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Great question. I would guess he woke up and that this was subsequent to him forming memories again. Memory seems to be a requirement for the kind of self-refer

Great question. I would guess he woke up and that this was subsequent to him forming memories again. Memory seems to be a requirement for the kind of self-referential conscious experience that appears to be basically unique to humans. An anesthetic that acts entirely on memory formation and paralyzes the body is in many ways the ideal anesthetic. It's not super unlikely this is how many anesthetics work to at least some degree. If you were administered such a perfect anesthetic it's likely that subjectively you'd experience a distrinct discontinuity in time. Even if you received surgery during that discontinuity, you wouldn't ever suffer from it - not even on some deep non-conscious level. There is no suffering in the now, suffering requires a self which requires memory.

p_j_w 2y ago
>There is no suffering in the now, suffering requires a self which requires memory. If there's no suffering in the now, then how can one remember that one suffered?
- cupcakecommons 2y ago
  I don't think there's a way define suffering without invoking contextualized pain and an entity that suffers (a self). A self is a complex phenomenon that has a bunch of additional requirements not least of which is the capacity for bridging multiple moments of sensory input that happen in the now. One can remember that one suffered because one can experience pain in the now and bridge that into a context where the self exists. Selfing is the trick of consciousness, it's not necessarily the natural state of all creatures with sensory equipment or memory - it's an additional trick that only a handful of creatures have.
layla5alive 2y ago
You are so stunningly Dunning-Kruger wrong here. Neurotransmitters, cortisol and other stress hormones, protein expression, epigenetics, the gut microbiome, all of these and more can lastingly be affected by trauma which is not committed to long term memory. Nevermind the fact that even if it is forgotten, an awake mind will suffer greatly in the moment - pretending that suffering did not occur because it was forgotten is some next level self-deception.
- cupcakecommons 2y ago
  What about what I said implied anything about various other systems like stress hormones not being lastingly be affected by trauma? I don't think most surgical patients are concerned with the kind of trauma their cells or gut microbiome sustain during surgery. In fact, if these systems recollected zero trauma it's doubtful the surgical outcome would be positive. When most people discuss suffering they are usually discussing the suffering of their selves. The self requires coordinated effort from the brain. When surgery occurs, it could be well argued you would want to use the least anesthesia necessary to avoid the kind of suffering the patient wants to avoid. What are you actually on about? Why be purposefully insulting?
  - cupcakecommons 2y ago
    ah I see what I wrote. "not even on some deep non-conscious level" yeah that was sloppy nm.

p_j_w 2y ago

>There is no suffering in the now, suffering requires a self which requires memory. If there's no suffering in the now, then how can one remember that one suffered?

cupcakecommons 2y ago
I don't think there's a way define suffering without invoking contextualized pain and an entity that suffers (a self). A self is a complex phenomenon that has a bunch of additional requirements not least of which is the capacity for bridging multiple moments of sensory input that happen in the now. One can remember that one suffered because one can experience pain in the now and bridge that into a context where the self exists. Selfing is the trick of consciousness, it's not necessarily the natural state of all creatures with sensory equipment or memory - it's an additional trick that only a handful of creatures have.

layla5alive 2y ago

You are so stunningly Dunning-Kruger wrong here. Neurotransmitters, cortisol and other stress hormones, protein expression, epigenetics, the gut microbiome, all of these and more can lastingly be affected by trauma which is not committed to long term memory. Nevermind the fact that even if it is forgotten, an awake mind will suffer greatly in the moment - pretending that suffering did not occur because it was forgotten is some next level self-deception.

cupcakecommons 2y ago
What about what I said implied anything about various other systems like stress hormones not being lastingly be affected by trauma? I don't think most surgical patients are concerned with the kind of trauma their cells or gut microbiome sustain during surgery. In fact, if these systems recollected zero trauma it's doubtful the surgical outcome would be positive. When most people discuss suffering they are usually discussing the suffering of their selves. The self requires coordinated effort from the brain. When surgery occurs, it could be well argued you would want to use the least anesthesia necessary to avoid the kind of suffering the patient wants to avoid. What are you actually on about? Why be purposefully insulting?
- cupcakecommons 2y ago
  ah I see what I wrote. "not even on some deep non-conscious level" yeah that was sloppy nm.