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Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

nautil.us

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Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#101

Post by 2snakes »

bowsamic wrote: post #31
simonh wrote: post #8

How to approach loss of consciousness is one of the problems I have with non-materialist theories of consciousness like dualism and panpsychism. If consciousness is not generated by my physical brain, how come physical chemicals can manipulate my conscious state? If the brain is a receiver for consciousness, surely my consciousness should exist independently of my brain? Interfering with a radio doesn’t change what’s…

The Buddhist answer is that all of physical reality is also in the mind. Rather than physical and mental being separate, physical reality itself is constructed by the mind

Right. In Kastrup's idealism, a scalpel, for example, is actually a transpersonal mental process. So it modifies brain-consciousness much like an emotion or thought modifies other thoughts.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#103

Post by 2snakes »

paulsutter wrote: post #48

Every debate about consciousness is painful to watch because consciousness is a suitcase word (so many meanings are packed into it that we can’t untangle them)

How about: that which draws distinctions (differences) especially between the Self and Other?

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#104

Post by velcrovan »

RadioLab did an episode on this topic “Decoding the Void” in 2014 (https://www.radiolab.org/episodes/anesthesia) that, for me, pretty much deconstructed the whole idea of an afterlife in 20 minutes.

What happens when we die? People commonly think of this as some kind of unknowable mystery. But people lose consciousness all the time and aren't entering the spirit world when they do so. If you’ve ever awoken from general anesthesia, you know what death will be like. Maybe a very pedestrian thought for some of you, but as a sincere fundamentalist zealot for most of my life, it was a big epiphany for me.

(Disclaimer: I understand some will disagree intensely — I would have been among you ten years ago. I’m not here to invalidate your sincerely held beliefs, only to relate a change in my understanding.)

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#106

Post by tzs »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #50
simonh wrote: post #8

How to approach loss of consciousness is one of the problems I have with non-materialist theories of consciousness like dualism and panpsychism. If consciousness is not generated by my physical brain, how come physical chemicals can manipulate my conscious state? If the brain is a receiver for consciousness, surely my consciousness should exist independently of my brain? Interfering with a radio doesn’t change what’s…

How do we know there is a "loss" of consciousness? I had some dreams when I was anesthesized once. I do no longer clearly remember them, but I do remember telling the medical people there, that I did dream something. How could I dream without consciousness?

How do you know the dreams didn't happen before you were fully anesthetized or when the anesthetic was wearing off?

I've had dreams when sleeping where in the dream several minutes or even hours seemed to pass where something happens at the start of the dream and the rest of the dream is trying to deal with it, such as an alarm going off. When I wake up, I find that the thing that started the dream, such as an alarm going off, is actually happening for real and it just started a few seconds ago.

It seems then that the time experienced in a dream can be much longer than the time actually spent in the dream, and so it is possible that every dream remembered is one that occurred just before waking up.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#107

Post by Dudeman112 »

bowsamic wrote: post #34
pas wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't panpsychism orthogonal to materialism? Isn't the trivial solution in the non-material case just regular mumbo jumbo? Ie. the connection between the consciousness and the body is severed by propofol while it's active, and so memories are not formed to keep you sane, or whatever? It stops when it gets to Nirvana, etc? All the attempts to explain it with non-materialism seems to very bluntly fail Ockham's razor. S…

Occam's razor = the theory with the fewest parameters should be preferred, or often interpreted as the simplest theory. Do you think that humans universally or even have historically interpreted physicalism as a simpler theory than a non-materialist one? I don't think so I think you speak from an already materialist perspective, in that you accept the physical world as something that really exists out there, and that…

>Do you think that humans universally or even have historically interpreted physicalism as a simpler theory than a non-materialist one?

To be fair with humans, the simpler theory is almost always "my neighbour is a witch, she did it"

Hand waving complexity as that thing you feel in your gut instead of having some proper definition for it was and still is the standard human experience

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#108

Post by ben_w »

TuringTest wrote: post #72
lend000 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not taking one position or the other, but you can't make any conclusions about whether a separate consciousness exists from anesthesia, only that no memories were formed that can be accessed by that consciousness (even if it did experience qualia during that time).

If qualia are not remembered, do they make a sound?

The sound of one hand clapping.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#109

Post by simonh »

bowsamic wrote: post #34
pas wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't panpsychism orthogonal to materialism? Isn't the trivial solution in the non-material case just regular mumbo jumbo? Ie. the connection between the consciousness and the body is severed by propofol while it's active, and so memories are not formed to keep you sane, or whatever? It stops when it gets to Nirvana, etc? All the attempts to explain it with non-materialism seems to very bluntly fail Ockham's razor. S…

Occam's razor = the theory with the fewest parameters should be preferred, or often interpreted as the simplest theory. Do you think that humans universally or even have historically interpreted physicalism as a simpler theory than a non-materialist one? I don't think so I think you speak from an already materialist perspective, in that you accept the physical world as something that really exists out there, and that…

When some physicalists talk about consciousness being an illusion, they're generally talking about the experience of being the centre of reality, they don't mean we don't have these experiences. They're addressing the fact that the brain isn't always conscious, that consciousness seems to go away completely in some situations, so for them it's not a permanent aspect of ourselves. That's all.

I prefer not to use the 'illusion' terminology because I think it's misleading. We do have a real experience of consciousness, just not always. For me Buddhism and panpsychism, and the idea of consciousness as being fundamental is a hierarchy inversion error.

If consciousness is a computation or an emergent phenomenon of brain activity processing information, then we are a kind of information system. It doesn't therefore follow that all information systems are in some way conscious. That's like saying horses are all animals, therefore in some way animals are all horses. Yes we have some things in common with all information processing systems, so we have some of the same features like persistent memory and such because we're members of the same conceptual category, but that doesn't make us the same thing.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#110

Post by the_only_law »

mathieuh wrote: post #7

I've overdosed on heroin before and when I woke up in hospital I had no feeling that time had passed, it was like I time travelled to a point in the future without experiencing the intervening points. Is it the same under anaesthesia or is it more like being asleep in that when you wake up and come to your senses again you are aware of it being later? Because my overdose felt like I just didn't exist for a couple of…

This is what it was like for me. Last thing I remember from my surgery, they loaded me up with some Valium, and then placed a mask over my face. I remember breathing a few times and then nothing, instantly faded to black. The however many hours later I woke post surgery, without recall of anything.

I've also fainted from blood pressure drops and that was a lot different. That was much more dreamlike, I remember lying on the floor contemplating whether I should get up or if I was just dreaming. It was all very quick, but felt much slower.

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