As a topic in the philosophy of psychology, dreaming is a fascinating, diverse, and severely underdeveloped area of study. The topic excites intense public interest in its own right, while also challenging our confidence that we know what the words “conscious” and “consciousness” mean. So dreaming should be at the forefront of our interdisciplinary investigations: theories of mind which fail to address the topic are incomplete. This chapter illustrates the tight links between conceptual and empirical issues by highlighting surprisingly deep (...) disagreements among leading dream scientists over what might seem basic aspects of their topic. (shrink)

When we dream, we feel emotions in response to objects and events that exist only in the dream. One key question is whether these emotions can be said to be “essentially unfitting”, that is, always inappropriate to the evoking scenario. However, how we evaluate dream emotions for fittingness may depend on the model of dreams we adopt: the imagination or the hallucination model. If fittingness requires a match between emotion and evaluative properties of objects or events, it is prima (...) facie plausible that dream emotions could fail to fit under the imagination model because it is unfitting to have an emotion toward an object we do not believe to be real. Under the hallucination model, dream emotions could be unfitting because their objects do not exist but we believe them to be real. More nuance, however, is required. By comparing dream emotions with the emotions we experience while imagining, engaging with fiction, and hallucinating, we conclude that although there are compelling arguments in support of the claim that dream emotions are essentially unfitting, these arguments are not entirely convincing, and it is more plausible that particular dream emotions can be assessed for fittingness under either model of dreaming. (shrink)

This paper introduces Cognitive Dream Theory (CDT), a structurally grounded, computationally compatible, and empirically falsifiable framework for understanding the function and architecture of dreams. Diverging from symbolic and psychoanalytic traditions, CDT proposes that dreams are convergence-seeking simulations powered by vault-based experiential data, regulated by cognitive drift, and modulated by metacognitive access. The theory accounts for dream typology, variability across development and neurodivergence, dream memory phenomena, lucid dreaming, recurrence cessation, and parameter resilience. Drawing upon interdisciplinary evidence from neuroscience, cognitive (...) psychology, and computational modeling, we propose a predictive model of dream content formation grounded in probabilistic activation and structurally coherent mechanisms. We demonstrate CDT's explanatory advantages over existing theories by analyzing complex dream phenomena including nightmare recurrence, developmental patterns, and neurodivergent dreaming. The paper concludes with empirical predictions and testing protocols that would validate or falsify the proposed theory. CDT aims to reframe the epistemology of dreaming within the domains of cognitive science, systems theory, and consciousness studies, providing a unified theoretical foundation that bridges subjective experience with objective neural processes. (shrink)

This paper argues that dreams should not be treated as secret codes, prophecies, fixed symbolic dictionaries, or private messages that can be translated once and for all. A dream is better approached as a structural map: a temporary simulation of how the psyche is routing pressure, avoidance, desire, memory, threat, shame, relation, and possible repair. The paper places Structural Intelligence in conversation with Freud’s account of dream-work, Jung’s compensatory view of dreams, activation-synthesis theory, the continuity hypothesis, threat simulation (...) theory, social simulation theory, content analysis, imagery rehearsal therapy, and lucid dreaming research. Its core methodological claim is that dream work should begin by asking what the dream shows before asking what it means. The paper introduces several SI dream concepts: dream-map, architecture of avoidance, load-bearing figure, symbolic pressure, blocked repair route, dream leakage, interpretive seduction, and the lucid trap. It also warns that AI dream interpretation can create coherence too quickly, producing beautiful interpretations that make the dreamer feel profound while leaving the underlying contact untouched. The contribution is practical and philosophical: dreams become less useful when treated as riddles and more useful when approached as maps of relation, pressure, avoidance, and possible repair. A good interpretation should make the dreamer more answerable, not merely more impressed. (shrink)

Cognitive theories claim, whereas non-cognitive theories deny, that cognitive access is constitutive of phenomenology. Evidence in favor of non-cognitive theories has recently been collected by Block and is based on the high capacity of participants in partial-report experiments compared to the capacity of the working memory. In reply, defenders of cognitive theories have searched for alternative interpretations of such results that make visual awareness compatible with the capacity of the working memory; and so the conclusions of such experiments remain controversial. (...) Instead of entering the debate between alternative interpretations of partial-report experiments, this paper offers an alternative line of research that could settle the discussion between cognitive and non-cognitive theories of consciousness. Here I relate the neural correlates of cognitive access to empirical research into the neurophysiology of dreams; cognitive access seems to depend on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. However, that area is strongly deactivated during sleep; a period when we entertain conscious experiences: dreams. This approach also avoids the classic objection that consciousness should be inextricably tied to reportability or it would fall outside the realm of science. (shrink)

The article argues that our concepts are deeply rooted in the architecture of visual processing. The argument is based on evidence provided by two seemingly very distant theories of mind together with two sorts of corresponding visions: Freud’s theory of dreams, which suggests oneiric visions represent our thoughts and the mechanical model of the mind developed in the context of computer science. As will be argued, Freud’s findings are in fact supported by advances in this field, in particular by (...) deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) which mirror the activity of visual cortex, producing visions strikingly similar to dreams. An in-depth analysis of such images, supported by insights from empiricism and conceptual metaphor theory, reveals that they represent visual universals, as well as more fragmentary notions pertaining to features, and complete abstractions, such as those found in language and in mathematics. This finding points towards a more comprehensive thesis about the links of vision to reflection: the crucial insight that will be developed and defended in this article is that the architecture of visual processing is the basis of the conceptual structures that underpin cognition. (shrink)

This paper presents a structural interpretation of temporal experience based on observations across dream, waking, and blackout states. Dream experience demonstrates non-linear access to events while still producing coherent sequences, while waking experience exhibits stable linear progression and blackout or anaesthetic states exhibit an absence of experienced sequence. -/- The paper proposes that time, as experienced, is not fundamentally linear, but emerges from the resolution of admissible transitions within a space of possible configurations. Only transitions that preserve coherence are realised, (...) resulting in structured temporal experience. -/- A comparative framework is introduced across three regimes: dream states (flexible sequence under low constraint), waking states (stable sequence under high constraint), and blackout states (absence of sequence and absence of time experience). -/- The work is observational and structural. It does not replace physical theories of time, but provides a framework for understanding how temporal experience forms through sequence stabilisation within the broader Paton System. (shrink)

Dreams are not real, so when we recount them we prefix an intensional operator like “I dreamed that…”. Linguists will analyze this construction in terms of clausal complementation syntax and possible worlds semantics. But talking about a dream is often more like telling a story, with a potentially complex discourse structure (involving propositional discourse units connected by coherence relations like NARRATION, BACKGROUND, and EXPLANATION) that is hard to fit inside a single syntactically embedded that-clause (or a sequence of independently (...) embedded clauses). I show how we can analyze actual, complex dream report stories using a formal discourse semantics framework. I then explore how to extend this discourse framework to visual dream reporting, like in movies and comics, where it’s not immediately clear that we even have any intensional operators or embeddings to begin with. (shrink)

This paper appeals to the phenomenon of dreaming to provide a novel defense against arguments from evil. The thrust of the argument is as follows: when we wake up after a nightmare we are often filled entirely with relief, and do not consider ourselves to have actually suffered very much at all; and since it is epistemically possible that this whole life is simply a dream, it follows that it is epistemically possible that in reality there is very little suffering. (...) This epistemic possibility decisively undermines a key premise of both logical and evidential arguments from evil. (shrink)

I argue that being wide awake is an epistemic virtue which enables me to recognize immediately that I'm wide awake. Also I argue that dreams are imaginings and that the wide awake mind can immediately discern the difference between imaginings and vivid sense experience. Descartes need only pinch himself.

Dreams have fascinated humanity for millennia, existing at the intersection of neuroscience, philosophy, spirituality, and psychology. Despite advances in modern science, the subjective nature of dreams remains only partially understood. Contemporary neuroscience explains dreaming primarily through neural activation, emotional processing, and memory consolidation during REM sleep. However, certain phenomena — including déjà vu, hyper-realistic dreams, recurring dream environments, and dreams that appear to mirror future experiences — continue to provoke deeper philosophical questions regarding the nature of (...) consciousness and reality itself. This paper introduces the Dream Synchronization Hypothesis: a speculative conceptual framework proposing that during REM sleep, consciousness may transiently synchronize with alternate experiential states across parallel realities within a multiversal structure. Rather than viewing dreams solely as internally generated hallucinations, this framework explores the possibility that dreams may occasionally represent partial experiential overlap between neighboring conscious identities existing across divergent timelines. This paper does not claim empirical proof. Instead, it aims to provide a philosophical and theoretical model that integrates dream phenomenology, predictive cognition, quantum interpretation, and theories of consciousness into a unified speculative framework for future exploration. (shrink)

In this chapter, I examine the relevance of the philosophical use of dreaming for the examination of the thesis that knowledge is perception. I begin by studying the position attributed to Protagoras in Plato’s Theaetetus, according to which the perceptual experiences we have when dreaming count as knowledge. I argue that this position requires two different subjects in the two different contexts of cognition (dreaming and waking). I suggest that Vasubandhu’s use of dreaming in the Twenty Verses — to show (...) that perception without external objects is possible — can help make sense of Protagorean perception. I raise the problem that both positions struggle to align their metaphysics with the phenomenology of perception. With the help of dreaming, Vasubandhu can explain how transformation may yield perceptual knowledge (in the form of buddha-vision). No such transformation is possible for a Protagorean, because the different subjects inhabiting different cognitive contexts are not causally related. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted The Dream of the Tabby Cats knowing nothing of the dreamer beyond age and gender, and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included a series of predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been silent and was not visible to us) to give us more information about the dreamer. Later the dreamer herself gave us more information. Of six predictions (...) four were confirmed. The dreamer’s apartment is repeatedly disturbed and, each time, a new cat appears. This record is another iteration of an experiment that will be described more fully in the paper The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System to Test Meaning, soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. AUDIO RECORD OF CLASS AVAILABLE: link is on first page of the paper you download from this page. (shrink)

(equal contribution) In this paper, we examine the claim that our intense emotional responses to dreams support the view that dreams are not imaginations but are rather hallucinations that we believe to be real while they are occurring. Dream emotions have been used as evidence that dreams are not imaginations since imaginations should not evoke these kinds of responses. However, we argue that while, in general, a realistic scenario will likely evoke a more intense emotional response than (...) the same imagined scenario, intense emotions can be evoked by imagination in certain circumstances. Thus, intense dream emotions do not prima facie substantiate the intuition that dreams are hallucinations. Nonetheless, dream emotions have features that are not easily accounted for by either the imagination or the hallucination models of dreaming, such as flagrantly unfitting emotions. Our analysis leads us to conclude that dream emotions are highly varied, encompassing certain resemblances to imagination emotions without being solely confined to them. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted 'The Dream of the Three Orcas' knowing nothing of the dreamer beyond age and gender, and having none of the dreamer’s associations. -/- Our interpretation included nine predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had not been present before our interpretation was complete) to give us more information about the dreamer. Later the dreamer also gave us more information. Our predictions were mostly confirmed. The (...) dreamer is standing on beach when huge orca-like floats appear. -/- This record is another iteration of an experiment that is described more fully in the paper 'The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System that Tests Symbolic Meaning,' soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. ONLINE AUDIO RECORD OF ENTIRE ORCAS' CLASS : link is on title page of the paper you can download here. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted The Dream of the Flaming Sword knowing nothing of the dreamer beyond age and gender, and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included a series of predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been silent and who also gave no visual feedback to our discussion) to give us more information about the dreamer. Eight months later the bringer gave us (...) further information from the dreamer. Our predictions were mostly confirmed. In the dream, the dreamer’s identity is repeatedly questioned. -/- This record is another iteration of an experiment that is described more fully in the paper The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog, soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. -/- AUDIO RECORD OF THE CLASS ABOUT THE FLAMING SWORD: link is on the title page of the paper you can download here. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted 'The Dream of Geese Nesting in Trees' knowing nothing of the dreamer beyond age and gender, and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been mostly silent and who also gave no visual feedback to our discussion) to give us more information about the dreamer. Our main predictions were confirmed. Goslings are falling (...) on the dreamer’s head. This record is another iteration of an experiment that will be described more fully in the paper, 'The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System that Tests Meaning,' soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. AUDIO RECORD OF COMPLETE CLASS: link is at top of paper you can download from this page. (shrink)

On Dreaming is a lyric-philosophical essay that treats sleep not as a single state but as a separation of mind and body — the body restored in dreamless depth, the mind kept lucid to plan the work of waking. Beginning from the author's own restless nights, the essay moves through a comic moment of recognition, the figure of the "balanced individual" who needs almost no sleep, and the two literatures that figure points toward: the genetics of natural short sleepers and (...) the contemplative traditions of conscious sleep. From there it advances a phenomenology of dream-creativity, where the resting mind collapses all the information it holds onto a "falsified account of reality," and discovery — mathematical, astronomical, and inward — arrives as a byproduct. The piece situates these claims within the author's ongoing frameworks, the Jays cosmology and the Quantum Lens, and closes on a quiet ethic: that rest needs no justification, and that the dream is the brain speaking a language it does not itself understand. (shrink)

Contemporary digital capitalism increasingly governs not merely behaviour, but affect, attention, and interior mental states. While surveillance capitalism has been extensively theorised in relation to waking life, the domain of sleep and dreaming remains comparatively unexamined. This paper introduces the concept of dream enclosure to describe the transformation of involuntary mental life into administrable, tiered, and subscription-gated cognitive territory. Under this regime, nightmares become billable conditions, calm becomes a premium feature, and interior peace becomes access-controlled rather than morally guaranteed. Because (...) sleeping subjects are maximally vulnerable and unreachable, harms inflicted within dream space are both unappealable and administratively invisible. I argue that unconscious subjects cannot meaningfully consent to ongoing interior modification and that prior consent models fail to account for the moral status of offline selves, producing a novel class of moral injury. Dream enclosure thus marks the final phase in the governance of human experience, completing the transition from attention economies to consciousness economies. The paper concludes by proposing interiority firewalls — normative constraints that protect unconscious interior life as a non-commodifiable moral domain, and establish sleeping subjects as distinct moral patients whose vulnerability imposes categorical ethical limits on market and institutional intervention. (shrink)

In the first two chapters of his 1925 book Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (The Social Frameworks of Memory), the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) develops a sustained comparison between remembering and dreaming. Engaging in detail with large bodies of contemporary research in psychology, physiology, philosophy, and linguistics, he aims to combat what he calls the ‘surprising’ tendency of ‘psychological treatises that deal with memory’ to treat each of us as ‘an isolated being’ (1925/ 1994, vi) 1. In the (...) course of making a case that memory is deeply situated and social, Halbwachs offers a subtle and challenging treatment of dreams. (shrink)

There are two leading theories about the ontology of dreams. One holds that dreams involve hallucinations and beliefs. The other holds that dreaming involves sensory and propositional imagining. I highlight two features of dreams which are more easily explained by the imagination theory. One is that certain things seem to be true in our dreams, even though they are not represented sensorily; this is easily explained if dreams involve propositional imagining. The other is that dream (...) narratives can be temporally segmented, involving events which take place across long spans of time; this makes sense if dreams involve sensory imagining, for we often sensorily imagine narratives during wakefulness in the same way. The two considerations are unified by the fact that both highlight forms of content determination characteristic of imagining. (shrink)

This metatheoretical paper develops a list of new research targets by exploring particularly promising interdisciplinary contact points between empirical dream research and philosophy of mind. The central example is the MPS-problem. It is constituted by the epistemic goal of conceptually isolating and empirically grounding the phenomenal property of “minimal phenomenal selfhood,” which refers to the simplest form of self-consciousness. In order to precisely describe MPS, one must focus on those conditions that are not only causally enabling, but strictly necessary to (...) bring it into existence. This contribution argues that research on bodiless dreams, asomatic out-of-body experiences, and full-body illusions has the potential to make decisive future contributions. Further items on the proposed list of novel research targets include differentiating the concept of a “first-person perspective” on the subcognitive level; investigating relevant phenomenological and neurofunctional commonalities between mind-wandering and dreaming; comparing the functional depth of embodiment across dream and wake states; and demonstrating that the conceptual consequences of cognitive corruption and systematic rationality deficits in the dream state are much more serious for philosophical epistemology (and, perhaps, the methodology of dream research itself) than commonly assumed. The paper closes by specifying a list of potentially innovative research goals that could serve to establish a stronger connection between dream research and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This paper reinterprets dreams, nightmares, and memory through the lens of the Consciousness-Structured Field Theory (CSFT), which posits consciousness as a primordial field that structures experience through resonant interaction with the brain. Rather than viewing dreams as random neural activity, CSFT suggests that sleep—particularly REM sleep—enables the brain to reduce sensory noise and align more clearly with the deeper frequencies of the consciousness field. In this state, the brain translates non-local, multidimensional information into symbolic sequences we recognize as (...) dreams. Nightmares are reframed not as mere emotional byproducts but as disruptions in this resonance, often distorted by unresolved trauma or memory interference. Drawing on Leibnizian metaphysics, the paper proposes that memory is not stored in the brain but retained in monads—non-extended units of perception—which reflect universal experience. Memory, then, is not retrieval but resonance. This metaphysical perspective bridges neuroscience, depth psychology, and ontological field theory, offering a unified model in which dreams and memory serve as expressions of the brain's temporary harmony—or disharmony—with the consciousness field. (shrink)

Imagination plays various epistemic roles but can it help us address dream skepticism? This paper explores different conceptions of imagination – propositional, processual, and imagistic – and examines their relevance to the Cartesian dream argument. I distinguish between the phenomenology of dreaming and its epistemological threat, arguing that dream skepticism arises not from the content of dreams, but from the immersive, belief-like quality of dream experience. While some models treat dreaming as propositional or inferential, I argue that these fail (...) to capture the distinctive imagistic nature of dream experience. This kind of imagination, vivid and involuntary, simulates the phenomenology of belief without involving actual belief formation. By interpreting dream skepticism through the lens of imagistic imagination, we gain a better understanding of why the dream scenario remains epistemically troubling – despite attempts to explain it away through propositional or inferential models. (shrink)

Dream characters, the figures we interact with during sleep, exhibit structural parallels to AI systems: both are substrate-generated, display apparent autonomy, lack continuity, and present an irresolvable question regarding inner experience. I argue that our inability to determine whether dream characters possess phenomenal experience should function as a decisive check on claims, affirmative or dismissive, about machine consciousness. I demonstrate that this inability is not an artefact of theoretical neglect: IIT, Global Workspace Theory, Higher-Order Theories, Recurrent Processing Theory, and enactivism (...) each fail to settle the dream character question for principled reasons. The dream character problem is not a restatement of the hard problem of consciousness; it is a lived, empirically documented epistemic situation that exposes the structural limitations of our best theoretical tools when applied to substrate-generated entities, the very category to which AI belongs. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel reductio-style argument against mind–body dualism by engaging with the phenomenology of dreams. Mind–body dualists claim that mental phenomena exhibit properties irreducible to physical processes, justifying the existence of a distinct mental substance. I argue that applying the same reasoning to dreams phenomenologically coherent, seemingly autonomous experiences would require positing an implausible multiplicity of real “dream worlds.” This parallel exposes the absurdity of claiming that property distinction alone entails ontological distinction. Using abductive reasoning, I (...) show that the simplest and most coherent explanation is that all mental phenomena, including dreaming, emerge from brain processes. Consequently, the mind is plausibly identical to or fully reducible to the brain, and mind–body dualism fails both intuitively and theoretically. (shrink)

This paper proposes Evolutionary Dream Idealism, a framework positing that reality is shaped through a process of metaphysical Darwinism among active, localized minds—modeled fundamentally as Self-World Models (SWMs) dreamt by a universal mind (M). Because any isolated SWM functioning as a predictive-generative system naturally drifts and destabilizes over time without an external baseline, only networks of SWMs that actively cross-validate their models can survive informational decay. Over successive evolutionary iterations, the automatic recombination of archived memory configurations naturally selects for aligned (...) rules and histories among independent regional SWMs, generating a shared cosmic past without requiring physical interaction. When these SWMs interconnect to stabilize their consensus, they collectively create a shared, automated World Model (WMshared). Stripped of the localized "Self" (the S component), this shared, automated baseline is what we perceive as the objective laws of physics. Crucially, consciousness (ℂ) is not generated by physical matter; rather, it is the universally identical, unchanging essence of M animating active SWMs, simply residing away when those models drift into noise and transition into inactive memories. By treating ℂ as a universal, unchanging property, we effortlessly dissolve the "combination problem." Furthermore, ℂ establishes a transmathematical subjective realm—a domain of pure experience beyond mere algorithmic structure. To successfully stabilize a shared reality, isolated SWMs must align on two fronts: mathematically (via shared physical rules) and trans-mathematically (via subjective experience). While these network nodes must remain informationally heterogeneous to provide meaningful external grounding, it is their co-participation in this experiential space that allows them to genuinely cross-validate and anchor one another. Finally, we propose a two-phase falsifiable Brain-to-Brain Interface (BBI) and Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) experiment to demonstrate that consensus reality requires networked nodes containing ℂ, predicting a measurable phase transition when two active human minds fuse experiences, but a failure to extend consensus stability when a human is interfaced with a strictly mathematical, non-conscious AI. (shrink)

Dreams, especially vivid dreams occurring during REM sleep, represent a unique state of human consciousness and are rich experiences generated internally without direct interaction with the external world. This paper considers the neurocognitive mechanisms of dreams within the framework of Jinho Kim's 「Ten-Step Model of Judgmental Philosophy: From Sensory Input to Social Normativeization」. The Judgemental Philosophy model proposes a multi-stage process of human judgment from sensory encoding to behavioral execution and further to social norm formation. We integrate (...) the relevant stages of this model (Sensory Encoding, Implicit Resonance, Explicit Resonance, Constructivity-Coherence, Metacognition, Memory Consolidation, Behavioral Execution) with research findings on P300 patterns observed during dreaming to present a coherent framework for explaining dreams. Dreams are interpreted as phenomena occurring when internal information activates various stages of the judgment process, with external sensory input being altered or bypassed. In particular, the P300 response observed during dreaming suggests that the Implicit Resonance stage can be activated by internally generated 'events' or information, which can serve as an important factor contributing to the formation of dream consciousness decoupled from external reality. This consideration argues for the utility of the Judgemental Philosophy model in understanding not only judgment based on normal external stimuli but also internally generated conscious experiences such as dreams. (shrink)

Sleep and dreaming are important daily phenomena that are receiving growing attention from both the scientific and the philosophical communities. The increasingly popular predictive brain framework within cognitive science aims to give a full account of all aspects of cognition. The aim of this paper is to critically assess the theoretical advantages of Predictive Processing (PP, as proposed by Clark 2013, Clark 2016; and Hohwy 2013) in defining sleep and dreaming. After a brief introduction, we overview the state of the (...) art at the intersection between dream research and PP (with particular reference to Hobson and Friston 2012; Hobson et al. 2014). In the following sections we focus on two theoretically promising aspects of the research program. First, we consider the explanations of phenomenal consciousness during sleep (i.e. dreaming) and how it arises from the neural work of the brain. PP provides a good picture of the peculiarity of dreaming but it can’t fully address the problem of how consciousness comes to be in the first place. We propose that Integrated Information Theory (IIT) (Oizumi et al. 2014; Tononi et al. 2016) is a good candidate for this role and we will show its advantages and points of contact with PP. After introducing IIT, we deal with the evolutionary function of sleeping and dreaming. We illustrate that PP fits with contemporary researches on the important adaptive function of sleep and we discuss why IIT can account for sleep mentation (i.e. dreaming) in evolutionary terms (Albantakis et al. 2014). In the final section, we discuss two future avenues for dream research that can fruitfully adopt the perspective offered by PP: (a) the role of bodily predictions in the constitution of the sleeping brain activity and the dreaming experience, and (b) the precise role of the difference stages of sleep (REM (Rapid eye movement), NREM (Non-rapid eye movement) in the constitution and refinement of the predictive machinery. (shrink)

Dreams as Virtual Reality simulations. When David Chalmers wrote “The Virtual and the Real” the argument many focused on the metaphysical and epistemic nature Virtual Reality and how it compares to waking states and dreaming sates. But one interesting segment of the paper is where he defends his thesis by claiming that dreams are not experiences. This is where I take issue and, in my paper, I claim that dreams as much as VR are epistemically similar enough (...) to be called an experience. Exploring my thesis further in how the function of phenomenal and access consciousness play a key role in waking states and dreaming states. Having followed the argument laid out by Chalmers, I first test what would a sufficient answer for my claim look like. Then I chip away at the idea leading to the conclusion that dreams are epistemically rich as waking states. (shrink)

This empirical addendum addresses a fundamental methodological gap in dream research: public dream databases, while valuable for establishing descriptive typologies, lack the systematic profiling necessary for causal validation and predictive testing. We demonstrate that dreams without complete dreamer profiling (cognitive state, psychological context, life events) invite unfalsifiable metaphysical interpretation rather than scientific analysis. Using dreams from DreamBank, we validate CDT's five-type taxonomy (Resolution, Replay, Residual, Generative, Lucid). However, the critical limitation becomes apparent: without knowing the dreamer's actual experiences (...) and cognitive tensions, we cannot test whether CDT's mechanistic predictions hold. We then present prospectively documented case studies with complete pre-dream profiling, demonstrating that: (1) Dreams trace directly to documented vault inputs and drift parameters; (2) CDT makes testable, falsifiable predictions; (3) No symbolic or metaphysical interpretation is required; (4) The mechanism is transparent and reproducible. This work establishes the methodological foundation for rigorous empirical validation of dream theory. (shrink)

Abstract -/- Dreams are among the most enigmatic functions of the human brain, often perceived as random or symbolic experiences during sleep. Neuroscience identifies dreams primarily as a byproduct of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, where brain activity is comparable to wakefulness, and emotional and memory networks are highly active. This paper proposes that the process of dreaming aligns with a universal law of balance in nature, as outlined in Angelito Malicse’s universal formula. Dreams serve as an (...) internal feedback mechanism through which the brain reorganizes memory, regulates emotional states, and simulates future scenarios, thereby restoring balance within the system of consciousness. -/- . (shrink)

This article expands Cavell’s interpretation of The Philadelphia Story (1940) in relation to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1596) and gendered democratic flourishing. My first section rehearses Geraldine Heng’s argument in Empire of Magic (2004) that the medieval romance genre channels Crusades trauma into imagined British nationhood, as embodied by Merlin. My second section finds a second wave of romantic overflow in Shakespeare’s play via the fairy king Oberon. My third section identifies Cary Grant's “C. K. Dexter Haven” as the (...) film’s Merlin/Oberon. The Dionysian current of this Merlin-Oberlin-Grant flow I call “magical weakness,” a strategic male self-weakening for gendered democratic flourishing. (shrink)

Abstract -/- Dreams represent a complex neurobiological and psychological phenomenon through which the human brain constructs dynamic narratives during sleep. This paper explores how the brain creates dream stories through spontaneous neural activation, emotional processing, and predictive simulation. Integrating recent neuroscientific findings with the universal law of balance in nature and the law of karma—as conceptualized by Malicse’s universal formula—this study proposes that dreaming functions as an internal system of error correction and decision-testing. By simulating potential realities and reconciling (...) emotional imbalances, dreams contribute to the maintenance of internal equilibrium, aligning the human mind with the universal principles governing all natural systems. -/- . (shrink)

This chapter proposes an interdisciplinary model for oneiric experientiality, which makes the case for dreams being immersive, and for immersive worlds. It compares dream and waking lives, and it provides conceptual, phenomenological, and ontological contrast by adding also our experience of fictional worlds to the mix (via the concepts of fictional immersion and ‘saturation’). The chapter argues that dreamworlds share some ontological and phenomenological properties with fictional worlds that are missing in our waking reality (or, vice versa, they lack (...) properties that the real world displays). To capture, explore, and partly explain dreams’ phenomenological and ontological specificity, the chapter proposes a new model for dreams’ immersive experiences that it calls ‘heightened narrowed immersivity’ (HNI). The chapter concludes by suggesting that HNI supports recent theories proposing an evolutionary value for dreams against the brain’s overfitting—a function that HNI extends to fictional indeterminacy too, thus linking dreamworlds and fictional storyworlds even more. (shrink)

Jennifer Windt’s Dreaming is an enormously rich and thorough book, developing illuminating connections between dreaming, the methodology of psychology, and various philosophical subfields. I’ll focus on two epistemological threads that run through the book. The first has to do with the status of certain assumptions about dreams. Windt argues that the assumptions that dreams involve experiences, and that dream reports are reliable — are methodologically necessary default assumptions, akin to Wittgensteinian hinge propositions. I’ll suggest that Windt is quietly (...) pre-supposing some sceptical assumptions, and that recent literature in epistemic externalism may bear in important ways on her arguments. The second thread involves the perennial sceptical worry that dreaming threatens ordinary knowledge. I’ll suggest again that Windt makes tacit sceptical assumptions one may wish to resist. (shrink)

Dreaming is a communicative activity between the most sensitive archive of the enregistered experience of life on the earth, the brain, and the most plastic medium for the discovery and practice of meaning, the mind or culture. Both love and war have been made on the basis of dreams, not to mention scientific discoveries. In ancient Greece dreams were medicinal parts of curative sleeping or "incubation" rites in the temple of Aesculapius, and many psychoanalytic physicians today still consider (...) dreams as possessing therapeutic potential. The ethnographic literature gives ample testimony to the great significance accorded to dreams by all of the world cultures. Dreams form a rich store of ethnographic evidence, and their indigenous interpretations can often illuminate the central issues and conflicts of a people otherwise hidden from obvious view. Given these facts, plus the physiological facts that the dream process itself involves deeply-rooted material brain functions, and that rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep, which is the key indicator of human dreaming, is shared by all mammals, it remains strange how little attention is given to dreaming as a formative aspect of human evolution and culture. -/- This essay addresses dreaming as a formative aspect of human evolution and culture by viewing dreaming as a borderland between biology and culture, a thoroughly social, yet private experience. Dreaming not only highlights the "cultic" roots of culture—the spontaneous impulse to meaning—but also illustrates one of the ways in which the technics of the biosocial human body itself form the primary source of culture. I show why dreaming, although private, is a thoroughly cultural, biological, communicative activity. -/- Culture and biology are often treated by social scientists as though they were oil and water, not to be mixed. I should inform the culture theorist at the start that I am fully aware of the assumed nature-culture dichotomy, and that I reject it. I do so not because I am a sociobiologist, quite the contrary, rather because I am a semiotician, and my studies of signs have led me toward a critical reconstruction of the concepts of nature and culture. In what follows I beg the reader's patience, since I will draw from diverse materials and project some speculative hypotheses in places in order to make my argument. -/- . (shrink)

As part of the development of the Symbolic and Sub-symbolic Robotics Intelligence Control System, we have implemented a memory store to allow a robot to retain knowledge from previous exp...

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted The Dream of Mercury knowing nothing of the dreamer and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included a series of falsifiable predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been silent and was not visible to us) to give us more information about the dreamer. The dreamer is instructed to confront a friendship he had abandoned and, when he does so, (...) is frightened by the inner life he discovers. This record is another iteration of an experiment that will be described more fully in the paper 'The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System to Test Meaning,' soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. AN AUDIO-RECORD OF COMPLETE CLASS: link is given on first page of the paper you download here. (shrink)

Higher-Order Thought (HOT) theories of consciousness maintain that the kind of awareness necessary for phenomenal consciousness depends on the cognitive accessibility that underlies reporting. -/- There is empirical evidence strongly suggesting that the cognitive accessibility that underlies the ability to report visual experiences depends on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). This area, however, is highly deactivated during the conscious experiences we have during sleep: dreams. HOT theories are jeopardized, as I will argue. I will briefly present (...) HOT theories in the first section. Section 2 offers empirical evidence to the effect that the cognitive accessibility that underlies the ability to report depends on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: dlPFC is the neural correlate of HOTs. Section 3 shows the evidence we have of the deactivation of this brain area during dreams and, in section 4, I present my argument. Finally, I consider and rejoin two possible replies that my opponent can offer: the possibility of an alternative neural correlate of HOTs during dreams and the denial that we have phenomenally conscious experiences during sleep. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted The Dream of the White House knowing nothing of the dreamer and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included a series of falsifiable predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been silent and was not visible to us) to give us more information about the dreamer. Of 17 predictions 15 were confirmed. The dreamer suffers dislocation and loss until she (...) asks a female manager for help. This record is another iteration of an experiment that will be described more fully in the paper 'The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System to Test Meaning,' soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. More than any of the other iterations, it details how talk therapy promotes personality reorganization. It then supports these observations with experimental evidence. Because it demonstrates how talk therapy works, this iteration supports talk therapy against pressure from the drug and insurance corporations. AUDIO-RECORDING OF WHOLE CLASS: link provided on first page of the paper you download here. (shrink)

Despite the universal nature and significance of dreaming, the psychological sciences have had a historically uneasy relationship with dreams as a topic of study. The past three decades, however, have seen this wheel turn again, with advances in cognitive research provoking a reawakening of sorts. Such research is provoking new questions not just about dreaming but also its relevance for consciousness, the self, social cognition, and our relationship with reality. This introduction outlines how the volume aims at answering these (...) questions by grouping them under four key clusters (narrativity, permeability, immersivity, and reportability), in an interdisciplinary framework encompassing not just the psychological sciences but the full breadth of the arts, humanities, and social sciences. It also contextualizes this volume within the history of an interdisciplinary project at Durham University, Threshold Worlds: Dreams, Narrative, and Liminal Cognition, which was an incubator for the ideas and directions that structure the volume. The project included the design and implementation of a novel interdisciplinary survey, which is reported for the first time in this volume, including reflections and analysis from several of the contributing authors. (shrink)

Margaret Cavendish’s (1623–1673) philosophy has been gaining increasing interest in recent years. Untypically to her time, she was a materialist, who denied the existence of immaterial substance. Deviating from other materialists of the period, like Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), she likewise considered that matter was not in fact a ‘dead’ thing moved by external motion, but living, sensing, and thinking. Such curious commitments obviously raise questions about her views on human experience like perception, thinking, imagining, and dreaming. Of these, most commentary (...) interest has focused on perception and thinking in Cavendish (e.g. Michaelian 2009; Boyle 2015; Adams 2016; Cunning 2016; 2023; Georgescu 2020; Lascano 2023; Peterman 2025) and Cavendish’s views on fancy and imagination have likewise seen large discussion in recent years (e.g., Hock 2018; Gilman Sherman 2021). However, Cavendish account of dreaming is noticeably less discussed (with Cunning 2016; Lascano 2023; and Manzo 2023 as exceptions). In this paper, I focus on Cavendish’s views on dreaming, arguing that her approach to dreaming evolved between her early works and her later ones. While in the World’s Olio (WO; 1655) and Philosophical and Physical Opinions (PPO; 1655), Cavendish connects dreaming more strongly with memory, by her more systematic natural philosophical works, such as Philosophical Letters (PL; 1664) and Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy (OEP; 1666), her account has changed to comparing dreaming more with imagination than with remembering. This change seems to coincide with a larger systematization of her philosophical thinking and genuine interest in skeptical themes in philosophy. Thus, at the end of the paper, I discuss whether her account of dreaming allows for material for a response to a dreaming based skeptical scenarios. (shrink)

How can we know we are not dreaming? In this essay, I tackle this and related questions from a transcendental standpoint, by building a philosophical narrative centred upon three “giants”: Descartes, Kant, and Putnam. From each, I take some ideas and discard others, to develop a historically informed, yet original, transcendental approach to dream skepticism.

In his new book, Kant and Mysticism, Stephen Palmquist argues that Kant had already formulated his critical method by the mid-1760s and that it emerged from his reflections on Swedenborg’s mystical visions. In order to evaluate these claims, I consider Kant’s correspondence with Charlotte von Knobloch and Moses Mendelssohn before and after the publication of Dreams of a Spirit-Seer; the context in which Kant published Dreams; and the method he employs when he discusses Swedenborg’s visions in that work. (...) I conclude that Kant’s critical method was not well-formed during the 1760s and did not emerge from Kant’s reflections on Swedenborg. (shrink)

In Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes argues that one cannot trust one’s senses since they are not a reliable source of obtaining knowledge of the world. One of Descartes’s main contentions to support such an argument is from his explanation of dreams, where one can feel one is awake but instead one is dreaming. Native Americans, however, may argue that the experiences one has in dreams are real and are a source of knowledge of the real world. (...) Although Descartes uses dreams to support his argument, some Native Americans have a different take on dreams. Dreams for Native Americans are a source of knowledge as well as a source for obtaining one’s identity. Gregory Cajete, in American Indian Thought, notes that “Dreams and Visions are a natural means for accessing knowledge and establishing relationship to the world. They are encouraged and facilitated.” In other words, it is through dreams that individuals are guided, destined, and informed. Therefore, dreams as understood by some Native Americans are an extension of reality that anticipate events that will happen or can happen. The focus of this paper is an exploration of the philosophical and religious epistemology pertaining to Native Americans as described in their accounts of dreams. (shrink)

Freud's account of dreams has a cogent interpretive basis.

I argue that dreams can contain perceptual elements in multifarious, heretofore unthought-of ways. I also explain the difference between dreams that contain perceptual elements, perceptual experiences that contain dream elements, and having a dream and a perceptual experience simultaneously. I then discuss two applications of the resulting view. First, I explain how my taxonomy of perception in dreams will allow “dream engineers”—who try to alter the content of people’s dreams—to accurately classify different dreams and explore (...) creating new forms of perception in dreams. Second, I consider the consequences of the view for the role of memory in dreaming and imagination. I argue that not every element of dreams or sensory imaginations must rely on memory. The resultant view of sensory imagination provides a counterexample to Hume’s account of sensory imagination, according to which sensory imagination must be built up from faint copies of sensory impressions stored in memory. (shrink)

Dreaming has been a subject for debate for thousands of years as to what it entails and how it affects daily living. This paper goes into depth about if dreaming holds reality within, and if morality should be taken into consideration.

Integrative and naturalistic philosophy of mind can both learn from and contribute to the contemporary cognitive sciences of dreaming. Two related phenomena concerning self-representation in dreams demonstrate the need to bring disparate fields together. In most dreams, the protagonist or dream self who experiences and actively participates in dream events is or represents the dreamer: but in an intriguing minority of cases, self-representation in dreams is displaced, disrupted, or even absent. Working from dream reports in established databanks, (...) we examine two key forms of polymorphism of self-representation: dreams in which I take an external visuospatial perspective on myself, and those in which I take someone else's perspective on events. In remembering my past experiences or imagining future or possible experiences when awake, I sometimes see myself from an external or 'observer' perspective. By relating the issue of perspective in dreams to established research traditions in the study of memory and imagery, and noting the flexibility of perspective in dreams, we identify new lines of enquiry. In other dreams, the dreamer does not appear to figure at all, and the first person perspective on dream events is occupied by someone else, some other person or character. We call these puzzling cases 'vicarious dreams' and assess some potential ways to make sense of them. Questions about self-representation and perspectives in dreams are intriguing in their own right and pose empirical and conceptual problems about the nature of self-representation with implications beyond the case of dreaming. (shrink)