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throwaway12131214121 t1_j37l7v8 wrote

Our consciousness changes when our brain enters different physical states, even states that it hasn’t evolved to be in(such as those created through the use of psychoactive drugs). You can even remove chunks of the brain and, so long as it doesn’t kill the person, they can remain conscious, though their consciousness is altered. Even someone who is sleeping is conscious, though differently from being awake.

This is why I think consciousness is a property of all physical phenomena and not just of the brain - we know altered brains are still conscious.

Most physical phenomena don’t have the ability to collect sensory data or form memories or learn, which is what the brain has evolved to do, but, while there’s no evidence and no way to collect evidence of this, given the information we have about consciousness, it seems more intuitive that physical phenomena would generate some form of experiences than the alternative simply by way of being physical phenomena.

Maybe when you open a dresser the dresser ‘experiences’ itself being opened, in some sense. Maybe by changing the channel on the tv the TV senses the signal of the remote and has an instinctive response of changing its internal data, which it experiences.

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