Reflexivity.

Try Vladimir Lefevr, "Algebra of consciosness"

That one: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780792371212

I believe, that's the same.

> It is a substantial work!

That is classics. Taking start in USSR, in 1968.

I think the following link contains a basic and useful information

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness

Michael Kowalik

'Relations and subdivisions : Features of Subjective Consciousness ',

https://www.alento.nl/al2ar37e.htm#top1 ,

('essential' taken as inherent and/or as unique).

('reflexive consciousness' is not necessarily inherent to consciousness, only by stipulation/definition).

For lamost 15 years I have been working on the modeling of targeted migration of animals (resulted in PhD defense). Believe me, a huge number of species do exhibit relexive behaviour...

> Is there any evidence of reflexive consciousness in animals?

I guess, for primates for sure. Konrad Lorents says dogs do have.

> we cannot directly observe it

Ha! That is the most sharp point! Actually, it seems to be a matter of belief: rigorous point of view stipulates that consciousness = reflexivity = articulation in words by speech. On the other hand, take a glance over consumer behaviour (I've done it for 12 years). Definitely, maybe one of tens thousand is able to articulate in oral speech the reasons standing behind his/her choice of an item.

Emotions bring another issue in this discussion. A lot of animals do exhibit emotions, with no word.

Shortly speaking: reflesivity goes ahead of speech, that latter goes ahead of (human) consciousness...

M-m-m-m... you are right, from one side. The point is that we have no other way to detect or "meausre" an occurrence of reflexivity but to trace the behaviour. You want the reflexivity be something rationally explainable in words, and what is more important, not by a "researcher", but by an object.

This approach is neither wrong nor the only correct. This seems to be a good frame for the consideration of the problem. My frame differs.

> I disagree that we infer reflexivity primarily from behaviour.

I agree with your disagreement. We do not. This is not a reduction; this is manifestation.

> We know we are born ofhumanity and all our meaning is a product of humanity,

> so that our individual agency andcontent of conscioisness is conditional on

> sociality.

Wolfs don't know also... Meanwhile, they behave themselves very rationally.

Once again: you argue agaist something I did not tell, nor keep in mind. The arguments you've shown above are well done, but within the framework you follow.

> The only way to find out is to live among the wolves, live as a wolf.

And to study elementary physics means to leave among the protons and positrons?

> I am suggesting that reflexive-consciousness we experience

> as individuals is meaningful

Almost agree. My point is that there is a number of cases where the behaviour looks definitely -- for an outer observer -- as reflexive. Wolfs bring this example (protons don't... :) ).

Hunting, e.g. Or rather complicated behaviour of the socially supported defence of a tribe.

Does passing the mirror test look like or require reflexive consciousness?

Michael Kowalik

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test

At present I have no considered view as to whether ability to pass the mirror test is sufficient for reflexive consciousness. It seems the test conditions and results can be nuanced in various ways, leading to different conclusions. However, I don't believe ability to pass the mirror test is necessary for reflexive consciousness. I imagine that somewhere among Oliver Sacks's cases of neurological oddities are individuals with reflexive consciousness who would've failed the mirror test.

Consciousness in its simplest form is awareness of an internal or external existence. Although centuries of analyzes, definitions, interpretations, and discussions by philosophers and scholars, consciousness remains puzzling and questionable, being the most familiar and most remarkable aspect of our lives.

> It is not obvious that hunting requires reflexive consciousness.

Of course. I personally know few people who do not suffer from the lack of reflexivity. :):)

In other words: definitely, that may be some species hunting without reflexivity. The point is that such community is evolutionary unstable against the intrusion of a new species/race who experiences reflexivity.

> Does passing the mirror test look like or require reflexive consciousness?

I guess, the answer is positive.

Some things to consider.

(1) Buddhism distinguishes 'consciousness of' from 'pure awareness' from 'reflexivity'. Consciousness-of is one of the (ego) skandhas (aggregates that comprise 'ego', consciousness, judgment, sensing of pleasure/pain distinction, perceptions, etc.). This applies to Husserlian phenomenological concept of consciousness as intentional; extended embodied cognition theories, etc. In Buddhism all deity yoga is 'reflexive' -- the deity is visualized, then absorbed into self, and dissolved; a 'reflexive' act. 'Pure awareness' (misleadingly called 'no-mind' or 'no-ego' etc.) in my experience is established by displacing the ego skandhas which opens to a 'non-frame' of awareness. This I learned to conceptualize from Yogacara theory as well as Vipassana, Dzochen, etc. This involves what might be phrased as somatic awareness, in which the 'endlessly spinning ego skandha noetics are 'on the left side' and pure awareness 'on the right side' of embodied body-sensing self.

(2) Kierkegaard (perhaps ironically): 'the self is a relation which relates itself to its own self as it relates to another, grounded in the greater (higher, wider, etc.) power (mystery of being).

(3) Re hunting in hunter gatherer cultures, see Jon Turk, Raven's Gift. 'Shamans go inward to encounter spirit-beings, hunters go outward into the landscape where they encounter same/similar spirit-beings'. In this sense, both are 'reflexive' since communicating with spirit-beings is by definition 'reflexive'.

non-intentional consciousness

(1) There is no singular definition of consciousness. Every academic and science discipline appears to have its own partial definition. The goal of philosophy, which seeks to conceptualize the totality of knowledge (which for any future philosophy means the global knowledge-base and the prehistoric knowledge-base over at least the last 2 million years.

(2) In the Kierkegaard definition the concept of the other in the self/other relation is radically split between the 'other' as another person and 'the Other' as the power which grounds the entire set of interrelated relationships. How Levinas might conceive this might be different. Same for Christian Barthian radical incarnationalists.

(3) I see you are writing on ontology. I have a philosophical project in which I see and advocate for a radical set of distinctions, drawing on Heidegger, between (a) ontology (strictly speaking), which has 6 fundamental regions (each with a different complex intentional dialectical relationships), (b) ousialogy (strictly speaking), which Heidegger designated 'to be', or 'being' or 'Dasein', and (c) anti-ousialogy, which draws on the logic of Nagarjuna. Heidegger commits the error of 'the univocity of being', which vitiates Western philosophy and theology for last two thousand years. There are at least, considering global language/Borean macrofamilies, eight distinctly different characterizations and etymological clusters for the concept of 'being' (sensu lato).

(4) Within just one discipline, neuroscience, as Damasio argued, there are multiple levels of consciousness. I attach a one-page summary (presumably long out-dated) to show the complex differentiations of concepts of consciousness, preconscious, unconscious, etc. in neuroscience.

(5) It might be the case that what a Vajrayana Buddhist calls 'pure awareness', is what Damasio calls 'core consciousness/self'.

(6) I know cognitive scientists and AI folks are trying to figure out what is consciousness to give mechanical devices some sort of consciousness. I suggest that however they define consciousness inevitably it will be a partial definition.

(1) Then your question only pertains to one of the six ontological regions, each which have a different form of reflexivity. In this regard the term self-consciousness, implies a self, and therefore belongs the self/other dialectic that underlies culture, and correlates to the neural network for 'self-relatedness'. On the other hand, when you use the term 'logical', that belongs to the ontological region of epistemology and its 16 or so transcendental logics, such as propositional logic, holistic logic, modal logic, etc. To confuse the two regions results in a philosophical category mistake. This does not preclude integrating the two regions in a more complex conceptual field, if one can avoid mistakes in categorical positions. At least that is my view of the question(s).

(2) To answer the question 'what it is like to be conscious without being conscious-of anything?' requires having distinct concepts of the different kinds of consciousness within and in disparate research disciplines. Thus, I attached the one-pager, indicating A. Damasio's levels of consciousness as defined by neuroscience discipline. I also mentioned Heidegger's approach of distinguishing 'consciousness-of' from 'the concept of being', which is pre-representational, pre-propositional, and pre-intentional. He arrived at this by providing the complement to Husserl's concept of intentional consciousness. For example, one of Husserl's prototypical examples is: "I am seeing a tree". Husserl brackets the "I am" (which he calls the transcendental ego), leaving "seeing a tree", and then characterizes them as noesis and noema, and on and on. Heidegger a student of Husserl's bracketed "seeing a tree" and thematized the "I am" as Dasein, Being-in-the-world, etc etc.

Dear Michael,

Plant have some self-awareness:

''Scientists have since found that the tips of plant roots, in addition to sensing gravity, moisture, light, pressure, and hardness, can also sense volume, nitrogen, phosphorus, salt, various toxins, microbes, and chemical signals from neighboring plants. Roots about to encounter an impenetrable obstacle or a toxic substance change course before they make contact with it. Roots can tell whether nearby roots are self or other and, if other, kin or stranger. Normally, plants compete for root space with strangers, but, when researchers put four closely related Great Lakes sea-rocket plants (Cakile edentula) in the same pot, the plants restrained their usual competitive behaviors and shared resources.""

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-intelligent-plant

Dear

You missed the most important: ''Roots can tell whether nearby roots are self or other''

This a form of self-awareness.

Of course a simple and elementary one, distinguishing its own body versus the rest.

By the way, I never understood why many think that self-awareness is uniquely human. All animals are self-aware. Human consciousness or awareness is unique in many respects . I personally think that its most fundamental uniqueness from which all other uniqueness unfold is our capacity to dream together while awake.

> Plant have some self-awareness:

No, they don't. This is a result of too extended definition of a consciousness; here it has no difference to any stimul-reaction pattern. Wing missile has consciousness, in these terms.

For consciousness, the first necessary property is the “World-like system”.

This is the foundation! All other properties are derived.

All entities of the subjective World cannot be active at the same time .... at every moment in time, you need to limit activity - you need an energy "phase transition", i.e. "consciousness"…

So far, only a person meets such quality ... In the future, such a quality should have AGI

Dear Michael Kowalik

1) " I am not clear what you mean by this: “All entities of the subjective World cannot be active at the same time... at every moment in time, you need to limit activity“ Why is this necessary? "

A "World-like system" contains an infinite number of entities... The activity of any entity requires energy consumption .... The brain is forced to save energy ... Which entities are activated during a phase transition? ... it depends on survival goals, etc. ... So we come to targeted systems ...

2) " For example, self-consciousness, the social dimension, and the world-like system could all be simultanously conditional and equally fundamental "

The world-like system is holon ... A world-like system includes other world-like systems ( Multi-Unity & Self-Reference & ...) ... This is an information holarchy ... A world-like system is constantly evolving ... the basis of development is social interaction (you need to absorb other Worlds - fractal properties) ... => the social dimension

A world-like system can be a "thing-in-itself" => self-consciousness & experience

The main feature ... A world-like system has its own space, its own time, its own matter, its own gevos and its own laws (in particular, thinking). World-like systems have the quality of "life" ...

3) I consider these issues in more detail (and formally) in my new book "Intuition: the experience of formal research" ... (book in publishing)

Regards, Yurii

> So far, only a person meets such quality

Not exactly, again. A number of animals do have reflexivity. Whether that former is an indivisible part of a consciousness, is matter of terminology.

Dear Michael,

The capacity to question and examine one own existence is an instance of thinking. What is thinking? It is a kind of control dreaming while being awake. All mammal dreams and play but only human dream-play while awake and this is thinking. So our awareness is a mixed of the ordinary primate awareness of here and now to which we most often have a super impose waked dream which is more or less intense and real. We easily distinguish the two sime the here and now consciousness is more vivid and its control is very different. Schizophrenic have a problem differentiating of xontrol with it so the two merge. Certain spychotic drugs may also do similar problems. How is it possible? It is a double use of the mammalian imagination. All mammals have the two but not simultaneously. In dreaming mammals can self-activate their sensory-motor system from traces of its waked staes in highly emotional situation and so come back in this here and now during REM sleep for learning, long term memory consolidation throw exploration of previous here and now. So thinking is day dreaming , a kind of timespace travelling in the NOW. Language is one instance of this. All the arts are instance of this. By having a mixeg consciousness, we do not live in Nature only but in a mixed Bio-cultural world . All human evolution is now almost only on the cultural side.

Regards,

- Louis

> All mammal dreams and play

That's a great doubt, hedgehogs go this way...

> All human evolution is now almost only on the cultural side.

Again rigorous "no". Both processes are running. Evolving (= subjected to selection) is everything what is inherited; e.g., spine glasses waves, in dead matter world.

What is tru, that the specific time of exstance of an entity in cultural inheritance is TREMENDOUSLY shorter in comoparison to that on in heman biology. Nonetheles, it does not that biological evolution stops.

If you watch very carefully for clocks with arrows, you definitely would not be able to detect the movement of the shorter (hours) arrow (pointer). This inability for sure does not approves the fact that time "stops"...

Dear Michael Sadovsky,

''That's a great doubt, hedgehogs go this way...''

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_in_non-human_animals

'' All human evolution is now almost only on the cultural side.''

My life and your life are different from those of our parent not because our genes change but because of the change of culture (this incluse material culture and technology). Our parents life was mostly different of that of their parents for the same cultural change reason and we are on a cultural change exponential, nothing significant in the genetic changes. Humans are the most homegenous genetic of all primate, there is less genetic variation among us than in other primate. Our social practice are going against natural selection, we are not adapting to environment but adaptint our environment, this is called culture.

Regards,

- Louis

Dear Michael,

''Only self-oriented thinking entails self-consciousness""

I don'nt think so. Creative activities such as music creation, dance creation, creative writing, elite sport level performances, etc. A high degree of self mastery and overcoming our current limits are needed in these activities. This is much more significant that having few banal ideas about our life.

I do not think that any non human animals think. There are totally in the here and now although they need to overcome tremendous difficulties and so have to be creative within certain limits. But like in humans, there are some exceptional genious like Otto the octopus https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96476905 or Santino the chimp https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chimpanzee-plans-throws-stones-zoo/ .

Regards,

- Louis

A few days ago I answered the question giving multiple types/definitions of consciousness/self-consciousness, which were rejected as not meeting a rather obscurely defined criteria. In general, rejecting out-of-hand alternative definitions from disciplines other than ones own is fine if one always states in any publication, the limitations of what one's hypotheses and findings. That's standard in science publications.

When I described 'content-free' 'non-intentional' 'non-representational' awareness during Buddhist and other forms of meditation, that position was totally rejected. However, that rejection is falsified by the recent publication, which fully supports my position.

Winter U, LeVan P, Borghardt TL, Akin B, Wittmann M, Leyens Y and Schmidt S (2020) Content-Free Awareness: EEG-fcMRI Correlates of Consciousness as Such in an Expert Meditator. Front. Psychol. 10:3064. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03064

Is 'sounds nonsensical' a scientifically testable hypothesis?

Dear Michael,

I am sympathic to what James is trying to bring to the discussion. It is mainstream in Vedanta and Buddhist philosophical practices. There are different form of consciousness. When you do most of your practical daily routine tasks of your life, you are paying attention to the task but not so much on exactly in the detail of what you are doing. In many philosophical traditions, they developed an phenomenal conscious attitude were attention to how we actually perform the task, or how your mind does not want to stay focus on breathing and escape in thoughts. Your question: ''Awareness is awareness of what? '' By practicing different type of meditation which are all forms of training of attention while doing certain task, you comes to rare state of awareness when litterally where you are aware of nothing specific but very intensely aware. It is the opposite of loosing consciousness when you are very tire, then without realizing it you fell asleep 1 second and wake up. There was nothing in between. In meditation, in these one secons blank, you intensely experience this blank and return to normal state which is much less conscious and intense. IN the 19th century, there is a branch of the western philosophical tradition which turn away from abstract ideas about the world (propositional attitude, science, rationality) and turn to a focus on experience: Goethe, Brentano, Bergson, Dilthey, Husserld, Schiley, etc... But even Descartes in his metaphisical meditations in its radical doubting of all knowledge came down to the imposibility to doubt, that he doubts. So his dualism: the cogito on one side and the res extensa on the other side posits that the phenomenal can'nt be doubt, experience is what it is, while knowledge about the world, what is abstract, science can be doubt and the two cannot be reduced to each other. It is not an ontological dualism, but a distinction between the real of experience, and knowledge about the world. In very ancient cultures, those called shaman were able to find answers in a trans state and accessing the world of spirit. As I told you, what distinguish humans from other primates is to dream in the waking state. With the rise of civilisation, we are collectively reinforcing certain mainstream culture and so are in a certain dream, kind of collectivly hypnotized into it and not consciously able to leave it for other healing ones. In modern time, we call these genius artists or prophets. Very hard to shake our collective hypnotic dreams. We carry screens constantly hooking our mind to it in artificial environment which reinforce these. It is why going in nature and meditation and art are more necessary than ever in order to have a minimum freedom from these very powerfull hypnotic mindset. So being human is to be able to live in bio-cultural world, in collective hypnotic dream, the downfall is that we are becoming more and more collectivly controled. We live in mega tribe were questioning the mega collective dream is mega hard. Questioning it is to show symptoms of a mental disorder in need of a therapeutic drug. The scientific training and mindset is actually even more brain washed into this collective mindset. It is why anything not conforming to this mindset appear illogical, or nonesensical.

Regards,

- Louis

Michael,

'' If you are aware of nothing then you are not aware, by definition. '' I pointed to some experience and you only see my finger pointing. I will try again. The experience of nothing, has no content but the experiencing is there and in my case it last a fraction of a second, but you have a tremendous change of the emotions between before and after that sudden discontinuity or consciousness surged, feel good after and unusually calm. Your cardiac rythm become very low. There is not much to say about this experience , a kind of orgasm of experience and drastic changes of mood and feeling between before and after. Of course, something is happening, but not much to described other than what I am saying here. It is not an awareness of something around me, or something inside me, it is a total sudden change of how you feel.

Regards,

- Louis

Dear Michael,

Maybe , calling such experience , experiencing nothing, is confusing and not the best naming for it. In my case, it was not an experience of universal connectedness. It is usual to have such experience in meditation for me. I had it in my first meditation. It is always unexpected, you do not see it coming. It does not happen in all meditations.

William James documented, mystical visions vary, but mystics from many different traditions, including Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Judaism, have described experiences that are devoid of content. The instructors in the type of meditation I practice call these event '' pure consciousness events'' . Again the name they gave to this is based on a metaphysics I do not suscribed to nor do I call these experience as ''mystic''. Maybe someone may feel good calling them with earth shattering names. I do not take it as anything fantastic , deeply refreshing but not life changing in significant way, illumination or anything like that.

The absence of colours is still a colour from black, the greys up to the bright white, basically what we see at night at a full moon when only our retinal rods are working.

Regaards,

- Louis

Michael, thanks for link to your paper, which I have now read. Admittedly, not every sentence carefully, nor the logical function equations, as I am not a logician familiar with the arguments or most of the citations. It has given me a context that you are working especially in the discipline of ethics.

This also is not a philosophical discipline of my specializations.

On the other hand, I did give a paper at the summer 2018 Oxford-Brookes conference on Evolution of Ethics, in which I provided an explanatory hypothesis for the chimpanzee stone accumulation ritual in West Africa (Kühl, et al., 2016) as an ethical response to abuse/unfairness that refrains from scapegoating innocent others by engaging in the ritual behaviors at special trees. This will be a chapter in forthcoming book of conference proceedings.

I do have one related suggestion to widen the scope of your ontological thesis.

As it currently stands you apply your argument to "a community of individuals of the same ontological kind". (p.6) "existence of a subject entails coexistence with other individuals of the same ontological kind". (p.4) you reference Kant human-kind and Habermas communication community. These notions are anthropocentric. It appears to me that you are defining 'same kind' as anthropocentric and are excluding other species from having the capacity to act, to have agency, to engage in self-reflecting reasoning, etc. You end the paper with the phrase 'the inhuman things we do dehumanise us, turn us into animals and ultimately to stone." But we are animals. So this is a self-contradiction.

I think you might easily broaden your definition of 'same kind' to explicitly refer to all living beings that/who have agency and self-reflection. According to the discipline of primatology that would include all primates, and zoologists have been extending reflexivity, self-consciousness, and agency to other mammals, and other phyla.

It is possible that a revision of your thesis in that direction might make it highly relevant to the legal question of animal rights, animal 'personhood', and the moral/ethical obligations that we and even these other species have for the shared communication community. Such an argument might be more robust than prior animal rights theories based on 'interest' or 'sensitivity'.

Dear Michael,

''To be conscious in the Human sense is commonly understood to mean that an individual being can think about itself''

Yes it is often commonly understood that way but this way of viewing our human consciousness is overly reductive. I sudgest for a tour of the purely human way to be conscious including what we have in common with other primate, this talk by Evan Thompson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StG-dmBWu7k&t=2836s

Dr. Evan Thompson: "Waking, Dreaming, Being"

Regards,

- Louis

To qualify as conscious, three conditions must be met:

1) You have to be AWAKE

2) You have to be aware that YOU are awake

3) There has to be SOMETHING IT IS LIKE to experience (1) and (2)

Dear Marc,

1) 2) and 3) are always true together. Impossible to have one of the three without the other two.

“…What are the essential properties of consciousness?…..”

- to answer on this question is necessary before to answer on the question – what is consciousness?, which is one of utmost fundamental question in philosophy; and which in the mainstream philosophy, and so further in science, fundamentally isn’t answered. Consciousness, and “Matter” are in the mainstream fundamentally transcendent/uncertain/irrational Essences; and so in the mainstream there exist numerous “definitions” of consciousness,

- and since all definitions are nothing else than some non-provable, non-disprovable, and from which no any rational inferences about what is consciousness follow, mental constructions,

- the “consciousness problem” in the mainstream exists only as an endless senseless discussions about transcendent item with exchanging senseless transcendent arguments.

The scientific definition of Consciousness and Matter is possible and is given, only in the Shevchenko-Tokarevsky’s “The Information as Absolute” conception https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260930711_the_Information_as_Absolute DOI 10.5281/zenodo.268904,

- where it is rigorously proven that there exist nothing else than some informational patterns/systems of the patterns, which are elements of the absolutely fundamental and absolutely infinite “Information” Set.

Correspondingly, as that seems evident, some system of informational patterns can exist as a system only if it is based on some concrete set of logical laws/links/constants, and between patterns some informational exchange proceeds, in accordance with this set.

So, say, that

“…1) You have to be AWAKE…..”

- in any dynamical system, i.e. where the informational exchange proceeds, and the system changes in accordance with this exchange, every pattern is “AWAKE”, i.e. is ready to obtain/to send information;

“…2) You have to be aware that YOU are awake …”

- in any dynamical system, every pattern is aware that it is awake, i.e. is ready to obtain/to send information;

“…3) There has to be SOMETHING IT IS LIKE to experience (1) and (2) ….”

- there is no necessity in anything for experience (1) and (2) in any system, again, any system can exist only provided the above, and if there is some system, in this case a consciousness, it has inevitably some base for some “experience”.

Say, in a material system an “Hydrogen atom” both, the electron and proton well know that they are just these electron and proton, and nothing else, i.e. are completely “self-aware”, constantly are awake, know that are awake, and so constantly exchange by informational patterns “photons”, and has corresponding experience.

The main property of any consciousness is unique: when some other systems, say, Matter, are closed systems and so don’t exchange by information with informational patterns in the Set outside the systems,

- and so such systems are stable in the Set,

- any consciousness is able to exchange, first of all to obtain, by information practically with any of absolutely infinite “number” of the Set’s elements, and in principle so isn’t stable.

So to exist and operate stably, for example a version of Consciousness “consciousness on Earth”, including this consciousness’s version “homo-two sapiens consciousness”, made on Earth a few billions of years a stable material residence, and developed step by step this residence aimed at increasing her ability at obtaining and analyzing of information.

More see the first approximation model of the “consciousness on Earth”, at least two SS comments Dec 9, 2019 and Dec 10, 2019 in

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329539892_The_Information_as_Absolute_conception_the_consciousness/comments?focusedCommentId=5ded35bacfe4a777d4f8a648&sldffc=0 , and, of course, the whole paper.

SS pot on the visible page in the thread

https://www.researchgate.net/post/If_every_neuron_in_a_human_was_accurately_simulated_in_a_computer_would_it_result_in_human_consciousness

- are useful as well.

Cheers

Despite what some have implied in this thread, I'm pretty sure there's a difference between sleeping dreamlessly and dreaming during sleep, and that there's something that it's like (as Nagel would describe it) when I am dreaming during sleep. I think that the problem with the term "conscious" and its cognates is one of ambiguity. For example, sometimes, but not always, the word "unconscious" is used in contrast with the word "awake", even though one might be still undergoing experiences of some sort, experiences which might even be indistinguishable from perceptual experiences of one's waking life. Some of the dream states associated with the Freudian Unconscious can be incredibly rich, but what is unconscious is not the dream states themselves but their meaning.

To be able to detect and then relate abstract meaning to physical phenomena- energy or matter

It is impossible to get anywhere with such loose terms as dreaming, waking, sleep with no dreams. Any philosophy of consciousness must make a clear definitive analysis of the components of consciousness or 'epistemological worlds'. In other words one is required to begin with developing a regional ontology for epistemic knowledge on ontic entities in a given kind of world. There must be a holistic account of these 'consciousness worlds'. The approach I prefer is identify these components according to Brain Wave States. So instead of anecdotal meandering thoughts about consciousness in general, or in bats or some other fantasy, which simply engages one component of consciousness to talk about consciousness as a whole, lay out the regional ontology with its distinct subregions (and no overarching, hyper simplistic notion of consciousness sensu stricto). There are then at least 6 modes of 'consciousness of' (to take a term from Husserl, who was no philosophical slouch). Roughly speaking, tehe correspondence set is:

Theta waves = 'Trance World';

Alpha waves = 'Daydreaming, Imaginal World';

Gamma waves = 'Synchronous Consciousness of Open Awareness'

Beta waves = 'Waking Consciousness of Everyday World';

REM and NREM-2 sigma spindles = 'Dream World';

NREM-3/4 and delta waves or 'slow wave sleep' and 'very slow' = 'Deep Sleep World'.

With this regional ontology, which includes the particular type of ontic contents found in each respective world, philosophy can proceed to articulate the distinctive features of each of these 6 modes of consciousness. Any philosophical position is not cognizant of these 6 modes is so biassed as to be worthless.

Dear James,

pretty hard to articulate the distinctive features of a Deep Sleep World. To articulate anything I need to remember what was going on, which contradicts the state of deep sleep. Furthermore phenomenology needs a waking mind to be practiced.

Your ontology and your question is a very hard nut to crack. If we take your ontology (for the sake of solutionfinding) for a viable modell, then I wonder what one can do to answer it in respect of the Deep Sleep World?

My first approch would be a negativ one: At least we can tell that the Catagory of Time is annihilated during that state. Better said: this is how I "experience" deep sleep. It is nighttime I fall asleep aaaand ... morning again.

In regards to your Ontology: Time is not an essential property of consciousness.

But time is the transcendental condition sine qua non of all experience.

As long as the scientific discourse depends on experience than it can only handle models that are (at least theoretically) grounded in experience. The notion of properties of an entity that doesnt even rely on time is in my eyes incomprehensive. It breaks the core rules of thinking and articulating.

If this is true than lays the answer beyond the borders of scientific discourse and can only be found in the realm of mysticism or maybe in the realm of pre-kantian metaphysics.

-----

In my opinion we can safely say that Brain-activity indeed corresponds to different forms of consciousness. But we cant say for sure wether all currently found activity patterns are sufficient indicators for consciousness.

Moreso we cant even say for sure if brain-activity is the one and only condition for consciousness. I see an overrelying in neurological insights here.

It is easier to dismiss Delta Waves from the Ontology. Or better said Delta Waves correspond to no World. Deep Sleep is no World at all. Or Delta Waves indicate a state of consciousnessless.

May the mystics be merciful with me. As acteur in the scientific discourse. I dont know better.