts world views they might have) but I don't think you are wrong. Consciousness, in so far it is definable at all, seems just an emergent property of our brain. We're pretty sure it resides in our brain and not for example your toes or other parts of your body since there are plenty of nasty accidents where people lose various parts of their body; or receive replacements for certain things without that really changing who they are or how they think. Also, doctors mess with it intentionally once in a while which definitely has all sorts of effects. As for anesthesia, that's just using chemicals to knock you out. I once had a mild anesthesia that messed with my short term memory while some unpleasant procedure was taking place. When I asked them when they were starting they informed me it was already done. I have no memory of the whole thing and was apparently "conscious" throughout. Great stuff; would have that again if the need arises. So, the medically correct answer is of course that a deep coma is virtually indistinguishable from being dead in the sense that there is not a lot going on in terms of brain activity. That kind of is the point of inducing such a level of unconsciousness. It frees up the doctors to mess with out bodies without creating a lot of psychological trauma that excruciating pain might otherwise cause.

EMM_386 4y ago
> I have no memory of the whole thing and was apparently "conscious" throughout. Great stuff; would have that again if the need arises. "Twilight anesthesia" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_anesthesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_anesthesia

kwoff 4y ago

This thread reminded me of Douglas Hofstadter's 'Who shoves whom around inside the careenium? OR What is the meaning of the word "I"?' https://jsomers.net/careenium.pdf https://jsomers.net/careenium.pdf