The Disappearance and Emergence of Consciousness

Abstract

This paper examines the nature of subjective consciousness through three empirical entry points: the subjective blankness of the pre-natal state, the temporary cessation of consciousness in dreamless sleep, and the extreme case of language deprivation in Genie Wiley. It first reconstructs the Lucretian symmetry argument, contending that the fear of death is rooted in the instinctive attachment of the self-perspective to its own persistence rather than in a rational cognition of “nothingness.” Second, it presents dreamless sleep as an “everyday experiment in death,” demonstrating that the interruption and resumption of consciousness constitute an introspectively accessible model for understanding the cessation of consciousness. Third, through an analysis of the boundary between dream and reality, it reveals consciousness as the builder of worlds, proposing the “irreversibility of consequences” as the practical criterion for distinguishing the two. Finally, drawing on the Genie case, it distinguishes phenomenal consciousness from higher-order reflective consciousness, arguing that structured symbolic systems—rather than spoken language per se—play a decisive role in the development of higher- order consciousness, and that consciousness is fundamentally relational and narrative in nature. This paper contends that understanding the disappearance of consciousness is ultimately for the sake of answering, before consciousness terminates, the question of who “I” am. Keywords: consciousness; death; dreamless sleep; hard problem; Genie case; phenomenal consciousness; higher-order reflective consciousness