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Mark_Friedenbach comments on Confused as to usefulness of 'consciousness' as a concept - LessWrong
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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.