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I found asian philosophies very interesting in this regard. There is an interesting Hindu philosophy about 4 states - awake, sleep, dream and turiya. In below video, lecturer explained them very beautifully.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGKFTUuJppU

Also you might enjoy Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid where author tried to explain self-referential systems.

If you pick up any interest in asian philosophies, try https://www.amazon.com/Who-Am-Sri-Ramana-Maharshi/dp/1537599... and https://www.amazon.com/I-Am-That-Nisargadatta-Maharaj/dp/089...

⬐ kruasan

Yes, it's called Advaita Vedanta. Swami Sarvapriyananda's lectures are always a great source of knowledge about Advaita.

So Advaita is about you, that is, about consciousness. You are consciousness. And then it goes something like "you're not your body and you're not your mind, you are the "pure subjectivity" present in any qualia, you are Sakshi." Or Atman, also a popular term. Also there's that equation that Atman = Brahman (brahman being the universe/existence itself? [1] but I don't buy it, maybe I don't understand what that means yet) And all of this supposedly is ought to make you feel better about your own problems or suffering, idk? I'm not sure how tbh, I just have a metaphysical interest in this topic. It didn't help me with my problems.

So in every qualia there is the content of experience, and then there is the very first-personal givenness of whatever is subjectively given [2]. Experiential presence. But it's only a conceptual difference, not a real nomological/metaphysical one. There's just qualia. There cannot be qualia without an experiencer, an experiencing that is happening. We wouldn't even call that "qualia". Similarly, there cannot be just this abstract quality of first-personal givenness, mere subjectivity without contents. We wouldn't call that an experience.

So in Advaitic terms: consciousness = subjectivity = Sakshi (just a laconic term) [3] = experiential presence = immediacy of experience = mineness = for-me-ness = the first-personal givenness of experience = the real metaphysical "I". So contrary to popular nowadays philosophers of mind, quale is not consciousness. Qualia consist of 1) consciousness and 2) contents of consciousness. And these two are inseparable, I make only a difference in words to explain what it is, on the level of concepts. In nature there are only experiences going on.

Advaita says that you are that which experiences. Whatever you experience — that you are not. This is a useful phrase to remember. A distinction. You observe happenings of your mind just as you observe your body and the outside world and everything else. (the mind is even sometimes called as "the subtle body" by Advaitins)

You are singular, only one. Experiences - many

You - never change, but experiences come and go

You are very simple and propertyless, but your experiences and feelings are complex and can change

There is no seer and the seen, there is only a process of "seeing", and you are that. Also from this follows that I am you and every conscious person, animal or being is the very same subjectivity, instantiated in different contexts (locations, times). This is also sometimes called Open Individualism theory of personal identity (term coined by Daniel Kolak) [4] [5] [6], or sometimes Universalism by Arnold Zuboff [7] [8], or as in writings of Edralis [9] [10].

There's also that concept of self-luminosity (svaprakasatva), that self-consciousness is just consciousness. Light reveals many other objects but simultaneously reveals itself. You don't need another source of light to see light. For advaitins, light is a metaphor for you, for consciousness. [11]

Also the mistaken identification of yourself, as consciousness, with your mind is called Adhyāsa (superimposition) [12]. There's a technique for grasping this concept intuitively called Drig Drishya Viveka, Swami Sarvapriyananda often talks about it [13].

References:

1 // https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/onab023

2 // The I: A dimensional account https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11097-020-09697-9

3 // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakshi_(Witness)

4 // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_individualism

5 // http://digitalphysics.ru/pdf/Kaminskii_A_V/Kolak_I_Am_You.pd...

6 // https://opentheory.net/2018/09/a-new-theory-of-open-individu...

7 // http://nsl.com/misc/zuboff/zuboff1.htm

8 // https://philpapers.org/rec/ZUBOST

9 // https://edralis.wordpress.com/2020/07/24/mineness-and-person...

10 // https://edralis.wordpress.com/2020/07/24/i-could-have-been-s...

11 // Consciousness in Advaita Vedanta, p.36 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3678791-consciousness-in...

12 // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhyāsa

13 // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka

Further reading:

// Prakāśa. A few reflections on the Advaitic understanding of consciousness as presence and its relevance for philosophy of mind https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11097-020-09690-2

// Galen Strawson - What is the Relation Between an Experience, the Subject of the Experience, and the Content of the Experience? chapter 6 of https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6689029-real-materialism

// chapter 5 & chapter 10 of https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/33357091

Mario Montano's youtube videos:

// https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WKqO16mkGE

// https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF5dVjRgXeU

// https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Uz6anwm47g

// Complex Numbers - We, 22nd Century. Electronic opera (english version) https://youtu.be/zC1o9CjeefI?t=1025

// https://www.naturalism.org/philosophy/death/death-nothingnes...

// http://web.archive.org/web/20210121121148/https://vitrifyher...

⬐ ebb_earl_co

This is a great amount of references, thank you for providing the next week of research for me :)