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Originally Posted by Ariel Bravy  Consciousness itself has only one property: It's conscious. It doesn't change. |
Yup. That's my experience and perception, as well.
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Originally Posted by Ariel Bravy I know there may be debate over this, ie. what happens when you get knocked out and "lose consciousness," or go into deep sleep or die or before you were born or go into nothingness and so on... where is consciousness then? |
I considered this point a couple years ago when I had some surgery. I was on the operating table trying to make a feeble joke and I guess it was such a dumb joke that the anesthesiologist was tired of listening to me, because next thing I knew I was waking up in recovery with a mighty pain in my upper abdomen and a mask on my face that I was convinced was keeping me from breathing (actually it was oxygen, but my brain wasn't very well engaged at that point.
So when I was more aware and my pain was under better control and I could think clearly, I thought about where I "went" when my surgeon was doing his thing. The answer eventually became clear. I didn't go anywhere. My brain was just not engaged for a while. It's similar to turning off the computer monitor but leaving the computer on. The computer is still there, operating, doing it's thing, you just can't see what it's up to. (Okay, that's not a perfect analogy, but it's the first reasonable one I could come up with.)
Obviously, the consciousness that thinks of itself as "me" is still present, or when I woke up I wouldn't have had any sense of identity or any understanding of what had happened to me or anything else. And yet the narrative that is "my life" was still there, as soon as my brain was back online to engage it again...
First time I've written all that down, so it may be disjointed. Apologies if it is.
Oh, and, Hi, Ariel!
