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Dream Recollection and Wittgenstein's Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2010

J. T. Price
J. T. Price
Affiliation:
Tuskegee Institute
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Extract

Philosophers have long been interested in dreams, for a variety of reasons. Much recent discussion has narrowed the scope of the traditional concern, however, and today dreams are often regarded from a position of skepticism and implicit behaviorism. This standpoint grew out of, and helped to reinforce, a habit of regarding Wittgenstein's later work as demonstrating a need for public, behavioral criteria of meanings. Thus, philosophers have wondered if there is any sense in saying that we do experience dreams, because so few of the usual criteria of “experience” apply to them. This is no occasion to review the complete history of dream interpretation by analytic philosophers, let alone the orthodox interpretation of the Philosophical Investigations. Instead, I will report an aspect of dreaming which has been overlooked in recent discussion, apply these findings to some of the alleged difficulties of speaking meaningfully of dream experience and, finally, attempt to locate this understanding of dreaming within Wittgenstein's later work.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , March 1974 , pp. 35 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1974

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References

1 This phenomenon is mentioned in another context by Hunter, John, “Some Questions About Dreaming,” Mind, Volume LXXX (1971), 70–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 In discussing this matter with acquaintances, I have found that “immediately” seems to vary from a few minutes after waking (my own case) up to several days. I am not convinced, however, that those who claim the longer period are not actually recalling earlier recollections, and not the dream itself.

3 The recent philosopher most influential on this subject is, of course, Norman Malcolm. My debts to, and disagreements with, his Dreaming (London, 1959)Google Scholar are too complicated to be easily untangled here. I might mention, however, that it was from his emphasis on the telling of the dream that my own thinking began. We part company, I believe, at his insistence that the relation between the dream and the telling is one of inference (cf. p. 65), rather than original union.

4 Foremost among the reviews of the Philosophical Investigations were Malcolm's in The Philosophical Review and P. F. Strawson's in Mind. Both first appeared in 1954 and are today perhaps most widely available in Pitcher, G., ed., Wittgenstein: The Philosophical Investigations (New York, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Strawson holds that Wittgenstein “has committed himself to the view that one cannot sensibly be said to recognize or identify anything, unless one uses criteria.” (p. 45 of the Pitcher volume) Malcolm reaffirms his commitment to outward criteria in Dreaming (op. cit.), especially Chapter 12, where he states, for example, that our “concept of dreaming” is founded on our experience of the “behaviour” (p. 57) of people making dream-reports.

5 Reference to the Philosophical Investigations, Third Edition (New York, 1968)Google Scholar will be by section number in Part I and by page number in the Preface and Part II. I use the translations of G. E. M. Anscombe, except where otherwise noted.

6 An earlier draft of this paper was read to the Alabama Philosophical Society on November 4, 1972.