It seems plausible to say that an unconscious person does not have any desires.
To further complicate this question, I will proudly report that I have learned to take off my socks in my sleep. Is that an unconscious desire to not have socks on?
I can report instances where I’ve apparently walked over to my alarm, turned it off, returned to bed, and returned to sleep, all without having any memory of it afterwards. I’m not sure if maybe I should classify this as being awake and having memory formation turned off, though (as I have also been known to respond to someone while mostly-asleep fairly cogently and then almost completely forget the whole thing).
Ah, but is reporting that one is conscious really evidence of being conscious? (Well, I’m also reasonably confident the answer I would give is “yes”.) Unless you meant literally “record your answer yourself”, in which case I’m not sure I could pull that one off without waking up sufficiently to fully form memories. Mostly I think this is evidence for the unsurprising conclusion that consciousness is not binary, and possibly for the very slightly more surprising conclusion that memory formation is not the same as consciousness despite the fact that memories are one of the main ways we get evidence of being conscious at some point.
Yeah, I wasn’t trying to design a very ambitious experiment. I’m just not sure I can predict what I would say to that question if I were asleep. Could you get the other person to make you convince them that you’re conscious if you say yes and have them report back what you say? I predict non-sequiturs!
I always have issues wrapping my head around how to deal with morality or responsibility-related issues when dealing with memory formation. Like really drunk people that say mean things and don’t remember them after—was that really them being mean? Whatever that means.
I always have issues wrapping my head around how to deal with morality or responsibility-related issues when dealing with memory formation. Like really drunk people that say mean things and don’t remember them after—was that really them being mean? Whatever that means.
I think the best way to look at it is pragmatic (or instrumental or whatever you want to call it) - figure out what behaviour you’d like them to exhibit (e.g. be less mean, generally avoid destructive behaviours), decide whether they can influence it (probably yes, at least by drinking less), and then influence them accordingly. Which is a roundabout way of saying that you should tell them they suck when drunk and you’re unhappy with them so hopefully they’ll act better next time (or get less drunk) and that legally they should have pretty much the same responsibilities. There’s also the secondary question of deciding to what extent being a bad person while drunk suggests that they’re also a (less) bad person while not drunk and have maybe just been hiding it well. I tend to think that it probably doesn’t (the actual evidence of what we know about them when they’re not drunk being more relevant), but I’m not really sure.
There’s also the secondary question of deciding to what extent being a bad person while drunk suggests that they’re also a (less) bad person while not drunk and have maybe just been hiding it well.
But then if they’re a good person while they’re sober but they spend a lot of their time drunk, then they’re really a weighted average of two people that computes more skewed toward their drunk self (who can’t really coherently answer questions about themselves) and their sober self can’t remember what their drunk self did so that self can’t either and omgarghblarghcomplicated. I generally do just short-circuit all of these computations the way you describe and don’t hang out with people like this, but I have one friend whom I’ve known forever who’s generally okay but sometimes acts really weird. And I can’t tell when he’s drunk, so he slowly acts a little weird over a long period of time before revealing that he’s been drinking all day and then I just feel like I don’t know who I’m talking to and whether he’ll be that person the next time I see him.
Anyways, I’m not too interested in the specifics of the instrumental side? I was just mainly wondering if the model of “conscious” “persons” breaks down really quickly once you introduce intoxicants that mess with memory formation. It kinda seems like it, huh?
Worse than that, I think it breaks down even without removing memory formation. If someone takes drugs regularly which make them act very differently, it’s probably best to model them as two people (or at least two sets of behaviours and reactions attached to one person) even if they remembers both sides at all times. On a less drug-related level, for most people, aroused!person acts quite differently from unaroused!person (and while I mainly meant sexual arousal, it’s true for anger and other strong emotions as well). Which is just saying that a person acts differently when experiencing different emotions/mental states, which we really already know. It’s definitely more salient with drugs, though.
I feel like that’s a bit exaggerated, because an angry person will still remember themselves yelling and maybe throwing things. Once they’ve called down, they might still be inclined to argue that what they did was correct and justified, but they won’t have trouble admitting they did it. If a person doesn’t remember having the experience of yelling and throwing things, they won’t know anything about their internal state at the time it happened. So people telling them something happened is evidence that it did, but it was the … conscious experience of someone else? (Blargh, fuzzy wording.)
To further complicate this question, I will proudly report that I have learned to take off my socks in my sleep. Is that an unconscious desire to not have socks on?
I can report instances where I’ve apparently walked over to my alarm, turned it off, returned to bed, and returned to sleep, all without having any memory of it afterwards. I’m not sure if maybe I should classify this as being awake and having memory formation turned off, though (as I have also been known to respond to someone while mostly-asleep fairly cogently and then almost completely forget the whole thing).
I think next time that happens, you should get someone to ask “hey, are you conscious?” and record your answer.
Ah, but is reporting that one is conscious really evidence of being conscious? (Well, I’m also reasonably confident the answer I would give is “yes”.) Unless you meant literally “record your answer yourself”, in which case I’m not sure I could pull that one off without waking up sufficiently to fully form memories. Mostly I think this is evidence for the unsurprising conclusion that consciousness is not binary, and possibly for the very slightly more surprising conclusion that memory formation is not the same as consciousness despite the fact that memories are one of the main ways we get evidence of being conscious at some point.
Yeah, I wasn’t trying to design a very ambitious experiment. I’m just not sure I can predict what I would say to that question if I were asleep. Could you get the other person to make you convince them that you’re conscious if you say yes and have them report back what you say? I predict non-sequiturs!
I always have issues wrapping my head around how to deal with morality or responsibility-related issues when dealing with memory formation. Like really drunk people that say mean things and don’t remember them after—was that really them being mean? Whatever that means.
I think the best way to look at it is pragmatic (or instrumental or whatever you want to call it) - figure out what behaviour you’d like them to exhibit (e.g. be less mean, generally avoid destructive behaviours), decide whether they can influence it (probably yes, at least by drinking less), and then influence them accordingly. Which is a roundabout way of saying that you should tell them they suck when drunk and you’re unhappy with them so hopefully they’ll act better next time (or get less drunk) and that legally they should have pretty much the same responsibilities. There’s also the secondary question of deciding to what extent being a bad person while drunk suggests that they’re also a (less) bad person while not drunk and have maybe just been hiding it well. I tend to think that it probably doesn’t (the actual evidence of what we know about them when they’re not drunk being more relevant), but I’m not really sure.
But then if they’re a good person while they’re sober but they spend a lot of their time drunk, then they’re really a weighted average of two people that computes more skewed toward their drunk self (who can’t really coherently answer questions about themselves) and their sober self can’t remember what their drunk self did so that self can’t either and omgarghblarghcomplicated. I generally do just short-circuit all of these computations the way you describe and don’t hang out with people like this, but I have one friend whom I’ve known forever who’s generally okay but sometimes acts really weird. And I can’t tell when he’s drunk, so he slowly acts a little weird over a long period of time before revealing that he’s been drinking all day and then I just feel like I don’t know who I’m talking to and whether he’ll be that person the next time I see him.
Anyways, I’m not too interested in the specifics of the instrumental side? I was just mainly wondering if the model of “conscious” “persons” breaks down really quickly once you introduce intoxicants that mess with memory formation. It kinda seems like it, huh?
Worse than that, I think it breaks down even without removing memory formation. If someone takes drugs regularly which make them act very differently, it’s probably best to model them as two people (or at least two sets of behaviours and reactions attached to one person) even if they remembers both sides at all times. On a less drug-related level, for most people, aroused!person acts quite differently from unaroused!person (and while I mainly meant sexual arousal, it’s true for anger and other strong emotions as well). Which is just saying that a person acts differently when experiencing different emotions/mental states, which we really already know. It’s definitely more salient with drugs, though.
I feel like that’s a bit exaggerated, because an angry person will still remember themselves yelling and maybe throwing things. Once they’ve called down, they might still be inclined to argue that what they did was correct and justified, but they won’t have trouble admitting they did it. If a person doesn’t remember having the experience of yelling and throwing things, they won’t know anything about their internal state at the time it happened. So people telling them something happened is evidence that it did, but it was the … conscious experience of someone else? (Blargh, fuzzy wording.)