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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

This paper advances reasons why lucid dreaming is considered problematic to the psychoanalytic venture. It is shown that the conscious thought mechanism of lucid dreaming is obstructive and in opposition to the repressed and therefore conflictual within the unconscious parameters. A negative value is attached to the mechanism of lucid dreaming which is presented as an ill-advised endeavor that undermines meaning through its promotion of conscious interference and ego inhibition of dream symbolism. Viewed as a deterrent to (...) self-knowledge and the interpretative process of working through, lucid dreaming does not advance an authentic inner presentation and is therefore of no interest to the betterment of the psyche. At the core of the argument is the significance of the willful autonomy of an ego-conscious presence on the continuance of the dream schematic. (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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

Nearly all Disney movies represent to people mere possibilities. One can conceive of scenarios with genies, wooden puppets coming to life, flying elephants, and mermaids. And there certainly seems to be no special problem in conceiving of a scenario where all the author's experiences are a mere dream induced by a Maleficent‐like evil genius. The problem in the present context is that the possibility of a dream‐inducing Maleficent‐like evil genius guarantees that how things appear would be no different, whether she (...) is dreaming or not. But maybe there is a difference: does it not appear to her that there is a difference between dreaming and wakefulness? The very fact that she is aware of such a distinction at all suggests the distinction is real. People prefer a real life over an experientially identical dream life, or even a more pleasurable dream life, because there is more to life than just experience. (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 this paper, I argue that dreaming arguments are no cause for alarm.

The following review summarizes and examines Mark Solms's article Dreaming and REM Sleep are controlled by different brain mechanisms, which argues why the understanding of REM sleep as the physiological equivalent of dreaming needs to be re-analyzed. An analysis of Solms's article demonstrates that he makes a convincing argument against the paradigmatic activation-synthesis model proposed by Hobson and McCarley and provides provocative evidence to support his claim that REM and dreaming are dissociable states. In addition, to situate (...) Solms's findings in concurrent research, other studies are mentioned that are further elucidated by his argument. [Solms]. (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)

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.

The central question facing sleep and dream science today seems to be: What is the physiological basis of the subset of NREM dreams that are qualitatively indistinguishable from REM dreams (“apex dreams”)? Two competing answers have emerged: (1) all apex dreams are generated by REM sleep control mechanisms, albeit sometimes covertly; and (2) all such dreams are generated by forebrain mechanisms, independently of classical pontine sleep-cycle control mechanisms. The principal objection to the first answer is that it lacks evidential support. (...) The principal objection to the second answer (which is articulated in my target article) is that it takes inadequate account of interactions that surely exist between the putative forebrain mechanisms and the well established brainstem mechanisms of conscious state control. My main response to this objection (elaborated below) is that it conflates nonspecific brainstem modulation – which supports consciousness in general – with a specific pontine mechanism that is supposed to generate apex dreaming in particular. The latter mechanism is in fact neither necessary nor sufficient for apex dreaming. The putative forebrain mechanisms, by contrast, are necessary for apex dreaming (although they are nor sufficient, in the limited sense that all conscious states of the forebrain are modulated by the brainstem). (shrink)

The complexity and mysteriousness of mental processes during sleep rule out thinking only in term of generators. How could we know exactly what mental sleep experience (MSE) is produced and when? To refer to REM versus NREM as separate time windows for MSE seems insufficient. We propose that in each cycle NREM and REM interact to allow mentation to reach a certain degree of complexity and consolidation in memory. Each successive cycle within a sleep episode should contribute to these processes (...) with a different weight according to the time of night and distance from sleep onset. This view would avoid assuming too great a separation between REM and NREM functions and attributing psychological functions only to a single state. [Nielsen]. (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)