Is consciousness present during deep sleep?
Possibly.
Q: Why should we believe our consciousness is present during deep sleep?
A: Because if we completely lacked consciousness, then loud noises would not wake us up. For a noise to wake us up, we must be able to perceive the noise. Conclusion: consciousness is present during deep sleep. It is the mind, in particular, memory, which is not present, that is, not functioning. So, when we wake up, we have no memory of having slept deeply.
Q: What about when we are under anesthesia, as during surgery, when loud noises do not wake us up?
A: Consider first when we have local anesthesia, as when the dentist does a root canal. It is obvious that we are conscious. We do not feel the pain because the anesthesia prevents the pain signals from reaching consciousness. Its possible when under a general anesthesia during surgery, the situation is the same: consciousness is present but the pain signals (as well as loud noises) are not reaching consciousness.
Q: Why should we believe our consciousness is present during deep sleep?
A: Because if we completely lacked consciousness, then loud noises would not wake us up. For a noise to wake us up, we must be able to perceive the noise. Conclusion: consciousness is present during deep sleep. It is the mind, in particular, memory, which is not present, that is, not functioning. So, when we wake up, we have no memory of having slept deeply.
Q: What about when we are under anesthesia, as during surgery, when loud noises do not wake us up?
A: Consider first when we have local anesthesia, as when the dentist does a root canal. It is obvious that we are conscious. We do not feel the pain because the anesthesia prevents the pain signals from reaching consciousness. Its possible when under a general anesthesia during surgery, the situation is the same: consciousness is present but the pain signals (as well as loud noises) are not reaching consciousness.
Comments (75)
Hey Art,
Why think consciousness is required to be awakened from deep sleep by a noise, rather than a subconscious process monitoring input from the ears and starting a subconscious arousal process?
I'm using "consciousness" in a broad way, as something that perceives, something which is aware. Under that (admittedly broad) definition, a subconscious process would be a form of awareness, i.e., consciousness.
Do you think computer's are conscious?
So the brain is in fact set up to ignore the world as much as possible. It aims to minimise its attentional consciousness by being able to deal with as much of the world as it can out of learnt and routinised habit.
Thus the expectation that being conscious is the essential quality of mindfulness is 180 degrees wrong. The goal of neurobiology is to deal with reality at the most routine, predictable and automatic level possible.
By definition, that then leaves the brain with the least attentive work to do. It only has to stop and deliberate when things get surprising or otherwise exceptional and memorable.
So consciousness is used as an umbrella term that has to cover this dichotomous neural architecture. It is a one-note description of a polarised architecture,
And on top of that, it makes it sound like full attention is the true ground state when instead, practiced inattention is the general goal of the brain.
We aspire to demonstrate mastery and flow by living life with the minimum of thought. Life of course is then always full of accidents and surprises. So we need attention. But the goal is still to minimise its employment.
The brain has no off switch. But deep sleep stifles all but the most basic levels of habitual response, such as the startle reflex to loud and otherwise unexpected noises.
What this bottom-up activity has to do is reach an attentional level response where the brain is awake and can apply the full resources of the higher brain, such as the prefrontal planning and working memory areas. The noise can be held in mind and examined for its meaning.
We could call this reaching consciousness rather than attention. But then that leads you into a paradoxical issue of where habits sit in terms of this consciousness, and why we would even have this second best level of awareness rather than always using full attention on every mental event.
Consciousness is simply a bad word as it has come to build in a set of wrong beliefs about the architecture of mind.
As usual, your post is a superb antidote to the mind-numbing babbles on "consciousness" that pervade this forum.
Quoting apokrisis
And does that general goal produce pleasure?
I was a mathematician on one hand and a rock climber on the other - and the dichotomy is interesting. An intellectual pursuit is obviously one end of the spectrum - although even here a period of relaxation allows notions to bubble to the surface - but surprisingly perhaps, climbing can attain its goals at both ends.
One might think that getting to the top of a climb first is all it's about, and assuredly most participants delight in achieving this goal, but at the other end of the spectrum there is reward in practiced performance, smooth, effortless. This was analyzed and researched by an old acquaintance of mine from the U of Chicago many years ago: Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. He defined this as "flow". Long ago I wrote a chapter on climbing as a mystical art form for a compendium on mountaineering, moving as far away from competition with it's intense focus as possible.
I would guess action sports like basketball induce pleasure in both "spheres" :cool:
The nature of consciousness may be different during sleep as opposed to absent. In particular, states of REM dreaming consciousness is present. During dreams people are aware of their own individual identity, with the narratives of experience being altered. There are degrees of depths of unconsciousness, which may show that consciousness is a spectrum, with presence and attention to outer reality being only the tip of the iceberg of awareness.
This is in accordance with Henri Bergson's suggestion of the brain as being a filter of perception. The states of awareness of waking reality, as experienced during awareness may not be the only dimensions of consciousness. The waking states, as emphasised by the philosophy of realism are a basic starting point for negotiation of experience but consciousness may not be as straightforward.
Quoting Art48
I don't think that's persuasive. The objcetion would presumably be that the brain remains receptive to some stimuli, and then on receipt of something sufficiently significant then more processes are started up.
Quoting Art48
That's interesting. I hadn't considered that before.
My own current view is that consciousness is always present, but psychological identity perhaps isn't. During deep sleep there are no memories, values, desires etc. The patient ceases to exist as a psychological entity. That might be consistent with your second point, I'm not sure. What I think can't happen is that consciousness 'turns off' (like a computer shutting down) and then boots up again. That would entail consciousness being a vague concept, and I don't think it is.
It gets trickier as the systems view of this is that dichotomies create the polarities that then can become the dynamical balances. So - as Kelso models - the brain wants to be in a sharply switchable meta critical state. If you have a system that is polarised in terms of attention and habit, it then can fluidly mix the two contrasting styles in a way that best fits the current task demands.
Reductionists treat dichotomies as either/or choices. The holist says sharp contrast is how you arrive at the high definition picture. Attention feels so damn spotlit and experienced because it has that lived contrast with all was the contrastingly automatic and unconsidered backdrop.
So Csíkszentmihályis flow state is the brain both attending and running on automatic in a skilled and unbroken fashion. Everything is clicking as you do some challenging task.
Could be climbing, trail-running, painting, writing, whatever. But it is demanding, hence there is adrenaline. Yet it is mostly working out, so it is pleasant in its surprises rather than the surprises being nasty ones. Habitual skill dominates. Yet there is also sufficient difficulty and novelty that you have to have an alert open-minded focus.
Attentional style is also dichotomous. Left brain for endogenous or internal planning focus, right brain for exogenous outward vigilance. One selects and plans actions. The other is the kind of open mind that feels clear and ready to jump on whatever eventuates from any direction.
So part of the pleasure of flow states is that it puts us into this zen mode of just being in the moment and not constructing actions step by laborious step. It feels clean and direct as we are riding the activity with the lightest of touches.
I played a lot of sports and this combination of high arousal, yet a quiet vigilance that lets your habits really flow, is a familiar combination. I wouldnt call it mystical as I knew the neurobiology that explained it. But it is counter-intuitive to the usual consciousness has to be in complete charge view of mind as you have to really concentrate to maximise vigilance while also really letting go and trusting to instinct.
In summary, flow is about letting the brain do its thing as a fast and unbroken skill. Habit dominates. But attentional style is also dichotomised. And an open-minded concentration is needed to stop unwanted interruptions from the brains other fusspot, micromanaging, style of running the show.
However, the question isn't only a matter of psychobiology, but also a question of phenomenology, perspective and empirical logic that neuroscientists tend to overlook:
A subject in an ideal sleep lacks consciousness from the perspective of external observers according to behavioural definitions of ' "consciousness" that refer to inter-subjectively ascertainable criteria such as stimulus responses, memory recall and directed attention. And yet from the subjective phenomenological point of view, the first person never sleeps. After all, I cannot experience myself sleeping, and so I cannot have direct knowledge that I have ever been previously unconscious in the pure sense.
If I awaken from a coma, I might infer that I was previously unconscious on the basis of my present state of amnesia, together with reports I am told from external observers who monitored my behaviour. The question is, are these grounds sufficient for me to establish the proposition I was previously unconscious in the phenomenological sense of "experiencing nothing"? Shouldn't a hard-nosed empiricist who demands verification criteria, reject this commonly held conclusion as meaningless or false?
I don't think they are now. Not sure about the future.
Quoting apokrisis
You seem to say "consciousness" is a bad word for describing brain activity. If we limit consciousness to biological activity, that would imply a computer (or other silicon-based, non-biological entity) could never become consciousness. Would you agree?
Also, I've heard that psychedelics reduce brain activity but increase awareness. If true, would that suggest that consciousness and brain activity are two different phenomena. Comment?
Quoting bert1
I'd say that the brain being receptive implies consciousness
Quoting bert1
It is consistent.
Who is such a hard nosed empiricist that he can't learn from someone else? People tell me I snore. Despite having no conscious recollection of snoring, I believe them.
But even simple computers now (with the right peripherals) could monitor the environment for loud noises, and in the event of detecting such a noise, power up a sophisticated AI system that could then evaluate and respond to the environment in a more sophisticated way.
It seems to me that sort of scenario is more analogous to my experience of being aroused from sleep by a loud noise, than that I am conscious during deep sleep. (REM sleep being a different matter.)
Other people can hear your snoring, but they cannot observe an absence of your experiences on your behalf, and neither can you. All they can observe is an absence of your experiences on their behalf in terms of their behavioural definitions of your experiences.
I wouldn't say its a bad word, its just a misapplied word. Consciousness is at its core, built on the subjective sense of self. When people ask, "What is consciousness", I think they're really asking how we have a sense of self, what is it, and how it fits into the larger understanding of the brain.
Consciousness is not something that can be created and then disappear, now be present and the next moment be absent.
Consciousness is connected to life. Once it is attached to a life it will be there until life stops.
So, why can't we feel anything under total anesthesia? Because we are unconscious. "Unconscious" does not mean "without consciousness". It means that we cannot perceive, feel, etc. Why? because substances such as drugs, alcohol, etc., shocks, bumps on the head, etc. block parts of the brain, preventing neurons in different brain regions from communicating with each other, with the result that the brain cannot transmit signals that consciousness can receive. In such a state, consciousness is attenuated to the degree of how strong, powerful the drug, shock, bump, etc. is. So, we can be unconscious in part or totally.
You seem to have your own idiosyncratic definition of "consciousness" that doesn't seem to have much overlap with what is commonly meant by the term.
For example, [url=https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/brain-death/]the UK NHS says on brain death:
Not sure about this. I believe consciousness is a process. Some processes that are connected to life cannot stop without ending the life. Respiration, for example. The process of movement, otoh, can stop. I think consciousness is dependent on a lot of structures and other processes working together. Maybe it's possible to stop those structures and processes from working together, literally ending consciousness, without the body, or even those things and processes, dying.
I have not given any definition of consciousness, "idiosyncratic" (!) or other sort.
Quoting wonderer1
What is commonly meant by the term? In your own words.
The reference that you brought up says ecactly what I said:
"Brain death (also known as brain stem death) is when a person on an artificial life support machine no longer has any brain functions. This means they will not regain consciousness or be able to breathe without support."
"But they will not ever regain consciousness or start breathing on their own again. They have already died."
Isn't this what I said (in different words)? Didn't I say "Once it is attached to a life it will be there until life stops"?
Maybe your comments refer to some other reply than my own ...
What kind of process? A process involves a series of actions or operations. Does consciousness act or operates in any way?
Quoting Patterner
Process or not, isn't what I said (in different words)? Didn't I say "Once it is attached to a life it will be there until life stops"? I think that "stops" and "ends" mean the same thing here, don't they?
I'm assuming you have some working definition "consciousness" (however vague that might be) which effects how you use the word.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
I'd think something like, "A state of being in which phenomenal experience occurs."
It doesn't seem to me like what you said, since a brain dead person typically has the majority of their cells still living. Also, things you have said other places gave me the impression that you think that individual cells have consciousness.
Quoting Alkis PiskasI'm suggesting it might not be there even though life has not stopped.
Nice. I like that. :up: However, I don'r how it is in conflct with what I said ... Can this experience exist when life ends?
Quoting wonderer1
This is maybe correct,. I'm not very knowledgeable on the subject. But if so, brain death belongs to the case of being unconscious, only to a much greater degree. E.g. total anesthesia, as I have said earlier to @Art48, blocks the brain to such a degree that it can't function on a stimulus-response anymore. The effect is the same (as far as consciousness is concerned).
Quoting wonderer1
Oh, far from that! :smile: Not only the cells, but even the whole brain has no consciousness. I talked about that yesterday, in the discussion of "What constitutes evidence of consciousness?" (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/813171)
Not feeling anything is a definition of unconsciousness.
But how can you verify that you feel nothing under anaesthesia?
By watching a video of how I reacted while being cut open with a scalpel and comparing that to how I'm likely to react to being cut open while conscious?
Re "But we could not point to their consciousness": Right. However, the examples of respiration and digestion are indeed procecess, in fact well defined ones. But how does consciouness function as a processs? Thi is what I asked.
[s]But where is the "process" that you are talking about in all this? Or do you mean that consciousness, respiration, digestion, etc.[/s]
Quoting Patterner
I wonder how that can be the case ... And if so, how could we know that? Science does not even know what exactly is consciousness, where it is located, how it functions, etc.
Well, also not being able to perceive anything with our senses, and other things ...
Quoting sime
I can't, since I'm unconsious! :smile:
I don't think even anesthesiologists do. They might have some kind of indications of slight bodily movements-reactions, etc. but I guess that not even these can an evidence that the patient actually "feels" ...
Ah, you were right. I was confusing thing apokrisis said, as having been things you said.
I guess my brain has been filing things under "starts with an A and has four syllables".
Sorry about that.
Either that or the loss of attentive filtering is a reduction of global activity that lets the selective spotlight of high level processing get flooded with a lot of unsorted data.
An organised mind is very accurately predicting its whole world and so minimising its need to be aware of everything. It is focused on a sharp sense of something as being what is unexpected, notable or concerning.
A disorganised mind would be just full of a blooming, buzzing, confusion. Like a dream state.
Most of the connections in the brain are inhibitory. The mind gains its high definition contrast by sculpting a pattern of neural excitation.
EEG recordings show this happening. The P300 wave is a wave of inhibition that comes about a third of a second after some salient or attention-worthy stimulus. It is a wave of positivity as firing is widely suppressed to create narrowed focus.
It is only a good word from the point of humans as social creatures who rely on folk acting the role of consciously self-regulating selves. We require people to take responsibility for all their actions at all times as if they were being attentive and thoughtful. That is how we civilise them. By insisting they have to be exactly that kind of biological self.
But then neurobiology tells us this is indeed a social fiction. Nature designs us to not think but just act as much as possible. It is a mistake to try to be fully conscious and self regulating even when walking down a flight of stairs.
It takes about 200 milliseconds to plan physical actions at the automatic or subconscious level of skilled habit. The brain just emits learnt routines thoughtlessly. To be in deliberative or attentive control takes about 500 milliseconds. And it suppresses sharp awareness for other things during the time it does its thing - the phenomenon known as the attentional blink.
So it is putting on the blinkers to operate step by step rather than letting behaviour flow. Performance on a tennis court or descending a staircase becomes dangerously choppy when we try to live up to the social ideal of being on full conscious control of our behaviour. It cant actually be done.
Society finds consciousness to be useful propaganda. We have to make ourselves as much like the kind of selves that society needs so as to function as a superorganism - an integrated collective of selves. The Catholic Church really refined this cultural technology with its guilt tripping approach to restraint on every impulse, its policing of every thoughtless omission.
But neurobiology can strip things back to how selfhood really works in the natural world without the linguistic bondage of a social order. It can jettison the religious baggage of Cartesian duality - the idea that the self is a little witness sitting on our shoulder, responsible for every choice we might will into existence.
The brain does as much as it can in the fifth of a second timeframe of practiced skill, leaving the half second of lumbering attentive follow-up to only what deserves that extra level of scrutiny and regulation.
The business of living as a self in the world can set the bar on how consciously regulated we need to be, rather than a human social institution that wants to reinforce its Cartesian ideal.
Any idea what "increased awareness" means?
I don't know whether you understand minds as functions of brains. However, in case your question wasn't rhetorical, Neurophysiology of Sleep and Wakefulness: Basic Science and Clinical Implications:
How do minds emerge from brains? Why aren't all brain processes associated with consciousness?
It's too early in the history of neuroscience to be able to explain how minds emerge from the most complex physical systems we know of.
Because the brain automates all sorts of things in the body that aren't under direct conscious control, and if those elements of the brain weren't doing what they do, and were instead involved with consciousness, we would die.
Do minds emerge from other things? Machines, maybe?
Imagine consciously squeezing our heart every second. :D Hey, Magneto had his heart literally ripped out of his body. He consciously kept his blood circulating with his power.
Well it's a big universe, so I can't claim to know. I don't think minds have emerged from machines other than brains here on earth.
That is an interesting question. Having had to return from it several times, I cannot verify a 'nothing' but the experience is unique. Something like, 'I left and am here again'.
Sleeping and dreaming is often an oppressive tour in the opposite direction. A cruel dossier of what one particularly sucks at.
How do you know? Some of the Ai's perform at human level. If an Ai passes the Turing Test, will it be conscious?
I didn't say that I know. The reason I consider it highly implausible is that we don't know enough about how consciousness emerges in a brain to have much hope of building a machine in which consciousness emerges. Furthermore, I don't consider it technologically feasible to build such a machine before neuromorphic hardware is in widespread use.
Some machines have performed at or above human levels in some limited domains, but that has been going on for a long time. That in itself doesn't lead to any good reason to think that consciousness has emerged in machines other than brains.
Your last question is poorly phrased. Passing a Turing test won't cause an AI to be conscious, and who conducts a Turing test and how that person interacted with the machine would make a difference in what conclusions would be reasonable, based on how the AI responded. In any case the Turing test wasn't seen by Turing as a test for consciousness, but as a test for thinking. I would say that modern AI's can reasonably said to think, regardless of whether they would pass the Turing test I would pose.
A simpler account is that the brain switches on sleep by cutting the brain off from the flow of incoming sensation at the level of the brainstem and thalamus. The brain ceases getting real input and so - being a reality predicting machine - generates its own hallucinations.
In a sensory deprivation tank, we are likewise taken over by waking hallucinations.
But in sleep, the brain also needs to switch off the output at the brainstem level so we cant act in response to our hallucinations. This is why we have sleep paralysis when in vivid dreaming sleep.
In deep sleep, we are allowed to move around more as now there is a generalised dissociation of brain activity due to a lack of thalamic integration. Even in deep sleep, we are sort of conscious. We have a woozy ruminating commentary to ourselves, that is really a disconnected word salad. And it all comes and goes without memory. But when waking from deep sleep - with some training - we can learn to notice and fix what it was like to be in that vague and rambling state of minimal arousal, minimal coherence.
So sleep is itself divided into two types. Deep slow wave sleep is speculated to be a restorative sleep phase where flushing pulses of lymphatic drainage help clear the brain of the days metabolic waste and aid consolidation of new pathways.
Then REM dreaming sleep is a way to get the brain roused and ready to go if needed, but still keep it off-line in blocking both incoming sensation and outgoing action.
The brainstem then has authority to throw the switch from sleep to waking if something noisy or untoward is happening. A startle response is a very simple neural reflex that doesnt require high intelligence to initiate.
Again, all this complexity of activity gets swept under the rug of consciousness and its equally unhelpful antithesis of unconsciousness. But the neuroscience is in. It aint a great mystery.
I see. You said to me "I don't know whether you understand minds as functions of brains.". Yet you're saying now that "we don't know how consciousness emerges in a brain to have much hope of building a machine in which consciousness emerges." I got the impression from you were pretty sure about minds and brains. Now it sounds like you're not so sure.
I never said that passing a Turing test would cause consciousness. I want you to think about what it would mean for a machine to be conscious. Soon, we will have AGI's that perform as well as us in all manner of activities. Soon after that, there will be ai's that surpass us. What does neuroscience say about how we should treat them? Should we assume they're conscious, even if we don't know?
Ok. I'm quite confident that minds emerge from brains, but that is a different matter than knowing all of the details of how minds emerge from brains that would be required to build a machine in which conscious could merge.
Similarly I'm quite confident that the property of being able to display a TV show, that my TV has, emerges from the electronic design and software in the TV, despite not knowing all I would need to know to design an equivalent TV.
Does that clear things up?
Quoting RogueAI
Neuroscience is about answering is questions, not ought questions.
We dont need neuroscience to answer that. If we can't tell they're not, then what is the downside of treating them as though they are?
Well then, let me ask you about brains. When did consciousness first arrive on the scene? Was coccocephalus wildi conscious? Were the dinosaurs? Is an ant conscious? A bee? A shark? Are mollusks conscious? What's the minimum number of neurons required for consciousness?
No downside. There's no downside to forbidding people not to abuse their cars or toasters. It just seems kind of odd to treat something as conscious when we have no idea whether it really is conscious or not.
While I've considered it worthwhile to respond to your trolling up till now, because people who are serious thinkers seem likely to be reading along. I'm not seeing a point to continuing. So thanks for the discussion.
I thought the conversation was about machines that pass every test we give them looking for consciousness. We could always refuse to believe they are, thinking we'll eventually come up with a test that will trip them up, and treat them like toasters or cars, despite what we think is their faux grief and horror.
Or, we could treat them as though they are what we have no legitimate reason to think they are not.
What's the upside and downside of the options?
The upside is that we're not making a horrendous mistake and mistreating something that's conscious. There is no downside. But as I said before, this applies to toasters and cars and my computer as well as AGI's. How far do you want to extend this courtesy to machines?
Let's give your toaster and car whatever tests of consciousness we can think of. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until they fail a test.
What tests do you propose we give an AGI that we suspect is conscious? Ask it?
I think that would be one of the tests. Let me know what your toaster's response is. I'm very excited!!
OK, now what? Do we assume a Commodore 64 is conscious because it says it is and there's no downside?
I'm trolling because I asked you questions about brains and consciousness? You better develop a thicker skin if you want to be taken seriously here.
Fascinating! How did your toaster respond? Audibly? Did it burn the words onto a slice of bread?
A panpsychist would say it's all conscious. I don't agree with it, but it's not a stupid position. They're not morons. I was being facetious with the toaster, but not with today's Ai. Are you sure ChatGPT isn't conscious?
Quoting RogueAII don't have reason to believe it is. I've chatted with it quite a bit. Amazing though it is, it does not at all seem like chatting with a conscious being. And it claims not to be.
[i]Panpsychism is the idea that consciousness did not evolve to meet some survival need, nor did it emerge when brains became sufficiently complex. Instead it is inherent in matter all matter.
In other words, everything has consciousness. Consciousness is not limited to humans and other animals.[/i]
https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/panpsychism-the-trippy-theory-that-everything-from-bananas-to-bicycles-are
That jibes with the stuff I've heard.
Quoting Patterner
That's true, but it could be programmed to say it is conscious (I imagine). I've talked with it a lot too, and when I had it ranking jokes on a 1-10 scale, I was impressed. I won't say I think it's conscious, but the next iteration? And the one after that? Eventually, these Ai's are going to sound just like a human. And if someone did think it was conscious, and that consciousness was affecting ChatGPT's output? I don't think that's a stupid position.
Note: The part "But where is the "process" that ..." at the end of my message is garbage - I forgot to remove it.
Quoting Patterner
I'm not sure what exactly do you mean by "static". But I agree that consciousness is not an "object".
Anway, you agree then that consciousness is not a process either, right?
No problem, wonderer1.
I'm glad that this is cleared. It's quite important.
:up:
Unfortunately, Science and Techology are advancing too fast for people to follow, undestand and assimilate their development, even when there's a hype about them. AI is a classic case. They all talk about it, but few know what it actually is, how it works, etc. Personally, as an AI programmer, I find this quite disheartening.
In a Ted Talk, Chalmers says:
Skrbina said:"This doesnt necessarily imply anything as sophisticated as thoughts."
"...some element of raw, subjective feeling. Some primitive precursor to consciousness."
"...instantaneous memory-less moments of experience."
They're talking about subjective experience. Not sentience. The theory (I'm not sure it qualifies as a theory. How can it be tested?) is not that all matter is conscious. The theory is that all matter, even every particle, has the property of protopsychism, just as they have properties like mass and charge.
When matter is arranged in certain ways, and certain events take place within this arrangement, all of the protopsychism is going through it, also. And maybe that's point of the physical that we know. And maybe evolution selected for the things that have greater consciousness, starting way back in the beginning of life, if not even earlier.
Whether or not any of that is actually the case, no panpsychist I've ever heard about thinks all particles, or all arrangements matter, are conscious in the sense you are talking about regarding your toaster and car. But if you want to know what rights I would give any object that seemed to be exhibiting characteristics of consciousness, I want to know what rights you would give animals, which surely have some of those characteristics, as well as plants, which many will argue also exhibit some.
Quoting RogueAINeither do I.
Indeed. OK, TV and radio are relatively simple technologies, based mainly on signals. But computers are still a kind of "magic boxes" and the Internet is a real "cloud" for a lot --if not most-- people even to this day ... As for AI, most people don't know even what computer programming actually is.
Without activity of consciousness itself? If consciousness is active, what does it do?
I think that ultimately we can't know with complete certainty, as it is possible that our memories are erased once we wake up and we really do just stare into the void for an average of 8 hours, for me 3.
But certainty is not necessary for knowledge.
If we go with it from a purely a priori standpoint, it's probably more likely than not that we are not conscious during that time. Just from phenomenological conservatism alone.
If we want to use Ockham's Razor, then we would have to argue whether or not it is more simple that our consciousness ceases or not. If I were to just examine the two claims point-blank, then I would probably say that both are equally complex, so our justification for both would be equal.
Now, I think it's best to appeal to some empirical data here, not that I'm an empiricist, necessarily. And see what the whitecoats have to say about this matter.
I think that consciousness is more than just sensory faculties.
I think it's more apt to say that the mind makes up the consciousness, but even then qualia and intentionality play a big role in them, but a rational agent is needed to be able to consider and think about these qualia.
So, I disagree with you dare.
Unless we want to say that philosophical zombies without the mind[regardless of whether or not it's a physicalistic or dualistic or idealistic mind] are conscious.
Agreed. Besides, when we are asleep we still dream. Not only do we dream, but we sometimes have lucid dreams. Pretty sure that counts as consciousness.
Quoting Patterner
You should try character.ai
I am quite sure it was dumbed down about a year ago, I had scarily engaging conversations with some characters, which I no longer am able to reproduce, but it is still much more personal and social-like than ChatGPT.
Quoting Lionino
Heres an interesting paper by Evan Thompson on the subject: