Deep dreaming |
I woke up in the middle of the night, aware that I been in some deep dream scenario. (Of course this dream was unpleasant, as all dreams are.)
I wonder if this dream was going on long before I became conscious of it, and that my consciousness attached itself to the dream at some point? In other words, that there are dreams occurring throughout the night that no one is conscious of. Meaning, that dreams can occur apart from the conscious experience of them.
Or, is the concept of dream only valid when associated with the conscious experience of it? Without that, a dream is merely dumb brain activity?
And when I first remember becoming aware of this dream, I was barely aware of it. How much of a tiny fragment of consciousness is needed to be considered as conscious? For example, is a jellyfish conscious, even if their experience is much reduced compared to human conscious experience?
Certainly my dogs are conscious, but the purview of their awareness is much smaller than mine. What about an amoeba; is it conscious in some small way, perhaps merely aware of its need for food and its movement and its splitting into two amoebas?
Can only brains be conscious? What about ganglia of nerves? What about molecules moving about inside a cell? Perhaps there is a brain kind of consciousness, a nerve ganglia kind of conscious (in creatures having no brain), and a moving molecule kind of consciousness?
If the brain generates consciousness from the network of neurons, perhaps it is merely the tight choreographed flow of electrons, of electric charges, that triggers the experience of consciousness. But all matter has electric charge and is moving. So perhaps all matter generates consciousness. Or does consciousness only pop into existence when the flow of electrons through the neural network of the brain gets sufficiently complex?
Anyway, dreams are odd, which is the main point of this post.