>>8682044This question is to HARD. Do you have a softer one?
So the Indians have been thinking about this forever, it seems to be their pet project, and the way they tried to examine it before neuroscience was to ask 'who is the observer' and 'who am I' and so on, and integrated it in their religion (stating this will lead to Moksha etc.)
Here in the west, our 'official' stance you could say, at least in the secular community, is it's a by-product of the brain.
As a Christian, I still have no idea what consciousness is. IS the 'I' a soul? Is it the brain? etc. I think this is one of those magical questions that we literally just don't have an answer for (at least yet). I think everyone feels baffled by this pretty much the same as the ancients.
Part of that is because whatever consciousness is, it is us. Whether it's brain, soul, inside, outside, whatever. The only thing we can know for sure is that it IS us. It's the part of us that we identify as US. And truly 'I'.
Sleep is related. The Indians also talk about sleep states etc. They recognized it was related. Because as we all know, consciousness seems to be affected in some way by sleep.
And now of course, anaesthetics etc. are a part of the equation.
There is also the question of whether or not you need to be aware that you are conscious to actually BE conscious.
The example of young children is a good one. Lots of people conflate self-awareness with having conscious experience. But the two things are not exactly alike.
An infant may very well be having a conscious experience, like you and I, but not yet be aware of themselves. Or have the memory capacity to record the fact that they were conscious for later retrieval, when they are older and can think about it.
Memory might be a function of the brain but consciousness could be separate. Or consciousness could STILL be a part of the brain, but be present much earlier than it takes for memory to develop etc.
