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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?

#131

Post by sandworm101 »

ColanR wrote: post #113
velcrovan wrote: post #104

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 gen…

I think that's why sleep has been called the 'little death' since ancient times. In a sense, you die every time you sleep, and wake up a slightly different person. Edit: ya'll have dirty minds. Homer refers to 'sleep as the brother of death' in the Illiad. Apparently Buddha said something similar too, though I can't find a source. Edit2: just going to leave you with this: "each day is a little life: every waking and…

Of you see a french character speak of having a little death, it isn't about sleep.

To quote the recent BBC series Versailles: "A little death is good for everyone." Louise XIV isn't talking about getting his eight hours.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#132

Post by ne0flex »

velcrovan wrote: post #104

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 gen…

While the rational side of me thinks that death is probably oblivion, I just don't want to admit it. After a friend of mine passed away, I did a lot of soul searching and basically came to the conclusion that there's nothing after death. It was mentally destructive for me and sent me into a bout of depression. I'd hate to think that we're going through all this just to have your entire life multiplied by 0 at the end. People tell me life is about the journey, but the journey is fun because the memories are retained and can be reflected upon. I just hope that there is something more, if not then there isn't much point in continuing in my opinion.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#134

Post by fny »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #129

I finetuned GPT3 with the complete works of Plato and posed the question: "How is the soul different from consciousness or sensation?" "The soul, I think, is like a sphere, and consciousness or sensation are like circles which move round another centre which moves round yet another centre, and so on in endless cycles." "And the definitions of the soul which you were mentioning," I said, "like that of the circle, were…

This reads like nonsense.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#135

Post by Hayarotle »

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…

Some forms of panpsychism (such as panprotopsychism) aren't much different from emergent materialism. Emergent materialism states human consciousness originates from the state of a physical brain, while the constituent parts of the human brain (and its physical interactions) have nothing resembling consciousness. Some forms of panpsychism would argue the physical interactions between the parts are already proto-conscious, and your brain is simply in a state that aggregates these phenomena into human consciousness.

The difference is purely ontological in this case. Both emergent materialism and this form of panpsychism would claim your aggregate consciousness has its origin in your brain and would stop if the parts of your brain were separated: both are compatible with physical reality. The difference is that the former would interpret this as a complete disappearance of such consciousness, while the latter would interpret it as a dis-aggregation of this consciousness into proto-conscious parts.

There are also some versions of eliminative materialism that claim consciousness doesn't exist in the first place, and myriads of other positions.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#136

Post by stephen_g »

velcrovan wrote: post #104

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 gen…

That doesn’t really make much sense to me… Seems more like a category error than anything - surely anyone who believes in any kind of spiritual afterlife would expect that death on a spiritual level is something much more than simply losing consciousness? Especially if some kind of omniscient deity is believed to be involved, why would such an entity perform any kind of transference into a spiritual realm when you weren’t properly dead?

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#137

Post by thiagoharry »

ne0flex wrote: post #132
velcrovan wrote: post #104

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 gen…

While the rational side of me thinks that death is probably oblivion, I just don't want to admit it. After a friend of mine passed away, I did a lot of soul searching and basically came to the conclusion that there's nothing after death. It was mentally destructive for me and sent me into a bout of depression. I'd hate to think that we're going through all this just to have your entire life multiplied by 0 at the end…

Memories are retained. If not in your brain, then in the history, in other people's minds, in the humanity's development, and in the legacies that you created. Which is better, your memory can be destroyed by Alzheimer, but these other memories can be more resistant and could survive for a longer time. :-)

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#138

Post by upsidesinclude »

tmountain wrote: post #88
feet wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there some rule that we should usually go with the simplest explanation that covers all bases? Why even go beyond 1? It feels like people want there to be something more

Occam's razor. In philosophy, a razor is a principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate ("shave off") unlikely explanations for a phenomenon, or avoid unnecessary actions. In essence, they provide guardrails to keep discussions centered within the realm of reason when venturing to the edge of our knowledge and beyond.

Except it fails the deeper you go in understanding physical phenomena.

We should not exist per Occam.

If you can hold on your awareness that the atoms of your body are not 'matter' but signatures of energy bound in a field, then the physical brain is much harder to consider the real and constructing element of reality.

I think many of these discussions are just measuring the difference in what we each perceive as the lowest building block.

Everything we are is wavelengths of energy. This isn't something metaphysical. Electron, proton, nuetron are all combinations of quarks which only exist independently as a discrete quantized energy in a field. The orderliness of the field is dependent on how much energy is exchanged for (converted to) mass. What is mass? Voltage - per modern understanding of physics. So the defining characteristic of reality is potential.

If we exist in this way as a consciousness then there is every reason to believe consciousness is pervasive in the universe

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#139

Post by jack_pp »

ne0flex wrote: post #132
velcrovan wrote: post #104

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 gen…

While the rational side of me thinks that death is probably oblivion, I just don't want to admit it. After a friend of mine passed away, I did a lot of soul searching and basically came to the conclusion that there's nothing after death. It was mentally destructive for me and sent me into a bout of depression. I'd hate to think that we're going through all this just to have your entire life multiplied by 0 at the end…

What's important is what we do with the time we have, the ripples we send out into the world. That I think is the true value of our lives

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#140

Post by e_i_pi_2 »

danhau wrote: post #24
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…

I'm not arguing for or against anything here, but regarding your comparison: > 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 happening in the recording studio. Interfering with a radio distorts the transmitted, outcoming sound. You could say your perceived consciousness is just that: something transmitted fr…

I totally agree with the parent post but was coming here to say the same thing - the best argument I've heard along these lines is that the signal is still transmitting but "you" aren't receiving it. This kinda makes goes against the idea of consciousness where you're aware of stuff, so in this case it should be more like an out-of-body experience that you do remember, but I could easily see someone arguing that it's some sort of soul-plane thing where you can't form memories but do have experiences.
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