Dreamless Sleep, the Embodied Mind, and Consciousness The Relevance of a Classical Indian Debate to Cognitive Science
January 1, 2015 Evan Thompson, J. Windt 17 citations
A debate in classical Indian philosophy between Advaita Vedānta and Yoga, which held that consciousness is present in dreamless sleep, and the Nyāya school, which held it is absent, challenges the standard neuroscientific definition of consciousness as that which disappears in dreamless sleep and reappears upon waking or dreaming. The reasoning used by Advaita Vedānta to rebut the Nyāya view offers new resources for contemporary philosophy of mind. Findings from cognitive neuroscience have implications for Indian debates about cognition during sleep and for discussions of the self and its relationship to the body. The Indian materials suggest a need for a more refined taxonomy of sleep states than sleep science currently employs, and that contemplative mind training is relevant for advancing the neurophenomenology of sleep and consciousness.