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Philosophy of Dreams and Sleeping PHILOSOPHY OF DREAMS AND SLEEPING Markku Roinila Dear participants, We are going to discuss what dreams are, how contemporary psychology explains them, what are the philosophical questions concerning dreams, how philosophers in the past have discussed these questions and finally, how contemporary philosophy can provide an alternative to the physiological approach to dreaming. The lectures will take place on Wednesdays 10-12 U40 lh 12 and Thursdays 10-12 U40 lh 8. The locations may change due to the number of participants. I’ll keep you posted. Preliminary program 30. 10. Introduction to dreams, practicalities 31. 10. Physiological matters; history of dream sciences and contemporary dream science; Reading Malcolm: “Temporal Location and Duration of Dreams”, in Dreaming, pp. 70-82 6. 11. Philosophy and dreams; dreams of philosophers: Reading Leibniz’s Philosophical Dream (http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rutherford/Leibniz/dream.htm) 7. 11. Philosophical questions of dreams and sleeping 13. 11. Ancient views on dreaming; Reading ? 14. 11. Cont.; medieval philosophy of dreaming 20. 11. Descartes and Hobbes on dreaming; Reading Descartes, 6th Meditation 21. 11. Some other Early modern views (Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke); Reading Leibniz: Fragment on dreams 27. 11. 18th and 19th century philosophy of dreaming (Kant, Voltaire, Bergson etc.) 28. 11. Contemporary philosophical views on dreaming (Wittgenstein, Malcolm and his critics); Reading Malcolm: “Judgements in sleep”, in Dreaming, pp. 35-44 4. 12. Cont. (Flanagan, Dennett, Revonsuo, Sutton, Phenomenology etc.); Reading ? 5. 12. Cont. 11. 12. General discussion: Dream Science & The future of philosophy of dreams; Reading John Sutton: Dreaming (http://www.academia.edu/313903/Dreaming) 12. 12. Course examination Study points As you can see, I’ve added some reading to some dates (more to come). I thought to ask you to read one short paper each week which we can discuss. In addition, there is a compulsory reading for the whole course which is Norman Malcom: Dreaming, a short collection of papers on dreaming. Some of the weekly readings are from that book. To gain 3 study points you should attend lectures, read the texts and discuss them and read Malcolm’s book. The course examination is 12. 12. If you cannot make it, it is possible to participate general examination of the Faculty in January. Alternatively, you can write an essay of ten pages concerning the philosophy of dreams (a theme discussed in the lecture course) to gain the study points. Reading material As there are only two copies of Malcolm’s book available in libraries, I will upload it to Moodle where you can also find other material to the course and slides I have used. In addition, there is news and hopefully discussion of dreams and sleeping. I would like to ask you to enroll yourself to the course. The address for the Moodle course area is https://moodle.helsinki.fi/course/view.php?id=11249&notifyeditingon=1 Alternatively, you can go to http://moodle.helsinki.fi/ and find the course under category Arts>Dreaming (or https://moodle.helsinki.fi/course/search.php?search=Dreaming) One you do the self-enrolment, the key to the course is “Dreaming”. For information, see http://wiki.helsinki.fi/display/moodle/Moodle+Manual+for+Students In case you cannot enroll yourself or you have any other problems or questions concerning the course, please write to mroinila (at) gmail.com I have added a bibliography on dreaming to Moodle. What is a dream? “Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.” (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. 2000). David Foulkes: “Dreaming is the awareness of being in an imagined world in which things happen.” “Mental activity occurring in sleep characterized by vivid sensorimotor imagery that is experienced as waking reality despite such distinctive cognitive features as impossibility or improbability of time, place, person and actions; emotions, especially fear, elation, and anger predominate over sadness, shame and guilt and sometimes reach sufficient strength to cause awakening; memory for even very vivid dreams is evanescent and tends to fade quickly upon awakening unless special steps are taken to retain it.” (J. Allan Hobson) “I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.” (René Descartes) Some characteristics of dreams They are different from waking experience, have a logic of their own If we are awake, we usually remember fairly accurately places, times and people. In dreams it is typical that we accept things which would seem peculiar to us in our waking state. For example, the time goes very slowly or very quickly in dreams, the people we know look different from what they are, the places can be familiar but strange and there may be connexion of things which usually are not in one place at the same time. Things merge into each other in a way which nver happens when we are awake. A more scientific list: loss of awareness of self, loss of orientational stability, loss of directed thought, reduction in logical reasoning, poor memory within and after the dream. Questions about dreams Hobson: Dreaming. A Very Short Introduction. 1) Why is dreaming so rarely self-reflective, when waking consciousness is so often the opposite? 2) Why is almost all dreaming forgotten? 3) Why are dreams so bizarre? All of these question can, and have, been treated by both psychologists (old and contemporary) and philosophers (especially question no. 2 & 3). In this course I will discuss both approaches with emphasis on philosophy. Hall analysis of dream content Calvin Hall and Van De Castle published The Content Analysis of Dreams in 1966 in which they outlined a coding system to study 1,000 dream reports from college students. It was found that people all over the world dream of mostly the same things. The following characteristics can be distinguished: Visuals The visual nature of dreams is generally highly phantasmagoric; that is, different locations and objects continuously blend into each other. The visuals (including locations, characters/people, objects/artifacts) are generally reflective of a person's memories and experiences, but often take on highly exaggerated and bizarre forms. People who are blind from birth do not have visual dreams. Their dream contents are related to other senses like auditory, touch, smell and taste, whichever are present since birth. Emotions The most common emotion experienced in dreams is anxiety. Other emotions include abandonment, anger, fear, joy, and happiness. Negative emotions are much more common than positive ones. Sexual themes The Hall data analysis shows that sexual dreams occur no more than 10% of the time and are more prevalent in young to mid-teens. Another study showed that 8% of men's and women's dreams have sexual content. In some cases, sexual dreams may result in orgasms or nocturnal emissions. These are colloquially known as wet dreams. Color vs. black and white A small minority of people say that they dream only in black and white. A 2008 study by a researcher at the University of Dundee found that people who were only exposed to black and white television and film in childhood reported dreaming in black and white about 25% of the time. Different kind of dreams There are several kinds of dreams. For example: Frightening Exciting Magical Melancholic Adventurous Sexual Lucid All except lucid dreaming is independent from the control of the dreamer. Dreams vs. delusions & hallucinations Essential condition to dreaming is that one is sleeping. Although there may be bizarre or strange dreams, they are not delusions or hallucinations because they disappear once we are awake. Thus one cannot cause one’s dreams – they are involuntary except lucid dreaming when we are aware that we are dreaming. However, delusions or hallucinations can reminds us of dreams as they are similarly illlogical and seem to be independent of reality. A light version of this is daydreaming which is visionary fantasy, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, experienced while awake. Some facts The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology. It is likely that all mammals dream. Dreams can last from a few seconds up to 20 minutes. An average person has 3-5 dreams per night – some can have 7 dreams during one night. Other dream-related phenomena Incorporation of reality A sound heard (for example, phone ringing) when sleeping can become a part of a dream – the brains incorporates it the stimulus to the dream in order to continue the sleeping state. The same happens if we wet the bet and we dream of urination. This can be developed, however. We can be trained to be awaken if we are in danger or hear a baby crying. This also happens when the events during the day or even a week before can become part of the dream. Predictive dreams It is common that people feel that they can predict future events in dreams. This is usually explained by selective and distorted memory. When in an experiment men were asked to write down their dreams, it became clear that they did not predict future at all. Other dream-related phenomena Lucid dreaming is the conscious perception of one's state while dreaming. In this state the dreamer may often (but not always) have some degree of control over their own actions within the dream or even the characters and the environment of the dream. Dream control has been reported to improve with practiced deliberate lucid dreaming, but the ability to control aspects of the dream is not necessary for a dream to qualify as "lucid" — a lucid dream is any dream during which the dreamer knows they are dreaming.The occurrence of lucid dreaming has been scientifically verified.
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