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Why does a unique person have a unique perception?

If one loses consciousness, why won't there be a random swap to someone elses consciousness?

Why is there a blackout of ones perception in that case, not an occupation of another?

How does time extrinsically pass yet doesn't pass while unconscious, if it requires an observer?

If it was material, what quantum of qualia has an electron?

If merely signal exchanges between synapses, pericarya and axons form consciousness, what happens in the timespan where the signals don't arrive? Why does one not notice briefest unconsciousness?

If physical data translate to mental data, why do electrons cause pressure, or thought, or pain, if electrons are symmetric?

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    I'd suggest reframing this from a list of many related questions to focusing on one single question with a bit more explanation behind it. E.g. keep "why is consciousness confined" as the main question, and then use the other questions as explanation of what you mean and what the implications are.
    – Kaia
    Commented Aug 12 at 18:55
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    The other thing is, I think many (most?) philosophers would likely agree that ultimately the answer is "We don't know". Which certainly isn't a satisfying answer, but it might be the best one we've got without wild speculation.
    – Kaia
    Commented Aug 12 at 18:56
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    You seem to be somewhat confusing physical and non-physical consciousness. If consciousness is nothing more than brain activity, then there wouldn't be consciousness when there's a lack of brain activity, for you to be aware of there not being brain activity. Also, the brain is a constant hub of activity, so any "gaps" would probably not exceed a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second. And if every millisecond contains gaps, that'll just seem like normal thinking to you - we tend to struggle to notice (or can't notice) uniformity (but we struggle to notice even longer gaps).
    – NotThatGuy
    Commented Aug 12 at 22:09
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    The standard answer is that consciousness is not a Cartesian "thing" to be swapped (like immaterial soul), it is an abstracted aspect of what it is the consciousness of. The idea is then as nonsensical as "swapping" the shape of an object for some other without changing the object itself.
    – Conifold
    Commented Aug 12 at 23:01
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    This is something I've been thinking about for a long time, and finally someone was able to put it into words. +1
    – Some Guy
    Commented Aug 13 at 6:59

2 Answers 2

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Supposing your consciousness did randomly swap with someone else's, how would you know? Would you have a perception of jumping between bodies, or memories of being another person?

There seems to be a lot of evidence that memories are stored in the brain, and that conscious experiences are somehow associated with electrical activity in the brain. There are no neuronal pathways connecting one person's sense organs to another's memories, so it's unclear how you could have the combined experience of being one person and remembering being another. Likewise, it's unclear how you could have the experience of switching bodies (in which brain would the neural correlates be?). Even if your consciousness does body-hop in some meaningful sense yet to be determined, that would seem to preclude your knowing about it.

How does time extrinsically pass yet doesn't pass while unconscious, if it requires an observer?

Physical time (a certain kind of correlation between spacetime points) and psychological time (a conscious experience associated somehow with electrical activity in the brain) are different things. Most of the physical light in the universe never enters your eye, so you never perceive it. Likewise, you don't perceive most of the physical time in the universe.

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  • I had more or less the same thought: for all we know the 'consciousness' does jump around, as a kind of anonymous witness, a neutral awareness. In the new brain, it now is aware of the sensory experiences of the new body and the memories that arise there. So, it is now the experiencing of that new (for it) body. And this does fit with some spiritual traditions. I'm not arguing that this is the case, but as long as we are speculating, I don't see how we rule it out. The question itself seems to presume dualism, so given that, why not? Commented Aug 13 at 5:43
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Why does a unique person have a unique perception?

Probably because perception (I assume you mean the subjective phenomenon of qualia) is physically happening somewhere in the brain, and brains are regular physical objects which are as unique as any stone lying somewhere, they don't just switch attributes or identity with others.

If one loses consciousness, why won't there be a random swap to someone elses consciousness?

Why would it?

Why is there a blackout of ones perception in that case,

Because "perceiving" (taking note of things that can be perceived) is what consciousness does, and being unconscious is defined as not being conscious, i.e. not perceiving.

How does time extrinsically pass yet doesn't pass while unconscious, if it requires an observer?

By way of an analogy: if we implement "time" in a computer, the time "perceived" by the computer is simply a big number which counts the numbers of seconds or milliseconds, sometimes nanosecond since an arbitrary time "0" (often defined as "1.1.1970 at 00:00" or "the time the computer was switched on"). The computer has to trust that whatever machinery in itself that counts up that number (at the lowest level some kind of very simple oscillating device, i.e. some kind of quartz oscillator etc.) "keeps time". Which it does because it has been designed just so. But if said oscillator would start misbehaving, i.e. taking 1 second for one "tick", but then 10 seconds for the next, the computer would have no way to notice this. From the point of view of the computer, time would be exactly the same as before - one tick, one second - while in the outside world, time would pass slower or faster.

Imagine the same happens in the brain, just wildly more complicated.

You can experience that yourself - famously, time flies if you're having fun, and time passes incredibly slowly if you're sitting in a boring school classroom. Time perception for us is clearly as relative as time perception to a computer.

If it was material,

What do you mean if it "was" material? There is no objective reason to believe that it is not material.

what quantum of qualia has an electron?

An individual electron does not require to have qualia, i.e. there is no reason to assume that our conscience would perceive individual electrons. A simple reason is that this would bring no evolutionary benefit whatsoever, or Occams Razor (individual electrons do not usually "happen" as an event in nature, as far as individual animals like us are concerned).

If merely signal exchanges between synapses, pericarya and axons form consciousness, what happens in the timespan where the signals don't arrive? Why does one not notice briefest unconsciousness?

That's just the way it is if you stack complex informational systems on top of another. If consciousness is running on our brain like software runs on hardware, then it is completely normal and to be expected that consciousness cannot "see" the workings of the brain itself. Same as no software "sees" the working of the hardware it runs on. (And no, sensors that sense aspects of the hardware, like temperature, voltages etc., do not count - the software does not perceive the hardware it specifically runs on, i.e. the internal hardware registers, MLUs, RAM locations etc.).

If physical data translate to mental data, why do electrons cause pressure, or thought, or pain, if electrons are symmetric?

You would have to formulate this differently, as written the words make no sense whatsoever.

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