Wakefulness vs awareness — the diagnostic crisis

23:19are, you know, PETA adjacent, etc. The the the ethical concerns about testing directly on humans are so prevalent >> Mhm. that it's perceived as a lower ethically bad option. >> Yeah. Um and for an outcome that's going to save millions of lives at some point in the future. >> Yeah, but here like It doesn't >> The ethics like is even more problematic because well, what you're not going to get anything out of it, right? >> And so you're just Yeah. Yeah. You're just like wasting animals at that point, right? And and that's not something that we want to do in science research. So, that's one bottleneck. Okay. Which is just animal models are not a thing. Mhm. The second bottleneck is the diagnostic

24:00crisis. Okay. That this is in general with consciousness in medicine, okay? Consciousness has two fundamental components. There's wakefulness, which is like arousal, like when you're awake. And then there's also awareness. That's the qualitative experience of like me being me and seeing you and everyone else, right? This is some qualitative subjective experience that only I have about what it's like to be me, right? So, disorders of consciousness that comes from physical trauma and oxygen deprivation, there's several different types. So, in a coma, you have neither arousal nor awareness, right? Because you can't be awoken. Yes. There's no sleep-wake cycle. >> Yes. And they fail to respond to stimuli. The lights are off.

24:41>> Yeah, lights are off and maybe nobody's home okay? >> Vegetative state means it's also called unresponsive wakefulness syndrome. You have wakefulness Mhm. and you have a sleep-wake cycle, but perhaps you have no awareness. So, the lights are on, but maybe nobody's home. >> Okay. But now it gets kind of weird. Like, what if they are aware Yeah. but they just can't have any agency over their motor controls. >> Mhm. Right? How can you tell? So, someone's home but they can't answer the door when you ring the doorbell. Exactly. Yeah, the lights are on. Lights are on. And someone is home. Yeah. You ring the doorbell but