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Mark_Friedenbach comments on Consciousness and Sleep - Less Wrong Discussion

8 Post author: casebash 07 January 2016 12:04PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 07 January 2016 05:19:31PM 4 points [-]

During some periods of sleep. So far as I am aware, in deep sleep there's no reason to think you are having any experiences at all.

Your brain keeps doing stuff however. Your lungs keep breathing, and your heart keeps beating. There is no normal phase of sleep where someone shaking you and yelling in your ear won't wake you up, but normal noises and the hum of machinery or cool breeze does not. So something is processing and filtering inputs for relevance.

imagine that there's some machine that completely suspends all your brain activity for five minutes, after which it continues from exactly its previous state. Are you the same person after as before?

The only honest answer I can give to this is "I don't know."

Comment author: Brillyant 08 January 2016 07:51:03PM 0 points [-]

imagine that there's some machine that completely suspends all your brain activity for five minutes, after which it continues from exactly its previous state. Are you the same person after as before?

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Comment author: polymathwannabe 08 January 2016 08:04:01PM 0 points [-]

Addressed before. TL;DR: it's not really a question about the existence of sound, but about the definition of sound.

Comment author: Brillyant 08 January 2016 09:11:21PM 1 point [-]

This is what I was referring to.

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