Back in October of 2013, this was the research that was brought to my attention:
"UCLA psychologists have used brain-imaging techniques to study what happens to the human brain when it slips into unconsciousness.
Their research, published in the online open-access journal PLOS Computational Biology, is an initial step toward developing a scientific definition of consciousness, Images of the scan are shown and some connection strength across sections of the brain provided. They raise the question at the end in the context of brain damage."
Since that time many of us have offered our various viewpoints of the question of whether a scientific definition of consciousness is possibly. While I've pondered this question for a while now, I'm left asking myself whether the opposite question is a valid option; Is a scientific definition of unconsciousness possible?
It is beyond debate that unconsciousness can be observed, when it is referenced to as it is in the example provided above (anesthesized brain), but the term carries with it an inexactness of meaning, and in language; an ambiguity exists around the word "unconsciousness" because the term can also refer to the part of the mind that is inaccessible to the 'conscious mind' but that affects behavior and emotions, a state that is below the level of our observable awareness.
How then do we proceed with finding a scientific definition of consciousness when the opposing state, unconsciousness, is ambiguous? Are consciousness, and its alternative states, unconsciousness, non-consciousness, subconsciousness etc, various parts of the same of the same entity. I will suggest this is the discussion we need to be having.
