Consiousness Theories

Definition

’Consciousness’ is a term often used as a synonym for self-awareness, or for social coordination of internal states, but I’m using it in a limited, technical sense: a system has consciousness if it feels like something to be that system. I.e., something is conscious if and only if it has subjective experience. ’Qualia’ refers to the elements of consciousness, e.g., redness.

The Function of Dreaming: The Overfitted Brain Hypothesis

By creating a weirded version of the world, dreams may make our understanding of it less simplistic and more well-rounded. “It is the very strangeness of dreams in their divergence from waking experience that gives them their biological function,” Hoel said. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/may/14/weird-dreams-train-us-for-the-unexpected-says-new-theory

References

[1] M. E. Johnson, “Blueprint for a new science”.