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

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Do you cease to exist when you sleep?
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Do you cease to exist when you sleep?

spock
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Posted 10/29/09 - 05:45 PM: Subject: Do you cease tto exist when you sleep?	#1
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

reincarnated
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Posted 10/29/09 - 09:42 PM:	#2
The answers to your questions depend on what you mean by the term "you". What makes "you" you? What are the defining characteristics (the necessary and sufficient conditions that must be met) which distinguishes "you" from "not you"?
crumpled bits of paper, filled with imperfect thoughts... we all talk a different language, talking in defence... and if you don't give up, and don't give in, you may just be ok... (Mike & The Mechanics, "The Living Years")

TempletonEsquire
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Posted 10/29/09 - 09:51 PM:	#3
I have a personal theory, that no one else subscribes to, that there are different physical manifestations which each retain their own information store. Our experience therefore is spread out across several of these manifestations at a time, and this is why we can imagine, dream, and remember falsely since there is that which does not exist purely in this manifestation.

spock
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Posted 10/30/09 - 03:40 PM:	#4
You: The sum of actions, behaviours and habits within a single body/totality. Not you: Actions, behaviors and habits not within a single body/totality.

Banno
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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 10/30/09 - 04:01 PM:	#5
The correct answer is of course that unconsciousness only happens to other people, and that for me, the universe simple jumps from late night to morning. I never loose consciousness.
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

Soylent
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Posted 10/30/09 - 05:40 PM:	#6
I'm not much for mind/body dualism and don't really subscribe to theories of identity that rest too heavily on the 'mind'. I would generally say that my identity is some sort of continuity rather than some static conception that requires me to claim a different identity every time some change occurs.

BitterCrank
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Posted 10/30/09 - 05:47 PM:	#7
spock wrote: When you [are] 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 Banno says that he never loses consciousness; at one moment he is awake and it is 10:00 pm., the next moment he is awake and it is 6:00 a.m. He says he has seen other people lose consciousness. He is on to something: we don't experience our own loss of consciousness. Whether we stop existing when we are asleep depends. Do we keep on existing when we are awake by our own efforts? (Like, could you be awake and stop existing?) If you think that it is up to each of us to do 'something' to keep existing, then maybe we stop existing when we are asleep. But there is a problem: What brings us back into existence when we wake up? And how could we exist one minute, stop existing another minute, and then start existing again? If we stop existing, then we aren't responsible anymore for our existence or non-existence. We just don't exist. We are out of the picture. Poof! The television disappears and the characters in the soap opera are never seen again. So, if we do start existing again (when we wake up) then something else (other than us) has to be responsible for our existing, and whatever it is keeps us existing when we sleep. But sometimes we don't wake up again, ever. We're dead. Totally not here anymore. That last time we fell asleep and we never did wake up. We stopped existing, as far as other people can tell, forever. And once upon a time, before our parents got together and had sex and we were conceived and 9 months later were born, we didn't exist. For all time, up to then, as far as anybody can tell, we didn't exist. So how did we come into existence that one time, when we were born? Is biology responsible for our existence? Well, maybe - but somethings that exist aren't biological. The bed you sleep in isn't alive. but it is usually still there in the morning when you wake up. How does a not-living thing manage to keep existing? Maybe there is something else that keeps the bed existing so that it is still there when you wake up. Well, this could go on and on, and to tell you the truth, I don't know what it is that keeps everything existing. Things seem to have been existing for a long time before we showed up, so either they didn't exist until we showed up, or something else besides our efforts are responsible for us - and everything else- existing. By the way, you don't have to answer personal questions here even if somebody asks them. (Its amazing how many people don't realize this. Even the police can legitimately ask questions only some of the time.) And at your age, you can wait to start worrying about efficiency. So just stop it. Your other question, about dreams, isn't as fundamental as the one about existence. There is no reason to think you are somebody else when you dream. One of the reasons people might think they are somebody else while they dream is that they don't like their dreams and don't want to be responsible for having those kinds of thoughts being in their head. But the truth is, just about everybody has the same kinds of dreams. Do dreams mean something? Some people think so - other people think they are meaningless. If you like to think about your dreams, go ahead. You might even find that if you think about it enough, you can shape your dreams a little bit. But don't take your dreams too seriously. They might not mean anything at all. Does this help answer your question?
If you won't fan the flames of discontent, at least don't join the fire department.

peter rabbit
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Posted 10/31/09 - 05:55 AM:	#8
Interesting questions. spock wrote: You: The sum of actions, behaviours and habits within a single body/totality. Not you: Actions, behaviors and habits not within a single body/totality. This is problematic. All your experiences, whether of "yourself" or of "others" happen "in" you. It is all mental-emotional-sensual data, which, for convenience, you split into "you" and "not you". But it is all self, is it not? As you point out, there seem to be many different people in here, but these different people are clearly all parts or manifestations of I or self. In the dream it seems like "I" am over here and "you" are over there. But, on waking, I see that it was all "inside me" - it was all "me". The question remains, to whom is that self occurring? What is the experience of the experiencer of experience? Unless there is a solution to this question, speculation on who one is under different states (dream, waking, trance, etc) is going to be confusing. 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.

Cadrache
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Posted 10/31/09 - 07:18 AM:	#9
??? I much rather like the question "Do we loose consiousness when we sleep?" Simply because our memories are blank between 10pm and 6am does not mean that consciousness disapeared per se but rather we merely did not form memories. Mmm... disregard the above information - else we may need to redifine unconscious thoughts as a word independent from its' root.
"...There was a writer who asked why it was that when we find positive experiences we say that only the physical facts are real, but in negative experiences we believe that reality is subjective. He made an example of those who say that in birth only the pain is real, the joy a subjective point of view, but that in death it is the emotional loss that is the reality." - Tony Ballantyne, Recursion. _____________________________________________ Truth is want. - The internal state of matters. Truth is Need. - The external state of affairs.

Banno
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Posted 10/31/09 - 01:27 PM:	#10
But as I noted, we never loose consciousness. It is the universe that jumps from one state to another. The universe ceases to be when I am not around to watch it. Edited by Banno on 11/02/09 - 06:54 PM
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

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