Do you cease to exist when you sleep?: Philosophy Forums

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Do you cease to exist when you sleep?
And other questions.

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Do you cease to exist when you sleep?

Timothy
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Posted 10/31/09 - 04:57 PM:	#11
Ahh Banno, if only I had half the subtlety you have to mock these threads...
"Neither Aristotelian nor Russellian rules give the exact logic of any expression of ordinary language; for ordinary language has no exact logic." P.F. Strawson

Banno
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Posted 10/31/09 - 05:05 PM:	#12

Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing... Ned: Such is life

TempletonEsquire
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Posted 11/02/09 - 04:42 PM:	#13
Consciousness can change. You may not loose consciousness, but your consciousness could be reduced to that of a turnip who's only mental imprint is "soil, water, sun". Or in human terms, your consciousness could become a single concept, that is frozen in time until you are awake.

BitterCrank
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Posted 11/03/09 - 09:08 PM:	#14
peter rabbit wrote: Interesting questions. The really interesting question, for me, is who I am in deep dreamless sleep, without any memory, image, feeling, self-awareness or perception. Am I then dead? It is clear why I do not remember the state, as no imaging or memory-creating is occurring, but am I in fact conscious in deep dreamless sleep? Again, I'd say, the solution to this riddle is not available to the normal speculating mind (the memory-maker), which comes up with opinions very easily, but to something more fundamental, the conscious experience of it. If we died during our deep and dreamless sleep (while the silent stars went by) we would not notice the transition, presumably. Death, sleep, anaesthesia are pretty much alike. Yes? No? Except that one lasts longer than the other two. An interesting question is the degree to which we are conscious when we are 'awake'. Most of the sensory experience we register as we go our merry way is either discarded as it is perceived, or it isn't even perceived all that clearly. Most of it does not enter into anything longer than the briefest of short term memory, if that. Intruding conditions can aggravate this lack of memory. If we are very upset, we are likely to find ourselves losing things frequently. "I had the keys, then they disappeared. I was distracted and I did something with the keys and can not now remember where I put them. It may turn out that the keys are still in the car and I only 'thought' that I had the keys in my hands." We can't reliably use memory or some other markers as proof of consciousness or lack of it, maybe. I had a memorable bike accident because I was not 'conscious' at one point when I was riding my bike through downtown Minneapolis, several years ago. I had been paying attention, but then I started to think about a problem at work, and the "I" on the bike disappeared. That "I" continued down the street and was not aware that he was running a red light until a van hit him. To any observer, I would have appeared conscious enough - I was sitting on a moving bike and was moving straight down the street. The "I" that I remember just before the accident was ruminating about work. Most of the time the question of whether we are consciousness is obvious enough. That it can be questionable at times suggests that the matter of our consciousness might be a little more complicated than we would like.
If you won't fan the flames of discontent, at least don't join the fire department.

Desidude666
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Posted 11/03/09 - 11:44 PM:	#15
spock wrote: Dream: When sone experiences thoughts, sounds, feeling and in general sensation during sleep. When you dream who are you? Are you a different person from who you are when you wake? If you do not recall a dream do you effectively lose the conciousness of that ego?(Is that "person" dead)Thus is there two or more people within one physical body? When you do not dream when sleeping and lose conciousness and self awareness do you cease to exist? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Also: I am new to this forums and in still in Grade school (Do not ask personal questions).So please go easy on me if I have any flaws in my logic. Please inform me of a more efficient format to post a topic in if you can. Peace Yes you do. Your consciousness might not 'exist'. So if you argue if noumenal you doesn't exist, I would not agree, if you argue that the phenomenal 'you' ceases to exist when you sleep, then you are right. It's good that you begin understanding the nature of things at a young age, so keep it up.
What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven. - Ludwig van Beethoven

Mijin
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Posted 11/04/09 - 06:24 AM:	#16
One nitpick: it is debatable whether we lose consciousness when sleeping. There is always significant brain activity, even in nREM, and experiments where people are woken from very deep sleep, find that they often describe thoughts and dreams they were just having (Note that REM is not the only time we dream; just the most vivid).

spock
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Posted 11/05/09 - 07:01 PM:	#17
Thank you for the help. I think that each individual human body may contain two or more different egos/experiencers. When you wake up from a dream you do not have the memories and behaviors that made the dream you. (And vice versa.) What I find intriguing is lucid dreaming. (When you are dreaming and are still aware of the environment around you though touch) If you try hard enough you can manipulate your dreams. When you are not dreaming and at the same time you are asleep you are likely in a primal state. I wonder if what we experience (if we do experience) in that state must be forgotten because it is God, nothingness or universal energy. Maybe nothingness is a vacuum of sensation and before the universe was created there was nothingness and nothing to experience it.

stew
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Posted 11/05/09 - 07:32 PM:	#18
honk if you don't exist!

hanuma
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Posted 11/06/09 - 07:10 AM:	#19
Mijin wrote: One nitpick: it is debatable whether we lose consciousness when sleeping. There is always significant brain activity, even in nREM, and experiments where people are woken from very deep sleep, find that they often describe thoughts and dreams they were just having (Note that REM is not the only time we dream; just the most vivid). Precisely right, and the images created in dreams can often be heavily influenced by noises and sensations coming from 'the real world'. Got into a similar discussion on the 'Who Am I' thread, and talked about 'consciousness' being almost a two way mirror that projects things in and out, so because our senses are limited in order to rest certain sections of the brain (and the body - which are not entirely divisible) we are not somehow 'lost'. When you wake up with a stiff neck, did it come from you lying awkwardly, or was it a souvenir from 'the other side'?

Wise Sage
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Posted 11/06/09 - 10:42 AM:	#20
spock wrote: Dream: When sone experiences thoughts, sounds, feeling and in general sensation during sleep. When you dream who are you? Are you a different person from who you are when you wake? If you do not recall a dream do you effectively lose the conciousness of that ego?(Is that "person" dead)Thus is there two or more people within one physical body? When you do not dream when sleeping and lose conciousness and self awareness do you cease to exist? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Also: I am new to this forums and in still in Grade school (Do not ask personal questions).So please go easy on me if I have any flaws in my logic. Please inform me of a more efficient format to post a topic in if you can. Peace Do you define sleep as a state of non existence? And why and how come do you wake up existent and what is existence?

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