Art by smbc-comics
Consciousness is often said to disappear in deep, dreamless sleep. We argue that this assumption is oversimplified. Unless dreamless sleep is defined as unconscious from the outset there are good empirical and theoretical reasons for saying that a range of different types of sleep experience, some of which are distinct from dreaming, can occur in all stages of sleep.
Pubmed Articles
Does Consciousness Disappear in Dreamless Sleep?
Sciencealert Article We Were Wrong About Consciousness Disappearing in Dreamless Sleep, Say Scientists
I mean, without defining what the self is and consciousness, it’s difficult to even define what death is from a consciousness point of view. A living meat bag doesn’t require brain activity either. There’s a whole range of things. So even assuming we have a good meaning of “death” is oversimplifying things.
We have a good definition of “death”, it’s the irreversible stop of some activity. For a brain, that’s neuronal depolarization; for a body organ or cell, it’s destruction past its ability to regenerate.
The self, is a snapshot of a brain state at a certain moment, which is technically irreversibly disappearing 30 times a second, but we like to think of it as just “changing” and forming a causal sequence we call “consciousness”.
This threshold has changed over time. So I don’t think it’s a good definition of it hasn’t always been the same point.
And the rest of your comment is just philosophy. You’re neither wrong nor right. Definition of self is not a concept there’s really any consensus over.
Threshold has changed, the definition is still the same, we’re just getting better at reverting the stop of some activities, like breathing or heartbeat. If we someday could revert neuronal depolarization, that would be great, but it seems difficult to achieve.
The other part is not just philosophy, it’s the best we can do to define a “self”. The philosophical part is only whether we can consider them a continuum, or whether we have to see them as usually similar but separate (there are reasons to support both versions).
If the threshold changed, the actual definition changed. The same words to describe a different point. If the definition described two different things, its changed. That’s basic and simple reasoning. If a definition no longer describes the same thing, it’s because it’s actual meaning has changed.
“To the end of the road” doesn’t change meanings when the road gets extended another 10 miles. The point changes, the definition doesn’t.
yes, the definition changes. it used to mean one point. now it means a point 10 miles away. come on. simple substitution. if you define it only with relative terms then its poorly defined as there’s no actual concrete meaning. so you either have a poorly defined term or you have a term that has changed meaning over time. which still makes it poorly defined. i don’t know how else to explain it. so i’m going to leave it here. this is going in circles.
I think I know what you mean, but plenty of terms have relative definitions (“behind”, “bright”, “x+1”, “etc”… etc). If you’re looking for an absolute point, you won’t find one, because their meaning is the relationship itself.
Both “life” and “death” define a state relative to another. The definition of “life” is a particularly tricky one, because it includes multiple relative definitions like “growth”, “reaction”, “functioning”, and a “reproduction” that includes both cloning and “imperfect” cloning. Being “death” the opposite, it’s necessarily as relative and tricky too.
Which is the crux of this whole conversation. We don’t have an actual definition of death. It’s all relative and changing over time.