what would make you change your beliefs?

[Godhead]

EvF -

If your consciousness left your body, you would be conscious of yourself (your consciousness).

[Edwardo Piet]

That ignores the fact that people can lose consciousness.

EvF

[Darwinian]

I probably know what you will say but, when our consciousness leaves our body, say, because we are knocked out, why can't we remember it?

[Godhead]

EvF -

No one ever loses consciousness, as we are consciousness. Bodies lose consciousness (us).

Darwinian -

I would say that it's because we generally tend to associate ourselves, our identity, existence, and our experience, with the physical body and everything around us which we experience and is physical. It's all we know in our everyday experience of being alive, so anything else is generally alien to us, and perhaps we can't relate to it or make sense of it. Or maybe we just go to sleep and dream.

[AtheistPhil]

Godhead, what is consciousness to you ?

[Godhead]

AtheistPhil -

Self awareness.

[AtheistPhil]

so, what is the "self" ?

Awareness is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects or sensory patterns.(from wikipedia)

Awareness is linked to our senses and cognitive functions, which means linked to our body.

[Godhead]

AtheistPhil -

The self is you. Awareness means awareness. The word doesn't refer to anything else. As a concept, it isn't linked to the body, although I know the dictionary makes that connectio. However the word just means awareness.

[AtheistPhil]

So you're making the assumption that the self-awareness, the knowledge that we "are", is not linked to our body, right ?

But when we are "unconscious" (casual definition), we lose the awareness of our body, our ability to think and to feel, etc... All of our abilities seems to go "off". Why would there be an exception with our ability to be self-aware ?

And when we see the advances of neurosciences, explaining lots of those abilities by studying the brain, I'd say that the hypothetical link between self-awareness and our body is likely.

[Godhead]

AtheistPhil -

Because the body is not the self. When we lose awareness of the body, it is only the body that we lose our awareness of. It's like leaving a room. You still exist, and you still are aware that you exist.