You are fully sentient (having experiences) during all phases of sleep. It is the brain processes related to MEMORY that shut down causing you not to remember it.
How do we know this? Myself and many people I’ve talked to have had the experience of almost falling asleep and then waking back up and realizing we were just thinking about a bunch on nonsense thoughts strung together in a stream of consciousness manner. For example:
“I am thinking about to go to the dog is up there is a good view of my office manager isnt really such a big potato chips are the lights on....”
It is clear that this kind of thought pattern reflects a lack of memory engagement. In the deepest sleep (or coma) this lack likely becomes so pronounced that not even single words or images are possible, but the sentient experience remains.
For another example, during dreams (REM) the memory processes turn partially back on, but not all the way, which is why dreams seem so illogical when you wake up and remember everything you couldn’t in the dream.
Our sentience always experiences only the present moment, but the complex memory hardware of our advanced brains allows our sentience to re-experience the past as well, making coherent thinking possible. Without memory there is only pure experience of the now. This is the most elementary state of mind and the definition of sentience.
From the time your neurons first start firing in the womb until they stop at death, they propagate your sentience continuously like a wave moving over the ocean. Through waking, sleeping, and even the deepest of comas this wave continues unbroken.
But when a wave crashes on the beach it is gone and nothing can bring it back. You can create a new wave of course, but you cannot get the original back. Like waves, the IDENTITY of a particular instance of sentience (“you” or “me” for example) arises from continuity and nothing else. And yes, it certianly does not arise from memory.
Silly ideas about teleported copies and clones being “you” come from basing identity on memories not continuity. Thats why it is important to understand that when you sleep it isnt your sentient awareness that shuts down… just your memory of it!
You are fully sentient (having experiences) during all phases of sleep. It is the brain processes related to MEMORY that shut down causing you not to remember it.
How do we know this? Myself and many people I’ve talked to have had the experience of almost falling asleep and then waking back up and realizing we were just thinking about a bunch on nonsense thoughts strung together in a stream of consciousness manner. For example:
“I am thinking about to go to the dog is up there is a good view of my office manager isnt really such a big potato chips are the lights on....”
It is clear that this kind of thought pattern reflects a lack of memory engagement. In the deepest sleep (or coma) this lack likely becomes so pronounced that not even single words or images are possible, but the sentient experience remains.
For another example, during dreams (REM) the memory processes turn partially back on, but not all the way, which is why dreams seem so illogical when you wake up and remember everything you couldn’t in the dream.
Our sentience always experiences only the present moment, but the complex memory hardware of our advanced brains allows our sentience to re-experience the past as well, making coherent thinking possible. Without memory there is only pure experience of the now. This is the most elementary state of mind and the definition of sentience.
From the time your neurons first start firing in the womb until they stop at death, they propagate your sentience continuously like a wave moving over the ocean. Through waking, sleeping, and even the deepest of comas this wave continues unbroken.
But when a wave crashes on the beach it is gone and nothing can bring it back. You can create a new wave of course, but you cannot get the original back. Like waves, the IDENTITY of a particular instance of sentience (“you” or “me” for example) arises from continuity and nothing else. And yes, it certianly does not arise from memory.
Silly ideas about teleported copies and clones being “you” come from basing identity on memories not continuity. Thats why it is important to understand that when you sleep it isnt your sentient awareness that shuts down… just your memory of it!