Why should we accept as evidence something that you perceived while you were dreaming? Last night I dreamed that I was walking barefoot through the snow, but it wasn’t cold because it was summer snow. I assume you don’t take that as evidence that warm snow is an actual summer phenomenon, so why should we take as evidence your memory of having two consciousnesses?
It seems to me that a correctly organized consciousness would occur once per body. Consciousness is (at least in part) a system for controlling our actions in the medium and long term. If we had two consciousnesses, and they disagree as to what to do next, it would result in paralysis. And if they agree, then one of them is superfluous, and we’d expend less brain energy if we only had one.
I was not dreaming. I was observing my hypnagogic images, which is not the same as dreaming; and when streams merged I become completely awake.
However, after I know what is it, I can observe similar thing again. The receipt is following: 1. do two different unrelated things which require conscious attention but happen in different modalities, audio and video 2. increase the wideness of attention and observe that you just had two streams of more narrow attention.
The closest thing in everyday life is “driver amnesia”—the situation when a car driver is splitting attention between driving and conversation.
Conscious experience is direct evidence of itself. It is only very indirectly evidence of anything about external reality.
However, I do agree that memory of conscious experience isn’t quite so directly evidence of previous states of consciousness.
Personally of the numbered claims in the post I expect that (1) is true, (2) is false and this experience was not evidence of it, and I really don’t know what (3) and subsequent sentences are supposed to mean.
Why should we accept as evidence something that you perceived while you were dreaming? Last night I dreamed that I was walking barefoot through the snow, but it wasn’t cold because it was summer snow. I assume you don’t take that as evidence that warm snow is an actual summer phenomenon, so why should we take as evidence your memory of having two consciousnesses?
It seems to me that a correctly organized consciousness would occur once per body. Consciousness is (at least in part) a system for controlling our actions in the medium and long term. If we had two consciousnesses, and they disagree as to what to do next, it would result in paralysis. And if they agree, then one of them is superfluous, and we’d expend less brain energy if we only had one.
I was not dreaming. I was observing my hypnagogic images, which is not the same as dreaming; and when streams merged I become completely awake.
However, after I know what is it, I can observe similar thing again. The receipt is following:
1. do two different unrelated things which require conscious attention but happen in different modalities, audio and video
2. increase the wideness of attention and observe that you just had two streams of more narrow attention.
The closest thing in everyday life is “driver amnesia”—the situation when a car driver is splitting attention between driving and conversation.
Conscious experience is direct evidence of itself. It is only very indirectly evidence of anything about external reality.
However, I do agree that memory of conscious experience isn’t quite so directly evidence of previous states of consciousness.
Personally of the numbered claims in the post I expect that (1) is true, (2) is false and this experience was not evidence of it, and I really don’t know what (3) and subsequent sentences are supposed to mean.