Is a sleepwalker awake or asleep, or are waking and sleeping vague states with no clear boundary between the two?

How Stuff Works Wrote:The DSM-IV, a handbook for mental health professionals, defines sleepwalking by these criteria:

   

• You leave your bed while sleeping, usually in the first third of your sleep pattern.
     
  
• Others find it difficult to wake you during an episode of sleepwalking.
     
  
• You can't remember what happened while you were sleepwalking.
     
  
• When you do wake up from an episode, you're confused.
     
  
• You aren't suffering from dementia or another physical disorder.
     
  
• It impairs your work or social life.
  

Now let's take a look at some of these criteria. During the first third of the night, your body is in NREM (non-REM) -- your deepest stage of sleep. NREM sleep is when you tend to toss and turn in bed. Your brain quiets down, which means that you aren't dreaming. So sleepwalkers aren't acting out their dreams. Think of it this way: In NREM sleep, your brain isn't very active, but your body is. In REM sleep, your brain is very active while your body isn't.

The brain is resistant to arousal during deep sleep, which explains why it's difficult to wake a sleepwalker. And if you do manage to wake one up, the sleepwalker is likely to exhibit signs of confusion for several minutes and have little to no memory of anything that happened.

Sleepwalking episodes can last from a few seconds to half an hour. Sleepwalkers usually have glassy-looking eyes and blank expressions on their faces. They might look awake but act clumsy. Sleepwalkers are capable of performing a variety of activities, from simply getting up and walking around the room to driving a car or playing an instrument.

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Mental health professionals refer to sleepwalking as a "disorder of arousal," which means that something triggers the brain into arousal from deep sleep, so the person is in a transition state between sleeping and waking.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/in...alking.htm

I have walked in my sleep. (Funny story, now.) It happens.

(May 30, 2015 at 9:56 am)Jörmungandr Wrote:

(May 29, 2015 at 6:32 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I don't think mind, under the definition I've given, is vague, although determining what systems have it is wayyy beyond vague and bordering on impossible.  But with the baby example, you are still talking about psychology rather than psychogony.

I don't know what your definition has to do with it.  It seems you are conflating having mind with experiencing qualia.  If so, my earlier example of cerebral achromatopsia, where an individual can have visual qualia without the color of ordinary visual qualia, is good evidence that qualia isn't an all or nothing proposition.  Regardless, I'm not arguing about qualia.  Mind (or subjectivity) could be either vague, or it could be that there is a definite boundary between mind and no mind.  Your continually repeating that you think there is a definite boundary does nothing to settle the matter.  I don't personally see any reason why there has to be a definite boundary, which is why I question you as to the basis of your belief.  Why do you feel there has to be a definite boundary?  I don't think that mind is a result solely of complexity - it needs to be complexity of a specific kind.  But if animal's nervous systems evolve incrementally, I see no obvious argument that subjectivity or mind wouldn't also have evolved incrementally.

I've defined the term "mind" as the existence of a subjective perspective as I mean the term in a discussion of evolution.  I certainly would agree with you that qualia is not all or nothing-- it involves the blending of different kinds of patterns, shapes, textures, etc., as well as the integration of different senses.

I've changed my position about your quote and comment to follow-- mind can be defined in different ways-- for example, as the processing of complex stimuli.  And given different definitions of mind, I'd be more than happy to see grey area.  But I don't think there is a "kind-of subjective": either something has that perspective or it doesn't.  I think there really must be some kind of elemental qualia that would represent the minimum possible stimulus that could meet that definition: perhaps the transmission and reception of a single photon, or perhaps the firing of a single neuron, or perhaps a neural chain which feeds back on itself at least one time.

Quote:

(May 29, 2015 at 6:32 pm)bennyboy Wrote: It's not an assertion.  HOWEVER you define mind, either it exists or it doesn't, under the definition I gave: that where there is even the vaguest subjective perspective, there is mind.  If you want to argue that mind means something more complex, that's fine-- but since we're talking about evolution, I want to start with the simplest possible definition, and look at how it relates to the development of the nervous system and then the brain throughout our evolutionary history.

(bold mine)
Did you really just say that?  My point is that I believe there will likely be cases where, under any criterion, it's not clear whether the organism does or does not possess mind.  Given that, your continued insistence that it either is or isn't present is just an assertion, one which you keep repeating to no effect.

See above.  I'm going to have to stay with my definition, which is tailored with a view to looking at how mind would first have evolved.  I no longer want to claim that under any possible definition, any aspect of mind is necessarily boolean.

Quote:Here your assumption about the non-vagueness of mind resurfaces.  If you could grant that the boundary between mind and no-mind is not distinct, the origin of mind would make a lot more sense, as it wouldn't have to be there all at once.  This is analogous to the case of cerebral achromatopsia, where one can have partial qualia.

The problem comes down to semantics: "mind" is so vague that many would ascribe it to things I would never attribute it to: computers, for example.  But you are still talking about quality of qualia, which I'd call psychology, whereas I'm really interested in getting at pschogony-- the origin and explanation of mind vs. not-mind.

(May 30, 2015 at 2:26 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: Is a sleepwalker awake or asleep, or are waking and sleeping vague states with no clear boundary between the two?

Actually, I think that's a perfect example. First of all, I know that sleepwalkers don't remember much-- but that doesn't necessarily mean the person wasn't awake and aware-- perhaps it just got scrambled in the transition to full wakefulness. I know many people who say they don't dream, and that they probably DO dream and just don't realize it upon awaking. I do not know if sleep-walking is related to this, though.

If there's really no subjective experience of that process, then I'd say there is no mind there, even though the body is doing many of the things a conscious person would do. In fact, I'd say this situation sheds real light on ideas about whether computers can ever be said to have a "mind."

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(May 30, 2015 at 2:38 pm)whateverist Wrote: I have walked in my sleep.  (Funny story, now.)  It happens.

Did you remember any of it?

I'm not sure if you can claim to be discussing the evolution of the mind if you ask us to assume, as a given...at the outset..that your mind provides you with no additional utility. That, plainly, is to ask us to assume that the most well attested and sensible explanation for the persistence of a trait or structure, evolutionarily speaking...is not acceptable as an explanation from the word go. Additionally, you've saddled poor old evolution with some heinous shit in this thread, like simultaneous emergence/development......

How, do you imagine, can a person provide an answer that is both acceptable to you and within the framework of evolutionary biology, if we must accept that assertion and that baggage? All that remains as an option is to explain that brain confers advantage, utility, and so mind persists as a by-product of brain - but you won't accept that as an answer either...due to other assertions which you will impose upon the discussion.

Heads you win, tails we lose. You are actively creating a situation in which your question cannot be answered..but not because it is unanswerable, or because those answers available lack explanatory power.

(May 30, 2015 at 11:23 pm)bennyboy Wrote:  But I don't think there is a "kind-of subjective": either something has that perspective or it doesn't.  

Then we'll just have to agree to disagree. However where your assertion makes a mystery of psychogony, mine facilitates an explanation: awareness gradually evolved; there was no sudden emergence.

(May 31, 2015 at 9:48 am)Jörmungandr Wrote:

(May 30, 2015 at 11:23 pm)bennyboy Wrote:  But I don't think there is a "kind-of subjective": either something has that perspective or it doesn't.  

Then we'll just have to agree to disagree.  However where your assertion makes a mystery of psychogony, mine facilitates an explanation: awareness gradually evolved; there was no sudden emergence.

Hmmmm. . . given that evolution happens based on variation or mutation, and given that at some point there was absolutely no mind on the Earth, then how could there not have been sudden emergence?

I certainly agree that psychogony is a mystery, but evolution doesn't really help us much either.  It's pretty clear to see why the brain evolved, and why people act certain ways; it is much less easy to see why an evolved brain needs to subjectively experience anything.  Are you sure that in this case, it's not just "evolutiondidit" rather than "Goddidit?

Quote:it is much less easy to see why an evolved brain needs to subjectively experience anything. 

Maybe it doesn't?   Regardless,  evolution isn't based on what a population or individual, or structure needs......so....what does that have to do with evolution of mind or brain?

Yes. I remember 'coming to' while walking down our gravel street buck ass naked as a 14 year old because of the pain of the gravel on my bare feet. My pillow was the only thing I had with me and, as if in a dream, I was on my way down the street to play some football with a buddy. But when I turned around and headed back the other way I overshot our house and went instead to our neighbors house, a fellow who regularly drank late into the night. I found out later it was about 3 in the morning. So I climb the stairs up to the front door where I discover I've been locked out. So I start banging on the door to be let in. Eventually I realized the pattern of the windows on the door weren't like ours. At about that moment the door opened and I was stone cold awake having realized my mistake. I think I gave him my most casual "sorry, I seem to have the wrong address" before turning and fleeing back into the night.

Never happened again.

In a better world a naked young girl would have answered that door, Whatevs.