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Dreams of Immorality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

William E. Mann
William E. Mann
Affiliation:
University of Vermont
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Extract

Are we responsible for our misdeeds in dreams? The obvious answer would seem to be ‘No’. Dreams catch us with our defences down: just those critical and discriminative abilities which are distinctive of our waking lives as responsible moral agents seem out of play when we dream; el sueño de la razón produce monstruos. Moreover, if we are responsible for our dreamt misdeeds, then parity of reasoning demands that we be praised for dreaming noble dreams. But that is absurd. Moral credit should not come that easily, and so neither should moral blame.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy , Volume 58 , Issue 225 , July 1983 , pp. 378 - 385
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1983

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References

1 ‘On Being Immoral in a Dream’, Philosophy 56, No. 215 (January 1981), 47–54. Readers desirous of textual evidence of Augustine's views should consult Matthews’ paper.Google Scholar

2 Ibid. 50–51.

3 Matthews calls Augustine a 'strong intentionalist’ in ethics. However, Augustine does allow consequences to play some role in grading the moral severity of different kinds of intentional actions; see, e.g., the eightfold gradation of lies in De mendacio 14.25.

4 See the passage from Confessions X cited by Matthews, .Google Scholar

5 Op. cit. note i, 53.

6 Dreaming (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959). See also Malcolm's earlier ‘Dreaming and Skepticism’, now reprinted in a useful anthology, Philosophical Essays on Dreaming, Charles E. M. Dunlop (ed.) (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 103–126.Google Scholar

7 ‘Are Dreams Experiences?’, in Dunlop, op. cit. note 6, 327–250. The paper originally appeared in The Philosophical Review 85 (1976).Google Scholar

8 See Dennett's approving citation of Malcolm's approving citation of this observation of Freud's: ‘Any disadvantage resulting from the uncertain recollection of dreams may be remedied by deciding that exactly what the dreamer tells is to count as the dream, and by ignoring all that he may have forgotten or altered in the process of recollection’ (Dennett, in Dunlop, op. cit. note 6, 249; Malcolm, Dreaming, 122).

9 ‘…[T]he concept of truth that applies here [sc. to dream narratives] has nothing to do with proof. In this respect telling a dream is like imagining something (“You are the mama tiger and I am the baby tiger”). It is unlike in the important respect that in it there is no place for inventiveness, for changing one's mind, for having things as one will. One tells a dream under the influence of an impression—as if one was faithfully recalling events that one witnessed’ (Malcolm, Dreaming, 86).

1 For a powerful example of this sort of reaction to a work of fiction, see Christopher Ricks's review of Jerzy Kosinski's novel, Cockpit, in The New York Review of Books XXII, 19 (27 November 1975), 44–45.Google Scholar

11 For suggestive remarks about how a person might legitimately regard some of her passions as not fully hers, see Harry Frankfurt, ‘Identification and Externality’, The Identities of Persons, Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 239–251.Google Scholar