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DreamingBrian O'ShaughnessyPublished online: 06 Nov 2010.
To cite this article: Brian O'Shaughnessy (2002) Dreaming,
Inquiry:An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 45:4, 399-432,
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Dreaming
Brian OShaughnessyKings College, London
The aim is to discover a principle governing the formation of
the dream. Nowdreaming has an analogy with consciousnes s in that
it is a seeming-consciousness .Meanwhile consciousnes s exhibits a
tripartite structure consisting of (A)understanding oneself to be
situated in a world endowed with given properties , (B)the mental
processes responsible for the state, and (C) the concrete perceptua
lencounter of awareness with the world. The dream analogues of
these three elementsare investigated in the hope of discovering the
source of the kinship between dreamand consciousness . The dream
world (A) proves to be a logically impossible world,limited by
nothing more than sheer narratability . The internal world (B) of
thedreamer is notable for the limitlessness of the scope allotted
to the imagination(exactly taking over the offices of rational
function) , together with the presence oftwo important phenomena
encountered in waking consciousness : a measure ofinteriority , and
the positing of a world. Finally (C), the dream further
replicatesconsciousnes s in so far as we seem in dreaming
concretely to experience ourphysical surrounds in the form of
perceptua l imagining. These properties play theirpart in enabling
the dream to be a seeming-consciousness . At the same time they
aresuch as to necessitat e its not being consciousness . It is
proposed that in the light ofthese properties, and those composing
the state of consciousness , the dream simply isthe imagining of
consciousness .
How light the sleeping on this soily star,How deep the waking in
the worlded clouds.
Dylan Thomas
(1) What is dreaming? It is the mind creating out of its own
resources anunreal replica of waking consciousness at least. This
article is an attempt toanswer the question by delimiting the
properties of the dream, and byuncovering a governing principle
that accounts for their existence. Then theanalogy between the
dream and consciousness suggests a structure for thearticle. When a
person is conscious he (i) understands himself to be situated ina
world that is endowed with certain properties, (ii) brings to bear
in relationto that world an internal life of a kind peculiar to
consciousness, and (iii)encounters the world in concrete mode in
sense-perceptual experience. Thesethree main ingredients of the
wakeful conscious situation are each re ected indreaming. Thus, the
dreamer dreams of a domain which has properties of aspecial dream
variety; has an inner life in relation to that dreamed worldwhich
is to be found only in dreaming; and in the dream seems to
encounter
Inquiry, 45, 399432
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that world through perceptual and generally visual imagining.
Then since Isuspect that the analogy between dreaming and
consciousness is an importantlead to the nature of dreaming, I have
chosen to divide the article into thefollowing sections: (A) The
dream world, (B) the inner world of the dreamer,(C) perceptual
imagination in the dream, and (D) the relation betweendreaming and
consciousness. My hope is that a closer inspection of the
centralelements of the dream situation may shed light on the
kinship between dreamand consciousness, and thereby on the
underlying nature of the dream.
(2) Before I begin the discussion, it seems desirable that I say
a few wordsconcerning the existential status of the dream.
Wittgenstein asked: do wedream, or do we wake with memories of what
never was? At rst one mightbe inclined to shrug off this question
on the grounds that the second state ofaffairs is unreal. But in
fact it is no more than an unusual possibility. In aword, we dream.
Had it been the case that seeming-memory was the onlyconceivable
evidence of dreaming, one might well reject the distinction:
ineffect, endorse a veri cationist analysis which reduced dreaming
out ofexistence. However, other evidences do in fact exist, even
though memory isevidentially in a privileged position in that those
alternative evidences dependultimately upon memory. Why suppose
that rapid eye movements (REM)have anything to do with dreaming, if
it were not because of the associationwith recollection? On the
other hand, if no other evidence of dreaming couldbe discovered
besides seeming-memory, then I think we should have to facethe
possibility that dream-memory was no more than a
post-sleepphenomenon: Wittgensteins second alternative. After all,
spurious recollec-tions are a real phenomenon indeed, one which
might sometimes occur insubjects who mostly remembered their dreams
so that Wittgensteinsdisjunction cannot even be dichotomous in
character, let alone unreal. Whilethe natural tendency of
experiences to leave memories of themselves makesthe second theory
unlikely from the start, it should be noted that someexperiences
are rarely remembered, e.g. somnambulist experience.The discussion
which now follows falls under the aforementioned
headings.
A. The Dream World
1. Unity
(1) What goes into the making of a dream?What is the
constitutive analysis ofthis phenomenon? The following items
frequently occur in the course ofdreaming. (i) Seeming visual
experience of a physical setting. (ii) Seemingperceived events in
that setting. (iii) Seeming facts, mostly relating to thatsetting.
(iv) Beliefs, mostly relating to that setting. (v) Ones seeming
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presence in that setting. (vi) Seeming physical actions of ones
own in thatsetting. (vii) Occasional seeming mental actions. (viii)
Thoughts andemotions, mostly relating to that setting.Now while we
might describe phenomena of this kind as parts of a dream,
are we really entitled to believe they are parts of a single
phenomenon? Whynot construe them as no more than a concatenation of
phenomena occurringduring sleep? What reason have we to believe
that there is any one somethingthat is the dream?
(2) One reason consists in the fact that there is much
cross-reference amongstthe above elements, and irreducible
cross-reference at that. For example, onehas a thought in the dream
about some X one seemingly sees in the dream, andthere is no
acceptable description of this thought-event which omits
referenceto that X-element. Here the essential description of one
dream-item involvesreference to a second dream-item, so that
although these phenomenalelements are numerically two, one is
essentially linked to the other.This property is intimately related
to another feature of dreams which is
also indicative of unity: their narratability. How could the
object of acontinuous narration be a mere concatenation, a
fragmentary sequence ofexperiential splinters, the unintelligible
phantasmagoric object of a wordsalad? And how could the time-order
posited in the narrative reveal itsexistence to the dreamer if the
dream consisted of mental bric-a-brac of thiskind? Presumably not
through the relational properties of those fragments,nor
recollectively either. A narrative of dream experience which takes
theform of a continuity must have as its object an experiential
continuity acrosstime, involving persisting items which reappear at
intervals, and must assumetherefore the existence of a continuous
temporally extensive framework inwhich the various dream elements
are positioned. While a dream mightsurvive the existence of a
temporal gap a sort of temporal blind-spot whichis not experienced
somewhat as a lm survives an interval narratabilityof the kind
which characterizes dreams is inconsistent with a break-up
intotemporal instants. It necessitates experiential continuity and
the persistence ofelements.
2. Presumptions
(1) Once again: what goes to make up a dream? Tautologically one
mightanswer: as much as is experienced. I express myself in these
circular terms fora reason. The literary critic L. C. Knights once
wrote a famous articleironically entitled How many children had
Lady Macbeth? At one point inthe play Lady Macbeth speaks of having
given suck ... , and one naturallyassumes she is referring to
children of her own. Here we have a perfectlylegitimate presumptive
inference from the text. Nevertheless, there seems to
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be something illicit in pursuing the question, unless there are
speci c pointersin that direction. As soon debate whether Venus was
or was not 5 6 inheight. It is not that these matters are hidden by
lack of data: we offend aprinciple in pursuing the question. We
shall see that a closely reminiscentprinciple holds concerning
dreams, a principle that establishes a kinshipbetween dream, myth,
legend, fairy story, etc.Consider some of the characteristics of
two familiar kinds of narratives.
First, a report in a newspaper to the effect (say) that a woman
was robbed ofher jewellery in Trafalgar Square. How would we
interpret such a report?Well, I think we would all naturally
endorse the (highly unlikely) claim thatthe woman must have either
been 5 6 in height, or more, or less, and do soeven if nothing in
the report mentioned her height. Likewise we would allaccept the
(equally improbable) claim that the jewellery is either
somewherewithin the Solar System or has ceased to exist. Now
consider further a novelin which (say) the hero is at one time in
Paris, and then a few days later inMarseilles or Tierra del Fuego.
If in Tierra del Fuego, and the novel is set in1895, then the
reader is at a loss and is forced to assume the novelist
hasblundered. If on the other hand he is in Marseilles, he must
assume either thatthe hero took a train and that the novelist has
not seen t to mention thematter, or else that the novelist is just
plain sloppy.
(2) It is all very different in dreams. Why? It turns upon the
presumptionswhich we bring to the situation. Thus, in the real
domain of physical naturethe principle of physically suf cient
reason governs all: there is a physicalreason for everything
physical. And this principle has no application indreams. By
contrast, it is automatically assumed to be operative both in
thedomain of being described by the newspaper report and in the
imaginedsubject-matter of the novel. Why the difference? Well, in
dreams there isgenerally no reason given why anything happens.
Strangely enough it followsfrom this simple fact that generally in
dreams there is no reason why anythinghappens; that is, generally
reasons form no part of dreams. This paradoxicaland seemingly
tautologous truth suf ces to disengage the normal physicallogic
from the dream. Thus, a third person listening to a report of a
dreamwhose content resembled the aforementioned novel could not
complain: buthow in 1895 could one be in Tierra del Fuego just
after being in Paris? If Idream that in 1895 I am in Paris and then
a moment later that I am in Tierradel Fuego, and if there is no
reason given for the change of place, then interms of the dream
there is simply no reason for the not, move but,alteration in
place. It simply happens: not an event of movement, but a changeof
site. And yet there is an explanation of the fact that in the dream
I was inTierra del Fuego immediately after being in Paris, even
though in the dreamthis fact is wholly without explanation: the
reason lies in whatever mentalphenomena led to my dreaming of such
things at such times as I did.
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I must now qualify the claim that presumptions lapse in dreams
thoughnot very seriously. If I dream of (say) Hume, it can be
assumed I dreamed ofan entity that can be conscious, and yet this
was not explicitly part of thedream. The reason is that in dreaming
of Hume one must be dreaming of somesomething, and therefore of a
certain type, and one must be in a position in theveridical report
to inject a determinate meaning into Hume. Therequirements of sense
and reference must be met in that narrative, and itcan be assumed
that I dreamed of a sentient being and not of a cabbage.
Bycontrast: we all know that Humes do not uctuate wildly in colour,
yet ifnothing relating to Humes colour is dreamed so that we can
say in the dreamhe did not change colour, we can do so only in the
sense it is no part of thedream that he did and this is not the
same as dreaming that he preserved asteady colour. Thus, the
presumption of steady colour lapses, that of being aconscious
entity remains. Indeed, even if Hume turns into a cabbage in
adream, it is still a conscious being who has become a cabbage. It
seems thatthose properties which are essential to the preservation
of a sense in thenarrative report must be presumed to be conserved:
they alone.
(3) Even though we dream, not of some fantastic metaphysical
realm, but ofthe physical world, and therefore of a world in which
the rationality of thereal governs, the dreaming representation of
that domain fails to honour theprinciple. Reason does not operate
in dreams, since nothing that isencountered explains anything else
unless it is dreamed to do so. Thisholds even when the
subject-matter openly conforms to the laws of physicalnature. I
dream of copper, of nitric acid, of an encounter between the two,
andof nitrogen peroxide coming from the solution. Then whereas
concerning anovel we can say Andre Bolkonsky died from wounds
received at the Battleof Borodino, irrespective of whether it is
explicitly stated that he did, wecannot say that in my dream the
gas was caused by the encounter between thetwo reagents unless it
is an explicit part of the dream. And even if it were, Imight very
well have embellished the report with the further detail that the
gaswas caused by the encounter of those reagents only because it
was Sunday.Thus, it is not that the dream has strayed into the
realm of law in explicitlyintroducing an explanation linking
nomically related events. Nothingexplains anything unless it is
dreamed to do so, and even when it is thusdreamed it is not as if
the dreaming mind has managed to carve out a rationalnook in a
non-rational domain.The inapplicability of the normal physical
logos to the subject-matter of
dreams is apparent in the persistence conditions for physical
objects indreams. In the real physical world, material objects do
not simply go out ofexistence. They either persist, for good reason
(e.g. attraction between micro-constituents), or else destruct,
again for good reason (e.g. A-bomb radiation).This principle is
operative in Nature, and is an application of a wider principle
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of rationality. And in the average realistic novel it is
intended by the author tobe part of the framework of the world
described. By contrast, even in a dreamin which explicit re-identi
cation of an object occurs across time, as in I sawan orange on the
table and walked over and picked it up, we have no right toinsist
that since it refers to the orange which was just then seen, so
that oneand the same object appears at two separate times in the
same dream, thatobject must have continued to exist between the two
recorded incidents.Conservation principles have no place in dreams.
For to repeat: there is asmuch to the dream as the experience
contains, and no more.
3. Conservation
(1) Like an orchid which seems as if it lives off air, so the
dream springs forthfully formed out of nothing (somewhat as Wagners
famous Prelude to Act IIIof Lohengrin appears like re suspended in
mid-air, a dazzling auditoryapparition supported by itself). This
quasi-miraculous onset is repeated atevery instant of the dreams
existence, and repeated in reverse in the momentof termination. It
is nothing but the inapplicability of the rationality of thereal
across time. One would search in vain for reasons within the dream
forits perpetuation, since no conservation principles govern the
subject-matter ofthe dream, and equally fruitlessly look for an
explanation of its ending at thepoint it did.It might seem to be
the same in the case of (say) a painting. As soon look
within the painting for reasons for its beginning on the left at
a church,continuing through a wood, and ending on the right at a
stream. So one mightsay mistakenly; and here we come across one
reason for the imagery of theorchid. While the church in the
painting does not cause the presence of thewood in the painting and
the painters mind does, just as the mind of thedreamer causes the
sequential stages of the dream, there is none the less apresumption
that (say) the horizon behind the church will continue as wemove to
the right, based upon the uniformity of physical nature.
Moreover,the painting may be presumed to represent a scene which
continues beyondthat depicted. We can therefore produce physical
explanations of thedevelopment of the painting cast in terms of its
subject-matter as in: thehorizon is one inch from the top to the
right of the church because it is almostan inch from the top to the
left of the church and a real physical horizon wouldgenerally
continue in that way. But we cannot do so in the dream. Hence
itsprogression through time is wholly without explanation in dream
terms and isin that sense quasi-miraculous, whereas the paintings
progression throughspace is amenable to explanation in terms of its
physical subject-matter. Nodream logic explains the dreams
appearing either at all, or at the point inthe narrative at which
it did, or for continuing as it does, or for lapsing without
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warning into non-existence when it did. Here we have one reason
why theimage of the orchid is so appropriate.Another determinant of
that image, and divergence from the principle of
development of the painting, is this. The advance of the
painting throughspace is known by the painter to derive from his
own mind, and understood toobserve the laws governing the domain
depicted. But the dream comes intothe mind for reasons unknown to
the dreamer, and advances through timeseemingly as self-sustaining
as is the physical world itself in the minds of thewaking
conscious. The causes lie elsewhere, as they do in the painting,
butwhereas in the painting they are overtly given as located in the
self, in thedream all appears external and autonomous. The illusion
is total. Thanks tothe conjunction of the above two properties, the
apparently autonomous realmof the dream unfolds a sequence of
seeming external phenomena which aretaking place there and then
without rhyme or reason: no reasons being hidden,for none are
there. And all of this is accepted without reservation by
theseemingly conscious being who is experiencing it. For him it is
neitheruntoward or toward: it simply is.
(2) Let me summarize the situation. Whether in novel or dream
the real reasonone event follows another lies in the minds of their
creators. And it does soeven if the two cited events are nomically
related in physical nature: forexample the aforementioned encounter
between nitric acid and copper andthe occurrence of nitrogen
peroxide. Nevertheless, if in a novel these sameevents were merely
cited, it would normally be understood that the author
isrepresenting not merely events but a causal relation as well. By
contrast, ifthey are merely cited in the full dream report, then
the dreamer did not dreamof two causally related events. If,
however, he dreams in addition that they arecausally related, so be
it. But he might also at the same time have dreamedthat the causal
relation occurred only because it was Sunday. Thus, dreamingof a
causal relation is not dreaming of a natural physical relation that
issusceptible of depth physical explanation unless that too is
dreamed. In thissense the dreamed causal relation does not lean
upon physical realities. It ismerely a causal relation and not even
for whatever reason. Thus, despiterepresenting a realm where law
governs, this feature of reality is notrepresented in dreams. To be
represented, nomicity would need to beexplicitly represented, yet
even then would not govern in the dream, sinceagain one would need
to dream the application of the dreamed nomicity.There is therefore
a kind of inertia dogging the footsteps of any attempt torestore
the missing presumptions, including the explanatory presumption.
Itstems from the fact that all additions are merely ad hoc, which
in turn derivesfrom the principle: there is as much to the dream as
the experience contains and no more.In short, the novel does not
need to mention a causal relation, and yet it is
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understood, as in he put the kettle on the re, and when the
water had boiledhe ..., and understood that it is part of physical
nature and susceptible ofdepth physical explanation. By contrast,
unless causality is explicitlymentioned it will generally not be
true that the dreamer dreamed of a causalrelation, and even when it
is explicitly present, none of the normalpresumptions hold. It is
ad hoc all the way.
4. Explanation
(1) The dreaming subject is in a non-rational state. What is the
reason for thisjudgment? It is not because the dreamer is
attentively out of touch withphysical reality. And no doubt it is
because the mental will, and thus also thecapacity for thinking, is
unavailable. But the non-rationality of the dreamer ismost apparent
in the phenomenon in which rationality or its absence
directlymanifests itself, viz. belief-formation. In so far as
beliefs occur in dreams,they occur somewhat as moods or
inclinations occur in the conscious: theysimply happen to one, we
have no jurisdiction over their arrival or departure.We encounter
here a phenomenon noteworthy for its absence in waking
life:just-believing. For rather as in waking consciousness we may
just feel likesinging, or just feel happy, so in dreams we just
believe . Neither in thecase of dream-belief, nor simple
inclinations or moods at any time, do I knowwhy I just , and in
each case the phenomenon is not rational. Moodscannot be rational,
and therefore cannot be irrational either, for moods cannotbe
contrary to reason. But because dream beliefs happen to us from
causesoutside our ken and beyond our jurisdiction, and beliefs can
be and putativelyare rational, dream beliefs must be deemed both
non-rational and irrational.The state of mind of the dreamer is
therefore not rational, since the world ofwhich the dreamer is
seemingly aware is not determined by that whosefunction it is to
determine the way reality appears to us: reason.
(2) What is the explanation of the inapplicability in dreams of
the principle ofthe rationality of the real? Why the absence of the
normal presumptionsconcerning subject-matter of just this kind? Why
cannot we assume that if anobject makes an appearance at two
distinct times in the one dream, then itmust have been at some
determinate place at some given time in between?The explanation
cannot lie in the fact that in the narration of the dream nomention
is made of the object at that time. After all, the same is true of
thenewspaper report of the jewellery. Equally, the explanation
cannot be that thedream is a work of the imagination, since the
same is true of the novel. And itcannot be that whereas both
newspaper and novel purport to represent reality,the dream does
not, for each may be said to do so, albeit in a different way.The
newspaper literally so; the novel a pretence of reporting reality,
so that
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reality is what it is pretending to report; while dreaming is
dreaming thatreality is a certain way. In each case reality is the
intentional object.
(3) Does the explanation lie in the non-rational state of the
dreamer? Thefollowing arguments might be advanced against this
suggestion. First, there isno reason why a fairy story should not
be invented on the spot by someone ina rational state. But the
principle of the uniformity of nature is no part of theframework of
the world of the fairy story: magic is rife, thought can wreakhavoc
in the physical domain without physical mediation of any kind,
actingupon matter out of the blue as one might say. Here we have a
non-rationalworld conjured up by a rational mind in a rational
state, and this demonstratesthat the explanation of the
non-rationality of the dream world cannot lie in thenon-rational
state of the dreamer. The second argument grasps the nettle ofthe
dream itself. For even if one supposes the fairy story to be
incapable ofsome of the feats open to dreaming, why should not a
wakeful rational beingsimply at will imagine all that occurs in a
dream: for example, imagine that heis in Paris on a Tuesday in 1895
and in Tierra del Fuego on the followingThursday? The description
of the conscious phantasy may well beindistinguishable from that of
the dream. What can the one do that the othercannot? And the same
conclusion is drawn in this second argument as in the rst.Consider
the rst of these arguments. I shall not debate whether a world
in
which magic exists is rational or not some might claim that all
that happensdoes so for a good reason, natural or supernatural.
Nevertheless, in such arealm reasons of a kind are obligatory: the
fairy story world is rule-observing.If the wizard is in two places
at once, this is because this is the kind of thingwizards can do,
it is one of the powers that come with wizardry. Reason of akind is
assumed for everything (no doubt because these narratives
areintended for beings in a rational state). But as we have seen
this is not true ofdreams. Reasons may be quoted only if explicitly
dreamed as reasons, aswhen one dreams that because it is Tuesday
the ocean is burning, and eventhen there is no presumption that the
ocean has a power to burn which hasbeen used: rather, it burns
simply because it is Tuesday, for that whollyparticular reason
alone. Nothing like law governs what happens, so that noneof the
presumptions that allow us to extrapolate beyond reports of events
inother realms (physical reality, novelistic reality, mythic
reality, etc.) andfurther to characterize them apply in the case of
dreams.Consider the second argument. It is important that we
distinguish the
activity of reporting a dream from the dream itself, and this
argument fails todo so. That the narratives of dream and conscious
phantasy are identical doesnot entail that the narrated phenomena
are the same: that what one imagines isthe same does not entail
that the imaginings are the same. After all, oneimagining may be
active and the other inactive, and the world conjured up in
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one imagining may not be that of the other. And in fact this is
the situationhere. And how in any case is one supposed rationally
to create a world likethat of the dream? Invent a narrative which
might easily be mistaken for adream, and instruct ones listeners
that it is to be understood as exhibiting theproperties of dreams?
For example: he turned him into a frog, proffered insuch a modality
that there is no presumption that he is exercising a power?Well,
one can invent such a narrative, and have phantasies with such
content,but the latter step is simply not open to one. There is no
way one couldactively or inactively have wakeful phantasies with
such a property. Thereason being that necessarily we cannot shake
off our rationality when awake.
(4) The question we must settle is whether the fact that the
dreamer is in anon-rational state determines that the domain of
which he dreams does notobey the rule of law. Is it because there
is no reason for dream-beliefs, that nodreamed x can be a reason
for some dreamed y in the sense Hamletsfathers death is a reason
for Hamlets grief? Now one signi cant property ofdreams is the
absence of any determining intention. This marks the dream offfrom
myth, legend, fairy story, etc. Thus, even though myths and
legends(etc.) scarcely derive from single intentions, they are none
the lessintentionally promulgated down the ages. By contrast, once
we distinguishthe intentional wakeful narration of the dream from
the experiential process itdescribes, it becomes obvious that there
can be no determining intention atwork in a dream. The dreamer does
not mean his dream in any way. Thensince the dream simply happens
to one, and (not being meant in any way)does not lend itself to
interpretative intentional re-description, might this bewhy there
is as much and no more to the dream as is explicitly present? And
isit therefore this that explains the inapplicability of the
presumptions whichordinarily apply to the physical subject-matter
of the dream? Well, I do notsee how it could be. After all, when a
conscious person perceives his physicalenvirons he has no
intentional control over the broad range of events, yetexperiences
everything as taking place in a law-governed domain.It seems to me
that the real explanation is to be found where we initially
supposed it might lie, viz. in the non-rational state of the
dreamer. Theinherence of this particular form of mental deprivation
carries the implicationthat in his experiences the dreamers
understanding is not observing theprinciple of suf cient reason: no
presumptions deriving from his dormantrational powers nd themselves
automatically applied by his mind to thephysical objects of those
experiences, which as a result are not experienced bythe subject as
set in a rational or comprehensible domain. For the moment Ishall
have to settle for this rather blunt and simple explanation. It
should benoted that it is a negative trait of which we have been
speaking: it is not thatthe absence of rationality in the dreamer
guarantees the occurrence of eventswhich are in nature contrary to
law. Rather, there is simply no guarantee that
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they follow it: for example, if an object appears in a dream at
time t1 andreappears at time t2, we cannot assume that it did not
go out of existence ordid. We have what we have, and no more. It is
a consequence of the almosttotal sleep of reason during
dreaming.
5. The Limits of Content
Few of us dream of metaphysically different worlds such as a
Leibnitziancolony of monads. Instead, we dream of Reality: things
are merely differentfrom how in reality they are. And they are
different because the dream is aninvention of the mind: to be
exact, of the non-rational mind (where no holdsare barred). In the
novel things are different too, the novelist shuf ing realand
imagined items around in imaginary situations, but in the dream
thingsare different only more and radically so. To be sure, one
ought not overstatethe difference. Many dreams are mundane in the
extreme, and we should notrepresent dreaming as a phenomenon in
which the imagination cuts adriftfrom normal life and soars off
into an Arabian Nights of untrammelledphantasy. Nevertheless, it is
of great importance that dreams canaccommodate events which could
not conceivably happen in reality: forexample, a stone turning into
a man. While dreams are mostly unlike fairystories and myths, all
that could happen in such works of the imaginationcould in
principle be dreamed: the resemblance is not so much in content as
inthe range of possible ways things can be. In dreams boundaries
persist, butalso dissolve; sense and non-sense of a kind co-exist;
a sort of logic is de ed,and a sort observed.What are the limits,
if any, so far as dream-content is concerned? What
kind of non-sense may it not include? It seems that dreams can
break lawswhich even fairy stories and myths must observe. One can
dream that 1 and 1make 3, that one is looking point blank at a
surface which is red and blue allover, and it is doubtful whether
possibilities of this kind could beaccommodated by (say) a fairy
story. If a story included a magician whocould construct an object
which was red and blue all over, something in uswould I think
protest: but what is it, this fantastic thing, that he is supposed
tobe able to create? A certain level of the understanding needs to
be intact if weare to so much as discover what it is that is
imaginatively entertained. Thatsame level is not called upon in the
dream, which must in this respect beviewed as the work of a mind
functioning (so to say) on fewer cylinders.Thus, one misidenti es
an event in the understanding when one describes adream experience
as grasping for the very rst time in my life that 1 and 1make 3.
While one understands what it is the wizard is supposed to
haveaccomplished in turning the prince into a frog, rather as we
understand (say)that a caterpillar turned into a butter y, it seems
to me that if he is creditedwith the capability of (say) making 1
and 1 equal to 3 then one understands no
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more than the separate words and the logical form of the
sentences in whichthose words are embedded. In sum, dreams can
break a priori laws as myths,legends, and fairy stories cannot.Then
does nothing limit dream content? Well, one could not accept as
a
dream report the following: if is to next thing; and therefore
one could notdream if is to next thing. Nor do I think one could
accept a dream report to theeffect that at that moment he entered
the room and did not enter the room. A agrant contradiction of this
kind, which visibly breaks the laws of logicrather than the rules
of sentence-formation as in the previous example,reaches the limit
we have been seeking. In reporting such a putative dream
thenarrator is giving with one hand what simultaneously he is
taking back withthe other: the result being that no transfer of
informational content is effected,and the narration breaks down.
This is not to say that dreams cannot embracethe contradictory. One
could have a dream report in which at one point one(say) endows a
person with the property of being born in 1900, and somewhatlater
in the dream with the property of not being born in 1900. What
cannot beaccommodated is the evident contradiction, something which
simply halts thenarration. In a word, the limits of dream content
are the same as the limits ofdream narratability. And this is the
same as the point at which occurs thedemise of referential
function, the limiting case where we are left withnothing but
words. That is, where we do not even nd ourselves in a positionto
ing up our hands in protest with the response: impossible! It seems
a neline between red and blue all over, and evidently p and not-p;
yet ne or not, aline is there. All that one needs for something to
be dreamable is that it is away the World might be claimed to be
however impossible, howeverincomprehensible, however
inconceivable.Narratability is the outer perimeter of the
dreamable, which is the point at
which referential function reaches its limit, and thus also
where representa-tional function does the same. The World is being
said to be a certain way,that is all that is needed. Then why is it
that we can accept that 1 and 1 mightmake 3 in a dream, but not in
a myth or fairy story? The answer I think is thatit is through our
belief at the time that 1 and 1 might make 3 in a dream, andthe
mental state of the dreamer is a wholly non-rational state in which
one canbelieve anything. By contrast, in the fairy story or myth
the world is presentedto a presumed rational reader through the
mediation of words constituting anarrative, rather than through the
beliefs or mental state of that reader. Thesetwo factors impose
constraints not present in the dream.
6. A Dif culty
(1) A problem is posed by dreams, which is reminiscent of Moores
Paradox.Can one dream that p without in the dream believing p? Can
a propositionhang in mid-air as it were, part of the given world
the dreamer inhabits,
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without at the same time his endorsing that proposition? Is the
following anintelligible dream-report: I dreamed that it was
raining but I was convinced itwas not raining? Now the parallel
waking report in the past tense like it wasraining but I was
convinced it was not raining poses no special problem(even though
the present-tense wakeful version of this statement lands us
inMoores Paradox). And the dream has the following special
property: allreports of dreams are of necessity in the past tense
(by contrast with wakingaccounts of present experience). Then this
fact can mislead us. It may causeus to think of the dream as
somehow essentially past, leading us to supposethat the contentious
dream-report must be acceptable (like the waking past-tense
report). But in fact the dream does not happen in the past, nor
even in thepresent: it merely happens when it does. Then the
question I am asking is: cana proposition p be presented as fact in
a dream, even as one personallyrepudiates it? And I have to say
that I do not see how it could. For how elsecould p exist in a
dream? What other mode of presentation is there?
(2) This conclusion raises a dif culty for the account I am
giving of dream-content. If I cannot dream that 1 and 1 make 3
without in the dream believingit is so, then conversely I should be
capable of dreaming that Mr X entered theroom and did not enter the
room, provided I can believe such a proposition ina dream. And why
should I not do so, seeing that I can dream that 1 and 1make 3?
Then why cannot I have a dream whose description includes andthen
Mr X entered the room and did not enter the room?Why cannot I
believethis proposition in a dream, and thereby dream it?Consider
the dream-report and then Mr X entered the room and did a
dance. How is this to be understood? It is a report of an
experience in which Iwas seemingly aware of a dance. And how is
that to be understood? It is not, Ithink, merely a propositional
awareness that is being recorded. Rather, it isseemingly an example
of the familiar relation in which we stand to ourenvironment when
awake: that is, a perceptual and generally visualawareness,
conjoined with belief in the object-content of the
perceptualexperience. This familiar relation is reproduced in the
dream in the form ofvisual imagining conjoined with belief in the
object-content of the latter.Accordingly, if I report that and then
Mr X entered the room and did not enterthe room, I should by rights
be taken to be reporting that and then I seemed tosee him enter the
room (and believed so) and seemed to see him not enteringthe room
(and believed so). But this report is unacceptable, though
notbecause it might appear to endorse a contradiction: rather, it
is because there isno such thing as seeing someone not enter a
room. However, since there issuch a thing as seeing that someone
did not enter the room, the report may wellbe understood to say I
saw him enter the room and simultaneously saw that hewas not
entering the room. And this report is perhaps acceptable, for I
mighthave seen him enter the room just as I saw his shadow cross
the door, which I
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perceived as indicative of his departure. Either way, this
account leavesunscathed my claim that there is no such thing as
having a dream whosedescription includes and then Mr X entered the
room and did not.
B. The Inner World of the Dreamer
I began this article by noting that consciousness possesses a
tripartitestructure, consisting of (i) understanding oneself to be
situated in a worldendowed with given properties, (ii) the internal
processes one brings to thesituation, and (iii) the concrete
phenomenal interaction with the containingworld. In short, a whole
containing the elements: posited world, world-constitutor, and the
concrete interaction of mind and world. Then dreamingrealizes an
analogous structure, the rst element of which (Dream World)has just
been examined in Section A. It emerged that the world posited in
thedream is logically incapable of being realized, and not just
because one mightdream that 1 and 1 make 3. Then since
consciousness is awareness of Reality,and reason our sole access to
Reality, dreaming can of logical necessity occuronly in states
other than consciousness. There is no possible world in whichthe
dream is the stream of consciousness of a conscious being. No
worldmatching a dream world is waiting there in narrative space in
the hope ofbeing contacted by a conscious subject. The world of the
dreamer observes nolimits: it is limited neither by reason, logic,
the past, the future. Anything ispossible in the dream world.I pass
now in this present Section B to an examination of the second
element of the above dream-structure. Then the element in
consciousnesswhich corresponds to this particular dream element is
what might be calledthe properly internal sector of the mental life
of the conscious, that which isthe object of so-called inner sense.
I propose here in Section B to inspect itsdream analogue, the inner
world of the dreamer, the sector of the mind whichmust harbour
those mental faculties whose operation throws up the dream. Ido so
in order to nd out what it is in that inner world which creates
thisphenomenon, and discover in so doing what in the dreaming mind
constitutesthe explanation of the dreams being a seeming
consciousness. This last mustbe a matter of some importance, since
it is surely a necessary property of thedream that it replicates
consciousness, natural to suppose that this property isa key to the
inner nature of dreaming, and reasonable to assume that
theexplanation must lie in the dream-making powers of the mind. For
I shouldlike to stress that in writing this article my overall
purpose is something morethan discovering the essential properties
of the dream; it is a search for adeeper factor: a principle which
accounts for their existence. Thenremembering the scope of the
imagination in the constituting of the dreamworld, the imagination
seems the most likely internal source of the kinship
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between dream and consciousness. For the imagination is par
excellence animitator, indeed an imitator whose model is the Real,
and in the dream theimagination seems to have the power and scope
to conjure up a domain that isan analogue of the Reality given
exclusively to waking consciousness. Weshall see that this theory
has a dif culty to face.
1. Imagination
(1) It emerged in Section A that the dream resembles the fairy
story and myth,not so much in its content as in the range of
possibilities it can encompass.Indeed, it extends the range to the
very limiting point at which narratabilityalong with
representational function break down. Then one might supposethat
this property was not merely necessary to dreams, but uniquely so
aswell. Here, however, one would be mistaken. For we encounter the
sameproperty in a state of consciousness which falls well outside
the range ofstates compatible with dreaming. Thus, it is a notable
fact that the hypnotictrance is a state in which one can believe
anything; indeed, not just believeanything, but in a situation in
which veridical perception is something of anorm seemingly perceive
anything. For example, believe that 1 and 1 make3, or really see an
orange and yet see that orange as red all over and blue allover.
Whatever is describable is in principle believable in this state,
and ananalogous rule holds for seeming-perceivings, even though the
latter takeplace in a situation where perception typically occurs.
The workingassumption I am making in this discussion is that in the
hypnotic trancewhatever way the hypnotizer says the World is and
perceptually appears, is away the hypnotizee believes and
experiences it to be. Then we can clearly seehow in this state the
limits of content coincide with the limits ofrepresentability: the
representable or merely sayable precisely de nes thatlimit, since
all that the hypnotizer need do to determine experiential content
issay things are a certain way. In short, here as in the dream
being a way is thetouchstone.The above examples of belief and
seeming perception are exercises of the
propositional and perceptual imagination, respectively.
Precisely the same istrue of belief and seeming perception in the
dream. Thinking of thiscommonality, one might wonder how it is that
the dream and the imaginative(suggested) experiential life of an
hypnotizee can differ. Both occur inbeings in non-rational states:
one (the dreamer) having his beliefs simplyhanded up to him by his
mind, the other (the hypnotizee) having his beliefssimply handed
down to him by another: two wholly non-rational methods
ofbelief-acquisition; and both experiences are exercises of the
imagination. Andyet on consideration it is clear that these two
varieties of experience must bedifferent, and in an interesting way
that points up an important property of
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dreaming. In particular, it brings to our notice an important
property of thedreaming use of the imagination.
(2) An hypnotic subject is in a state such that a command from
the hypnotizertends to propel him into motor-perceptual behaviour.
Then at such times heuses his senses to perceive, may well believe
for good rational reasonwhatever they reveal, and perform acts
guided by those rational beliefs.Meanwhile he believes for no
reason whatsoever all that he is told by thehypnotizer, and is
ready to disbelieve the evidence of his senses: for example,to
believe that the white paper before him is black or that the
lighted room isplunged in darkness. And so the faculty of reason
must be at once operativeand inoperative in this condition. And a
comparable schizoid-like divideholds so far as a subjects contact
with the environment is concerned. Thus, anhypnotizee who believes
it is dark might obey an order to walk over to a tableand pick up
the one ripe orange in a group of green oranges. Indeed, were heto
be told that the orange was (say) an elephant, he would still need
ordinaryvisual clues to identify it. The order would need to be
couched in somethinglike the following terms: walk over to the
table and pick up the elephant thatlooks like a ripe orange. In
other words, the phantastic working of anhypnotizees perceptual and
propositional imagination takes place ofnecessity upon a realistic
base or ground of actual psycho-physical contactwith the
environment: indeed, it takes place within such a realistic
setting,rather than the reverse. It embellishes that setting with
cognitive andperceptual imaginings, rather than the reverse.The
relation of a dreamer to his environment is totally different.
Dreamers
are perceptually, rationally, cognitively, and actively cut off
from physicalreality as hypnotic subjects are not. Typically,
dreaming subjects neither see,reason about, learn about, nor walk
around in their environment: instead theyimagine a physical
setting, frequently imagine they are visually perceiving it,and
often enough imagine they are moving about somehow in that
imagineddomain. Real perceptual experiences do not occur, neither
do real bodilywillings, and the power of reason as determinant of
belief is almost totallylost. And while the dreamer does not
imagine his own existence, he none theless generally imagines he is
in that imagined environment, not so much in theform of a belief to
that effect, but in so far as he seems perceptually andactively to
be on the spot. Thus, there can be no question of his being intouch
with Reality in the merely local perceptual-cognitive senseexempli
ed in the hypnotic subject. And neither is it possible that
hisimaginings should occur within and be integrated into a real and
concretelygiven physical ground which is constituted in his own
mind through thepower of reason. The dreamer inhabits a purely
imaginary world, theconstituting of which owes nothing to the use
of rational function andeverything to the imagination.
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(3) What is the signi cance of this difference between these two
states? Itconcerns the fundamental question: what is it about the
inner world of thedreamer that makes dreaming a
seeming-consciousness? Thus, since theconcept experience is not the
concept experience when seeminglyconscious, experiences might occur
which are not embedded in a seeming-consciousness: the experiences
of a somnambulist presumably are not. Andneither are those of an
hypnotic subject (as we shall later see). However,dream experiences
do occur in such a context. Then how does dreaming cometo have this
property? The most likely explanation is to be found in the
partplayed by the imagination in constituting the dream. In the
dream theimagination is continually active and observes no limits,
and in thisun agging and limitless creative power we seem to have
the wherewithal tocreate a containing domain that is the analogue
of the Reality posited in thestate of waking consciousness. One
might naturally suppose that in this powerwe have the source of the
dream and of its kinship to consciousness.Then it is here that the
relevance of the hypnotic trance becomes apparent.
The discussion of the trance was undertaken to help delineate
the precise roleof the imagination in dreaming, and in so doing
explain why the dream is aquasi-consciousness. For the trance is of
special interest in this regard, sincethe imaginings of an
hypnotizee seem to observe no more limitation than dothose of a
dreamer, the imaginings of an hypnotizee being free to roam as
faras the language of the hypnotizer can transport them. But the
unlimitedimaginings of the trance do not take place in the context
of a quasi-consciousness. It follows that the projected explanation
of the fact that thedream is a quasi-consciousness, which located
the answer in the limitlesscharacter of dream imaginings, cannot as
it stands be sustained. Then oughtwe to abandon the theory? And
does this show that the imagination cannot bethe dream-making
agency in the inner world of the dreamer? In my opinionnot, as I
hope now to demonstrate.
(4) One feature of the imaginings of an hypnotizee which emerged
was thatthey take place within a context of psycho-physical
cognitive and activecontact with the environment which is at once
rationally constituted andnecessary. And so it turns out that in
the trance the imagination has after all toobserve limits of a
special kind: it can operate only if the mind posits anouter
unimagined and fully objective containing domain for the
unlimitedworkings of the imagination to embellish. Therefore while
it can imagineanything whatsoever within that containing context,
it is unable to imaginethe containing context itself, and there
must therefore also in addition be thatin the mind constituting
that objective context which of necessity is not animagining. These
limits to the scope of the imagination in the trance imply
acorresponding scope for reason. For since the sole access to
Reality availableto self-conscious beings is reason, it follows
that in the trance reason must
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have a certain scope. Accordingly, in the trance the rule of the
imaginationmust be far from total.The contrast in these respects
with the dream are noteworthy. Unlike the
trance, in the dream the imagination is the source of all that
appears in thecontaining domain, generating all outer seeming
cognition. Thus, it createsthe context and its contents entire, and
is altogether unlimited in scope.Accordingly, the state must be
wholly non-rational: the imaginationcompletely replacing reason in
physical cognitive matters. In sum, the dreamemerges as wholly
irrational, wholly imaginative, wholly interior, andperhaps also as
wholly inactive. It remains prima facie plausible that thedream
property of being a replica of consciousness owes its existence to
thealmost unlimited rule of the imagination in the dream and the
correspondingtotal sleep of reason.
2. Interiority
(1) In so far as an hypnotized subject relates concretely with
his environmentin motor-perceptual response to commands, he relates
concretely with the realWorld. In this sense he may be said to live
within or psycho-physically toinhabit the World. By contrast, a
dreamer lives in a world of his own, a purelyimagined world.
Paradoxically, this loss makes possible a measure ofinteriority
which is not found in the trance. The involuted character
ofdreaming preserves an inwardness which is lost in the
de-personalizingexternalization of the mind of the hypnotizee, as I
hope soon to show.We have seen that the dream reproduces the
tripartite structure of
consciousness, which is a necessary condition of the dream being
a seemingor quasi-consciousness. The second element of that
structure, the distinctiveinner life of the dreamer, is the
subject-matter of the present Section B. Itemerged in B(1) that the
imagination may well be the prime internal source ofthe kinship
between dream and consciousness. Here in B(2) I examineanother
feature of the inner life of the dreamer, a factor of a different
kind. Forwe are concerned here, not with a causal agency of that
kinship but astructural parallel which holds between the two
states, in other words withone of the elements of the kinship. What
I have in mind is the preservation indreaming of a fundamental
divide which runs through the experiential life ofthe conscious.
Once again we shall nd in the trance an illuminatingcontrasting
phenomenon. But before I consider these states I must say a
littleabout the divide in question.
(2) The stream of consciousness of the self-consciously
conscious is in asense a two-tiered structure, in that perception
and bodily action occur on thefrontier of consciousness, at the
point where mind and extra-mind meet,whereas all other experiences
take place within that perimeter. Thus, behind
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our immediate epistemological and active contact with physical
reality runsan experiential stream, an array of internal phenomena
which for the mostpart are directed to items in the outer world, a
contact which is effectedthrough the mediation of concepts rather
than via the concrete causal relationsof perception and bodily
action. It is through this distinction that the conceptof
inwardness which I appeal to in this discussion is to be
explicated. Theexperiential sector of that part of the
self-conscious mind that is singled outunder objects of inner sense
is roughly what I mean. Thus, the divide ofwhich I speak is that
between the outer experiential perimeter and the abovevariety of
experience. It is a divide in the mind between the
experientialouter and the realm of true experiential
interiority.When we come to examine the trance and dream, we nd a
signi cant
dissimilarity between the two states on this particular count.
Consider in thisregard the trance (which takes either quiescent or
activated form). Thecondition of hypnotic quiescence is a sort of
mental suspended animation:experience stilled, no trace of an inner
life of any kind, not even a state ofcontinuous expectation,
nothing but a continuous openness to thesuggestions of the being
who caused him to be in this vacuous state. Thesecond alternative
mental posture of automatistic behaviour is equally devoidof
interiority. It is true that experience has returned here to the
mind, but it is amental desert for all that, an inner emptiness. We
nd no sign of the mentalwill, and so of the active thinking will,
and therefore of self-determination;nor any form of mental
response, whether of a thinking or even affective kind,to what is
presented perceptually to consciousness; and thus no evidence ofthe
fundamental divide between outer and inner, between outer senseand
the experiential object of so-called inner sense. The precipitating
cause ofall that happens in the experiential sector of the subjects
mind lies outside ofhim and is distributed between the mind of
another and the environment,which is to say that the generating
locus of his inner life is altogether external.Accordingly, in each
of the above two conditions the hypnotized subject maybe said to be
outside of himself. He is at once in the mind of another
anddispersed in the environment.
(3) I hope now to show how much closer to normal consciousness
is thedream in this respect. But I emphasize that it would be a
futile and indeedcontradictory enterprise to seek to demonstrate
that the dream actuallyreproduces the stream of consciousness of
the conscious. Rather, if Naturemay be said in the dream to have a
primary project of merely seeminglyreproducing consciousness, then
my purpose is to show how much of theinner life of the conscious is
conserved in the dream without interfering withthat natural project
(which is what one should expect if the one state isseemingly the
other). By way of justi cation of this contention I appeal
tophenomena of the following kind. In place of the steady
groundbass of
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thinking, which is of the essence of the conscious stream of
consciousness, we nd in the dream the occurrence of stray thoughts,
sometimes even the oddsporadic chain of reasoning, and over it all
a puzzling semblance of mentalfreedom. And we encounter emotion,
wholly untarnished by the loss ofconsciousness, or desire equally
as real as in waking life, each provoked bythe cognitive content of
the dream. Then whereas the events and facts andobjects given to
the dreamer in his outer world are no more than products ofthe
imagination, and his experience of them mostly forms of
perceptualimagining which are unreal versions of the perceptual
reality, these latteraffective or conative phenomena are neither.
Such thoughts and emotions anddesires are real examples of their
kind, in contrast with the seemingperceptions and seeming physical
actions that populate dreams. Thus, there ective divide of
consciousness is preserved intact in dreaming. It is agenuine
reality in the dream, and in no way merely imagined.Now one might
have expected all along that a measure of interiority would
obtain in the dream, bearing in mind the sheer continuity
between wakingconsciousness, pre-sleep semi-conscious
phantasmagoric inner life, anddream. And in fact it has proved to
be so. While dreaming is not a form ofthinking, which is the main
locus of interiority, it exhibits certain other marksof inwardness,
albeit in lesser measure than in waking consciousness.Whereas the
experiences of the hypnotizee face immediately outwards to thebody
and environment in perception and action, and the objects of
perceptualand propositional imaginings take their place within such
a wholly externalsetting, the perceptual and propositional
imaginings of the dream integrateinto an imagined and altogether
internal scene and dream-situation. Thefundamental divide between
the outer (i.e. imagined environment) andinner (e.g. thinking and
affective responses to the latter) is preserved indreaming. In the
phenomenon of interiority we have part of the explanation ofthe
fact that the dream is a seeming consciousness and the trance
not.
3. World
(1) We have seen that the dreamer imagines a containing
environment inwhich he is situated, and that the hypnotic subject
does not. In fact there is asense in which the dream involves the
creation of a containing world and thehypnotizee does not. Then in
this respect the dream mirrors an importantproperty of waking
consciousness. And it is a necessary condition of thedream being a
seeming-consciousness that it do so.What does it mean to create a
world? I shall take it stipulatively to be
equivalent, not to any activity on the part of a subject, but to
a particular stateof the mind: namely, that in which the mind
ranges in its objects across adomain marked by certain properties
conferred by the inherence of thecapacity for thought. We see these
properties in the domain given to the
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understanding of an awake rational being. Such a being at such a
timeunderstands himself to be situated at a speci c point in
space-time; knows thattemporally behind him there is a vast stretch
of time and the same before himin the future, and likewise around
him spatially in all directions; understandsthat the existent takes
place in such a framework, and realizes that thingsmight have been
different from how in contingent fact they are; and so on.This much
at least is present in the mind of the rational conscious. And it
is acondition which cannot exist in beings incapable of thought,
whetherconscious or not. The peculiar powers of thought whereby the
mind can crossfrontiers of time and space and actuality to
elsewhere in space and time andinto the realms of the
might-have-been (etc.) is the source of this frameworkwithin which
the awake and rational mentally lead their lives.
(2) Consider in this regard the state of mind of one in a
trance. While anhypnotic subject is capable of perceiving and
learning about the environment,his mind does not range across the
reaches of spatio-temporal and modalreality in the ways just
mentioned. The mind of an hypnotizee seems strandedin parochiality,
entirely localized: spatially reaching as far as the eye can
see,temporally as far as the termination of his present occupation,
all else out ofsight and out of mind. The framework of which a
conscious rational subjectis aware, in which physical quasi-in
nitude and contingency and modality nd representation, is neither
present nor needed in the trance. As a result, theobjects of
experience are positioned in no more than a region. Such a state
ofaffairs is all of a piece with the loss of interiority that
characterizes the trance:the power of thought arrested, the
affective life all but completely dormant. Inthe mentally
constricted condition I am assuming there is no psychologicalspace
available for spontaneous thought, (say) for re ection upon
thesituation in which the subject nds himself, or for emotion
following uponsuch thought, and so on. Meanwhile the imagination is
called upon only whenthe hypnotizer conjures up counter-realities
in his mind, for the rest of thetime being inactive. Then while the
range of reference would here coincidewith that of normal
consciousness, this is merely at the behest of another mindand is
inserted into a mind which is otherwise stranded in a
spatio-temporalregion, and cannot count as an exercise of the power
of re ection on his part.In sum, this subject constitutes neither
the real world, nor a world of his own,nor a world of the
hypnotizer. He is stranded wholly in the here and now, in amere
region. In bartering the limitless sway of reason for a measure
ofimagining, he loses a World and gains a region.What of the dream?
If I dream that 1 and 1 make 3, the object of such a
dream cannot be a possible world. In addition, the negative
presumptionprinciple operative in dreams forbids our supposing that
the dreamerunderstands that spatio-temporal quasi-in nitude and
contingency character-ize the domain in which he nds himself, which
seems to con rm that dreams
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are not of possible worlds. None the less there are reasons
which might inclineone stipulatively to say that the mind of the
dreamer posits a world. It is notjust that the imagination plays a
central part in constituting the dream. Themain consideration is
that the dream ranges as far and wide, across space andtime and
actuality, as the mind of a wakeful thinking being. Here we have
astark contrast with the trance, where reference beyond the region
is possiblebut no part of the frame of reference, being inserted
from outside. Thus, in thedream we imagine real or imagined people,
real or imagined places, counter-factual situations (he is alive
after all!) without limit, exactly as whenawake. If we express the
concept of a world in terms, not of what the subjectunderstands but
the type of the mental canvas upon which occur therepresentations
of the dreamer, then in that sense it coincides with that of
awakeful rational being. In dreams thought and the imagination have
the samerange of operation as in waking consciousness.
(3) The properties of dreaming listed in this present second
Section B go someway to explaining why we are deceived in the dream
as to our state ofconsciousness, why in the dream we seem to
ourselves to be awake, why inother words it is a
seeming-consciousness. While the dream cannot entirelyreproduce the
inner experiential life of consciousness, for it is not a replica
ofconsciousness in the sense in which one painting replicates
another, the dreaminvolves the occurrence of phenomena which
approach as near as possible toreproducing the phenomena peculiar
to consciousness without actually doingso. For example, one is
experiencing. And a measure of interiority obtains.And one nds
oneself in a seeming World. And an apparent freedom seems toreign.
In addition, an absolute single-mindedness characterizes the dream
inthat it is wholly given over to the unreal, in contrast with the
schizoid-likecharacter of the trance, where experience splays with
ease across reality andthe imaginary. This all or nothing character
mirrors that of wakingconsciousness, which likewise is devoid of
compromise, in that in this staterationality and thinking and
perceptual power (etc.) inhere withoutquali cation, constituting
the unquali ed contact with reality which isde nitive of the
condition. Such an uncompromising mental posture is thebreeding
ground for the world-making quasi-in nitudes characteristic of
boththe dream and consciousness.
C. The Perceptual Imagination
I began by saying that dreaming realizes an analogous tripartite
structure tothat of consciousness. Then in Sections A and B I
examined the rst twoelements of that totality, viz. the world of
the dreamer (in A) and the inner lifeof the dreamer (in B). I come
now in the present Section C to the third
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element, which is the dreaming analogue of the perceptual
encounter withphysical reality that is part of the phenomenon of
waking consciousness.While it might seem that this third element
ought to include the apparentbodily willings of dreamers, since
physical action is one half of the concretephenomenal encounter of
consciousness with the world, the seemingperceptions of the dream
completely overshadow seeming physical actionsin that context. This
is because seeming physical action plays no part inconstituting the
dream world, whereas by contrast the perceptual imagining ofdreams
seems to be centre-stage in the process.
1. Dreaming and Words
(1) Whereas thought is completely translatable into language,
which is itscompletely adequate tool, dreaming is not: no dream
comes to us purelyverbally, nor for that matter purely
conceptually. So, at any rate, I should say.But I think we need to
take a closer look at this claim, even though thephenomenological
facts lend it some support. For example, when we recall adream we
mostly recall a phenomenon involving visual imaginings alongwith
imagined willings, etc. While if we were non-visual creatures it
seemslikely that our dreams would lean rather heavily upon tactile
imaginings. Andif we lacked both sight and touch, we might perhaps
dream of a voice whichdescribed a world: that is, we might hear a
voice and dream that things areas the voice says they are, thereby
putting to use the auditory together with thepropositional
imagination.These suppositions raise two questions. First, could
one dream merely that
the world was a certain way? Could one have a dream whose entire
contentwas propositional? It would be a dream whose descriptive
narrative tted itsobject with the exactitude with which a sentence
ts the content of a passingthought, which it describes without
remainder. And a closely related secondquestion: could one dream of
a voice speaking a narrative, whose contentone discovered and
dreamed in the double process of deciphering andbelieving the sense
of those words?
(2) There are dif culties in either suggestion. To begin, while
there is nothingto prevent one from having an experience during
sleep which consisted inones entertaining the thought and belief
that a certain proposition was true,and while this might be
accounted a dream by some, such a phenomenon isnot an apparent
reproduction of consciousness. In a word, it is an
entirelydifferent phenomenon from the phenomenon under
investigation. In any case,it should be noted that I am assuming
the dream is a continuous experientialprocess which endures across
time. Then how could an intelligibly linkedcontinuous sequence of
propositions come before the mind except through asequence of words
coming into ones mind, and how could that happen except
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through ones dreaming a seeing or hearing of words, which is to
saythrough use of the perceptual imagination? What other mode is
there in whicha connected series of thoughts could be transmitted
continuously across timeto a receiving mind? How else other than
through the piecemeal gathering of astructured linguistic
formation? Here we have one dif culty, raised by thesupposition
that a pure sequence of propositions might be the entire content
ofa dream. A second dif culty is raised by the supposition that
even assuminglanguage were to be given to a dreaming consciousness
in whatever way, thatones mind should in the dream reach through
those words to their contentthrough the use of ones understanding
of that language, believe what thosewords are saying as they occur,
and in the twin processes of understandingand believing be dreaming
that content.The situation in which one thinks aloud on ones feet,
slowly fashioning in
vocal terms the linguistic statement of a gathering thought, and
thinks variousunuttered thoughts in so doing, has a close parallel
in the minds of thelisteners to this audible thinker. They hear
with understanding somethingwhich resembles the developing stages
of a building which is being erectedthrough the use of bricks and
other parts. Word-edi ces appear before themind, which at each
stage are susceptible of a diminishing multiplicity
ofinterpretations, all of which nally get closed off until the
listener is left withone unambiguous interpretation, at which point
the speaker is said to havethought a thought and his listeners to
have grasped a thought. Then just as thisthinker was thinking on
his feet, so his hearers were thinking in theirarmchairs. Therefore
if we suppose such a thing to be going on during thecourse of a
dream, we in effect postulate a phenomenon in which thinking
istaking place simultaneously with a dreaming use of the perceptual
andpropositional imagination. This hybrid is not a dream.
2. Dreaming and Perception
(1) It is because I cannot think of anything answering to the
abovespeci cations that I do not think one could have either a
purely verbal or apurely propositional dream. This nds
corroboration in the following thought.A proper or acceptable
characterization of the dream is that in dreaming themind merely
through its own resources seemingly but unsuccessfullyreproduces
waking consciousness and its objects. Then in wakingconsciousness
the world is not given to us purely propositionally: it is notknown
of purely in thought, nor sub specie aeternitatis like (say)
thetheorems of algebra. The normal situation is that we encounter
Reality from astandpoint in space and time and concretely
perceptually. Waking toconsciousness we nd it all palpably and
visibly around us, given not merelyin thought and proposition, but
actually and concretely. And by that I mean,not just that one is
conscious-that or aware-that it is there, even though this is
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certainly true. Rather, I mean that one is simply aware-of, or
conscious-of, orhas experiences-of, the things amidst which we
ourselves are situated.Waking to consciousness is coming into a
state in which our physicalsurrounds and body are direct objects of
awareness. Through perception wedirectly experience those
phenomenal realities. And concepts play second ddle to
psycho-physical causality in this phenomenon: the
perceptualencounter with the environment is as concrete as a blow
between the eyes.But the worlds concrete presence to consciousness
does not just consist in
perception of the environment. Even before that it takes the
form of theawakeness of the perceptual attention, together with
present knowledge ofthe reality of the sector of the world that
lies outside our own mind, which isthe potential direct object of
the awake attention. When conscious (i) oneknows of the existence
of the sector of the world lying outside our own mind,(ii) one is
possessed of the power perceptually to respond to incoming datafrom
outside, which is to say that the perceptual attention is awake or
on,and (iii) one has perceptual awareness of sectors of that
domain, whetherpositively (e.g. hearing sound) or negatively (e.g.
hearing silence). Themental presence of the outer world is thus
more than cognition and/orperception: it consists pre-eminently in
the continuous readiness-to-respondon the part of the attention to
the causal impact of the already known-ofphysical environment in
which one is placed.
(2) Typically, the dream is an attempted reproduction of all
this, since thedream is an attempted reproduction of consciousness.
The speci c faculty ofdreaming consists in the power imaginatively
to conjure up a World in whichwe nd ourselves, in ways which are
modelled upon the above. That we canrespond internally to these
imagined phenomenal objects, in the form ofthought-about or
affective responses-to them, seems to be no more than theminds
normal powers being put to use in a dream context: a
mentalphenomenon which is undoubtedly part of the dream, but
secondary to theexercise of the primary dream power, which is an
imaginative powerconstituted out of perceptual and propositional
imaginings. These latterpowers take speci cally dream form: the
perceptual power having much incommon with hallucinatory power,
while dream propositional imagining is animagining-that which is a
special case of belief-in.Thus consciousness involves more than
either knowledge or perception of
physical reality. In consciousness the physical World is a
continuing concretepresence to the mind, a phenomenon which takes
the form of a steadyawakeness of the attention to an already
known-of outer World. This ispart of the normal conscious
condition. Then how is this feature ofconsciousness to be
reproduced by the imaginative powers of dreaming? Howdo we manage
to imagine the concrete presence of the physical environment?How
imagine it simpliciter so to say? I ask, because there are reasons
for
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thinking that there can be no such thing as imagining-of a
physical or indeedany other object. So how do we imaginatively
reproduce the aforementionedfundamental element of waking
consciousness?It is achieved through imaginatively reproducing what
occurs in waking
consciousness, viz. perception of the environment. That is,
through the use ofthe perceptual imagination. For example, through
an imaginative seeming-seeing. For whereas there is no just
imagining-of an object, there is justvisual imagining-of an object,
as in mental imagery. This is the main reasonour dreams are mostly
visual dreams. But there is also a secondary reason forthis fact.
In sight alone we are concretely aware-of, have
experiences-of,objects at a distance. Thus, the sound in hearing is
not its object-source, anymore than the light in seeing is its
object-source, but whereas the perceptualattention does not in
hearing pass on from sound to source, in the case of sightit passes
not through but on from the visible light mediator to the
physicalobject causes which then generally nd themselves
intentionally representedin the experience (seeing as ...). Hence
in sight alone we are aware of thephysical environment stretching
away into the distance. Then if in a dream weare to imaginatively
conjure up so extensive and spatially organized anobject, we have
no alternative but to avail ourselves of the power of
visualimagining. This is the subsidiary reason our dreams take
visual form. If wewere blind from birth, to achieve an imagining of
a concretely present worldwe would no doubt have to make use of the
imaginative varieties of seeming-feeling or seeming-hearing,
augmented in each case by extensive use
ofpropositional-imagining.
(3) Given such a seeming concrete presence, the propositional
imaginationjoins it in constituting the dream, for in the dream we
tend to believe muchof what we see (though not necessarily because
we see). These delusivebeliefs are imaginings-that, intrinsically
and indexically bonded to theproducts of the visual imagination. In
the previous Section (1) I rejectedthe supposition that the mind
might in a dream be capable of conjuring upa seemingly concretely
present environment simply by calling upon ourpowers of
imagining-that such and such obtained. That judgment wasbased on
the assumption that this experiential process across time
cannottake the form of deciphering words given either (somehow)
inthemselves or else auditorily since that would count as a form
ofthinking and be inconsistent both with the non-rational state in
whichdreaming occurs and in any case with dreaming itself. The
question I wasleft with was: whether one might, experientially
across time, without directuse of the perceptual imagination, and
without deciphering language in aprocess of thinking, create in
ones mind a dreaming purely propositionalrepresentation of a here
and now present Physical Reality. My answer atthe end of this
discussion is, no.
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Thus, any dreamer who is endowed with the power of visual
perception isalmost inevitably going to dream in visual terms,
which is to say through theuse of the visual imagination, which is
in turn aided and abetted by thepropositional imagination in
constituting the dream. In this way an imaginarydomain, modelled
upon physical reality, stretches around and encompassesthe dreamer,
who proceeds to respond mentally to and conduct himselftowards that
world in ways which likewise are modelled upon normal life.
D. Dreaming and Consciousness
1. The Sense of Seeming Consciousness
(1) I have been describing the dream as a seeming or as if or
quasi-consciousness. Why so? The following considerations suggest
it: that in thedream we seem to ourselves to be conscious, that we
are in a sense deceivedat the time by the experience, that on
waking we discover that the world isnot like that (so that
consciousness acts here as a corrective presumably ofsomething that
was passing itself off as precisely that corrective agency rather
as a man might unmask an imposter posing as himself by appearing
inperson upon the scene). Furthermore, we have the expression I
dreamed ,whose place- ller can be occupied by absolutely any
episode in the consciousexperiential life of subjects. And the fact
that we sometimes nd ourselveswondering: did I really experience
that, or did I only dream it? And so on.But a problem now presents
itself. For it is also natural to describe certain
other phenomena as seeming examples of some exemplar phenomenon.
Forexample, the visual hallucination, the visual mental-image, the
mere visualexperience itself, are all naturally described as
seeming-seeings. And yet ineach case these phenomena stand in a
different relation to the seeing which insome sense they seem. This
implies that the sense of seeming - must varyfrom case to case.
Then the questions we should now consider are: what is thesense of
seeming, quasi-, as if that is applicable to the dream in thedream
is a seeming (etc.) consciousness? And: will discovering that
senseenable us to de ne the phenomenon of dreaming? Will it enable
us to saywhat dreaming is?
(2) It is tempting to opt for a re exive-cognitive analysis of
seemingconsciousness, to take it to signify the property of seeming
cognitively to beconsciousness. That is, to believe that dreaming
is seeming cognitively to beconscious. After all, it may well be
that one does believe such a thing at thetime, and legitimate
therefore to predicate being a seeming consciousness(in that sense)
of dreaming. However, if by the dream is a seemingconsciousness we
purport rather to be descriptively characterizing thephenomenon of
dreaming which is what the above considerations argue,
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and how I have understood the sentence throughout this article
then there exive-cognitive reading must be rejected, since the one
property isdescriptive and the other relational.An additional and
equally decisive reason for rejecting that reading is to be
found in the dreams of non-rational animals. For non-rational
animals areboth conscious in precisely the sense humans are stunned
meaning thesame of man or beast, and dream in the same sense their
dreaming beingequally a quasi-consciousness , yet do not entertain
beliefs concerning theirdreaming. After all, the claim I am
attempting to analyse is that when onedreams it is as if one is
conscious, and this is surely a different claim from theassertion
that when one dreams one believes one is conscious. Indeed,
sinceconsciousness itself is not in the nature of a belief, it is
evident that aphenomenon which at the time is experienced as
consciousness cannot takethe form of a belief.
(3) One other theory concerning the particular sense of seeming
underconsideration should be examined. When we describe a visual
experience as aseeming-seeing we mean, not that we believe it a
seeing, but thatexperientially it is the same: we mean it is the
same experience. Then onemight be inclined, perhaps in the spirit
of DescartessMeditations, to say sucha thing of dreaming, to claim
it is experientially the same as waking.However, this theory cannot
be correct. One reason is that the stream ofconsciousness of the
conscious is a suf ciency for consciousness, andconsciousness is
inconsistent with dreaming. Consciousness is an
internallyself-validating phenomenon, an internal state suf cient
unto itself. Thus, thephenomenal condition consciousness is not
re-describable as conscious-ness, consciousness being essentially
consciousness. For example, con-scious