Art by smbc-comics
Consciousness is often said to disappear in deep, dreamless sleep. We argue that this assumption is oversimplified. Unless dreamless sleep is defined as unconscious from the outset there are good empirical and theoretical reasons for saying that a range of different types of sleep experience, some of which are distinct from dreaming, can occur in all stages of sleep.
Pubmed Articles
Does Consciousness Disappear in Dreamless Sleep?
Sciencealert Article We Were Wrong About Consciousness Disappearing in Dreamless Sleep, Say Scientists
It's not rational. Evolution has hardwired us and every other organism that has the necessary neural architecture to fear death and seek to avoid it. A species that didn't have an instinctive and heritable aversion to death would not last very long.
Describe your "aversion" to death any way you want to, if in the end it results in something that very much looks like fear, I think you're making a distinction without a difference.
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