You can't reduce a physically instantiated non-physical to a non-physical. It can't exist in that form. It's always a two part relation and irreducible. — Mark Nyquist

If it's irreducible then the same applies to the physical portion. So either way we are then talking about a mental-physical hybrid which is irreducible to either physicality or mentality. This also works for me.

It occurs to me that during general anesthesia you certainly exist. — fishfry

The state of unconsciousness with anesthesia is mysterious indeed. It's much better than a good whack in the head which might be followed by a lump and headache. Given that a whack anywhere else produces pain and a lump, I would tend to agree that the brain is the affected area in either case. Interestingly, flies are rendered also unconscious when hit on top of the back by a fly whacker, suggesting that their brains are in their bodies.

Philosophically, replacing lack of existence with a gap in awareness and experience works. Sleep is somewhere between unconsciousness and consciousness. Some functionality is shut down but not all. The lucky frigatebird can keep flying over the vastness of an ocean for weeks by sleeping on one side then later on the other side of its brain as needed. It can also fly in autopilot.

Things that exist don't care what we think about them. That is not to say that our intentions will not change those things. They do all the time.
But "we" do not understand how that works.
Not yet, anyway.

But being awake does feel different to being asleep.

Therefore, the assumption is wrong, and there are things that can be know.


Not necessarily. I've been an avid lucid dreamer for about 15 years and I have discovered there are several different levels or layers to the dream state and disturbingly some are much more real than this state

. I've been an avid lucid dreamer for about 15 years and I have discovered there are several different levels or layers to the dream state and disturbingly some are much more real than this state — MAYAEL

So you know that your lucid dreams were dreams.

That's the point. Being awake is different to being asleep.

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.

Rumsfeld of course. The great philosopher.

You said and I quote

"But being awake does feel different to being asleep.

Therefore, the assumption is wrong, and there are things that can be know."

And so I pointed out that there's much more complexity to dreams than the standard fuzzy vague kind and I was pointing that out because they can feel just as real as real so my point being it doesn't always feel different in some lucid dreams it feels just like this.

So in certain instances being awake doesn't feel any different than being asleep

What does being awake feel like? Hell....what does being asleep feel like? Even if being asleep is different than being awake, is the difference qualifiable as a feeling?

If I’m awake, the being of awake is merely a particular condition in which my state of consciousness is found. Why do I need to think of a condition as a feeling, when I already understand that condition as a relative state of being?

The conditions of a thing are different; feelings of the condition of the thing is a needless abstraction.