We are conscious but do not have a robust sense of self. It is only with the sudden experience of something extremely unexpected and strange that a phenomenal self model is thrust into the picture, and we lucid dream.

When we dream we typically have a duller sense of pleasure and pain. In fact there are cases in which fully-conscious people experience extreme pain but do not find it to be a bad thing.

A very good paper discussing the phenomenology of dreams from an embodied and cognitive science perspective is Andy Clark's The Twisted Matrix: Dream, Simulation or Hybrid? (See download link at upper left of page)

Dreams are very fascinating. Surreal films created by a lump of meat.

Neuroscientists have updated Libet's experiments. A study by scientists at Charite-Universitatsmedizin Berlin 1/4/16 studied the nature of cerebral process during conscious decision making.

Libet demonstrated that conscious decisions were initiated by unconscious brain processes, and that "a wave of brain activity referred to as a 'readiness potential' could be recorded even before the subject had made a conscious decision"

This lead to the question of how a brain process could possibly know in advance what decision a person is going to make at a time when they are not yet aware of it themselves, which has been regarded as evidence of 'determinism'.

The Berlin crew tested to determine if these early brain waves meant that further decision-making is automatic and not under conscious control or if a person can cancel the decision. They set up a 'duel' with a specially trained compute that could read the subject EEG data, which enabled it to indicate that the player was about to move.

If subjects were able to evade being predicted it would be evidence that control over actions "...are not at the mercy of unconscious and early brain waves". The study found that subjects were able to actively intervene and interrupt a movement.

Regarding dreaming and specifically lucid dreaming, my understanding it that neuroscientists think dreaming is a form of meta-cognition, similar in proximity to areas of the brain they can show active during self-awareness. They also think that people who have lucid dreams also have larger anterior prefrontal cortexs.

Dreams seem to be the way we organize what we experience, a memory function. Freud remarked on how traumatic events are ' relived' in our dreams and he suspected that it is our attempt to change what happened.

Is there something it is like to have a dream? Of course. So we are conscious at least in that sense.

I've had a look at the recent study and Professor John-Dylan Haynes who conducted it says it does not prove free will.

"Our conscious decisions are not slaves to unconscious brain processes," Haynes said.

"In other words, we can stop the fall of the dominoes. But does this ability translate to free will? Haynes says no."

https://www.sott.net/article/310267-Free-will-and-the-point-of-no-return


Im interested to know when do we become responsible for our actions. Say a sleep walker goes to the kitchen turns on the gas which blows the house up killing everyone, is he responsible for that?

If someone having a lucid dream strangles their partner to death who is sleeping next to them are they responsible for that? if they had some control over the dream then could they have controlled that?

When im tired i tend to make poorer decisions, I would argue because I am less conscious, so am I less responsible for my actions when I am tired?

Im interested to know when do we become responsible for our actions. — NoWill

When you get caught, for starters.

I can't say that I have 'lucid dreams', or maybe I have but don't recognize the experience as such.

It seems to me that decisions "emerge" rather than are made. For instance, a poker player deciding to take another card from the dealer probably didn't consciously make a series of calculations about chance. However the decision was made to "hold", most--or all of it--was made unconsciously. Almost all mental processes are not conscious. I have no idea how the brain creates conscious experience, but it seems like the small pool of awareness is fed by a lot of underground springs.

I am aware of a recurrent dream (not very frequent) involving 3 elements: one is a complicated system of subways and elevated trains; a second concerns a river waterfront of dams, railroad tracks, and electric power lines, and the third involves some sort of dilapidated urban low-rise market area. I can map some of this against the city I live in, but mostly not. Of course there are emotions connected with these 3 urban elements -- anxiety about find my way to some destination, for instance, or people who skitter in and out of scenes.

I don't know why the brain generates these 3 situations. I can't tell whether it is organizing information, revealing emotions that my conscious mind can't deal with, or indulging the medulla oblongata's obsession with urban infrastructure. As dreams go, they are interesting, so I'm grateful for that.

Maybe dreams are an unintended peek behind the curtain of unconsciousness, revealing the frightening way the brain works all the time--frightening because it seems so utterly irrational. I sometimes wonder what "all of reality" would look like if we saw the world, ourselves and all our experiences, without the limitations of our several senses and maybe necessary restricted consciousness. Maybe "raw reality" is as irrational and chaotic as our subconsciousnesses.

I'll only be answering your first question since Libet's experiments are unknown to me.

The answer to the question depends a lot on what you mean by "being conscious".

If this merely means the ability to acknowledge the mental states you are experiencing,in the sense,for an example, that you have the ability to acknowledge the mental state created within you when you see the colour red,then the answer is yes.

During the interval of time within which you see the dream,you are aware of the mental states created in your brain by the events of the dream and hence you are conscious during the dream.

Im interested to know when do we become responsible for our actions. Say a sleep walker goes to the kitchen turns on the gas which blows the house up killing everyone, is he responsible for that?

Take a look at:
https://priceonomics.com/what-happens-if-you-commit-a-murder-while/

It looks at legal precedents which suggest that if you can prove you were asleep and you can show a history of sleepwalking or engaging in activities while asleep, you cannot be held responsible for you actions....lucid dreaming or not (my understanding is that most lucid dreamers have only limited if any control over their dreams).

Jeff Welty, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, tells us, adding that the concept began to gain traction in courtrooms in the 1980s. He continues:

“Sleepwalking qualifies as automatism from a medical-legal viewpoint, as it meets both criteria: it is unconscious and involuntary. In general, a person can’t be convicted of a crime if he or she acted involuntarily; If a jury concluded that a defendant was unconscious when he or she killed another person, the jury could acquit the defendant on the basis of automatism.”

I've had a look at the recent study and Professor John-Dylan Haynes who conducted it says it does not prove free will.

"Our conscious decisions are not slaves to unconscious brain processes," Haynes said.

"In other words, we can stop the fall of the dominoes. But does this ability translate to free will? Haynes says no."

I specifically avoided mentioning 'free will' in my post because I think to talk about man's viability as an autonomous agent is categorically different from talking about man's physical determination or freedom. They are two distinct but related discourses. Related in that the physical can effect the mental and the mental the physical , distinct in that neither can sufficiently explain the other.

But I would say there are varying degrees of consciousness.

When I wake up in the morning i more likely to make poor decisions, mistake, forget things, because I am still waking up. What if Make a mistake like leaving the gas on which causes an explosion that kills everyone in the building? am I as responsible as when I am fully awake and conscious.