In this paper, I discuss the relationship between bodily experiences in dreams and the sleeping, physical body. I question the popular view that dreaming is a naturally and frequently occurring real-world example of cranial envatment. This view states that dreams are functionally disembodied states: in a majority of dreams, phenomenal experience, including the phenomenology of embodied selfhood, unfolds completely independently of external and peripheral stimuli and outward movement. I advance an alternative and more empirically plausible view of dreams as (...) weakly phenomenally-functionally embodied states. The view predicts that bodily experiences in dreams can be placed on a continuum with bodily illusions in wakefulness. It also acknowledges that there is a high degree of variation across dreams and different sleep stages in the degree of causal coupling between dream imagery, sensory input, and outward motor activity. Furthermore, I use the example of movement sensations in dreams and their relation to outward muscular activity to develop a predictive processing account. I propose that movement sensations in dreams are associated with a basic and developmentally early kind of bodily self-sampling. This account, which affords a central role to active inference, can then be broadened to explain other aspects of self- and world-simulation in dreams. Dreams are world-simulations centered on the self, and important aspects of both self- and world-simulation in dreams are closely linked to bodily self-sampling, including muscular activity, illusory own-body perception, and vestibular orienting in sleep. This is consistent with cognitive accounts of dream generation, in which long-term beliefs and expectations, as well as waking concerns and memories play an important role. What I add to this picture is an emphasis on the real-body basis of dream imagery. This offers a novel perspective on the formation of dream imagery and suggests new lines of research. (shrink)

The paper proposes a minimal definition of dreaming in terms of immersive spatiotemporal hallucination (ISTH) occurring in sleep or during sleep–wake transitions and under the assumption of reportability. I take these conditions to be both necessary and sufficient for dreaming to arise. While empirical research results may, in the future, allow for an extension of the concept of dreaming beyond sleep and possibly even independently of reportability, ISTH is part of any possible extension of this definition and (...) thus is a constitutive condition of dreaming. I also argue that the proposed ISTH model of dreaming, in conjunction with considerations on the epistemic relationship between dreaming and dream reports, raises important questions about the extent to which dreams typically involve a detailed body representation—an assumption that plays an important role in philosophical work on dreaming. As a commonly accepted definition of dreaming is lacking in current dream research, the ISTH model, which integrates conceptual analysis and epistemological considerations with results from empirical research, is an important contribution to this field. By linking dreaming to felt presence, full-body illusions, and autoscopic phenomena such as out-of-body experiences in wakefulness and in the hypnagogic state, the ISTH model of dreaming also helps integrate dream research, both theoretically and experimentally, with the study of other altered states of consciousness involving hallucinations. It makes straightforward and investigable predictions by claiming that all of these experiences have amodal spatiotemporal hallucinations as their common denominator. Finally, it is theoretically relevant for the philosophical discussion on minimal phenomenal selfhood. (shrink)

Are subjects ever morally responsible for their dreams? In this paper I argue that if, as some theories of dreams entail, dreaming subjects sometimes express agency while they dream, then they are sometimes morally responsible for what they do and are potentially worthy of praise and blame while they dream and after they have awoken. I end by noting the practical and theoretical implications of my argument.

In this paper I aim to elucidate Wittgenstein’s claim that the so-called dream argument is senseless. Unlike other interpreters, who understand the sentence “I am dreaming” as contradictory or self-defeating, I intend to elucidate in what sense one should understand it as senseless or, more precisely, as nonsensical. In this sense, I propose to understand the above-mentioned claim in light of Wittgenstein’s criticism of skepticism from the _Tractatus logico-philosophicus_ to his last writings. I intend to show that the words (...) “I am dreaming” are nonsensical in the same sense as the alleged proposition “There are physical objects” or the expression of doubt about the existence of external objects. (shrink)

The main concepts of the free energy (FE) neuroscience developed by Karl Friston and colleagues parallel those of Freud's Project for a Scientific Psychology. In Hobson et al. ( 2014 ) these include an innate virtual reality generator that produces the fictive prior beliefs that Freud described as the primary process. This enables Friston's account to encompass a unified treatment—a complexity theory—of the role of virtual reality in both dreaming and mental disorder. In both accounts the brain operates to (...) minimize FE aroused by sensory impingements—including interoceptive impingements that report compliance with biological imperatives—and constructs a representation/model of the causes of impingement that enables this minimization. In Friston's account (variational) FE equals complexity minus accuracy, and is minimized by increasing accuracy and decreasing complexity. Roughly the brain (or model) increases accuracy together with complexity in waking. This is mediated by consciousness-creating active inference—by which it explains sensory impingements in terms of perceptual experiences of their causes. In sleep it reduces complexity by processes that include both synaptic pruning and consciousness/virtual reality/dreaming in REM. The consciousness-creating active inference that effects complexity-reduction in REM dreaming must operate on FE-arousing data distinct from sensory impingement. The most relevant source is remembered arousals of emotion, both recent and remote, as processed in SWS and REM on “active systems” accounts of memory consolidation/reconsolidation. Freud describes these remembered arousals as condensed in the dreamwork for use in the conscious contents of dreams, and similar condensation can be seen in symptoms. Complexity partly reflects emotional conflict and trauma. This indicates that dreams and symptoms are both produced to reduce complexity in the form of potentially adverse (traumatic or conflicting) arousals of amygdala-related emotions. Mental disorder is thus caused by computational complexity together with mechanisms like synaptic pruning that have evolved for complexity-reduction; and important features of disorder can be understood in these terms. Details of the consilience among Freudian, systems consolidation, and complexity-reduction accounts appear clearly in the analysis of a single fragment of a dream, indicating also how complexity reduction proceeds by a process resembling Bayesian model selection. (shrink)

The central feature of traditional Aboriginal religion which is reiterated throughout Australia, in spite of regional variations and the vastness of this continent is the Dreaming and its integral link between humans, land, and all that lives on the land. Variously referred to as Dreamtime, Eternal Dreamtime and, the Law, the Dreaming is the sacred knowledge, wisdom and moral truth permeating the entire beingness of Aboriginal life, derived collectively from Dreaming events performed by the creative ancestors. In (...) this paper I shall review interpretations of this thing called the Dreaming and pursue an alternative one. This alternative is that the Dreaming can be interpreted as a subliminal reality that Aborigines can tap into through various means. As a working paradigm I shall use the theoretical perspectives of Schutz and the mutual tuning‐in relationship, as well as Csikszentmihalyi s notion of "flow." Keywords: Aborigines, Australia, dreaming, consciousness. (shrink)

Based on the distinction drawn by James Conant between Cartesian skepticism and Kantian skepticism, I intend to show that Wittgenstein’s remarks on dreaming should not be understood as a direct attack on the former, as commonly held, but as an indirect attack on it, for Wittgenstein approaches Descartes’ dreaming hypothesis by changing the very problematic at stake. Wittgenstein’s attack on skepticism takes one step back from a question about how to distinguish between dreaming that one is experiencing (...) something and actually experiencing it, for this attack focuses on the linguistic conditions of the possibility of something that the Cartesian problematic takes for granted, that is, the very possibility of saying “I am dreaming.” I also intend to show that Wittgenstein’s remarks on dreaming should be read in light of his claim that skepticism is nonsensical put forward in the Tractatus logico-philosophicus as well in his last writings. More specifically, I intend to show that the words “I am dreaming” are nonsensical in the same sense as the alleged proposition “There are physical objects” and the expression of doubt about the existence of physical objects or the external world. (shrink)

This paper presents the place of dreaming in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. It elicits the view of dreaming developed in three seminal texts:Phenomenology of Perception, the passivity fragment from the Themes from the Lectures at the College de France, and The Visible and the Invisible. In each of these texts, Merleau-Ponty releases dreaming from the secondary status conventionally granted to it in relation to waking perception, and maintains, instead, the integrity of the phenomenon as an authentic mode of experience. (...) At the same time, he insists upon the interrelatedness of dreaming and waking by positing for both the lived body as a common ground that precludes dichotomization. Merleau-Ponty’s elevation of the imaginary in general, and dreaming in particular, is especially relevant to contemporary psychology in its quest for theoretical foundations that will accommodate the full spectrum of psychological phenomena. (shrink)

Farrell, Marie T Review of: Jesus and the dreaming: Discovering an Australian spirituality through Aboriginal-Christian dialogue, by Frank Fletcher, MSC, ed. Fabian Byers, pp. 344, paperback $24.95.

After resolving the dreaming doubt at the end of the Sixth Meditation, Descartes concedes to Hobbes that one could apply the criterion for waking experience in a dream and thus be deceived, but he no longer considers this possibility to have skeptical force. I argue that this is a legitimate response by Descartes since 1) the dreaming doubt in the Sixth Meditation is no longer a global skeptical hypothesis as it is in the First, and 2) the level (...) of certainty that sensory experience must meet in the Sixth Meditation is lower than it must meet in the First. (shrink)

Ernest Sosa has proposed two different ways to respond to dreaming skepticism. In this paper I argue that Sosa's first response —which centers on holding that we have no beliefs in dreams— does not appear to be successful against either the hyperbolic or the realistic dreaming skeptic. I also argue that his second attempt to respond to the dreaming skeptic by arguing that perceptual knowledge indeed counts as what he calls "animal knowledge", may succeed but requires us (...) to perform what appears to be some radical surgery on the concept of knowledge; a radical surgery that, as I show, is probably unnecessary to avoid dreaming skepticism. Finally, I sketch some independent considerations why I think that the hyperbolic skeptic's dreaming argument is not acceptable. Ernesto Sosa propone dos maneras de responder al escéptico del sueño. En este ensayo argumento que su primera propuesta, según la cual no tenemos creencias en los sueños, no parece ser una buena respuesta en contra de ninguno de los escepticismos del sueño, de los cuales distingo dos tipos: el hiperbólico y el realista. También argumento que su segunda propuesta para responder al escéptico del sueño, en la que argumenta que el conocimiento perceptual sí cuenta como conocimiento animal, quizá resulte exitosa; sin embargo, ésta requiere llevar a cabo una cirugía radical en el concepto de conocimiento; una cirugía que, como muestro, es probablemente innecesaria para evitar el escepticismo del sueño. Finalmente bosquejo algunas razones independientes por las cuales considero que el argumento del escéptico hiperbólico del sueño no es aceptable. (shrink)

In 1900 the publication of the book, Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud raised very seminal and fascinating questions in the disciplines of psychology and psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud’s intellectual contributions and the discovery of unconscious had given a big jolt to all the classical approaches, shook the disciplinary foundations of psychology and placed ‘psychoanalysis’ as an alternative model for understanding mental world. Psychologists across the world showed keen interest in uncovering the mysteries of dreams and dreaming. But the institutional (...) dominance of Behaviorism and its standards of research didn’t allow them to cross the boundaries of conventional psychology. Behavioristic psychologists raised important questions on the methodology adopted by Sigmund Freud and leveled criticism against his unverifiable explanations. Behaviorism branded his theories as absolute subjectivist and unscientific. Hence, most of the psychologists were silent and systematically marginalized dream research and banished the discourses on dreams in the institutions of higher learning and research. The nineteenth century saw the emergence of the first dream studies, which were primarily concerned with dream phenomenology. Nevertheless, the pace of methodical dream research was held considerably by the emergence of distinct psychological movements at the start of the 20th century: behaviorism, classical psychoanalysis, and gestalt psychology, placed greater stress on the significance and meaning of dreams, as well as what they symbolized in the lives of individuals. Also a few of them questioned the reality of dreams and other similar mental experiences. Consequently, every movement undermined the greater sample sizes and more methodical research on dreams in its own unique manner. While presenting the views of Sigmund Freud, John Watson, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Fritz Perls this paper makes an attempt to show how classical schools of psychology slowed down the flow of systematic dream studies with large samples. (shrink)

Dream is a state of consciousness characterized by internally-generated sensory, cognitive and emotional experiences occurring during sleep. Dream reports tend to be particularly abundant, with complex, emotional, and perceptually vivid experiences after awakenings from rapid eye movement sleep. This is why our current knowledge of the cerebral correlates of dreaming, mainly derives from studies of REM sleep. Neuroimaging results show that REM sleep is characterized by a specific pattern of regional brain activity. We demonstrate that this heterogeneous distribution of (...) brain activity during sleep explains many typical features in dreams. Reciprocally, specific dream characteristics suggest the activation of selective brain regions during sleep. Such an integration of neuroimaging data of human sleep, mental imagery, and the content of dreams is critical for current models of dreaming; it also provides neurobiological support for an implication of sleep and dreaming in some important functions such as emotional regulation. (shrink)

This paper compares the free energy neuroscience now advocated by Karl Friston and his colleagues with that hypothesised by Freud, arguing that Freud's notions of conflict and trauma can be understood in terms of computational complexity. It relates Hobson and Friston's work on dreaming and the reduction of complexity to contemporary accounts of dreaming and the consolidation of memory, and advances the hypothesis that mental disorder can be understood in terms of computational complexity and the mechanisms, including synaptic (...) pruning, that have evolved to reduce it. (shrink)

In this article, I offer a detailed examination of Margaret Macdonald's response to the Cartesian sceptical argument from dreaming. I show that Macdonald's views were not well understood by her contemporaries, and I suggest that this misunderstanding has led to her omission from subsequent discussions of this subject. I end with a brief demonstration of the fact that Macdonald's central claims have re-emerged in contemporary epistemology.

In a recent, and influential, article, Crispin Wright maintains that a familiar form of scepticismwhich finds its core expression in Descartes’ dreaming argumentcan be defused (or, to use Wright’s own parlance, “imploded”), by showing how it employs self-defeating reasoning. I offer two fundamental reasons for rejecting Wright’s ‘implosion’ of scepticism. On the one hand, I argue that, even by Wright’s own lights, it is unclear whether there is a sceptical argument to implode in the first place. On the other, (...) I claim that even on the supposition that Wright has indeed succeeded in setting-up such an argument, he nevertheless fails to follow-through with an adequate response. A diagnosis of the failure of Wright’s approach is then given in the context of the wider sceptical debate. (shrink)

Australian Aboriginal cosmology is centered on The Dreaming, which has an eternal nature. It has been referred to as "everywhen" to articulate its timelessness. Starting with the assumption that "waking" reality is only one type of experienced reality, we investigate the concept of timelessness as it pertains to the Aboriginal worldview. We begin by questioning whether in fact "Dreaming" is an appropriate translation of a complex Aboriginal concept, then discuss whether there is any relationship between dreaming and (...) The Dreaming. We then discuss Aboriginal ceremonial performance, during which actors are said to become Dreaming Ancestors, using as a frame of reference the "flow" experience explicated by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi together with Alfred Schutz's "mutual tuning-in relationship." © 2009 by the Joint Publication Board of Zygon. (shrink)

Recently, there has been an increased interest in employing model-based definitions of actual causation in legal inquiry. The formal precision of such approaches promises to be an improvement over more traditional approaches. Yet model-based approaches are viable only if suitable models of legal cases can be provided, and providing such models is sometimes difficult. I argue that causal-model-based definitions benefit legal inquiry in an indirect way. They make explicit the causal assumptions that need to be made plausible to defend a (...) particular claim of actual causation. My argument concerns the analysis of legal cases involving a combination of double prevention and causal redundancy. I show that discussions among legal theorists about such cases sometimes suffer from ambiguous assumptions about the causal structure. My account illustrates that causal models can act as a heuristic tool for clarifying such assumptions, and that causal models provide a framework for more accurate analyses of legal cases involving complex causal structure. (shrink)

Upshot: This interdisciplinary work draws on phenomenology, Indian philosophy, Tibetan Buddhism, cognitive neurosciences and a variety of personal and literary examples of conscious phenomena. Thompson proposes a view of consciousness and self as dynamic embodied processes, co-dependent with the world. According to this view, dreaming is a process of spontaneous imagination and not a delusional hallucination. This work aims at laying the ground for systematic neurophenomenological investigation of first-person experience.

Recent studies suggest that lucid dreaming might be associated with increased brain activity over frontal regions during rapid eye movement sleep. By applying transcranial direct current stimulation , we aimed to manipulate the activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during REM sleep to increase dream lucidity. Nineteen participants spent three consecutive nights in a sleep laboratory. On the second and third nights they randomly received either 1 mA tDCS for 10 min or sham stimulation during each REM period starting (...) with the second one. According to the participants’ self-ratings, tDCS over the DLPFC during REM sleep increased lucidity in dreams. The effects, however, were not strong and found only in frequent lucid dreamers. While this indicates some preliminary support for the involvement of the DLPFC in lucid dreaming, further research, controlling for indirect effects of stimulation and including other brain regions, is needed. (shrink)

In the final years of his life, the Belgian phenomenologist Marc Richir started to question if philosophical writing would become pointless when artists, great poets for example, have already achieved so well what philosophers have always aspired to achieve. There is no doubt that Richir considers himself in alliance with artists, since he basically believes that “phenomenology is trying to say the same thing as poets or musicians, or even possibly painters, but with philosophical language”. He seems thereby to imply (...) that phenomenology is destined to become self-aware as a sort of art. There is no surprise in this regard if we notice how frequently, throughout his entire career of philosophical production, he employs the Kantian term of the sublime to express what constitutes the phenomenon as nothing but phenomenon. This article goes through his phenomenological interpretation of Kantian aesthetics, his elaboration of the affinity between phenomenology and art, and then his genealogical conception of art, in order to introduce an original thought on what he calls “the moment of the sublime”. (shrink)

Recourse to auxiliary disciplines has greatly contributed to the ways in which biblical scholars seek to elucidate various dimensions of meaning in textual constructions of dreams and dreaming in the Old Testament. The original contribution this article hopes to make to the ongoing research on associated oneirocritic topoi is to propose the so-called philosophy of dreaming as a potential dialogue partner to supplement already available perspectives within the multidisciplinary discussion. At present, there is no descriptive philosophical approach exclusively (...) devoted to the identification and clarification of the folk-philosophical assumptions implicit in oneirocritic materials as conditions of their possibility. By way of comparative-philosophical commentary, the article features a brief introduction to the related research within Old Testament studies, an overview of the history and problems of the auxiliary subject, and an illustration of how the new approach might look when applied to texts involving ‘oneirophany’ (Gn 15:1–21, 20:3–6, 28:11–17 and 1 Ki 3:5–15). The study concludes with a few remarks on the limits of the proposal and suggestions for more extensive and in-depth future research in related and alternative areas. (shrink)

The threat simulation theory of dreaming states that dream consciousness is essentially an ancient biological defence mechanism, evolutionarily selected for its capacity to repeatedly simulate threatening events. Threat simulation during dreaming rehearses the cognitive mechanisms required for efficient threat perception and threat avoidance, leading to increased probability of reproductive success during human evolution. One hypothesis drawn from TST is that real threatening events encountered by the individual during wakefulness should lead to an increased activation of the system, a (...) threat simulation response, and therefore, to an increased frequency and severity of threatening events in dreams. Consequently, children who live in an environment in which their physical and psychological well-being is constantly threatened should have a highly activated dream production and threat simulation system, whereas children living in a safe environment that is relatively free of such threat cues should have a weakly activated system. We tested this hypothesis by analysing the content of dream reports from severely traumatized and less traumatized Kurdish children and ordinary, non-traumatized Finnish children. Our results give support for most of the predictions drawn from TST. The severely traumatized children reported a significantly greater number of dreams and their dreams included a higher number of threatening dream events. The dream threats of traumatized children were also more severe in nature than the threats of less traumatized or non-traumatized children. (shrink)