Life is “consciousness� as they say

[paarsurrey1]

Life is “consciousness� as they say. If yes, how much one is conscious when asleep? Kindly give the ratio of consciousness when awake and when asleep in percentages, please.

Regards

[Divine Insight]

Life is “consciousness� as they say.

Who says that life is consciousness?

Don't we consider plants to be alive? Yet most people don't consider them to be conscious. Are paramecium conscious?

I don't think that life is "consciousness". But consciousness is a property or attribute that some living things have evolved to possess.

And as you point out they don't even necessarily possesses consciousness 100% of the time. If someone becomes "unconscious" but they are still breathing we don't say that they are dead. We simply say they are still alive but unconscious.

Now consciousness may be a necessarily requirement for personality to exist. Therefore if you consider a person to be their personality, then their person-hood may only exist when they are conscious.

If we allow for that definition, then to kill the body of an unconscious human cannot be said to be the "murder" of the person. It would be a murder of the body that is occasionally a person when it is conscious.

Oh the drudgery of legal details!

[paarsurrey1]

Life is “consciousness� as they say.

Who says that life is consciousness?

Don't we consider plants to be alive? Yet most people don't consider them to be conscious. Are paramecium conscious?

I don't think that life is "consciousness". But consciousness is a property or attribute that some living things have evolved to possess.

And as you point out they don't even necessarily possesses consciousness 100% of the time. If someone becomes "unconscious" but they are still breathing we don't say that they are dead. We simply say they are still alive but unconscious.

Now consciousness may be a necessarily requirement for personality to exist. Therefore if you consider a person to be their personality, then their person-hood may only exist when they are conscious.

If we allow for that definition, then to kill the body of an unconscious human cannot be said to be the "murder" of the person. It would be a murder of the body that is occasionally a person when it is conscious.

Oh the drudgery of legal details!

One did not give thoughts on consciousness when asleep.
Regards

[Divine Insight]

One did not give thoughts on consciousness when asleep.
Regards

My understanding is that the only time we are conscious when asleep is when we are having lucid dreams. Dreams in which we are totally aware that we are having at the time we are dreaming them.

I think it's unclear whether we are actually conscious during dreams that we only remember having had after we wake up. I guess that's an open question.

However, it seems that when we are asleep and not dreaming then we are not conscious at all. Although, our brains might be processing information on a "sub-consciousness" level.

In that case it seems we have the difficult question of whether "sub-conscious" equates to some form of consciousness? If so, then why do we call it "sub-conscious"? These are interesting questions to be sure.

I have experimented with trying to have lucid dreams on purpose. I have only had some success with this. But that I mean that there are times when I have succeeded in entering into a lucid dream. However, I have not mastered a technique to be able to do this dependably, its seems to only happen randomly. If there are controlling factors I haven't yet been able to identify them.

Also, it's much like transcendental mediation. If you consciously think to yourself, "I'm in a lucid dream", that tends to destroy it. And at that point it becomes nothing more than a regular daydream which is not at all the same as a lucid dream.

In short, the question concerning consciousness during sleep seems to be a complex question that can depend on many things. I'm pretty sure that scientists who monitor brain activity can tell whether a sleeping person is dreaming or not, and their brain behaves quite differently in these two different modes.

So the answer to the question of whether we are conscious when fully asleep and not dreaming, appears to be no. At least in terms of highly orchestrated brain activity.

The question then becomes: "Is highly orchestrated brain activity required for consciousness?"

The answer appears to be "yes".

And if that is indeed the answer, then it's also most likely true that consciousness itself is nothing more than highly orchestrated brain activity.

This is certainly how the materialists view consciousness.

Consciousness = Highly orchestrated brain activity.

That's a pretty stark definition, but one that may very well be true.