How sure are you that you have no conscious experience while asleep (in contrast to merely having no recollection of conscious experience)?
The same question can be asked of meditation and anaesthesia. One scary speculation about anaesthesia is that it doesn’t actually take away the pain of surgery at all, you just don’t remember afterwards.
Because, dreams aside, I don’t remember any. At some point at night I pass out, and the next thing I know, it’s morning.
Presumably in meditation you do remember what it was like to have just had a non-conscious experience. However, not having experienced it myself, I have a hard time imagining what “non-conscious experience” could be.
Well, not having conscious experience isn’t like anything. It just seems to me that being asleep is like something.
Not along the lines of having a sense that time is passing (one only seems to have that sense after waking up, so it’s really “having a sense that time passed,” as if the brain has some kind of built-in chronometer), but in having some kind of experience that can’t be described normally.
The same question can be asked of meditation and anaesthesia. One scary speculation about anaesthesia is that it doesn’t actually take away the pain of surgery at all, you just don’t remember afterwards.
OK, but, how sure are you that you have no conscious experience while asleep?
Because, dreams aside, I don’t remember any. At some point at night I pass out, and the next thing I know, it’s morning.
Presumably in meditation you do remember what it was like to have just had a non-conscious experience. However, not having experienced it myself, I have a hard time imagining what “non-conscious experience” could be.
Well, not having conscious experience isn’t like anything. It just seems to me that being asleep is like something.
Not along the lines of having a sense that time is passing (one only seems to have that sense after waking up, so it’s really “having a sense that time passed,” as if the brain has some kind of built-in chronometer), but in having some kind of experience that can’t be described normally.
Also, while you’re insensible, someone might cut you open and mess with your innards :)