Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T04:06:44.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

40 - Dreaming: Beyond Imagination and Perception

from Part VI - Altered States of the Imagination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2020

By
Jennifer M. Windt
Edited by
Anna Abraham
Anna Abraham
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
Get access

Summary

In the philosophy of dreaming, it is common to assume that dreams fall into one of two categories, which are thought to be mutually exclusive: Either they are quasi-perceptual phenomena, which is typically taken to imply they are hallucinations, or they are imaginative experiences. In this chapter, I propose that describing dreams as immersive mental simulations can help overcome this dichotomy, illuminating how dreams are both perception-like and deeply imaginative. Like standard waking experiences, dreams are here-and-now experiences of a virtual world centered on a virtual self. Like imagination, they are driven by spontaneous processes, marking a deep commonality with mental simulation in wakefulness, including mind-wandering and daydreaming. The sources of dreaming are similarly broad, spanning short- and long-term memories, ongoing concerns, and emotions, as well as illusory own-body perception during sleep. Understanding the commonalities between dreaming, perceiving and imagining without collapsing dreams into either category can enrich our understanding of our mental lives and forge new connections between philosophy and contemporary research on sleeping, dreaming, and mind-wandering.

Keywords

Imaginationimageryperceptionhallucinationillusionmind-wanderingspontaneous thoughtmental simulation
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination , pp. 659 - 675
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Antrobus, J., Hartwig, P., Rosa, D., Reinsel, R., and Fein, G. (1987). Brightness and Clarity of REM and NREM Imagery: Photo Response Scale. Sleep Research, 16(1958), 240.Google Scholar
Baird, B., Mota-Rolim, S. A., and Dresler, M. (2019). The Cognitive Neuroscience of Lucid Dreaming. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 100, 305–323.Google Scholar
Blagrove, M., Henley-Einion, J., Barnett, A., Edwards, D., and Seage, C. H. (2011). A Replication of the 5–7 Day Dream-Lag Effect with Comparison of Dreams to Future Events as Control for Baseline Matching. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(2), 384–391.Google Scholar
Blagrove, M., and Pace-Schott, E. F. (2010). Trait and Neurobiological Correlates of Individual Differences in Dream Recall and Dream Content. International Review of Neurobiology, 92, 155–180.Google Scholar
Brooks, J. E., and Vogelsong, J. A. (2000). The Conscious Exploration of Dreaming: Discovering How We Create and Control our Dreams. Bloomington, IN: 1st Books Library.Google Scholar
Cheyne, J. A., and Girard, T. A. (2007). Paranoid Delusions and Threatening Hallucinations: A Prospective Study of Sleep Paralysis Experiences. Consciousness and Cognition, 16(4), 959–974.Google Scholar
Christoff, K., Irving, Z. C., Fox, K. C. R., Spreng, R. N., and Andrews-Hanna, J. R. (2016). Mind-Wandering as Spontaneous Thought: A Dynamic Framework. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 17(11), 718–731.Google Scholar
Dement, W., and Kleitman, N. (1957). The Relation of Eye Movements during Sleep to Dream Activity: An Objective Method for the Study of Dreaming. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 53(5), 339.Google Scholar
Dennett, D. C. (1976). Are Dreams Experiences? The Philosophical Review, 85(2), 151–171.Google Scholar
Desseilles, M., Dang-Vu, T. T., Sterpenich, V., and Schwartz, S. (2011). Cognitive and Emotional Processes during Dreaming: A Neuroimaging View. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(4), 998–1008.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Domhoff, G. W. (2013). Finding Meaning in Dreams: A Quantitative Approach. New York, NY: Springer Science & Business Media.Google Scholar
Fosse, R., Stickgold, R., and Hobson, J. A. (2004). Thinking and Hallucinating: Reciprocal Changes in Sleep. Psychophysiology, 41(2), 298–305.Google Scholar
Foulkes, D. (2009). Children’s Dreaming and the Development of Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, K. C., Nijeboer, S., Solomonova, E., Domhoff, G. W., and Christoff, K. (2013). Dreaming as Mind Wandering: Evidence from Functional Neuroimaging and First-Person Content Reports. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 412.Google Scholar
Hobbes, T. (1651/2006). Leviathan. London, UK: A. & C. Black.Google Scholar
Hobson, J. A. (1999). Dreaming as Delirium: How the Brain Goes out of Its Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hobson, J. A., Pace-Schott, E. F., and Stickgold, R. (2000). Dreaming and the Brain: Toward a Cognitive Neuroscience of Conscious States. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23(6), 793–842.Google Scholar
Horikawa, T., Tamaki, M., Miyawaki, Y., and Kamitani, Y. (2013). Neural Decoding of Visual Imagery during Sleep. Science, 340(6132), 639–642.Google Scholar
Ichikawa, J. (2009). Dreaming and Imagination. Mind & Language, 24(1), 103–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ichikawa, J.(2016). Imagination, Dreaming, and Hallucination. In Kind, A (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination. London, UK; New York, NY: Routledge, 149–162.Google Scholar
Irving, Z. C. (2016). Mind-Wandering Is Unguided Attention: Accounting for the “Purposeful” Wanderer. Philosophical Studies, 173(2), 547–571.Google Scholar
Kerr, N. H. (1993). Mental Imagery, Dreams, and Perception. In Cavallero, C and Foulkes, D (eds.), Dreaming as Cognition. New York, NY: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 18–37.Google Scholar
Kind, A. (2013). The Heterogeneity of the Imagination. Erkenntnis, 78(1), 141–159.Google Scholar
LaBerge, S., Baird, B., and Zimbardo, P. G. (2018). Smooth Tracking of Visual Targets Distinguishes Lucid REM Sleep Dreaming and Waking Perception from Imagination. Nature Communications, 9(1), 3298.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
LaBerge, S., and Ornstein, S. (1985). Lucid Dreaming. Los Angeles, CA: J. P. Tarcher.Google Scholar
Leibniz, G. (1956). Philosophical Papers and Letters. Volumes 1 and 2. Edited and translated by Loemker, L. E.. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Liao, S., and Gendler, T. (2019). Imagination. In Zalta, E. N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring). plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/imagination/.Google Scholar
Malcolm, N. (1959). Dreaming. London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Metzinger, T. (2009). The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self. New York, NY: Basic Books (AZ).Google Scholar
Nielsen, T. A. (1993). Changes in the Kinesthetic Content of Dreams following Somatosensory Stimulation of Leg Muscles during REM Sleep. Dreaming, 3(2), 99.Google Scholar
Nielsen, T. A.(2000). A Review of Mentation in REM and NREM Sleep: “Covert” REM Sleep as a Possible Reconciliation of Two Opposing Models. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23(6), 851–866.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nielsen, T. A.(2017). Microdream Neurophenomenology. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2017(1), nix001.Google Scholar
Nielsen, T. A., and Powell, R. A. (1989). The “Dream-Lag” Effect: A 6-Day Temporal Delay in Dream Content Incorporation. Psychiatric Journal of the University of Ottawa, 14(4), 561–565.Google Scholar
Nielsen, T. A., and Stenstrom, P. (2005). What Are the Memory Sources of Dreaming? Nature, 437(7063), 1286–1289.Google Scholar
Nir, Y., and Tononi, G. (2010). Dreaming and the Brain: From Phenomenology to Neurophysiology. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(2), 88–100.Google Scholar
Noreika, V., Valli, K., Lahtela, H., and Revonsuo, A. (2009). Early-Night Serial Awakenings as a New Paradigm for Studies on NREM Dreaming. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 74(1), 14–18.Google Scholar
Pagel, J. F., Blagrove, M., Levin, R., Stickgold, B., and White, S. (2001). Definitions of Dream: A Paradigm for Comparing Field Descriptive Specific Studies of Dream. Dreaming, 11(4), 195–202.Google Scholar
Rechtschaffen, A., and Buchignani, C. (1983). Visual Dimensions and Correlates of Dream Images. Sleep Research, 12(189).Google Scholar
Revonsuo, A. (2000). The Reinterpretation of Dreams: An Evolutionary Hypothesis of the Function of Dreaming. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23(6), 877–901.Google Scholar
Revonsuo, A.(2005). The Self in Dreams. In Feinberg, T. E. and Keenan, J. P. (eds.), The Lost Self: Pathologies of the Brain and Identity. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 206–219.Google Scholar
Revonsuo, A.(2006). Inner Presence: Consciousness as a Biological Phenomenon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Revonsuo, A., Tuominen, J., and Valli, K. (2015). The Avatars in the Machine: Dreaming as a Simulation of Social Reality. In Metzinger, T and Windt, J. M. (eds.), Open MIND. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: MIND Group.Google Scholar
Rosen, M. G. (2018). How Bizarre? A Pluralist Approach to Dream Content. Consciousness and Cognition, 62, 148–162.Google Scholar
Rosen, M. G.(2019). Dreaming of a Stable World: Vision and Action in Sleep. Synthese, 1–36. doi:10.1007/s11229-019-02149-1.Google Scholar
Ryle, G. (2009). The Concept of Mind. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sauvageau, A., Nielsen, T. A., and Montplaisir, J. (1998). Effects of Somatosensory Stimulation on Dream Content in Gymnasts and Control Participants: Evidence of Vestibulomotor Adaptation in REM Sleep. Dreaming, 8(2), 125.Google Scholar
Schmidt, R. E., and Gendolla, G. H. (2008). Dreaming of White Bears: The Return of the Suppressed at Sleep Onset. Consciousness and Cognition, 17(3), 714–724.Google Scholar
Schönhammer, R. (2004). Fliegen, fallen, flüchten: Psychologie intensiver Träume. Tübingen, Germany: Dgvt-Verlag.Google Scholar
Schönhammer, R.(2005). “Typical Dreams”: Reflections of Arousal. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 12(4–5), 18–37.Google Scholar
Schredl, M. (2006). Factors Affecting the Continuity between Waking and Dreaming: Emotional Intensity and Emotional Tone of the Waking-Life Event. Sleep and Hypnosis, 8(1), 1.Google Scholar
Schwartz, S. (2000). A Historical Loop of One Hundred Years: Similarities between 19th Century and Contemporary Dream Research. Dreaming, 10(1), 55.Google Scholar
Seli, P., Risko, E. F., Smilek, D., and Schacter, D. L. (2016). Mind-Wandering with and without Intention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(8), 605–617.Google Scholar
Siclari, F., LaRocque, J. J., Postle, B. R., and Tononi, G. (2013). Assessing Sleep Consciousness within Subjects Using a Serial Awakening Paradigm. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 542.Google Scholar
Siclari, F., and Tononi, G. (2017). Local Aspects of Sleep and Wakefulness. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 44, 222–227.Google Scholar
Smallwood, J., and Schooler, J. W. (2015). The Science of Mind Wandering: Empirically Navigating the Stream of Consciousness. Annual Review of Psychology, 66(1), 487–518.Google Scholar
Solms, M. (2014). The Neuropsychology of Dreams: A Clinico-Anatomical Study. New York, NY: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Sosa, E. (2007). A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge. Volume 1. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Strauch, I., and Meier, B. (1996). In Search of Dreams: Results of Experimental Dream Research. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Stumbrys, T., Erlacher, D., Johnson, M., and Schredl, M. (2014). The Phenomenology of Lucid Dreaming: An Online Survey. The American Journal of Psychology, 127(2), 191–204.Google Scholar
Suddendorf, T., Addis, D. R., and Corballis, M. C. (2009). Mental Time Travel and the Shaping of the Human Mind. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1521), 1317–1324.Google Scholar
Sutton, J. (2010). Carelessness and Inattention: Mind-Wandering and the Physiology of Fantasy from Locke to Hume. In Wolfe, C. T. and Gale, O (eds.), The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge: Embodied Empiricism in Early Modern Science. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 243–263.Google Scholar
Thomas, N. J. T. (2018). Mental Imagery. In Zalta, E. N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring). plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/mental-imagery/.Google Scholar
Valli, K., and Revonsuo, A. (2009). The Threat Simulation Theory in Light of Recent Empirical Evidence: A Review. The American Journal of Psychology, 122(1), 17–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van Rijn, E., Eichenlaub, J.-B., Lewis, P. A., et al. (2015). The Dream-Lag Effect: Selective Processing of Personally Significant Events during Rapid Eye Movement Sleep, but Not during Slow Wave Sleep. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 122, 98–109.Google Scholar
Voss, U., and Hobson, A. (2015). What is the State-of-the-Art on Lucid Dreaming? Recent Advances and Questions for Future Research. In Metzinger, T and Windt, J. M. (eds.), Open MIND. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: MIND Group.Google Scholar
Voss, U., Schermelleh-Engel, K., Windt, J. M., Frenzel, C., and Hobson, A. (2013). Measuring Consciousness in Dreams: The Lucidity and Consciousness in Dreams Scale. Consciousness and Cognition, 22(1), 8–21.Google Scholar
Windt, J. M. (2010). The Immersive Spatiotemporal Hallucination Model of Dreaming. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9(2), 295–316.Google Scholar
Windt, J. M.(2013). Reporting Dream Experience: Why (Not) to Be Skeptical about Dream Reports. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 708.Google Scholar
Windt, J. M.(2015a). Dreaming: A Conceptual Framework for Philosophy of Mind and Empirical Research. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Windt, J. M.(2015b). Just in Time – Dreamless Sleep Experience as Pure Subjective Temporality. In Metzinger, T and Windt, J. M. (eds.), Open MIND. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: MIND Group.Google Scholar
Windt, J. M.(2017). Predictive Brains, Dreaming Selves, Sleeping Bodies: How the Analysis of Dream Movement Can Inform a Theory of Self- and World-Simulation in Dreams. Synthese, 195(6), 2577–2625.Google Scholar
Windt, J. M.(2018). Consciousness and Dreams: From Self-Simulation to the Simulation of a Social World. In Gennaro, R. J. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Consciousness. New York, NY: Routledge, 420–435.Google Scholar
Windt, J. M., Nielsen, T., and Thompson, E. (2016). Does Consciousness Disappear in Dreamless Sleep? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(12), 871–882.Google Scholar
Windt, J. M., and Voss, U. (2018). Spontaneous Thought, Insight, and Control in Lucid Dreams. In Fox, K. C. R. and Christoff, K (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought: Mind-Wandering, Creativity, and Dreaming. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 385–410.Google Scholar
Zeidman, P., and Maguire, E. A. (2016). Anterior Hippocampus: The Anatomy of Perception, Imagination and Episodic Memory. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 17(3), 173–182.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×