Everyone reading this, please take a moment to see whether you have any sensation that you might describe by those words.
This doesn’t make sense to me. I have nothing to compare this experience of consciousness to. I know, logically speaking, that I am often unconscious (e.g. when sleeping), but there is no way—by definition—I can experience what that unconsciousness feels like. Thus, I cannot compare my experience of being conscious with the experience of being unconscious.
Am I missing something ? I think there are drugs that can induce the experience of unconsciousness, but I’d rather not take any kind of drugs unless it’s totally necessary...
Being asleep is not being unconscious (in this sense). I don’t know about you, but I have dreams. And even when I’m not dreaming, I seem to be aware of what is going on in my vicinity. Of course I typically don’t remember what happened, but if I was woken up I might remember the last few moments, briefly. Lack of memory of what happens when I’m asleep is due to a lack of memory formation during that period, not a lack of consciousness.
The experience of sleep paralysis suggests to me that there are at least two components to sleep; paralysis and suppression of consciousness and one can have one, both, or neither. With both, one is asleep in the typical fashion. With suppression of consciousness only one might have involuntary movements or in extreme cases sleepwalking. With paralysis only one has sleep paralysis which is apparently an unpleasant remembered experience. With neither, you awaken typically. The responses made by sleeping people (sleepwalkers and sleep-talkers especially) suggest to me that their consciousness is at least reduced in the sleep state. If it was only memory formation that was suppressed during sleep I would expect to witness sleep-walkers acting conscious but not remembering it, whereas they appear to instead be acting irrationally and responding at best semi-consciously to their environment.
This doesn’t make sense to me. I have nothing to compare this experience of consciousness to. I know, logically speaking, that I am often unconscious (e.g. when sleeping), but there is no way—by definition—I can experience what that unconsciousness feels like. Thus, I cannot compare my experience of being conscious with the experience of being unconscious.
I don’t see why this is a problem. Why should I need to compare my experience of being conscious to an experience, defined to be impossible, of being unconscious? If I want to compare it with something (although I don’t see why I should need to, to have the experience) I can compare my experiences of myself at different times. It varies, even without drugs.
In what ways does it vary? Communicating internal experiences is difficult, especially when they may be idiosyncratic. When I first wake, my sense of presence is at a rather low level, but there is enough of it to be able to watch the rest of the process of properly waking up, which is like watching a slowly developing picture. There may be more dimensions to it than just intensity, but I haven’t studied it much. Perhaps that would be something to explore in meditation, instead of just contemplating my own existence.
Then it might be that you don’t have access to the sensation Richard is talking about.
I can distinguish states where I’m totally immersed in a video game and the video game world from states when I’m aware of myself and conscious of myself.
If I wanted to go more into detail I can distinguish roughly four different sensations for which I have labels under the banner of “I experience a certain sense of my own presence”.
There a fifth sensation that I used to mislabel as presence.
I can distinguish states where I’m totally immersed in a video game and the video game world from states when I’m aware of myself and conscious of myself.
Ok, so who, exactly, is it that is “totally immersed in a video game” ? If it’s still you, then you have simply lost awareness of (the majority of) your body, but you are as conscious as you were before.
Imagine there were drugs that could remove the sensation of consciousness. However, that’s all they do. They don’t knock you unconscious like an anaesthetic; you still maintain motor functions, memory, sensory, and decision-making capabilities. So you can still drive a car safely, people can still talk to you coherently, and after the drugs wear off you’ll remember what things you said and did.
Can anyone explain concretely what the effect and experience of taking such a drug would be?
If so, that might go a long way toward nailing down what the essential part of consciousness is (ie, what people really mean when they claim to be conscious). If not, it might show that consciousness is inseparable from sensory, memory, and/or decision-making functions.
For example, I can imagine an answer like “such a drug is contradictory; if it really took away what I mean by ‘consciousness’, then by definition I couldn’t remember in detail what had happened while it was in effect”. Or “If it really took away what I mean by consciousness, then I would act like I were hypnotized; maybe I could talk to people, but it would be in a flat, emotionless, robotic way, and I wouldn’t trust myself to drive in that state because I would become careless”.
Implicit memories—motor habits and recognition still work. Semantic and episodic memories are pretty separate things. You can answer some factual questions without involving your more visceral kind of memory about the experience later. Planning couldn’t be totally gone, but it would operate at a much lower level so I wouldn’t recommend driving...
Imagine there were drugs that could remove the sensation of consciousness. However, that’s all they do. They don’t knock you unconscious like an anaesthetic; you still maintain motor functions, memory, sensory, and decision-making capabilities. So you can still drive a car safely, people can still talk to you coherently, and after the drugs wear off you’ll remember what things you said and did.
That doesn’t make any sense to me. If you were on that drug and I asked you “how do you feel?” and you said “I feel angry” or “I feel sad” ,,, that would be a conscious experience. I don’t think the setup makes any sense. If you are going about your day doing your daily things, you are conscious. And this has nothing to do with remembering what happened—as I said in a different reply, you are also conscious in the grandparent’s sense when you are dreaming, even if you don’t remember the dream when you wake up.
Jbay didn’t specify that the drug has to leave people able to answer questions about their own emotional state. And in fact there are some people who can’t do that, even though they’re otherwise functional.
I wasn’t limiting it to just emotional state. If there is someone experiencing something, that someone is conscious, whether or not they are self-aware enough to describe that feeling of existing.
Yes. Really to be completely unconscious you’d have to be dead. But I do acknowledge that this is degrees on a spectrum, and probably the closest drug to what you want is whatever they use in general anesthesia.
This doesn’t make sense to me. I have nothing to compare this experience of consciousness to. I know, logically speaking, that I am often unconscious (e.g. when sleeping), but there is no way—by definition—I can experience what that unconsciousness feels like. Thus, I cannot compare my experience of being conscious with the experience of being unconscious.
Am I missing something ? I think there are drugs that can induce the experience of unconsciousness, but I’d rather not take any kind of drugs unless it’s totally necessary...
Being asleep is not being unconscious (in this sense). I don’t know about you, but I have dreams. And even when I’m not dreaming, I seem to be aware of what is going on in my vicinity. Of course I typically don’t remember what happened, but if I was woken up I might remember the last few moments, briefly. Lack of memory of what happens when I’m asleep is due to a lack of memory formation during that period, not a lack of consciousness.
The experience of sleep paralysis suggests to me that there are at least two components to sleep; paralysis and suppression of consciousness and one can have one, both, or neither. With both, one is asleep in the typical fashion. With suppression of consciousness only one might have involuntary movements or in extreme cases sleepwalking. With paralysis only one has sleep paralysis which is apparently an unpleasant remembered experience. With neither, you awaken typically. The responses made by sleeping people (sleepwalkers and sleep-talkers especially) suggest to me that their consciousness is at least reduced in the sleep state. If it was only memory formation that was suppressed during sleep I would expect to witness sleep-walkers acting conscious but not remembering it, whereas they appear to instead be acting irrationally and responding at best semi-consciously to their environment.
I don’t see why this is a problem. Why should I need to compare my experience of being conscious to an experience, defined to be impossible, of being unconscious? If I want to compare it with something (although I don’t see why I should need to, to have the experience) I can compare my experiences of myself at different times. It varies, even without drugs.
In what ways does it vary? Communicating internal experiences is difficult, especially when they may be idiosyncratic. When I first wake, my sense of presence is at a rather low level, but there is enough of it to be able to watch the rest of the process of properly waking up, which is like watching a slowly developing picture. There may be more dimensions to it than just intensity, but I haven’t studied it much. Perhaps that would be something to explore in meditation, instead of just contemplating my own existence.
Then it might be that you don’t have access to the sensation Richard is talking about.
I can distinguish states where I’m totally immersed in a video game and the video game world from states when I’m aware of myself and conscious of myself.
If I wanted to go more into detail I can distinguish roughly four different sensations for which I have labels under the banner of “I experience a certain sense of my own presence”. There a fifth sensation that I used to mislabel as presence.
Ok, so who, exactly, is it that is “totally immersed in a video game” ? If it’s still you, then you have simply lost awareness of (the majority of) your body, but you are as conscious as you were before.
Maybe you’re on to something...
Imagine there were drugs that could remove the sensation of consciousness. However, that’s all they do. They don’t knock you unconscious like an anaesthetic; you still maintain motor functions, memory, sensory, and decision-making capabilities. So you can still drive a car safely, people can still talk to you coherently, and after the drugs wear off you’ll remember what things you said and did.
Can anyone explain concretely what the effect and experience of taking such a drug would be?
If so, that might go a long way toward nailing down what the essential part of consciousness is (ie, what people really mean when they claim to be conscious). If not, it might show that consciousness is inseparable from sensory, memory, and/or decision-making functions.
For example, I can imagine an answer like “such a drug is contradictory; if it really took away what I mean by ‘consciousness’, then by definition I couldn’t remember in detail what had happened while it was in effect”. Or “If it really took away what I mean by consciousness, then I would act like I were hypnotized; maybe I could talk to people, but it would be in a flat, emotionless, robotic way, and I wouldn’t trust myself to drive in that state because I would become careless”.
I can almost picture it.
Implicit memories—motor habits and recognition still work. Semantic and episodic memories are pretty separate things. You can answer some factual questions without involving your more visceral kind of memory about the experience later. Planning couldn’t be totally gone, but it would operate at a much lower level so I wouldn’t recommend driving...
That doesn’t make any sense to me. If you were on that drug and I asked you “how do you feel?” and you said “I feel angry” or “I feel sad” ,,, that would be a conscious experience. I don’t think the setup makes any sense. If you are going about your day doing your daily things, you are conscious. And this has nothing to do with remembering what happened—as I said in a different reply, you are also conscious in the grandparent’s sense when you are dreaming, even if you don’t remember the dream when you wake up.
Jbay didn’t specify that the drug has to leave people able to answer questions about their own emotional state. And in fact there are some people who can’t do that, even though they’re otherwise functional.
I wasn’t limiting it to just emotional state. If there is someone experiencing something, that someone is conscious, whether or not they are self-aware enough to describe that feeling of existing.
Good! I’m glad to hear an answer like this.
So does that mean that, in your view, a drug that removes consciousness must necessarily be a drug that impairs the ability to process information?
Yes. Really to be completely unconscious you’d have to be dead. But I do acknowledge that this is degrees on a spectrum, and probably the closest drug to what you want is whatever they use in general anesthesia.
I think my opinion is the same as yours, but I’m curious about whether anybody else has different answers.