Sleep, Sam Harris, extrinsic images

[findingblanks]

On his latest episode Sam interviews sleep researcher Matthew Walker. It is nearly a 4 hour interview but they cover a lot of fascinating ground.

At one point Sam brings up the possibility that the common assumption that sleep evolved from wakefulness, might be the opposite of what's true.

Now, in the context of this group, we know that the body is the extrinsic partial image of a first person experience.

Many of us also are comfortable with the notion that we are always conscious regardless of if there are memory gaps that we call unconscious.

Finally, many of us are comfortable allowing for 'unconscious' to mainly refer to non-metaconsciousness.

Again, we can see how BK's model has much more explanatory power than a physicalist attempt.

With BK you begin with a deeply intelligent though not self-conscious subject.

It's very nature is to creatively transform into self-consiousness.

This would match what Sam is talking about in terms of the first organisms/alters being 'unconscious' and by the very nature of the evolutionary impulse, slowly but surely, consciousness emerges.

Now, Sam's wife is a pan-psychicst and Sam himself is still exploring idealism despite his preference for the nuts and bolts aspects of physicalism (a misunderstanding but common one). But, as he says, physicalism has nothing important to say about the nature of consciousness.

[Jim Cross]

common assumption that sleep evolved from wakefulness, might be the opposite of what's true.

And what is the rationale for this? Why not they evolved together as part of the circadian rhythm?

Finally, many of us are comfortable allowing for 'unconscious' to mainly refer to non-metaconsciousness.

Not me. I don't see unconsciousness as the same as unselfconsciousness. We do all sorts of activities semi-automatically but have memories from doing them. We have no memories from times we are unconscious. We are engaged in no external activities when we are unconscious. We can quibble over terminology but there are distinct states.

[findingblanks]

Jim you are such a fun loving troll here. You just purposefully misrepresented me, but, guess what. You are one of the few people who acknowledges when your shadow plays a role in how you respond. So, all's fair

The sleep conversation wasn't a seminar so they just don't cover all the complex theories and different arguements for what is possible. Sorry about that. You still might find it interesting. I can only make an educated guess as to why the norm was to assume that first organisms became conscious and then becoming less conscious was selected for by the environment. Because I think the fundamental aspect of evolution is a polaric force, I am inclined to thin they did evolve together from the start.

I'll ignore your comments about the various ways of thinking about unconsciousness because I made clear that this post was starting from various sets of assumptions. Believe, I know that there are even smart people who make rational arguments for us living in a simulation. Just not interesting to me here. Thanks.

{{for those who privately contact me about shadow dancing, I hope you see that I try my best to only exceed the other's gesture by a slight exaggeration. And I did the fold-in as well because, well, Jim often really does enjoy just chatting and can refrain from making it about ego. When he said, "Not me," it could come across that he simply forgot that I had said "some" and that the entire post was framed from starting from various assumptions.}}

[Jim Cross]

Jim you are such a fun loving troll here. You just purposefully misrepresented me, but, guess what. You are one of the few people who acknowledges when your shadow plays a role in how you respond. So, all's fair

The sleep conversation wasn't a seminar so they just don't cover all the complex theories and different arguements for what is possible. Sorry about that. You still might find it interesting. I can only make an educated guess as to why the norm was to assume that first organisms became conscious and then becoming less conscious was selected for by the environment. Because I think the fundamental aspect of evolution is a polaric force, I am inclined to thin they did evolve together from the start.

I'll ignore your comments about the various ways of thinking about unconsciousness because I made clear that this post was starting from various sets of assumptions. Believe, I know that there are even smart people who make rational arguments for us living in a simulation. Just not interesting to me here. Thanks.

{{for those who privately contact me about shadow dancing, I hope you see that I try my best to only exceed the other's gesture by a slight exaggeration. And I did the fold-in as well because, well, Jim often really does enjoy just chatting and can refrain from making it about ego. When he said, "Not me," it could come across that he simply forgot that I had said "some" and that the entire post was framed from starting from various assumptions.}}

Since you brought up the evolution of sleep and wakefulness, I was just asking if there was rationale for sleeping evolving before waking. You just stated it as a view and leave it like that.

While we're clarifying, I also have a question about this:

Again, we can see how BK's model has much more explanatory power than a physicalist attempt.

Explanatory of what? It doesn't explain consciousness, it assumes it.

[findingblanks]

" I was just asking if there was rationale for sleeping evolving before waking. You just stated it as a view and leave it like that."

I get it. And, yes, a fascinating question. Unfortunately, there conversation was limited to sort of scanning over core topics. Many interesing nuggets like this were brought up but then not dove deeply into.

Jim said:

"Explanatory of what? It doesn't explain consciousness, it assumes it."

Again, he's being a playful troll Now, sweet Jim, as I've said many times now, this post was clearly set up to take a certain set of assumptions for granted. Obviously, whenever anybody (physicalist or any other thinker) says, "Let's start by taking X for granted.." they are acknowleding that there are maybe billions of people who don't. You're right that an ongology that assumes, say, that some kind of 'matter' is fundamental is saying that they can't explain that starting point, even though they believe that their conception of what matter fundamentally 'just is' can, then, explain everything else much more cleanly. You and I are holding hands in joy when we notice that the physicalist (or whomever) that believes there is some fundamental reality about 'matter' that isn't explained by some other fundamentla reality about matter (and on and on) isn't explaining matter (or experience or information or whatever the person thinks is primary). And I do like holding your hands this way. But, for this post, I probably won't put much time into the wonderful topics regarding which ontology is correct. If you create a thread in the right way, I bet you can snag me in it, though

{{again, we see a slight exaggeration but I also then genuinely name, playfully, how astute Jim is being and how much I agree with the secondary points he's making. This means he might want to increase his initial thrust, but he may very well see my point and come back kindly. I'm guessing that's what most likely happens. He's not the aggressive kind of troll at all. Very sweet and you can almost feel the twinkle of delight has in his eye when he just happens to slide past a particular point, sort of a "Who me, what?" kind of thing. I like it even though it does bring out a little reciprocal shadow. However, in other threads you can see that when Jim makes this kind of move, it really slams the conversation off course via the shadow it brings out. I've pretty much figured out how to avoid that with Jim by simply honestly showing how smart he is and also not ignoring his dance. These kinds of meta-comments mean 'nothing' to Jim, by the way. In the good sense.}}

[AshvinP]

The sleep conversation wasn't a seminar so they just don't cover all the complex theories and different arguements for what is possible. Sorry about that. You still might find it interesting. I can only make an educated guess as to why the norm was to assume that first organisms became conscious and then becoming less conscious was selected for by the environment. Because I think the fundamental aspect of evolution is a polaric force, I am inclined to think they did evolve together from the start.

The bold is an important point. We should see how polar forces evolving together is not the same as dualism of consciousness arising from 'unconsciousness', or waking from sleeping. They are actually diametrically opposed to one another - dualism says one pole can be reduced to another, while polarity says they are two relational forces of the same underlying Power. It really matters which one we are holding in our understanding (not merely as abtract concept but also as living idea connected to concrete experience of the world), because the lapse into dualism will lead to a recapitulation of all the major errors of Cartesian dualism in the modern age, except now we are substituting out mind/matter (or spirit/matter) dualism for conscious/unconscious. The slahes must remain win out over the dashes... conscious-unconscious.