The Dreaming Mind: Understanding Consciousness During Sleep [1 ed.] 1032435240, 9781032435244

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THE DREAMING MIND

The Dreaming Mind provides an insightful, interdisciplinary approach to the study of dreaming, exploring its nature and examining some of the implications of dream states for theories of consciousness, cognition, and the self. Drawing on research from philosophy, cognitive science, and psychology, the book reveals new insights into the sleeping and waking mind. It considers philosophical thinking such as extended mind theory, theories of consciousness and theories of the self, applying these to empirical dream research. The book embraces a pluralistic account of dreaming, showing how dream experiences can be highly varied in content and cognition and discusses the implications of dreaming for a variety of influential consciousness theories, including higher-order thought theory, global workspace theory and the phenomenal/access distinction. Alongside imaginative and hallucinatory dreaming, the book also discusses vicarious dreaming and its implications for philosophy of the self. Offering an integrative approach into our understanding of dreams and the mind, this book is essential reading for students and researchers of consciousness, dreams, philosophy, and cognitive sciences, as well as anyone who is curious about dreaming. Melanie G. Rosen is an assistant professor at Trent University, Canada. Her work takes an interdisciplinary approach to philosophy of mind and cognitive science with special interests in altered states of consciousness, dreams, delusions, memory, and perception.

THE DREAMING MIND Understanding Consciousness During Sleep

Melanie G. Rosen

Designed cover image: © Getty First published 2024 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Melanie G. Rosen The right of Melanie G. Rosen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-1-032-43527-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-43524-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-36771-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003367710 Typeset in Sabon by MPS Limited, Dehradun

CONTENTS

Introduction

1

1 The science of dreaming

7

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7

Introduction 7 Sleep stages 10 Dream reports 15 Measuring the dreaming brain and body 20 The sleeping brain, mind, and cognition 26 Lucid dreaming 30 Conclusion 33

2 Dream content and cognition 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

42

Introduction 42 The variety of dream content 43 How cognitively impaired? 61 Conclusion 76

3 Are dreams conscious? 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

Introduction 83 Dreaming as dream reporting 85 Why we report dreams 95 Narrative confabulation of dream reports

83

101

vi Contents

3.5 Individual differences in dream confabulation 110 3.6 Evidence against dream narrative confabulation 114 3.7 Conclusion 115 4 The imagination model of dreaming 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5

Introduction 123 Dreaming as imagining 124 The imagination model is overly reductive Both perceptual and imaginative 147 Conclusion 152

123

131

5 Dreaming as hallucination 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4

Introduction 159 Dreaming as hallucination The dream body 176 Conclusion 187

159 160

6 The self in vicarious dreams

193

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

Introduction 193 Vicarious dreams are a real phenomenon 194 Self-reference and self-representation 196 Imagining vs. dreaming that I am Napoleon 197 6.5 Denying psychological identity 204 6.6 Conclusion 216 7 Dreaming vs. the extended mind 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4

221

Introduction 221 Extended cognition and dreams 223 Extended consciousness and dreams 234 Conclusion 249

8 Consciousness in dreams 8.1 Introduction 253 8.2 Unconscious dreaming 255

253

Contents vii

8.3 Dreams as early consciousness 265 8.4 Impoverished consciousness 270 8.5 Conclusion 280 Conclusion Index

284 286

INTRODUCTION

When you fall asleep, you become shut off from the external environment, and yet, while this occurs, you experience what appears to be an immersive, realistic environment. You can interact with objects and have conversations with people that do not exist, all the while unaware that this is not reality. Even when things get weird – pigs fly, your boss grows tentacles, and you morph into a large photocopier – you don’t realise something strange is afoot. Many of us are intrigued by our own dreams, seeking explanations for why they occur. More interesting, however, is what they tell us about the human mind in general. A short few thousand years ago, Aristotle raised important questions about dreams that still interest modern researchers. We must, in the next place, investigate the subject of the dream, and first inquire to which of the faculties of the psyche it presents itself, i.e., whether the affection is one which pertains to the faculty of intelligence or to that of sense-perception; for these are the only faculties within us by which we acquire knowledge. (Gallop, 1996) Ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou, who dreamed of being a butterfly, questioned whether the butterfly was just a dreamed self, or perhaps the butterfly was real and Zhuang Zhou was just a dream. Much later, Descartes famously questioned the nature of reality by being sceptical of whether he could know whether he was dreaming. Taking a different approach, Freud focused on the psychological aspect of dreams, assuming they could reveal our secret desires. However, it wasn’t until the DOI: 10.4324/9781003367710-1

2 Introduction

discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep in the 1950s that we first started to develop a scientific method for studying dreams. The discovery of REM sleep led to a rise in scientific interest in dreams, yet philosophers until recently have been less enthusiastic. Norman Malcolm and Daniel Dennett brought scepticism back to the dream discussion by denying that dreams are necessarily experiences that occur during sleep (see Chapter 3). These claims evoked heated discussion from philosophers and scientists alike but were rejected quite swiftly. Modern philosophical interest in the nature of dreaming was shaken up by philosophers Antti Revonsuo and Thomas Metzinger who take a crossdisciplinary perspective, along with Evan Thompson, Jenny Windt, Jonathan Ichikawa, Owen Flanagan, Ernest Sosa, and Eric Schwitzgebel, who have challenged our assumptions about what dreams are. However, dreams remain a “severely underdeveloped area of study” (Sutton, 2009). Dream research has often focused on attempting to devise a simple definition or narrow criterion of dreaming, although the variety of experiences that can occur while we sleep resist such attempts. Here, I argue for a pluralistic approach that focuses on this variety. From this, it becomes apparent that dream experience needs to be taken seriously by researchers of the mind, self, and consciousness. By focusing on the variety of experiences that can occur during a dream, we see that there are many implications for the study of the mind that arise from particular kinds of dreams as well as dreaming in general. Minimal conditions of dreaming, such as bizarreness or irrationality, or conversely, mundanity and normal cognitive functioning (see Chapter 2), run into too many counterexamples and there is much disagreement about these features. Even the nature of dreaming is debated, with some arguing that dreams are imaginative as opposed to perceptual (see Chapter 4), whereas perceptual theorists describe dreams as hallucinatory or virtual reality (see Chapter 5). These views all get something right and something wrong. They all describe some dreams but exclude others. Dreams are resistant to reduction because reductive views cannot accurately describe all types of dream phenomena without arbitrarily omitting certain experiences. This book looks into the nature of dreaming and based on these findings, discusses several theories of mind, the self, and consciousness through the lens of dreaming. I focus on the self, cognition, and consciousness but do not look into the evolutionary function of dreams or whether dreams have any psychological purpose, which are interesting topics in their own right but beyond the scope of my present goals. The

Introduction 3

breadth of dreaming is of particular interest because different types of dreaming have different implications. Realistic dreaming, for example, has important implications for extended mind theories, while bizarre and cognitively deficient dreams bring up an interesting case study for philosophy of personal identity. Both impaired and unimpaired dreams, such as lucid dreams, where the dreamer realises they are dreaming, have several implications for theories of consciousness such as higher-order thought theory and global workspace theory. While I look into the nature of dreaming in Chapters 1–5, Chapters 6–8 focus on the philosophical implications of these findings. I begin with a commentary and overview of our empirical understanding of dreaming in Chapter 1, focusing on findings that are most relevant to the discussion in later chapters. Different stages of sleep relate to different types of dream content, although these differences are averages rather than absolute. I show that correlations made between dream reports and sleep behaviour have often been tenuous, although lucid dreaming and REM sleep behaviour disorder, which causes people to act out their dreams, provide robust correlations. I briefly discuss dream report collection and physiological measures of the sleeping brain and body, focusing on the limitations of these methods. After detailing these methods, I outline what they have revealed about the cognitive and neural features of dreams, focusing on disagreements between research groups, such as the extent of deactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and lack of rational abilities during sleep. Brain activation is very difficult to study in sleep and varies greatly, which may explain why there are such discrepancies between findings. Chapter 2 focuses on dream content and cognition. While stereotypically, dreams are bizarre and our cognition is severely diminished, some dreams are accurate simulations of waking life. An interesting aspect of dream research is the disagreements theorists have about these features. I found that bizarreness is overrated by some groups and underrated by others due to choice of bizarreness scales and failing to take context into account. Regarding cognition, there are a variety of alterations to metacognitive accuracy and frequency in dreams. Although sometimes deminished, it would be incorrect to state that metacognition doesn’t occur in dreams. We can have feelings of knowing and judgements of learning as well as the ability to assess the accuracy of our own perceptions. However, at times these judgements are inaccurate, and lack of awareness of the nature of one’s experience in non-lucid dreams shows a common metacognitive failing.

4 Introduction

The most disregarded view of dreaming is the anti-experience thesis proposed by Norman Malcolm and Daniel Dennett, discussed in Chapter 3. This view opposes the received view of dreams, that dreams are experiences that occur during sleep. Although a strong anti-experience thesis is not supportable given the current empirical methods of dream collection, there is room for another form of scepticism. There are a multitude of ways that dream reports can be confabulated, rationalised, and restructured, and whole dream narratives can be created by the waking mind. Dream reports are much more susceptible to such confabulation than waking reports due to bizarre elements in dreams and poor dream recall, thus a “narrative confabulation” description of many dream reports is justified. While Malcolm and Dennett’s rejection of experience during sleep is implausible, dream reports often fail to tell us about the true content of dreams. Two main competing hypotheses about the nature of dream experience are the imagination and hallucination models. In Chapter 4, I focus on the imagination model and then shift focus to the hallucination model in Chapter 5. If dreams are imaginative, they do not involve perceptual elements as we might believe when we wake up. Reasons for thinking that dreams are imaginative include that they develop alongside the ability to spatially imagine, they are subject to the will and are causally inefficacious in the same way imagination is. However, I argue that this view is overly reductive and many dreams do involve perceptual or hallucinatory elements, even though some dreams are better classed as imaginative. Continuing this discussion in Chapter 5 and shifting towards the hallucination view, theorists who support dreams as perception, hallucination or virtual reality give strong arguments that some dreams can be highly realistic. One argument in support of hallucination in dreaming is that the dream body may be represented as having both body image and body schema. However, this view, like the imagination model, does not capture the variety of dreams that can occur. Dreams can be imaginative, perceptual, or involve elements of both. It is likely that our experiential state can shift between more imagination-like and more hallucination-like in dreams. Chapter 6 applies a particular dream phenomenon to theories of the self. When you dream you are someone else, which I refer to as “vicarious dreaming”, an interesting array of cognitive features can result. One interpretation is that this dream “protagonist” is in fact a different individual than the waking self altogether. I compare this dream case with Velleman’s analysis of imagining that I am someone else and conclude that the cases are not analogous – using the first person pronoun when I imagine I am someone is not the same as doing so in a

Introduction 5

vicarious dream. I then concede that vicarious dreaming may be a genuine case in which several distinct personalities share my brain. Under a psychology-based view of personal identity, dreams provide an even more plausible case of multiple personalities than dissociative identity disorder (DID). Chapter 7 looks at the implications of dreaming for the extended mind theory. Two versions of this theory, the extended cognition view and the extended consciousness view, have different implications. I maintain that dreaming is a counterargument to the extended conscious mind view, but not the extended cognition view. This is because, according to this latter view, cognition can but does not necessarily extend, so dreams can still be cognitive without extension. However, dreaming provides some interesting thought experiments for this view as well as modifications to classic thought experiments. In contrast, dreams are problematic for any extended consciousness view that states that real objects are necessary for perception. Noë rejects dreaming as a counterargument because he believes that dreams cannot be like waking experience. His view, however, is based on an implausibly reductive account of dreams. In Chapter 8, I continue the discussion of dreaming and consciousness and look into some classic theories of consciousness. Dreams have received insufficient attention from contemporary philosophers of consciousness, especially since they bring up challenges for several theories. Any plausible theory of consciousness also requires a plausible account of dreaming. I discuss the possibility that under higher-order thought (HOT) theory and Dennett’s spotlight of consciousness, some dreams should be considered unconscious. Interestingly, Dennett is better equipped to handle this kind of outcome, whereas it seems counter-intuitive under HOT theory. In contrast, according to the global workspace (GW) theory, dreams are conscious, but a type of primitive consciousness. While GW theory has the resources to describe dreaming fairly, recent efforts of GW theorists fall short. Finally, the access/phenomenal consciousness distinction proposed by Block is consistent with the possibility that some dreams are phenomenally conscious but lack access consciousness. I think this approach can take into account a wide variety and dream phenomena, but interestingly, Block does not take this view. I argue that his description of dreaming is overly reductive although his distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness could account for dreaming well. Dreams encompass a broad range of phenomena that are resistant to reductive descriptions. The cognitive and phenomenal attributes that occur during sleep are not only important for dream theorists to take into account in their descriptions of dreams, but also for philosophers of mind, consciousness, and the self. Here I hope to demonstrate just a few

6 Introduction

reasons why dreams are fascinating and important for understanding the human condition. References Sutton, J. (2009). Dreaming. In J. Symons & P. Calvo (Eds.), Routledge companion to the philosophy of psychology. Routledge. Gallop, D. (1996). Aristotle on sleep and dreams: A text and translation with introduction, notes, and glossary. Liverpool University Press.

1 THE SCIENCE OF DREAMING

1.1 Introduction

When we dream, we enter a world separate from the real waking world. While this happens, our real bodies are paralysed, and we are mostly shut off from the environment. When we wake up, we sometimes report fantastical experiences, but our memory can be spotty at best. The reports we make seem quite random and unpredictable, and there is no known way of predicting or causing someone to have a particular dream. The simple fact that we can have such experiences while prone and isolated from stimuli is quite baffling. This makes dreaming particularly interesting for researchers but also difficult to study, since reports of these poorly remembered and weird experiences cannot be verified by external observers. Further, there are no obvious behavioural criteria for dreaming as, while asleep, we appear to be having no experience at all. Dreams have been of interest to philosophers as early as Aristotle and Zhuang Zhou thousands of years ago, but until quite recently, the scientific study of dreaming was limited by their enigmatic nature. The discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep in the 1950s (Dement & Kleitman, 1957a, 1957b) was the start of a major scientific breakthrough in dream research. Researchers thought they had found behavioural criteria for dreaming. Whereas previously, research relied on the analysis of dream diaries that were written after waking up in the morning, now, believing they had discovered the stage of sleep in which dreams occurred, researchers could wake dreamers up during the dream to nearly guarantee that a report would be made. We now know that dreaming is not DOI: 10.4324/9781003367710-2

8 The science of dreaming

associated only with REM sleep, but this finding was key to the scientific study of dreams. This new discovery prompted interest in the neuropsychology of dreams and it allowed for the creation of improved dream report collection techniques, better data analysis, and new technological methods. This research has expanded our knowledge of sleep physiology, the dreaming brain, and the content of dream experience. By observing sleeping subjects with new methods to measure bodily changes, a variety of subtle behaviours were discovered, not only the rapidly moving eyes of REM sleep but also bodily twitches, changes in heart rate, and changes in skin conductance – the amount of sweat produced. Dream reports these days can be collected and analysed using a myriad of techniques, and these reports can be correlated with physiological measures. Waking the dreamer up during REM is the best way to improve the chances a report will be made, although dreams can occur during any stage of sleep. From this research, interesting cognitive and phenomenal features were discovered. 9/3/1981 Red Car, Dream no. 16 I am trying to organise a group for departure. I find one member at the foot of the hill, near some water … I urge him to go up the hill to a rendezvous point for departure. Suddenly, or perhaps always, he is in a red car, which runs along beside me up the hill. The peculiar thing is that the front of the car, including the driver, is underground. Yet its trajectory is smooth and the ground is unbroken! As we climb, the car moves ahead of me and I make a strong but vain effort to keep up with its progress. The car then crosses from left to right and runs – still half underground – into a wall, I wonder if the driver will have hurt his head in the crash. (Hobson, 2002, p. 24) Hobson’s dream report here displays many of the features common in dreaming, including bizarreness – a car that is semi-submerged in the ground, cognitive dysfunction – Hobson’s inability to realise that the scenario is strange, and vivid hallucination that he believes to be real. Modern research has attempted to correlate these features with brain activity. Poor cognitive capacity has been correlated with reduced activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and vivid hallucination with activation in the visual and other sensory centres. However, there is much disagreement about the dreaming brain, cognition in sleep, and even the nature of the dream experience. Here I discuss some of these disputes and outline some of the scientific findings and disagreements between researchers. I argue that several of these discrepancies arise from the fact

The science of dreaming

9

that dream phenomena are multifarious and resist reductive definitions. A pluralistic view, one that highlights the variety of what can occur while we sleep, is the most plausible description of dreams. Historically, philosophers and scientists alike have attempted to define dreaming simply, for example, as hallucinations that occur in sleep, or specifically, listing necessary features such as bizarreness and cognitive dysfunction. Both simplistic and specific definitions risk excluding some dreams from our definition. For example, continuity and discontinuity theorists disagree about whether dreams are continuous with waking experience (Hobson & Schredl, 2011). However, dreams can be either continuous or discontinuous with waking depending on the dream and there can even be shifts between continuity and discontinuity within a single dream. Analysing dream reports can reveal the specific types of continuities and discontinuities, although there are complexities. Some theorists think dreams are akin to a specific form of waking experience, such as perception (Hobson, 2002; Hobson et al., 2000), whilst others argue dreams do not involve perception, but rather imagination (Ichikawa, 2016; Ichikawa & Sosa, 2009). It is likely, however, that dreams vary from imaginative to perceptual (see Chapters 4 and 5). Cognition is often described as essentially impaired or equivalent to waking (Rosen, 2018) although empirical findings suggest experience in dreams is widely varied (see Chapter 2). Although dreams occur more frequently during REM sleep, over 80% of REM sleep awakenings elicit dream reports (Domhoff, 2003), they can occur during any sleep stage (Noreika et al., 2009; Perogamvros et al., 2017). Dreams in non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep are more common than we might think, with up to 40% of NREM awakenings eliciting reports (Domhoff, 2003). Different stages of sleep, however, are often associated with different types of dreams as well as different physiological activity, such as eye and body movements and brain activity. The different stages of sleep partly account for the wide variety of dream experience, although there is much variation within stages. The dreaming brain and mind displays a variety of features and changes, rather than constant physiology, phenomenology, or cognition. Altered brain activation can affect the type of experience that occurs in a particular dream, but this does not support a reductive view, for example, that says all dreams are cognitively impaired. Lucid dream research is a very important aspect of dream science that has revealed important findings and broadened our knowledge of dreams, but one limitation is that lucid dreams, dreams in which the dreamer realises they are dreaming, are not indicative of the average content or cognitive features of non-lucid dreams. Lucid dreaming offers the

10

The science of dreaming

opportunity to use new methods that are unavailable when studying nonlucid dreams, however, and is another example of sleep and the multifarious nature of experiences. The cognitive abilities and vivid experiences that can occur during lucid dreams provide counterarguments to certain reductive views discussed throughout this book. The following offers an overview of some of these findings and the controversies in dream research. 1.2 Sleep stages

Multiple times a night, sleeping subjects’ eyes move rapidly beneath their eyelids for periods lasting from a few minutes to up to 90 minutes. Aserinsky coined the term “rapid eye movement” or “REM” sleep while researching sleep onset for his doctoral thesis. The discovery was serendipitous as his initial intention was to confirm Lawson’s (1950) observation that individuals blink during sleep onset. Using an electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrooculogram (EOG) to measure the electrical brain activity and eye movement of his son as he fell asleep, Aserinsky initially thought the machine was faulty, as it suggested unexpected rapid eye movements that occurred long after sleep onset (Aserinsky, 1996). After confirming that the machine was accurate and that temporary awakenings did not explain the REMs, he soon discovered that dreams are most frequently reported when subjects are awakened during REM sleep. Initially, it was thought that REM sleep was necessary and sufficient for dreaming, although it was later shown that dreaming also occurs in NREM sleep. Nielsen (1999) found laboratory REM awakenings to elicit dreams 68.7% of the time compared to a rate of 21.0% when woken from NREM sleep, although this rate has increased with improved reporting techniques. With these new techniques, 40% of NREM awakenings elicit dreams, while 80–90% of REM awakenings elicit dream reports, suggesting dreams do occur in NREM and some REM sleep lacks dreams. REM sleep occurs around every 90 minutes and occupies 20–25% of sleep time (Domhoff, 2003). The mistaken view that dreaming occurs solely in REM sleep led to the belief that REM sleep was the physiological cause of dreaming. Wamsley and Antrobus (2006) recall that “it seemed that all we needed to do was to study the physiology of REM sleep and its connection to dream reports, and we could unravel the mystery of what dreams were and how they came to be” (p. 130). While dreams are most frequently reported when woken directly from REM sleep and they tend to be vivid, dreams can occur during any stage but tend to have average differences in terms of content (Foulkes, 1967, 1996). Despite some initial misconceptions, early

The science of dreaming 11

research into REM sleep and dreaming paved the way for modern dream science. It was later discovered that there are several sleep stages which can be distinguished physiologically. 1.2.1 NREM sleep

In modern research, NREM (non-rapid eye movement) is divided into three stages, however, previously they were divided into four (Van de Castle, 1994, Chapter 10). What was previously seen as stages 3 and 4 are now both considered stage 3 due to similarities in the electrical brain activity readings on the EEG (electroencephalogram) (see Section 1.3) and other physiological activity. EEG patterns are measured in terms of amplitude and frequency. Amplitude, measured in volts, is the height of the EEG tracing, with high amplitude meaning a taller wave. The frequency refers to the speed or the number of cycles that occur per second. When we are awake and concentrating, the EEG shows gamma waves, the lowest voltage and highest frequency, higher than 30 Hz. Beta waves, between 13 and 20 Hz, are the most common when awake, but when we are sleepy or relaxed, alpha waves, between 8 and 10 Hz, dominate. During “light” sleep stages 1 and 2, the sleeper is responsive to auditory stimuli. Stage 1 is sleep onset, when “hypnagogic hallucinations” often occur (Foulkes & Vogel, 1965). These are simple unimodal sensations, often visual images, sounds or somatic sensations, such as the feeling of falling.1 Electrical brain activity during stage 1 is similar to waking brain activity, involving low amplitude beta waves with a high frequency between 12 and 30 Hz. The eyes move slowly, and muscle activity reduces, although atonia, the paralytic cessation of muscle tone, does not occur until later stages. Eye movements slow further in stage 2 and brain frequency reduces, although occasionally interspersed with bursts of highfrequency brain waves known as spindles (Hobson et al., 2000). Deep sleep, or stage 3, exhibits predominantly delta brain waves (1–4 Hz), muscle atonia and very little eye movement. It is the most harmful stage to be deprived of and the most restorative. Extreme insomnia, such as fatal familial insomnia, causes the sufferer not to be able to sleep at all, and this leads to waking hallucinations, irrational choices and actions, and eventually ends in coma and death (Guilleminault, 1994). Sleep is essential for survival, and even missing a single night of sleep can lead to cognitive difficulties, inability to focus and reduced rational capacity. Metabolism in the brain, when measured by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET, see Section 1.4.1), shows a decrease in global cerebral metabolism in NREM sleep compared to both

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The science of dreaming

REM sleep and waking. However, specific areas of metabolic activity vary, with many of the areas of the brain that are deactivated during NREM becoming active in REM (Braun et al., 1997; Maquet et al., 1996; Nofzinger et al., 1997). As Hobson notes “the regional pattern of deactivation in NREM […] sharply contrasts with the regional activation of these same regions (i.e., thalamus, pontine brain stem, anterior cingulate cortex) in REM” (Hobson et al., 2000, p. 811). While it is easier to distinguish sleep stages with electrical activity using EEG (electroencephalogram), a much simpler technology, NREM and REM sleep can also be distinguished by metabolic activity as well as physiological behaviour such as eye movements and changes in muscle tone. With such a variation of brain activation, it is surprising that similar dream content can occur across different sleep stages (Bosinelli, 1995; Foulkes, 1991, 1993, 1996, 1997; Moffitt, 1995). However, we need to avoid assuming that altered brain activity entails altered cognition, as I discuss in Section 1.3.1, and further, brain activation in sleep varies greatly, even within stages. Although the content of dreams can be similar in different stages, it has been argued that on average, NREM dreams are more repetitive, irrational, thought-like, and have little perceptual content compared to REM dreams (Hobson, 2002, p. 7). Some NREM dreams are vivid and complex, however. While different stages of sleep can display similar features (Antrobus et al., 1995; Occhionero et al., 2005) there seem to be some average differences. This evidence, I argue, suggests that NREM dreams tend to be more “imagination-like” while REM dreams are more “hallucination-like”. 1.2.2 REM sleep

REM sleep has also been called “paradoxical sleep” (Jouvet, 1999) due to the apparently paradoxical wake-like high levels of brain activity and NREM-like reduced muscle tone and paralysis. REM, however, can be divided into two further stages: the phasic and tonic stages. These stages are most easily distinguished by the phasic stage having short bursts of REMs, which are the most likely to correlate with dream reports, and the tonic stage having a cessation of REM and from which dream reports are less common. There is reason to suspect, further, that the tonic stage is more “open” to stimulus from the external world being experienced by the dreamer, which I refer to as sensory infiltration (Rosen, 2019). In the phasic stage, the dreamer is comparatively isolated from the external environment. For this reason, “REM sleep cannot be considered a homogeneous state in terms of the processing of external stimuli. In this

The science of dreaming 13

sense, it is similar to NREM sleep that is known to be composed of various microstates, as indicated by various responses to an invariable stimulus” (Sallinen et al., 1996, p. 227). It is difficult to determine exactly to what extent stimuli from the world are experienced by the dreamer since dreamers can fail to report experiencing a stimulus for several reasons such as forgetting or preferring not to make a report. Nonetheless, indirect evidence that external stimuli has more effect on the dreamer in the tonic stage is that we are more likely to wake up in response to stimuli.2 Early dream scientists devoted significant effort to wards trying to incorporate external stimuli into dreams, for example, waving perfume under sleeping noses and spritzing dreamers with water. While possible, it is “very, very difficult” to cause external stimuli to filter into a dream (Hobson et al., 2000, p. 37), although this varies depending on the type of stimulus (Windt, 2015, 2017). This difficulty may in part be due to dreaming occurring more frequently during the phasic stage when stimuli are less likely to infiltrate the dream. Tonic stages, which last longer than phasic stages, may be an adaptation to reduce vulnerability to predators, according to some theorists. This would, after all, lessen the period in which the sleeper is unresponsive to alarming noises (Wehrle et al., 2007), allowing dreamers to wake up to approaching threats. The view that dreams can happen at any stage of sleep and that REM sleep itself involves different stages has replaced the scanning hypothesis (Foulkes, 1996, p. 612), that REMs are caused by the eyes scanning dream imagery. While it is likely that some eye movements are caused by scanning, this hypothesis made an implausibly strong claim about the link between dream eye and real eye movements. 1.2.3 Scanning the dream world

Dement and Kleitman (1957a, 1957b) proposed the scanning hypothesis of dreams based on their discovery of REM sleep. In this view, rapid eye movements scan dream imagery, replicating the dream eye movements. Thus, if I dream of watching a tennis match, my dream eyes and real eyes both make horizontal movements as I track the dream tennis ball. Early experiments attempted to correlate eye movements with dream reports and were met with some success. Dement and Kleitman (1957b), for example, correlated dreams about throwing a basketball into a hoop or climbing a ladder with vertical eye movements (p. 344). However, these experiments were based on small sample sizes and the results have not been replicated in subsequent experiments (Mota-Rolim, 2020). Doricchi and colleagues (2007) claim that “despite decades of research, the question of whether the rapid eye movements (REMs) of paradoxical sleep (PS) are equivalent to waking saccades and whether their direction is

14

The science of dreaming

congruent with visual spatial events in the dream scene is still very controversial” (p. 450). According to Hobson and colleagues, “further evidence would be required to confirm [the scanning] hypothesis” (2000). REMs are neither sufficient nor necessary for dreaming since dreams often occur during NREM sleep and do not always occur in REM sleep. Better evidence of the relationship between eye movements and dream content comes from lucid dreaming, where dreamers realise they are dreaming. Lucid dreamers can perform eye signals to indicate that they have attained lucidity, strong evidence that these intentional dream eye movements correspond with real eye movements (LaBerge, 1980, 1985, 1998, 2000).3 This has even allowed simple two-way communication between dreamers and researchers (Baird et al., 2021; Konkoly et al., 2021). Lucid dreams, however, have some different average features than non-lucid dreams, so this only shows that intentional eye movements may correlate with dream reports under certain conditions. Further, dream reports are made after waking from NREM stages when there are no eye movements. Thus, the scanning hypothesis is not accurate for all dreams, although there is strong evidence that some dream eye movements do correlate with real eye movements (Rosen, 2019). Some forms of sleep behaviour, such as sleep talking (somniloquy) and sleepwalking (somnambulism), falsely appear to be dream behaviour. Rather than dream behaviour, however, “most sleep talking originates during the microawakenings of from 10 to 20 seconds that occur several times per night in both children and adults” (Domhoff, 2003, p. 135).4 Further to this, sleepwalking “starts in the deepest stages of NREM and usually does not lead to dream reports when awakened” (Domhoff, 2003, p. 163). It thus seems likely that most sleepwalking and talking do not usually occur during dreams, although REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) is a counterexample to this. RBD, a rare condition where individuals act out their dreams during REM sleep, is the most convincing evidence for correlations between dream movements and real body movements. Brain lesions in areas that usually inhibit the spinal motor neurons during REM sleep prevent normal sleep atonia from occurring (Mahowald & Schenck, 2010; Mahowald et al., 2005; Schenck et al., 1987, 1992). Acting out one’s dreams is dangerous, and can lead to injury or death, either for the dreamer or their partner (Arnulf, 2019). However, RBD allows researchers to directly observe dream behaviour,5 although most observed behaviour is stereotypical or generic. For example, violent movements can be correlated with reports of violent dream content. These particular cases may not be sufficient to conclude that behaviour indicates specific content: that the dreamer is acting out their dream. However, using multiple methods to record sleep behaviour, such as video polysomnography, has revealed

The science of dreaming 15

complex and specific behaviours that have been correlated with reports (Högl et al., 2022). RBD is a rare condition with limited sample sizes and it may not indicate regular dream content, since, tragically, the lesions causing the disorder may also increase aggressive dream content (Schenck et al., 1987). RBD does allow us to see dream behaviour directly, but we must primarily rely on regular dreaming to understand dreams in general. Dream reports are essential for dream studies. 1.3 Dream reports

Most of what we know about dreams comes from the reports we make about them when we wake up. However, getting an accurate understanding of the nature of dreaming from these reports faces several obstacles. First, unlike when we are awake, we can’t report dreams while they are happening. Second, dream memory is notoriously poor. There are also issues about studying the brain whilst dreaming since much of the technology used to study neuroactivation and physiology is disruptive to sleep. When attempting to collect accurate data about dream content and cognition, theorists disagree about whether the best methods are at-home studies or sleep laboratory research. Here I argue that different methods are useful for different types of study. Collecting dream reports at home in the morning tends to result in more bizarre and interesting narratives than those gathered in the lab, according to some theorists (Foulkes, 1996; Hobson et al., 2000; Waterman et al., 1993). There are several possible reasons for this discrepancy, including investigator bias and environmental factors. Dream report collection can be biased by expectations as investigators are more likely to prompt answers that they expect. For example, a parent questioning their child about their dreams might expect their dreams to be creative and interesting. I used to regularly ask my daughter about her dreams when she was young (about 3–4 years old). I had the sense that she was making stuff up on the spot. This seemed especially plausible on one occasion when at breakfast one morning I asked her what she had dreamed. She looked around the table and her eyes landed on the saltshaker. “Salt”, she said. “I dreamed about salt!” (Eric Schwitzgebel, personal communication) [My three-year-old daughter] told me her dream this morning, there was a black and red monster that sometimes turned grey, and a white owl that protected her. When I got enthusiastic about her dream, I got the feeling she made up another white owl. (Anke Snoek, personal communication)

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An experimenter in the lab who seeks evidential support for a theory might unintentionally draw out a specific kind of report. An environmental factor that could affect reporting is the effect of being in a dream lab (discussed in Chapter 2). Similarly, the best control measures, such as waking the subject during different stages of sleep, disrupt sleep which can affect dream content. Alternatively, getting a full night’s sleep and waiting until the morning decreases the chance of getting a report and biases memory towards early morning dreams. Researchers disagree on whether the lab setting suppresses bizarreness, as argued by Hobson and colleagues, or whether the lack of controls in the home setting leads to interesting dreams being selectively remembered and reported. Likely, both have such effects. 1.3.1 Dream lab

Lab-based awakenings are the gold standard of dream research, and Foulkes (1996, 1999) highlights the many benefits, such as the ability to control which stages of sleep a report is taken from, the immediacy of reporting, and reduced memory loss. Foulkes found that children’s reports taken at home are much more bizarre than those collected in the lab. Over the breakfast table, a child might want to impress their parents, exaggerating a dream that had only simple imagery. Most lab-collected children’s dreams lack complexity, multimodality, and narrative structure. Foulkes notes that at home, memory loss, bias towards remembering interesting dreams, and pressure from their parents make reports more interesting. One problem is that in Western cultures, we think that creative dreams indicate creativity or intelligence, and parents tend to help the child elaborate. Parents also suggest the types of narratives, objects, or people that they think their children might dream about. At that age, children still want to please their parents and get attention by telling stories that may not be real dreams that they experienced (Foulkes, 1999, p. 22). Adults’ dreams tend to be more complex than children’s, but report elaboration remains a problem for research on adults. Foulkes argues that “sleep laboratory research has shown that there are systematic differences in dream reports made during the night on REM-sleep awakenings and later accounts of the same dreams given the following mornings” (1999, p. 26). The longer the delay between dreaming and the report, the higher the chance of reporting errors. These delays in the home setting lead to reports being “biased in the direction of the emotional or unusual dream” (Foulkes, 1996, p. 615). We forget mundane, boring dreams, and remember weird, interesting, or exciting ones. In the lab, however, a

The science of dreaming 17

more accurate, unbiased sample of dream experience can be collected, and we can control which sleep stage the participant wakes up from. Williams and colleagues (1992), in contrast, argue that bizarre experiences can also be forgotten or perhaps rationalised to be less bizarre. During a delay [between dreaming and reporting], the subjects have the opportunity to further organize and make sense out of their recall and produce a more coherent and edited narrative. As a result, much of the bizarreness in dreams (especially the discontinuity and uncertainty) could be lost by the time the subject described the experience. (Williams et al., 1992, p. 182) In Foulkes’ view, however, rationalisation would not explain why lab reports are less bizarre than home reports. Rationalisation should make reports less not more bizarre on average.6 Proper controls, like awakening subjects to make direct reports, can also be used in home-based research (Domhoff, 2007, p. 9). There are still some content differences between these kinds of reports and lab-collected ones, however (Lloyd & Cartwright, 1995; Weisz & Foulkes, 1970). In sum, memory loss and confabulation can be reduced in the home setting given appropriate controls, but since some content differences between lab and home-based dreams remain, these are are most likely due to the environmental settings. 1.3.2 Home-based research

Strong support for home-based dream research comes from Hobson, who extensively tracked his own dreams. In his view, the best method of dream collection is to use devices to physiologically monitor the reporting conditions in the normal surroundings of the home, avoiding the problems of the lab setting. Nowadays, a large variety of technologies can be used to track one’s sleep and dreams, such as smartwatches, rings, and even phone apps (Peake et al., 2018). Smartwatches and rings can track heart rate and movement and, to some level of accuracy, estimate sleep stages while phone apps can record dream reports. More complicated technologies such as headbands that track electrical signals in the brain and can more accurately estimate sleep stages (Wood et al., 2023). Some technologies are dream-specific, such as the early Nightcap state detection system (Cantero et al., 2002; Stickgold & Hobson, 1994), or more recently, the Dormio system (Horowitz et al., 2020). On the Nightcap, electrodes monitor head and eye movements, and can thus detect REMs. The Dormio instead measures biosignals from the hand. Monitoring sleep stages in the

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home can replicate lab protocols in which dreamers are woken directly from sleep to make a report by using an alarm that is programmed to go off during a particular sleep stage. In Hobson’s view, this overcomes two major drawbacks of lab reports. The lab environment is unfamiliar, and participants may take several days to adapt to it. In these first days, sleep can be disrupted and dreams affected (Domhoff & Kamiya, 1964). Subjects often dream about being in a lab. Most studies do not last long enough for the effect to wear off, which could be at least four days. Further, very long studies that last for over 14 nights can cause “laboratory fatigue” (Hobson et al., 2000, p. 803). NREM and REM reports become more similar with REM reports becoming shorter and less “dream-like” (Antrobus et al., 1991). In Hobson’s view, this is likely due to participants becoming less motivated to report dreams the longer they spend in the lab. All this suggests that the most accurate lab based reports would occur after the participant has adapted to the lab but before lab fatigue sets in. For Foulkes, the laboratory setting is not problematic in the aforementioned ways. He found that differences between home and lab reports nearly disappear when equal controls are used, and there are practically no differences in children’s dreams (Foulkes, 1999, p. 32). This suggests that it is the lack of controls in the home environment, not the change in environment, that makes the difference. Considering that controlled studies on adults still reveal some differences (Colace, 2010; Lloyd & Cartwright, 1995; Nielsen et al., 1991; Weisz & Foulkes, 1970), one might assume that the different settings must make some difference, but Foulkes rejects this possibility, although it is not clear why. The time of night that the report is collected makes a difference too. We make more bizarre, irrational, vivid, and “dream-like” reports in the late morning according to some studies (Antrobus et al., 1995; Wamsley & Antrobus, 2006; Wamsley et al., 2007) and there are differences between dream diary reports and when someone is asked to report the last dream they remember having (Schredl, 2020). The upshot here is that what is remembered and reported varies depending on the collection method. It is usually assumed that collecting a report right after the experience is the best collection method, but this excludes delayed factual reminiscence (DFR). This is when memory improves or is made available after a delay, often cued by some stimulus such as a sound or smell (Montangero et al., 1996). If we only collect dream reports from lab awakenings, we cannot collect episodes of DFR. I have experienced this a few times. Once, after hearing a dog bark in the afternoon, it reminded me of a nightmare I had about being chased by dogs. If some dreams are

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remembered in more detail later in the day, perhaps lab awakenings are not as foolproof as we might hope. Nonetheless, while DFR does occur, it is relatively rare, and “the far more common rule in delayed recall is selective forgetting and the assimilation of a particular event (or dream) to general assumptions about events (or dreams)” (Foulkes, 1999, p. 26). DFR, in Foulkes’ view, is unreliable and less common than selective forgetting. Compare DFR reports, which usually have little detail, with REM awakenings. Environmental cues might bring back a vague memory of being chased by a dog, but usually not a detailed and vivid memory of a full dream narrative. Moreover, we can’t determine what stage of sleep the dream occurred, or even which night, or if the memory was from a dream at all. In contrast, REM sleep awakenings nearly always evoke reports, and these reports tend to be the most detailed. Further, if there is much delay between the dream and the report, this increases problems with “source monitoring”, the ability to discern the source of a memory. Dreamers find it difficult to determine whether a memory is from a dream or some other source after time has passed, known as “source monitoring” (Johnson et al., 1984). It is difficult to distinguish between memories of real dreams and made-up ones, imagination or stories someone else told us. Dream source monitoring was found to be less accurate than other memory source monitoring. Johnson and colleagues’ explanation is that “real dreams are deficient in information about cognitive operations that help identify the self-generations we create when we are awake” (p. 333). Although dreams are usually more vivid than imagination, the cognitive operations that generate imagining are also remembered. Remembering that you intentionally thought of an image helps distinguish it from a perception that you did not intentionally generate. Dream generation, in contrast, is “transparent” in that we don’t experience the generation process (Metzinger, 2003), making it more difficult to source monitor. Due to the lack of controls and source monitoring, DFR reports, although an interesting feature of human memory, are not very useful for dream research. Waking a person up significantly increases the chance of getting a dream report while DFR results in very few reports and it is unclear if we are source monitoring correctly when we report DFR of dreams. Evidence of laboratory fatigue and the four-day adaptation period explains the differences between controlled home and lab reports. Thus, controlled home awakenings, where possible, should be seen as the gold standard. However, most neuroimaging, other than portable EEG, needs to be done in a sleep lab. Neuroimaging and other physiological measures are useful but have drawbacks.

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1.4 Measuring the dreaming brain and body

We can gain information about changes in the brain and body of a sleeping individual using a variety of techniques. This data can be compared with dream reports, although it might be difficult to determine if the report is of a dream that occurred at the same time as the data that was collected. Waking a participant during high levels of brain activation, especially during REM, and attaining an immediate report, is the method most commonly used since we infer that the report is of a dream that occurred right before waking. This is plausible considering that dream memory is poor, and it is less likely for a participant to remember a dream from earlier in the night, but it cannot be guaranteed. Physiological measurements are useful in that they can help confirm the occurrence of a certain type of dream. While we cannot gain a detailed dream report objectively from physiological data alone, if, say, neural activation associated with fear correlates with a report of being afraid in a dream, the neural activation can help confirm the report. We can also use this data to work out what physiological mechanisms underlie certain types of dream experiences. Some theorists argue that since we cannot derive entailment relations between mental processes and brain processes, objective measures are only useful for ascertaining how the brain is activated during different tasks. Although we must acknowledge the limits of such methods, correlations between reports and data can be useful as strong inductive arguments for dream content. Since dream reports are prone to confabulation and memory loss, physiological data might give evidence to support or negate the accuracy of a dream report. 1.4.1 Physiological measures and their drawbacks

EEG (electroencephalography) is one of the oldest methods of mapping brain activity dating back to 1928. Hans Berger was the first to use EEG for assessing brain activation (İnce et al., 2021) by placing electrodes on the scalp to amplify and record general areas of electrical brain activity. In dream research, the same electrode method is often used to also measure electrical activation in muscles around the eyes, known as electrooculogram (EOG), and on the chest to measure the heart, called the electrocardiogram (ECG). EOG is particularly useful for determining sleep stages as the eyes have very different movement patterns at different stages. Emotional state and other types of arousal cause changes to the heart rate while we are awake, thus the same is likely true while dreaming. An electromyogram (EMG), placing an electrode on the skin, can measure

The science of dreaming 21

muscle tone on any part of the body. This is useful as different stages of sleep display various muscle tone or atonia and EMG has been used to correlate muscle twitches with reports of movement in dreams. Vaginal EMG has also been used to correlate vaginal pulsing with reports of dream orgasms (LaBerge & Rheingold, 1991). Historically, this simple technology has been used in a variety of interesting and ingenious ways and is still the most common way to measure physiology in the dream lab due to its simplicity, accessibility, and speed. In the 1950s, EOG played a key role in the discovery of REM sleep, and EEG has been critical for distinguishing the brain physiology in different stages of sleep. These methods are also important for lucid dream research (Schatzman et al., 1988). Electrical monitoring of the brain and body has many benefits but also a few drawbacks. It is much more portable than other techniques, with simple EEG headbands available for even non-researchers to purchase, usually used for tracking sleep quality. These have even been used for artistic projects (Baraniewicz-Kotasińska, 2022). These devices are much less disruptive to sleep than others. Even a full EEG setup is easier to sleep in compared to the other techniques mentioned in the following. EEG might disrupt sleep somewhat, as it goes on the head and makes lying down less comfortable, but it is not noisy and the sleeping participant does not need to remain still while wearing it, allowing for movement in sleep. It is also relatively cheap, easy to use, and very safe, so can be operated throughout the night and over many trials. Clare (1997) notes that the major drawback of EEG is that the readout may not represent the activity of the underlying cortex as it uses electrodes on the scalp, which can produce disruptive signals not related to brain activity. While EEG has the best temporal resolution, being updated instantly by electrical signals, the information obtained is very general, giving only an average signal of the area near the electrode, poor spatial resolution, and not any information on specific neural patterns. Unfortunately, detailed information about the brain and high-resolution images requires the use of machines that are not very well suited to sleep studies. The highest spatial resolution comes from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), but unfortunately, MRI machinery is very loud and to get a detailed brain scan, the participant must remain completely still. This makes it hard to fall asleep and it is difficult to control sleep movements. fMRI detects changes in blood oxygenation metabolism, which indirectly indicates neural activation. Images can be taken at a rate of about one per second, which is much slower, of course, than EEG, which is updated constantly. Radio waves are emitted through a strong magnetic field which generates a signal that is stronger in areas of higher oxygen metabolism. These signals are picked up by sensors and form a map of

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metabolic activity. The spatial resolution of MRI is three millimetres, which is the best of all neuroimaging methods. PET has the next highest resolution of five millimetres. PET scanning is also much slower, taking 40 seconds or longer per image. This may be problematic if these time courses “are […] too slow to be part of how the brain performs cognitive tasks” (Craver, 2016, p. 705). While blood flow and metabolism may correlate with neural activation, this is an indirect inference and does not always indicate increased neural activation. Neural inhibition can also increase metabolism. Hobson notes that one must consider whether or not more efficient functioning of an area might result in less versus more observed metabolism or whether glucose or oxygen uptake by inhibitory interneurons may produce local maxima in areas that are, in fact, less active due to inhibition. (Hobson, 2000, p. 807) If excitation is confused with inhibition, inaccuracy can result. The noisy machinery can be somewhat remedied by earplugs or muffled by music (Redcay et al., 2007) but the sound, somewhat like a slow jackhammer, cannot be completely muted. Studying children’s dreams is particularly difficult due to the sound and requirement of staying still. Redcay and colleagues (2007) note that “few studies have directly examined brain function in infants and young children with fMRI due to the difficulty in acquiring such data without motion artifact” (p. 696). Any motion blurs the image to the extent that is it unusable. In a study of 20 infants between two and three months old, Dehaene-Lambertz and colleagues (2002) managed to get five to fall asleep in an MRI. Other data has been collected when children, who are getting an MRI scan for another reason, fall asleep (Wilke et al., 2003). More recently, fMRI has been used in experiments in an attempt to predict dream content before a report is made (Horikawa & Kamitani, 2017) and combined EEG and MRI studies have looked into the relationship between sleep and the “default network” that is activated during mindwandering (Domhoff & Fox, 2015; Fox et al., 2013). PET is used to study changes in the density of chemicals, body compounds and metabolism in the brain. This technique injects a radiotracer, which is a radioactive compound, into the bloodstream. The radiotracer accumulates in areas where the target chemical is most concentrated. For example, metabolism rates in different areas of the brain can be traced by using a specific radiotracer that accumulates in areas that have the highest levels of glucose or oxygen being metabolised (Andersson

The science of dreaming 23

et al., 1995). This technique was used to investigate brain differences in high and low dream recallers (Eichenlaub et al., 2014). PET can also record dopamine function and other neurochemistry. While a lot quieter than MRI, the long-term effects of radiotracers are unknown, and due to requiring an injection, it is far more invasive than other techniques. It is unlikely that researchers would use PET scanning on children or for longterm studies. With any technique or technology, simply using it on participants could potentially affect the outcome of the study. External stimuli affect dreams in a variety of ways, from infiltrating stimulus to disrupting sleep, but the full effects of neuroimaging on the sleeping brain are unknown. The noise of an MRI certainly affects the ability to fall asleep and stay asleep, which is especially problematic for researching a full night of sleep. However, the effect on dream content is difficult to ascertain. In PET research, radiotracers accumulating in different parts of the brain might affect brain activity, although there is as of yet no evidence for this. It may be difficult to distinguish between neural activity generated naturally by sleep or dreaming and effects caused by external factors. fMRI and PET scanning both use expensive machinery, therefore extensive funding is required to collect statistically significant sample sizes. The cost of having someone scanned for an entire night, even one full sleep stage cycle, is prohibitive. An extremely sceptical view of brain scanning is that we cannot gain useful information about cognition or consciousness from any type of neuroimaging (Coltheart, 2006a, 2006b). Klein (2010a, 2010b) notes that making inferences from images of brain function to psychological function can be problematic for many reasons. One problem is that due to the density of the connections in the brain, any cognitive task should cause increased activation all over the brain. We can only analyse MRI images if a threshold is used to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant activation. If activation is relatively low, it is interpreted as inactivity, however, the threshold is chosen somewhat arbitrarily by the experimenter, even though which choice they make can have theoretically important implications (Klein, 2010a). Experimenters, like all humans, are biased. When a researcher has preconceived ideas about what to expect, this can affect the outcome. An example of this is when researchers made stereotypical assumptions about the differences between male and female cognition. These were based on small differences in brain activity even though the relationship between cognition and these types of activity was unknown at the time (Fine, 2011). Klein argues that “neuroimages are theory-laden: the very same theories that are being tested are also the source of the contrasts that generate the neuroimages themselves” (Klein, 2010b, p. 191). Harley (2004) and Coltheart (2006a) propose an even

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more extreme view, that neuroimaging is irrelevant to psychology. For neuroimaging to be useful, we would need sufficiently precise theories about how psychology relates to neural activation, but we don’t have these theories. If we could, for example, make predictions about psychological events from neural events, this would give useful data about dream content, yet once each theory is formulated and confirmed, “[neuroimaging] would have nothing of interest to contribute to psychology” (Klein, 2010b, p. 169) since we would already know all the important information. Scepticism of neuroimaging is justified, but it is unclear to what extent. PET and fMRI make inferences about neural activation through indirect measures, either through metabolic or chemical activity. When, for example, oxygenation increases, it is difficult to ascertain whether this increased activity correlates with electrical neural excitation. Further, although we might observe that a person undergoes a certain cognitive state X when brain region Y activates, we cannot later infer state X from observing Y (Klein, 2010b, p. 190). Perhaps other cognitive states are associated with Y, and it is also possible that X can correlate with different types of brain activation, known as multiple realisability of mental states (Jackson, 1996). If we were to look at the brain of a sleeping person and they had activation Y, we could not “read off” the activation and infer that they were undergoing X. We cannot state that X is necessary and sufficient for activation in the brain region Y (Fodor, 1975). Psychophysical invariants (Cacioppo et al., 2007), or one-to-one mapping of cognitive state and brain activation, are very rare. One-to-one mapping may, however, be an unnecessarily strict requirement as probabilistic associations between cognition and brain state, as Klein concedes, are preferable. If we can determine that activation of brain region Y increases the probability of cognitive state X, perhaps this is sufficient. If we were to find that increased activation of the DLPFC is correlated with increased rational capacities, and a dreaming individual displays activation of the DLPFC, then we have some reason to think that cognitive capacities are heightened during that dream. Further, we might try to stimulate the area to see if it affects cognition. Research has found that electrical stimulation of the DLPFC increases insight in dreaming (Voss et al., 2014), although, this is only a statistically significant increase. The relationship is only probabilistic, so we could not infer with certainty that the particular cognitive process is occurring due to stimulating the neural area alone. A report needs to be collected to make a correlation, and reports are taken as better evidence of cognition than neuroactivation. If, for example, after stimulation, the participant reports lowered rational capacity during the dream, the evidence from the report would be taken as more reliable than

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the neuroimaging data. Further, general areas of activation do not tell us exactly which neural pathways are associated with which mental processes. We only have average activation data. This information may help corroborate a report, but it would not be useful in the absence of it, or if it contradicted a report. Interestingly, scientists have been able to predict what the dreamer will report using neuroimaging data, although the data that allows predictions to be made is not transferrable between participants. By scanning the neural activation of specific experiences, after around 50 trials with each participant, an accurate prediction can be made for some dream content (Horikawa et al., 2013), for example, that the person had been dreaming about a dog. The fact that scanning data cannot be used between participants, however, suggests that there is a lot of individual variation in brain activation. A further complication is that when a subject makes a dream report, it is difficult to know when in the night the dream occurred, making it harder to correlate brain activity with the report. Kahan and Laberge (1994) note that the traditional psychophysiological approach has not been of much value for investigating hypothesized associations between physiology and dream phenomenology because of the difficulty of predicting what subjects will dream about and the difficulty of making precise time correlations between dreamed experience and physiological events. (p. 255) Generally, if the report is made after a lab awakening, it is assumed that the dream occurred just before the awakening due to the poor memory we have of dreams. If specific neural activity can be correlated with specific dream events such as shifts in scenery, intense emotions or irrational decisions, then the timing of the dream could also be inferred, but this can be difficult. Signal verification and correlating behaviours such as eye movements and bodily twitches with dream reports is the strongest method of determining the time of the dream. Denying any usefulness of brain imaging techniques entirely would be excessive. Brain images can give a sketch of how neuromechanisms work (Zednik, 2019) even if one-to-one mapping cannot be achieved. Strong evidence about the necessity of an area of the brain can be gained from brain-lesion imaging studies. Discovering how cognition alters when there is a specific area of damage has been instrumental in our understanding of brain function (Parkin, 2016). The deactivations in the dreaming brain could serve a similar function, however, unlike lesions where it can be verified that an area of the brain is not functioning due to damage, this is

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not the case when areas of deactivation are due to altered sleep neurochemical activity. As mentioned previously, these “deactivation” claims are made based on somewhat arbitrary thresholds since all areas of the brain are always “active” in terms of some kind of blood flow and neurochemistry. One important finding for dream research is that certain brain lesions (unimodal cortical lesions) lead to non-visual dreaming whereas others (inferior parietal lesions) lead to a complete cessation of dreaming (Solms, 1997). Although there is some debate about these findings (Yu, 2001), such research can help determine the centres of the brain necessary for dream production. Although we cannot gain detailed information about dream content from brain states, sufficiently strong probabilistic relations between neuroimaging and specific mental features can be valuable for dream research. In the following section, I discuss some of the main theories about the cognitive and neural features of the sleeping brain relevant to the discussions in the forthcoming chapters. 1.5 The sleeping brain, mind, and cognition

A commonly reported feature of the sleeping brain is that activation in the frontal lobes, in particular the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and inferior parietal cortices, is severely decreased (Braun et al., 1997; Hobson, 1988; Limosani et al., 2011; Mutz & Javadi, 2017; Wamsley, 2013). The frontal lobes are associated with complex cognition such as rational thought and metacognition. This is “relevant to the cognitive deficits in self-reflective awareness, orientation, and memory” (Hobson et al., 2000, p. 809) commonly reported in dreams. Due to these brain changes, dreams are irrational, have poor memory, and at times are even delusional or involve psychosis (D’Agostino et al., 2013; Hobson & Voss, 2011; Wilkinson, 2015). There are some discrepancies between studies, however (Kubota et al., 2011; Nofzinger et al., 1997), suggesting that frontal activation as well as cognitive capacity in dreams varies widely. I remember very few dreams. While my memory may be worse than average, about one per month, generally dreams are very hard to remember after we wake up, and during a dream, dreamers have poor waking memory access (Giustino, 2009; Hobson & McCarley, 1977; Rosen, 2013). Waking an individual during a dream dramatically increases recall, but if, for example, we all have several dreams per night as lab awakenings suggest, I could be forgetting hundreds of dreams per month. Since dreams can be so intense and bizarre, this is surprising, but poor memory is often blamed on altered neuromodulation and decreased brain activation in certain areas, such as the aforementioned DLPFC

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(Hobson et al., 2000). “Paradoxically”, the intense experience relates to hyperactivation in other brain areas, such as those involved with sensory processing (Jouvet, 1999). The purported multimodal, hallucinatory, vivid nature of dreams along with intense emotions are correlated with hyperactivation in brain areas such as the visual cortex and areas associated with emotion, including the insular cortex (Hobson et al., 2000). Maquet and colleagues (1996), using PET scanning, found strong activation in the right inferior parietal lobe which is activated during spatial imagery construction tasks. This is consistent with reports that dreams involve percieving a three-dimensional world in which we interact with objects and perceive spatial imagery. Attempts to correlate brain activation with reports of cognition in dreams aim at explaining the differences and similarities between dreaming and waking experience. Similarities include the multimodality of the experience, but differences include weird shifts of time, object, and place as well as irrationality. Temporo-occipital activation [that occurs when subjects are dreaming] is in keeping with visual dream imagery. Prefrontal deactivation is suggestive of the lack of orientational stability, the alteration in time perception, the delusional belief of being awake, the decrease in volitional control and the fragmented episodic memory recall. Inferior parietal deactivation may contribute to the lack of distinction between first and third-person perspectives. (Dang Vu et al., 2005, p. 415) Our lack of control, change of perspectives, and poor memory recall are consistent with these purported neural features. In support of deficiency views of dream cognition (see Chapter 2), it is hard to see how a mind with a deactivated frontal cortex could be rational. Yet, the story is undoubtedly more complex. Kubota and colleagues (2011) note inconsistencies between studies about the activation of the DLPFC. “Normal” activation has been found in REM sleep using both PET and fMRI. Dream content and cognition appear highly varied. This means we should be cautious when trying to derive a set of minimal conditions for dreaming. An example of an overly reductive definition of dreaming comes from Hobson and colleagues, who revealed interesting features of common dreams but made the mistake of describing these as defining features. According to Hobson and colleagues (2000), the dreaming and waking brain shows highly different activation and modulation. In their view, some studies have led to the erroneous idea that the dreaming and waking brain functions are similar or identical, however, these conclusions are due to insufficient specificity of the technology. Early studies only show general

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brain function, while later detailed neuroimaging techniques reveal important differences in specific areas and neuronal populations (Braun et al., 1997; Maquet et al., 1996; Nofzinger et al., 1997). Small neural changes can lead to highly altered cognition, both in sleeping and waking, as revealed by abnormal waking states and altered states of consciousness. The specific “wake-like function of regional brain areas is preserved in many abnormal states such as focal motor activity during seizures (Adams, 1997) or the recruitment of visual association cortex during visual hallucinations […]” (Hobson et al., 2000, p. 808). These changes were the foundation of Hobson’s AIM (activation, input, modulation) model, which is meant to capture the three most important aspects of cognition and neurobiology that distinguish between different stages of sleeping and waking (Table 1.1). TABLE 1.1 Illustration of the AIM psychological and neurobiological correlates of each dimension Model factor Psychological Neurobiological A – Activation: • Word count of the • EEG activation Level of energy report • Firing level and processing capacity • Cognitive complexity, synchrony of reticular, e.g., perceptual thalamic, and cortical vividness, emotional neuron intensity, narrative I – Information: • Real-world space, time • Level of presynaptic and post-synaptic inhibition Source internal or and person referents, external and their stability • Excitability of sensorimotor pattern • Real vs. imagined action generators M – Mode: • Internal consistency? • Activity level of Organisation of • Physical possibility? aminergic neuron Data • Linear Logic? Adapted from Hobson and colleagues (2000).

Dreaming brain activation (A) includes a mostly inactive DLPFC and other frontal areas, lowering the capacity for information processing, memory storage and rational thought (Hobson, 1988; Hobson et al., 2000; Muzur et al., 2002). Hyperactivation occurs in the visual and motor cortex, explaining the vivid multisensory hallucinations (Nir & Tononi, 2010). The flow of information (I) is generated internally, and we are paralysed due to an “input and output blockade” (Hobson, 2002; Hobson et al., 2000). This prevents stimulus from being received by the brain and prevents the body from responding to the environment. This output blockade, however, is broken in REM sleep behaviour disorder, as

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discussed previously. The waking brain is modulated (M) primarily by serotonin and noradrenalin, known as the aminergic system. During NREM sleep, the production of these neurotransmitters is halved and production ceases during REM sleep, where the brain is primarily cholinergically modulated, the effect of acetylcholine. The neuromodulatory shift from aminergic in waking to cholinergic in REM sleep means that “waking and dreaming are at opposite ends of an aminergic/ cholinergic neuromodulatory continuum, with NREM sleep holding an intermediate position” (Hobson et al., 2000, p. 813). Injecting cholinergic drugs into the pons7 of cats causes them to fall asleep more quickly and have extended periods of REM sleep (Hobson, 2002, p. 68). Modulation relates to activation in that cholinergic modulation has been associated with increased emotion and decreased capacity for directed thought due to “selective activation of the subcortical and cortical limbic structures (which mediate emotion) and with relative inactivation of the lateral prefrontal cortex (which mediates directed thought)” (Hobson et al., 2000, p. 809). We can see what happens to the waking mind when there is a change in modulation as a result of stress, sleep deprivation or drug use. When these or other factors lead to a waking neuromodulatory shift similar to that of the sleeping brain, the waking self experiences similar changes to the mind that the dreaming self undergoes, such as a lack of rational control of thought, and sometimes even hallucinations. The three dimensions of the aim model are intended to explain how differences in inputs and processing account for differences in experience. Waking involves high activation, external input source, and aminergic neuromodulation. NREM has lowered neuroactivation, internal input source and intermediate neuromodulation between aminergic and cholinergic. REM sleep, like waking, has high activation in sensory and emotional areas but is lowered in the prefrontal rational thought and attention areas. In REM, the inputs are internal, and modulation is cholinergic. A fair criticism is that this model is too simplistic (Domhoff, 2003; Gottesmann, 1999, 2000; Perry & Piggott, 2000; Perry et al., 1999; Steriade, 2000). Activation is complex and it varies throughout the brain. Laberge (2000) queries, “from which brain area is ‘Activation’ (A) measured? Obviously, A varies as a function of brain location. […] The need for multiple A dimensions seems inescapable” (p. 926). Further, one sense can remain awake while others fall asleep, so input is multidimensional (LaBerge, 2000). We are not fully shut off from the environment since sensation can infiltrate our dreams (Windt, 2015, 2017). We can also experience modality crossover, mistaking one sense

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for another, such as the feeling of lying down being mistaken for movement. Moreover, modulation (M) involves a highly complex interplay between several neurochemicals. AIM is intended to be a simplification, and Hobson accepts that each dimension is itself multidimensional. AIM can, however, be seen as a tool to describe major changes between the waking and dreaming brain. However, despite the usefulness of AIM, Hobson’s description of the dream experience as cognitively impaired and bizarre is overly reductive. Not all dreams are bizarre and cognitively impaired. One example of dreams that can be cognitively unimpaired is lucid dreams in which the dreamer realises they are dreaming. Although not the only type of dreams that can be rational and highly cognitive, lucid dreaming provides one reason to reject the cognitive deficiency view as a description of all dreams. 1.6 Lucid dreaming

Until recently, lucid dreams were not widely accepted as a real phenomenon. Now that signal-verified lucid dream has been widely replicated, it is hard to deny that we can be aware of dreaming in dreams. LaBerge notes that “during such ’lucid’ dreams, one can reason clearly, remember the conditions of waking life, and act upon reflection or in accordance with plans decided upon before sleep” (LaBerge, 2000, p. 962). Being lucid, if defined simply as the realisation that one is dreaming, is not always accompanied by wake-like rationality, metacognition, and memory. A dreamer may realise that they are dreaming but still think and act irrationally and have poor memory access. Lucid dreams are also often accompanied by increased volitional control over actions and even the dream narrative. When you realise you are dreaming, it makes sense to try to manipulate the dream environment, experiment and perhaps fly or levitate objects. “Full lucidity” (LaBerge & DeGracia, 2000, p. 143) refers to full access to one’s cognitive capacities; however, it is unclear if complete control over the dream scene and narrative is possible. For my purposes, I use “lucid dreaming” broadly to refer to the realisation that one is dreaming, whether or not this realisation is accompanied by increased cognitive capacities. Becoming “fully lucidity” is rare, but possible according to Kahan and LaBerge (1994). […] I am standing on a sidewalk in a city. I recall a waking intent for the next lucid dream—to call a particular type of cat to me—the sort of cat I would want to have if cats were allowed in my building- a black tortie cat with cream and orange markings. Already I see a small black

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and white cat on some stone steps. I call ‘Here kitty,’ hoping to call the particular cat I was imagining to me. Soon I am surrounded by 7 or 8 cats, including the black and white cat. I see a tortie cat that is close but not exactly like my ideal and pick it up out of the group. (p. 258) Here, the dreamer not only has reached lucidity, but they can remember their waking intentions. This subject is an expert lucid dreamer who formed an intention to carry out an activity in a dream to test the nature of dreaming. He controls not only his own actions but also the dream scene by calling a cat to him. This control, however, appears hard-earned and incomplete. Despite realising his potential power to control the dream, he can’t carry out exactly what he wants. Elements of the dream remain beyond his control – the cat that comes to him is not quite the one he wants, and he lacks control of other elements of the dream. The dream mostly remains “transparent” to him (Metzinger, 2003), he is not aware of the generation of the dream scene despite being aware that it is a dream. Lucid dreaming can be “learned” in that there are techniques that increase the liklihood of becoming lucid, but dreamers sometimes spontaneously realise something is bizarre in their surroundings and that this must be a dream. Questioning one’s reality is called “prelucidity” but this does not always lead to lucidity; the dreamer can slip back into non-lucid dreaming if their attention is broken or they may confabulate an explanation for the unusual events (LaBerge & Levitan, 2015; Spadafora & Hunt, 1990). The prelucid stage is itself an exception to the generalisation that dreamers can’t notice bizarre features in dreams or question whether they are dreaming. Signal-verified lucid dreaming requires subjects to learn to indicate with their eyes whilst dreaming. These eye flicks, “left, right, left, right”, are recorded by EOG (Kahan & LaBerge, 2011; LaBerge, 1980, 2000), as well as EMG and EEG (LaBerge, 1981; LaBerge & Ornstein, 1985; Schatzman et al., 1988). This allows precise timing of when a dream occurs. Expert dreamers can carry out instructions and this has revealed interesting information about dreaming. Dreamers can, for instance, draw on the ground in the dream so that physiology such as arm twitches can be correlated with the report (Schatzman et al., 1988). Similar techniques have been used to track how long it takes to carry out activities in dreams (Erlacher & Schredl, 2004; Erlacher et al., 2013), test the effect of practising activities (Erlacher & Schredl, 2010; Schädlich et al., 2017) and even communicate with the dreamer (Baird et al., 2021; Konkoly et al., 2021). Early attempts to teach lucid dreamers to use sign language to report their dreams were unsuccessful (LaBerge, 1998). A sensor glove used to record the movements was not sensitive enough to read the hand signals and modern dream glove technology is used for other purposes,

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such as “dream incubation”, using stimulus to affect hypnagogic dreams (Horowitz et al., 2020) rather than communication with the dreamer. Perhaps reduced muscle tone during sleep would make it unlikely for hand signals to be sufficiently precise to measure something as complex as sign language irrespective of the quality of the technology. Self-awareness exercises, such as questioning your reality and doing reality checks (like trying to levitate or pinching yourself) increase the chances of lucid dreaming (Kahan & LaBerge, 1994). As an anecdote, when I was practising and memorising a speech in which I demonstrated lucid dream techniques8, this meant I was doing the reality checks several times a day. I had two lucid dreams that week – this is an increase from about one per year without training. Increased self-awareness in waking life appears to increase dream awareness. Kahan and LaBerge note a complicating factor is that dream psychology itself is divided on the question of whether lucid-control dreaming is an aberration of normal dreaming or represents one end of a continuum of cognitive abilities available in the dream state. In the first case, lucid dreaming would not be representative of normal human cognition, while from the latter perspective, lucid dreaming would be a significant capability within the range of human cognitive endowments. (Kahan & LaBerge, 1994, p. 253) Since lucid dreaming can be learned by most of us, lucidity is available to almost everyone in the dream state. Cognitive capacities are varied between dreams, with lucid dreaming being more cognitively advanced than most dreams. These cognitive features can all vary on a spectrum, even if lucidity is not reached. Yet lucid dreams in particular show what the dreaming mind can do in the right circumstances. Lucid dreams give a strong counterexample to the view that all dreams are cognitively deficient. This might seem unusual given the deactivated DLPFC. The delusional belief that we are awake, the lack of directed thought, the loss of self-reflective awareness, and the lack of insight about illogical and impossible dream experience are due to the combined and possibly related effects of aminergic demodulation and the selective inactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortices. (Kahn & Hobson, 2005, p. 841) Lucidity should then correlate with increased activation of the DLPFC and potentially a shift towards aminergic neuromodulation. Indeed, the

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discrepancies between findings about the DLPFC mentioned earlier are consistent with the view that dreams are not necessarily cognitively deficient and also with the possibility of gaining lucidity. Lucidity opens dream research to the possibility of greater control and communication, but lucid dreaming is not indicative of normal dreaming. Although cognition varies widely both in lucid and non-lucid dreams, the lucid kind on average have much greater cognitive abilities to the extent that perhaps they should be considered separately from non-lucid dreaming. While lucid dreams are certainly a type of dreaming, features that are common to lucid dreams, such are insight, are far less common in non-lucid dreaming. There may be other differences that are harder to test for, such as whether NREM dreams can involve the real eyes moving along with the dream eyes. While the scanning hypothesis is empirically confirmed for signal verification in lucid dreams, it is not true for all dreams and requires separate evaluation. This shows just one way in which lucid dreams and non-lucid dreams require a separate account, and we can’t make inferences from one type to the other. Lucid dreams are an important subset of dreaming phenomena to study, but experiments on lucid dreaming do not indicate the common features of ordinary, non-lucid dreaming. 1.7 Conclusion

The scientific study of dreaming has taught us a variety of interesting things about the dreaming mind and brain. An epistemological analysis of dream research is important for analysing exactly what these findings show. Different research groups have conflicting evidence about the cognitive and neural features of dreams. There is disagreement about whether dreams should be defined as delusional and cognitively impaired, and further to this, how exactly the DLPFC and other brain areas are activated. There isn’t even consensus on the extent to which we are isolated from the external environment while dreaming. This is consistent with the view that cognition and brain activation are in fact highly varied during dreaming. Neural activation can alter from dream to dream and especially varies between sleep stages; however, the brain also changes within sleep stages and can change over the course of a single dream. This is how a dream can shift from non-lucid to lucid. Dreams range from highly cognitively impaired to unimpaired; however, lucid dreams deserve a separate analysis, and should not be seen as indicative of the content of non-lucid dreams. We can’t base a theory of dreaming on lucid dreams, but we cannot exclude lucid dreams from our account either. Lucid dreams, while not indicative of all dreams, demonstrate that dreaming cognition can be highly varied.

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Due to this variation, I take a pluralistic approach towards dreaming. The variety that occurs raises several important issues that philosophers should pay attention to. The difficulty in reaching agreement on the cognitive and phenomenal features means we should resist defining dreams by a specific set of these features. Theories that do not take this variety into account are overly reductive, which can lead to errors in theories of the mind, self, and consciousness. Notes 1 Some argue that these sensations should not be considered dreams. In Chapter 5 I argue that we should include hypnagogic hallucinations as dream phenomena. 2 See Chapter 3 for further discussion. These types of dreams are relevant to the cassette theory of dreaming. 3 See Section 1.5 for further discussion about lucid dreams. 4 There is some contention over the issue of sleep talking which I discuss in more detail in Chapter 3. 5 See Chapter 3 for a discussion of RBD as evidence for dreaming as experiences that occur during sleep, and Chapter 4 for RBD as evidence against the imagination model of dreaming. 6 See Chapter 2 for a discussion on dream bizarreness and Chapter 3 for a discussion of rationalisation. 7 The area of the brain stem that theorists widely agree is responsible for the generation of REM sleep. 8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i40-x3Tp8Z0&t=3s

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Maquet, P., Péters, J.-M., Aerts, J., Delfiore, G., Degueldre, C., Luxen, A., & Franck, G. (1996). Functional neuroanatomy of human rapid-eye-movement sleep and dreaming. Nature, 383(6596), 163–166. Metzinger, T. (2003). Phenomenal transparency and cognitive self-reference. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2(4), 353–393. Moffitt, A. (1995). Dreaming: Functions and meanings. Impuls, 3, 18–31. Montangero, J., Pasche, P., & Willequet, P. (1996). Remembering and communicating the dream experience: What does a complementary morning report add to the night report? Dreaming, 6(2), 131. Mota-Rolim, S. A. (2020). On moving the eyes to flag lucid dreaming. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 14, 361. Mutz, J., & Javadi, A.-H. (2017). Exploring the neural correlates of dream phenomenology and altered states of consciousness during sleep. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2017(1). doi: 10.1093/nc/nix009 Muzur, A., Pace-Schott, E. F., & Hobson, J. A. (2002). The prefrontal cortex in sleep. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(11), 475–481. Nielsen TA. (1999). Mentation during sleep: The NREM/REM distinction. In Lydic, R., & Baghdoyan, H. A. (eds). Handbook of behavioral statecontrol: Cellular and molecular mechanisms, Boca Raton: CRC Press (pp. 101–128). Nielsen, T. A., Deslauriers, D., & Baylor, G. W. (1991). Emotions in dream and waking event reports. Dreaming, 1(4), 287. Nir, Y., & Tononi, G. (2010). Dreaming and the brain: from phenomenology to neurophysiology. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(2), 88–100. doi: 10.1016/ j.tics.2009.12.001 Nofzinger, E. A., Mintun, M. A., Wiseman, M., Kupfer, D. J., & Moore, R. Y. (1997). Forebrain activation in REM sleep: An FDG PET study. Brain Research, 770(1), 192–201. doi: 10.1016/S0006-8993(97)00807-X Noreika, V., Valli, K., Lahtela, H., & Revonsuo, A. (2009). Early-night serial awakenings as a new paradigm for studies on NREM dreaming. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 74(1), 14–18. Occhionero, M., Cicogna, P., Natale, V., Esposito, M. J., & Bosinelli, M. (2005). Representation of self in SWS and REM dreams. Sleep and Hypnosis, 7(2), 77. Parkin, A. (2016). Explorations in cognitive neuropsychology. Psychology Press. Peake, J. M., Kerr, G., & Sullivan, J. P. (2018). A critical review of consumer wearables, mobile applications, and equipment for providing biofeedback, monitoring stress, and sleep in physically active populations. Frontiers in Physiology, 9, 743. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2018.00743 Perogamvros, L., Baird, B., Seibold, M., Riedner, B., Boly, M., & Tononi, G. (2017). The phenomenal contents and neural correlates of spontaneous thoughts across wakefulness, NREM sleep, and REM sleep. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29(10), 1766–1777. Perry, E., & Piggott, M. (2000). Neurotransmitter mechanisms of dreaming: Implication of modulatory systems based on dream intensity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23(6), 990–992. Perry, E., Walker, M., Grace, J., & Perry, R. (1999). Acetylcholine in mind: A neurotransmitter correlate of consciousness? Trends in Neurosciences, 22(6), 273–280.

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Wamsley, E. J. (2013). Dreaming, waking conscious experience, and the resting brain: report of subjective experience as a tool in the cognitive neurosciences. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 637. Wamsley, E. J., & Antrobus, J. S. (2006). A new beginning for empirical dream research. American Journal of Psychology, 119(1), 129–135. Wamsley, E. J., Hirota, Y., Tucker, M. A., Smith, M. R., & Antrobus, J. S. (2007). Circadian and ultradian influences on dreaming: A dual rhythm model. Brain Research Bulletin, 71(4), 347–354. doi: 10.1016/j.brainresbull.2006.09.021 Waterman, D., Elton, M., & Kenemans, J. L. (1993). Methodological issues affecting the collection of dreams. Journal of Sleep Research, 2(1), 8–12. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2869.1993.tb00053.x Wehrle, R., Kaufmann, C., Wetter, T. C., Holsboer, F., Auer, D. P., Pollmächer, T., & Czisch, M. (2007). Functional microstates within human REM sleep: First evidence from fMRI of a thalamocortical network specific for phasic REM periods. European Journal of Neuroscience, 25(3), 863–871. Weisz, R., & Foulkes, D. (1970). Home and laboratory dreams collected under uniform sampling conditions. Psychophysiology, 6(5), 588–596. Wilke, M., Holland, S. K., & Ball, W. S. (2003). Language processing during natural sleep in a 6-year-old boy, as assessed with functional MR imaging. American Journal of Neuroradiology, 24(1), 42–44. Wilkinson, S. (2015). Delusions, dreams, and the nature of identification. Philosophical Psychology, 28(2), 203–226. Williams, J., Merritt, J., Rittenhouse, C., & Hobson, J. A. (1992). Bizarreness in dreams and fantasies: Implications for the activation-synthesis hypothesis. Consciousness and Cognition, 1(2), 172–185. doi: 10.1016/1053-8100(92) 90059-J Windt, J. M. (2015). Dreaming: a conceptual framework for philosophy of mind and empirical research. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. 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, 1–49. Wood, E., Westphal, J. K., & Lerner, I. (2023). Re‐evaluating two popular EEG‐based mobile sleep‐monitoring devices for home use. Journal of Sleep Research, 32(5), e13824. Yu, C. K.-c. (2001). Neuroanatomical correlates of dreaming: The supramarginal gyrus controversy (dream work). Neuropsychoanalysis, 3(1), 47–59. doi: 10. 1080/15294145.2001.10773336 Zednik, C. (2019). Models and mechanisms in network neuroscience. Philosophical Psychology, 32(1), 23–51. doi: 10.1080/09515089.2018.1512090

2 DREAM CONTENT AND COGNITION

2.1 Introduction

We often remember dreams that involve bizarre events. However, during the dream, we were, for some reason, unable to realise just how bizarre the event was. It seems that we often go about our dream lives unable to reflect, metacognise or think rationally amid fantastical or even impossible occurrences. In general, our dream lives seem incredible, but our dream selves seem pretty stupid compared to our waking selves. Why do we so rarely realise that we are dreaming? One obvious explanation is that there is a significant reduction in our cognitive powers while we dream. There is, however, wide disagreement about these features. Here I argue that one reason for this disagreement about the nature of dream content and cognition is that there is a broad variety in what occurs when we dream. Dreaming, in my view, resists reductive definitions: dreams are neither essentially bizarre nor essentially cognitively deficient. The simplicity of such definitions is appealing, but they are inaccurate. This chapter focuses on two aspects of dream content and cognition: bizarreness and metacognition. These features have seen perhaps the broadest disagreement amongst dream researchers. While dreams have been defined as entirely bizarre and incoherent by some researchers, others describe them as primarily accurate simulations of waking life. Similarly, with dream cognition, some theorists argue that the dreaming mind is cognitively deficient compared to waking cognition, perhaps lacking metacognitive capacity altogether, whereas others argue that our cognitive incapacities in dreaming have been overstated. I argue that we should take DOI: 10.4324/9781003367710-3

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a pluralistic approach to dream content and cognition. Dream content can be exceedingly bizarre or entirely mundane, while cognition may be highly deficient in some dreams but equivalent to waking in others. One limitation of dreaming is that there is little evidence to support the possibility that dreaming cognition can be superior to waking cognition, although it is possible that we are at times very creative in dreams. Further, it is difficult to determine whether dreams can be entirely unlike waking in terms of content, although some dream reports suggest such experiences can occur. A cessation of metacognition and the occurrence of bizarre events have been considered as “formal features of dreaming” (Hobson & Pace-Schott, 2002, p. 684). Others think of dreaming as involving accurate real-world representation with some occasional bizarre features (Domhoff, 2003), although dreams have more recently been acknowledged as multifarious and involving a variety of individual differences (Domhoff, 2005b; Hobson, 2005). The question of just how bizarre and cognitively incapacitated dreams are remains open. Attempts to answer this question have had mixed results from empirical researchers. One reason that these features are difficult to determine is that different groups focus on different features. Some focus on the similarities while others on the differences between waking and dreaming. While either focus is a good way of guiding research, specific claims about the nature of dreaming do not necessarily follow. Here it is argued that dreams can range from highly bizarre to mundane, and in terms of cognition, they can be utterly impaired or cognitive capacities can equal waking. It may be surprising to some that dreams, on average, are less bizarre than we expect, since we are more likely to remember the bizarre ones. Drawing out this variety shows that these features are worthy of study but not defining features of dreaming. 2.2 The variety of dream content

Dreams can involve fantastic worlds where the laws of nature, or even logic, do not apply. Dreamers perform impossible feats, visit fantastical locations, and meet fictional people. The scenery, time, and events occurring in the dream shift incongruently. Characters and even the dream self can morph and change into other characters, displaying odd behaviours. Several terms have been used in the literature to describe bizarreness, for example: “distortion from reality”, “metamorphosis”, “implausibility”, but many authors agree that the concept of bizarreness includes both (a) impossibility and (b) improbability and /or oddness compared to “common daily experiences”. (Colace, 2010, p. 109)

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According to the discontinuity view (Hobson & Schredl, 2011), dreams are unlike waking life – they are far more bizarre and incoherent. In contrast, continuity theorists (Horton, 2017; Schredl & Hofmann, 2003) think dreams, more or less, are similar to waking. In this view, dreams are less bizarre and unusual than it is generally assumed: while some continuity theorists describe dreams as replicating waking experiences, others claim they are rather replications of waking mental life – thoughts, imagination, concerns, and other mental states. Here it is argued that dreams involve a broad range of experiences, from bizarre and incoherent to mundane and similar to waking. However, exactly how bizarre or mundane is in contention. Why there is such disagreement is philosophically interesting: why is it so difficult to answer a relatively simple question: how bizarre are dreams? In this section, the continuity and discontinuity views of dream content are analysed. In my view, the diversity of dream content, the difficulty of collecting dream reports and the different approaches taken by research groups, such as using different bizarreness scales, all play a role in this disagreement. A pluralistic approach that focuses on the variety that can occur is justified. A surprising feature is that dreams are on average less bizarre than we are led to believe by our own experiences. 2.2.1 Discontinuity and bizarreness

Discontinuity theorists describe dreams as unlike waking experience. Hobson and colleagues claim that content bizarreness is a “formal” or “typical” dream feature (Hobson & Pace-Schott, 2002; Hobson et al., 1987, 2000). When we dream, we experience “impossibility or improbability of time, place, person and actions” (Hobson et al., 2000, p. 794). Dreams are bizarre, incoherent, and unlike waking experience, and this has been measured using bizarreness scales. A bizarreness scale measures bizarre elements against the total number of elements in a dream report. Something is bizarre if it is unlike common waking experiences. However, different research groups use different scales. Hobson and colleagues’ (1987) scale uses two categories: content and bizarreness. They assign letters to different types of content and numbers to different types of bizarreness so that the specific types can be analysed. There are four content categories in Hobson and colleagues’ scale. Characters, actions, places, objects, and time are assigned A, while the dreamer’s or another dream character’s thoughts are assigned B. C classifies feelings and emotions, whereas inferences or explanations for events, characters, and objects are identified as D. In the bizarreness

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category, discontinuities are labelled 1, incongruities or mismatching features are 2, and uncertainties or vagueness are 3. For example, an experience of time travel would be classed as A1, thinking that I have telepathic abilities would be B2, and being emotionally ambivalent in a near-death experience would be C3. From this data, bizarreness density can be calculated, which involves dividing the number of bizarre items by the total number of items in the report. This scale can also determine how common specific types of bizarreness are. Using such a calculation, the bizarreness of a dream report can be compared with other dreams or waking reports, and further we can deduce the average bizarreness density of dream and waking reports. For a more concrete example, the following dream report contains several bizarre features: Cowboys are moving around … . Water is flowing in a strange way above? … . On the ceiling? … . It will change soon, I know, so we just have to wait … . Lots of people are dressed in red clothes … . At one point I am at a long dinner table outside, fancy with white table cloth, lots of glassware, many people seated there … . (sleepanddreamdatabased.org KB Journal 2022 KB:1 01-23-2023) Cowboys moving around (characters) and water flowing above (objects) are incongruous, so both A2, whereas the ambiguity about how the water is moving could be classed as A3. The fact that the dreamer “knows” it would change soon thus needing to wait is an incongruous inference, D2. This shift from inside to a table outside could be seen as a discontinuity of place, A1. If we were to list all elements, which are around 11, and around 6 are bizarre, the bizarreness density is 0.54. This is only an estimate for illustration, and there are some complexities in judging what counts as a separate element. In practice, these issues are settled by reaching a consensus between several judges who together determine how many features there are, what counts as bizarre and how to classify each one. A further complexity to be discussed in section 2.2.3 is that context can alter whether something is bizarre. Different dreamers may find different experiences strange. Using Hobson and colleagues’ (1987) bizarreness scale, Williams and colleagues (1992) asked 12 students to record every dream they remembered upon waking. Analysis of the 60 gathered reports revealed a bizarreness density of 0.223 – one bizarre element to every four or five elements. This rating is very high considering that bizarre elements, such as discontinuities or incongruities, occur very rarely in waking perception, by definition. If something occurs regularly, it is no longer considered

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bizarre. One might argue that this supports the discontinuity hypothesis – dreams are bizarre and quite unlike waking. However, it is unclear if this is the right conclusion. In Hobson’s scale, although put in a separate category, thoughts, inferences, and mental states are considered as part of the bizarreness ranking. It seems plausible to assess thoughts and inferences for bizarreness; however, these assessments, we might think, should be compared with waking mental states rather than experiences of waking events. While it is unlikely that up to a quarter of the elements of a waking event report would be bizarre, as Williams and colleagues found in dream reports, it is less clear that less than a quarter of the elements of our waking reports would be bizarre if we included thoughts and other mental states in our calculation. Thoughts are quite often bizarre and unrelated to current perceived events. Further, what counts as a bizarre thought may differ from bizarre perception, although these issues will be discussed in more detail later. In Hobson and colleagues’ rating system, A items refer to the dream content while all other categories are types of mental state. So, to compare like with like, only bizarre A features should be divided by the total number of A features. As Williams and colleagues did not do this analysis it is unclear how the bizarreness density would change. Some reports may not include mental features, for example: I am perched on a steep mountaintop; the void falls away to the left. As the climbing party round the trail to the right, I am suddenly on a bicycle, which I steer through the group of climbers. It becomes clear that I make a complete circuit of the peak (at this level) by staying on the grass. There is, in fact, a manicured lawn surface continuing between the rocks and the crags (Hobson 2002, p. 8). This dream report, taken from Hobson’s dream diary, only describes content, not, say, thoughts or emotions. This may be because we tend to report events rather than mental states when describing an experience. In contrast, the cowboy dream above mentions beliefs states which are bizarre – knowing that the water will change soon and knowing to wait. If we were to do a comparison between experiences of events and mental states, we would, as discussed later, expect a higher bizarreness density in other mental states than perceptual experiences. The fact that mental states often go unreported is a further confounding factor. Another line of reasoning that supports the discontinuity hypothesis is that the neurochemical changes that occur during sleep would be hard to explain if waking and dreaming experiences were continuous. Hobson (2005) argues that “if dopamine and acetylcholine are available in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep but norepinephrine and serotonin are not, one might predict that mentation is quite different from waking. [It is unlikely]

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that such dramatic changes in brain function have no psychological consequences” (p. 22). However, neuroactivational and chemical changes should not lead us to assume that there are experiential differences (Sutton, 2009). Mental content and what is represented in experience rarely map perfectly onto neural vehicles – brain states that the mental states supervene on. On the other hand, even if we cannot assume neural change leads to changes in mental state, the widespread neurochemical and activational changes Hobson describes do mean that it would be unlikely for waking and dreaming to be psychologically continuous. For example, lesions to specific brain areas or, as occurs in dreams, deactivation of specific areas do have predictable consequences. Further to this, altered states of consciousness occur when we undergo similar neural changes whilst awake. For example, when one is sleep deprived, we undergo a shift towards cholinergic modulation which is associated with bizarre experience and cognitive changes (Hobson, 2002a). Flanagan (2000), in support of this argument, suggests that “bizarreness will increase the more control mechanisms are turned down” (p. 147). The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with focus and attention, is one such control mechanism. This brain area often displays a cessation of activity during sleep. Nonetheless, bizarreness is not a typical or defining feature of dreams, as described by Hobson (2002b, p. 9). Dreams can at times be convincing simulations of waking life. One question that remains unanswered, however, is whether dreams should be described as continuous with waking life or not. The view proposed here is that neither continuity nor discontinuity theses capture the full range of dreaming. 2.2.2 Mundane and continuous

According to the continuity view, dreams are like waking experiences, contrary to what our intuitions would lead us to believe. Our beliefs about dreams being bizarre are due to a bias towards remembering the bizarre ones. Instead, dreams generally reflect waking experiences and concerns and are “for the most part reasonable simulations of waking life that contain occasional unusual features” (Domhoff, 2007, p. 180). Foulkes (1999), Domhoff (2005a, 2007), Nielsen and colleagues (1991), and Snyder and colleagues (1970; Snyder et al., 1968) found significant similarity between our dreaming and waking lives. What leads to the disagreement between continuity and discontinuity theorists might be the discrepancies in measurement tools. Continuity theorists argue that Hobson and colleagues used measurement instruments that overrated dream bizarreness, leading to the erroneous description that dreams are typically bizarre. Another ambiguity leading to this disagreement is

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whether we should be comparing dream events with waking events or waking mental states. For Snyder and colleagues (1968; Snyder, 1970), dreams provide a “a remarkably faithful replica of waking life” (Snyder, 1970, p. 133). In an experiment analysing 635 lab-based dream reports, bizarreness was calculated for setting, characters, emotions, and activities. “Exotic” elements were unusual and out of the ordinary and “fantastic” elements were unrealistic experiences that could not occur in waking life. Interestingly, less than 1% of dream settings (location, time, and nature of the setting) were rated as fantastic and only 5% exotic, leaving the majority of settings to be judged as ordinary. Perhaps even more surprisingly, half of dreams were rated as having no bizarreness, and as little as 2% as having a high degree of bizarreness. Sixty to eighty per cent of events were rated as highly logically coherent, with only 5% low in coherence (ibid., pp. 145–146). In Snyder’s view, when collected during laboratory awakenings, dream reports are usually a “clear, coherent, and detailed account of a realistic situation involving the dreamer and other people caught up in very ordinary activities and preoccupations, and usually talking about them” (ibid., p. 148). In fact, ‘‘90% would have been considered credible descriptions of everyday experience’’ (Snyder et al., 1968, p. 375) which can be indistinguishable from credible waking memories. This description is very surprising to many of us who remember our dreams on occasion. If I relate this to my memories of my own dreams, nearly all of them are bizarre in some way, often incredibly so. I very rarely remember mundane, normal, life-like dreams. Yet further evidence supports this counter-intuitive outcome. A much larger home-based study involves the analysis of 3,118 reports collected from one woman, Barb Sanders (Domhoff, 2003, pp. 111–133). To determine bizarreness, it is important to compare one’s dream life and waking life since what might be bizarre and unusual to one might be normal to another. To this end, a blind analysis compared Barb Sanders’ dream reports with her reports of social interactions with family and friends, and also reports from friends and family members about their interactions. The goal was to determine whether and to what extent the dreams reflected her waking life. The analysis used the Hall-Van De Castle content analysis system which codes a variety of content types such as characters, social interactions, and activities (Hall & Van de Castle, 1966). 250 randomly selected dream reports were analysed and compared to the waking reports. Social interactions with family and friends in her dreams were judged as mostly “continuous with her waking thoughts and concerns in terms of the frequency of their appearance and the balance of aggressive and friendly interactions with them” (Domhoff, 2007, p. 16).

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These results suggest that, at least for Barb Sanders, dreams are mostly accurate imitations of waking life with the occasional bizarre element, in contrast with Hobson’s characterisation of dreams as highly bizarre and distinct from waking life. One limitation, however, is discerning whether “bizarreness” should be about one’s experiences or one’s mental state. Domhoff’s assessment, for example, depends on a comparison between dream content and waking concerns instead of waking perceptual experiences. If we assume that dreams are indeed a kind of simulation of perceptual experience, we would need to compare the experiences of events that occur in dreams with the experiences of events that occur in waking. Mental states such as concerns should be compared with waking mental states. However, we can question whether dreams are indeed a type of simulation, an issue discussed in detail in Chapters 4 and 5. Further to this, Barb Sanders’ dreams were collected in a dream diary after waking up normally rather than in controlled lab awakenings. There is some reason to think the bizarreness apparent in such reports may be due to a memory bias, as argued by Foulkes. In Foulkes’ (1979, 1996, 1999) view, dream bizarreness has been overstated. Focusing on the development of dreaming and dream reporting from childhood to adulthood, Foulkes’ (1999) research found differences in content between lab awakenings, where the dreamer reports their dream immediately after being woken by an experimenter, and home-based dreams in which the report is made after waking up normally in the morning. Morning reports seem to include more bizarre dreams than reports from lab awakenings. Further, children’s dreams, according to Foulkes’ findings, are comparatively simple and without narrative. They are more likely to describe images or scenes whereas adults report dreaming about events. More complex dreams and dream reports that involve a narrative seem to develop with age. Parents do, however, often urge children to elaborate on their reports (Parsons & Rosen, 2018). This can encourage the child to report bizarre or imaginative narratives in order to to please their parents, meaning that such reports are not an accurate reflection of dream content. Dreams, in Foulkes’ view (1982a, 1982b, 1985), are generated by the unconscious activation of memory units during sleep. The conscious mind attempts to organise this information into a sensible narrative that the dreamer can comprehend. So why aren’t dreams more bizarre? The conscious mind while we sleep is quite successful at creating plausible narratives out of the somewhat chaotic neural activation. However, discontinuities occasionally arise when it’s not possible to sensibly incorporate the data from hyper-activated areas in the brain. The upshot here is that, for Foulkes, these discontinuities are an exception to regular dream production.

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If children’s dreaming begins as simple imagery, when are we first aware of these images and when do the narratives develop? It is unclear exactly when conscious experience of dreamed imagery starts, due to both the inability of toddlers to report their experiences and researchers’ inability to determine conscious experience from brain imagining alone. However, Foulkes (1999) found that young children aged 3–5 tend to report dreaming of simple imagery and from the ages of 5–9, complex narrative reports develop (ibid., Chapters 4 and 5). With this established, we can ask how bizarre these experiences are. Foulkes (1999) rated children’s dreams based on the number of “character distortions” and “setting distortions”. He found few such distortions. Instead, dreams are “generally coherent and internally plausible images strung together over time as generally coherent and internally plausible narrative sequences. They are not, as the stereotype has it, illogical sequences of bizarre images” (p. 8). Similarly, Colace (2010) found that especially between the ages of 3 and 5, children’s dreams are very simple, sometimes one scene or activity and with generally little bizarreness. I have dreamed the tree near the house, where the garage is. There was a rose. I dreamed I was at school and I was drawing. (ibid., p. 105) The first report was from a three-year-old and the second from a fouryear-old. Colace (2010) carried out three studies, two lab-based and one home-based with parents collecting the reports. He rated 68% of dreams as “sensible, comprehensible and plausible”, 17% as “clear, consistent and sensible but strange since their meaning is scarcely compatible with common daytime experiences” and 15% as “senseless, not comprehensible, bizarre and without meaning” (pp. 117–118). Older children’s reports (ages 5–7) tended to be more bizarre, with 42% being sensible and comprehensible, 24% as sensible but not compatible with waking life and 34% as strange and bizarre. As we grow up, dreams develop narrative complexity but remain predominantly sensible and comprehensible. The above findings show discrepancies between research groups. Hobson and colleagues rate dreams as highly bizarre, suggesting the discontinuity theory, while Snyder and others found dreams to be mostly continuous with waking experience with a few bizarre elements. The explanation for these differences, and whether dreams are in fact bizarre, is discussed in what follows.

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2.2.3 Why results conflict

Two major reasons for why there is disagreement between groups are, firstly, the focus on lab-based collections in some groups and home-based collections in others, and, secondly, the difference in bizarreness scales. Some evidence suggests the content of dreaming is somewhat changed by the lab environments in that lab-collected dreams are less bizarre. Other evidence suggests we are less likely to remember mundane dreams if we are not awoken at the right time. If both are true, lab collections are biased towards mundane dreams while home-collected dreams are biased towards bizarre experiences. For example, Williams and colleagues’ aforementioned experiments used home-based reports, Foulkes and Colace use both home-based and lab-based methods and Snyder’s studies involve only lab awakenings. It is plausible that bizarre and interesting dreams are more likely to be remembered than mundane dreams when we wake naturally for several reasons. Bizarre and unusual events are more memorable in general, and they are more likely to wake us up, which increases the chance of remembering a dream. Alternatively, the strange environment of the dream lab may repress bizarre content. The lab is certainly an unfamiliar location, which may alter dream content, but it may also repress REM sleep (Schredl, 2018). In a study of over 2,000 labcollected dreams, 20% included reference to the sleep lab (Schredl, 2008), although the effect of altered dream content and reduced REM may wear off after the first night (Dement et al., 1965).1 One issue is that the minor differences between controlled home and lab reports seem insufficient to explain the discrepancy between research findings. A second difference is that the groups use different measurement scales that may over- or underrate bizarreness. Further to this, what is considered to be bizarre may differ depending on context, such as the life and experiences of the dreamer. When assessing dream content, “blind reviewers” that know nothing about the person reporting the dream are used to avoid biasing their interpretation. However, in this context it is unclear whether assessors should know nothing about the dreamer. What counts as bizarre depends on whether the dreamer themselves finds the dream bizarre in the context of their own lives. What is “bizarre”? If I was to dream of working on a ship, this would be quite bizarre as I have never done so and spend little time on boats. This kind of dream would, in contrast, be normal for an ocean explorer. In this way, bizarreness is subjective and context dependent. There are of course dream experiences that would be bizarre to everyone – events that are impossible or fantastical. However, some fantastical dream events might reflect elements of our lives, such as films we have watched or games we

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have played. Around Christmas time, children see Santa Claus on every street corner. Colace (2010) argues, then, that dreaming of Santa is continuous with waking life even though Santa is a fictional character. Out of this context, dreaming of Santa seems bizarre. Colace focuses on ways in which taking context into account can reduce apparent bizarreness; however, context can work both ways. Bizarreness density can increase if an element that seems mundane to an observer does not fit in the context of the dreamer’s life. In Hobson’s mountaineering dream described above, I would rate three elements as bizarre under the assumption that Hobson sometimes goes mountaineering – being on a bicycle while mountaineering, cycling through a group of mountaineers and the out-of-place manicured laws. However, if he has a phobia of heights and would never go near a mountain, the mountain setting itself should also be judged as bizarre for him. You might even judge the dream of someone who rarely goes mountaineering as more bizarre than a regular mountaineer. Given this variation, judging the bizarreness of someone else’s dream relative to their own life is complex. Different training of the blind reviewers could also explain different results to some extent. Researchers could reduce the scope of this problem by taking into account context-dependent items and having some knowledge of what is considered a normal occurrence in the lives of the participants. The aforementioned Barb Sander’s series did indeed compare dreams to elements of her own life and the reports of those close to her. However, it would also be informative for the dreamers themselves to rate the elements in their dreams for bizarreness. We are as individuals the most “expert” in terms of what elements are continuous with our own lives. Another plausible explanation for the discrepancies between groups is that different bizarreness scales are used by different groups. Some bizarreness scales appear to be too general and, as Domhoff argues, “much of the specific information in dream reports can be lost or unused with [these] rating scales” (Domhoff, 2003, p. 59). Foulkes’ (1999) scale might be guilty of this. The scale is more course-grained than Hobson and colleagues’, measuring only character distortion and setting distortion. Perhaps if Foulkes’ scale was more fine-grained, it would better account for the nuanced set of bizarre elements (Colace, 2010). Snyder (1970) also used only two measures of bizarreness: exotic or fantastic (p. 134). More generalised scales tend to report lower bizarreness densities, which may simply be an artefact of insufficient nuance. On the other hand, overly fine-grained systems might overestimate bizarreness. Hobson’s scale, for example, includes thoughts and emotions although these elements should be considered as separate from content. There could be a disconnect, in some dreams, between bizarre occurrences and unusual cognition. Lucid

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dreams, for example, can have very strange content but the dreamer has normal thought patterns and cognition. Further, waking thoughts and imagination are likely to be more fantastical or strange than waking experiences. So, it would be unfair to compare dream thoughts with waking events, scenery, characters, and such. Hobson’s scale does not distinguish between levels of bizarreness, such as “unusual”, “highly bizarre”, and “impossible”. We might consider an event with one impossible element to be more bizarre than several mildly unusual elements. A dream in which my pens are green instead of their usual blue, my laptop is a different brand, and in which I’m eating a large steak when, in waking, I’m vegetarian, seems less bizarre than a dream in which my boss is a lizard person. It is difficult, however, to decide which scales are the most appropriate, and I do not have a clear solution. Here I shift focus from the disagreements between groups to the issue of dream bizarreness itself. Dream bizarreness varies greatly from entirely impossible, fantastical, and incoherent to accurate, even mundane simulations of waking life. Often our dreams involve a mixture of bizarre and mundane elements. Alternatively, a dream may begin as wake-like and mundane but at a certain point shift to bizarre, which accurately describes many of Hobson’s dream reports. The opposite could also occur, starting as bizarre and shifting to mundane. In agreement with Domhoff (2003), I think Hobson’s AIM model does over-emphasise dream bizarreness, claiming that it is a defining feature of dreams. On the other hand, Hobson (2005) makes a good point that “all of the studies cited by Domhoff (2005a) do report some strong emotion and some bizarreness in dreams.” (Hobson, 2005, p. 22). It is hard to deny that dreams can indeed be fantastic and incoherent. Many dreams, nonetheless, involve no bizarre elements, meaning any definition of dreaming should not refer to their bizarreness as a necessary feature. As we have seen, dream content can be highly varied in terms of bizarreness. Dreams, it should be agreed, are more bizarre than waking even though some dreams are not bizarre at all. If Snyder is correct in his assessment that only 5% of dreams are incoherent, and less than 1% are fantastic, “incoherent” and “fantastic” events rarely if ever happen when awake. Of course, “impossible” events do not happen, by definition, although one might experience something that appears impossible if they are hallucinating. The degree of bizarreness has important implications for other aspects of our theory of dreams. If dreams are mostly mundane, how does the sleeping mind with all its neurochemical changes and “envattedness” – being shut off from the external world – generate such an experience? If dreams are bizarre, why is it so rare to realise that we are

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dreaming? One approach that would provide an answer to these questions is to argue that we are making the wrong comparison when we judge dream bizarreness. Previously I stated that we should compare like with like, such as thoughts with thoughts and perceptions with perceptions. An alternative, however, is the view that dreams should be compared instead with waking fantasies and mindwandering. Given this comparison, dreams seem less bizarre. Further, their lack of bizarreness is not due to the brain generating mundane, normal waking experience but instead, simply generating mindwandering or imagination with eyes closed. 2.2.4 Bizarreness and imagination

Our waking mindwandering, imagination, and fantasising can be far more bizarre than our waking experience. We can, as with dreaming, imagine any number of bizarre and even impossible scenarios. The odd shifts in scenery, objects, and narrative that occur in dreams become less baffling when we compare dreaming to imagination and thoughts. Thoughts pop into our heads, often appear unrelated to each other or to what we are experiencing and can be quite unusual or even fantastical. Several theorists find dreaming to be appropriately analogous with waking mental states (Domhoff, 2007; Flanagan, 2000; Klinger & Cox, 1987; Klinger et al., 1999; States, 2000). However, we must consider both the conceptual issue of whether the comparison is appropriate and the empirical issue of how dreams compare to imagination in terms of bizarreness. While the comparison between dream thoughts and waking thoughts is indeed appropriate, whether dream events should be compared with imagined, mindwandered or thought-up events depends on the nature of dreaming. Further, there is disagreement on the empirical issue. Some groups have found increased bizarreness in dreaming compared to waking thoughts, although, as is the case with dream events, bizarreness is not characteristic of all thought. It is questionable whether mindwandering and dreaming is the appropriate comparison to make when we assess the bizarreness of dreams, but firstly, how does dreaming compare to waking imagination? Dreaming and imagination, relaxed thinking (Foulkes & Fleisher, 1975; States, 2000), or mindwandering (Flanagan, 2000; Starker, 1974), share many commonalities. Although there is much debate on exactly what “mindwandering” (Irving & Glasser, 2020) and “imagination” (Kind, 2016) are, for the purposes of this chapter, I specify that we can imagine while mindwandering, but mindwandering and imagination are not the same kind of mental state. Generally, mindwandering is a mental state which is less focused than directed, task-specific thought and while our

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minds wander we can evoke sensory imagery or propositional thought. Imagination involves bringing to mind visual or other sensory representations that are not memories, although there are similarities between imagining and remembering (Rosen & Barkasi, 2021). According to one interpretation of the continuity view, dreams reflect waking concerns and other mental states such as imagination as opposed to experiences of waking events. This interpretation is not necessarily an imagination model of dreaming according to which dreams are imagination (see Chapter 5) but imagination model theorists could subscribe to this continuity view. If we were to compare an average dream report with an average mindwandering report, according to Flanagan (2000), we often would not be able to tell which was which. Neurobiology students were asked to assess the content of the following report. I saw the first bird of Autumn appear on the new feeder. My mind turned from the fleeting sighting of the finch to a dim image of a Turkish city (I have never been to Turkey). I felt happy as I imagined having lunch later with G., and then pictured a scene in which a TV sports announcer urinated out the window of a nightclub onto two plainclothes officers staking the club out for drug traffickers. This seemed funny. […] I put my remaining raspberry yoghurt on the dog’s dry food, and drove off in a red Saab. (Flanagan, 2000, p. 58) Not knowing that this was in fact a report of Flanagan’s waking thoughts, students began judging the weird elements as if they were from a dream report. Waking thoughts can indeed be quite a lot like dreams. They both can shift and change in odd ways and not reflect a normal pattern of waking events. We can imagine random and bizarre images, often unintentionally, like a sports announcer urinating on a police officer. At first, Flanagan’s example does indeed seem analogous to dreaming. The non sequiturs have no logical connection, like some events in dreams. Yet when Flanagan adds context, we can see why his train of thought progressed this way. His thoughts about Turkey related to meeting a friend who was from Turkey. The fact that he had never gone to Turkey makes the thought seem more bizarre, but Flanagan chose to include the information that made the report seem weirder, a kind of bias. The urination event was from a story he had just read in the newspaper and seemingly popped into his head – a memory rather than imagination. Giving the dog yoghurt seems odd, however like many dog owners, he explains, he was thinking about introducing the dog to new foods. Given this context, it turns out that all of these elements make narrative sense in relation to things happening in Flanagan’s life. It is likely that not all

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thoughts make sense in this way, however. We have random thoughts pop into our heads and imagine strange things. However, if Foulkes’ example is analogous to dreaming, one would expect there to equally be context that explains the odd shifts in dream scenery. While context may explain some bizarre features, the fact that we find our own dreams to be bizarre suggests that context doesn’t explain it all away. Further, context can make a report seem more rather than less bizarre, such as mountaineering when you are afraid of heights. My own dreams often involve elaborate martial arts fights, which is not very bizarre considering I spent many years studying martial arts as a hobby. In contrast, my dreams of going to outer space seem bizarre given my lack of experience and desire to do so. For Flanagan’s analogy to be a good one, dreaming should have a similar level of contextual explanation. Another issue is that Flanagan’s example was intended to seem like a dream report to make a point about dreams and imagination. Had the students been given the full context of the report, it most likely would not have fooled them. So, this particular example should not convince us that dreaming experience is like waking thought. The issue of dream and imagined bizarreness needs further analysis. For States (2000) dreams can be contextualised like Flanagan’s example. Most dream bizarreness, like waking thought bizarreness, relates to “that reminds me syndrome” (p. 183): when unrestricted by external stimuli, our minds wander off on tangents. He argues that being reliable and efficient in a state of detachment from the world isn’t something the brain does well—and for which benefit we can probably be thankful because at least half of the world’s thinking gets done in the unreliable mode. In short, the only ground on which to compare dreams to anything would be […] that of imaginative thought. (States, 2000, p. 185) Imagining and dreaming minds both produce bizarre imagery because they are not restricted by external stimuli, also known as the “input blockade” (Hobson, 2004; Hobson et al., 2000). When trying to concentrate on a task, we can be derailed by something in the environment or even a though popping into our heads that reminds us of something else. While awake, our thoughts will likely shift back to the task at hand eventually because it is brought back to focus by the present stimulus. This is not the case in dreams. Dreaming shifts “in a series of ‘flits’ from one thing to another, determined by the strongest mnemonic association aroused by the dream at any point” (States, 2000, p. 106). Unlike waking thought, there are no environmental cues to bring the mind back on task.

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For States, dreaming and waking thought are equally bizarre, dreams are simply less constrained. An important point is that mindwandering does not usually involve hallucinogenic imagery nor a belief that the imaginary content is real, whereas most describe their dreams as involving both hallucination and belief that the dream is real. Mindwandering may be simply propositional – thinking in sentences – or may involve imagined imagery, but few would describe their mindwandering as hallucinatory. However, Foulkes and Fleisher’s (1975) mindwandering study conflicts with these intuitions. In this study, 16 female college students were instructed to relax but stay awake – confirmed by EEG and EOG – while in a dimly lit room. Of 74 arousals, 24% described their imaginings as intensely visual and hallucinatory. Experiences were judged to be hallucinatory when a subject reported feeling that the event really happened, and they were not just imagining it. A second study of 20 subjects, 10 male and 10 female, with 115 arousals, showed 23 instances (27%) with a hallucinatory quality (p. 68).2 Foulkes found that “relaxed waking thought is fairly susceptible to momentary intrusions of bizarre content or hallucination; [and] such qualities emerge in a variety of psychophysiological conditions and without any extraordinary induction techniques” (p. 66). The wandering mind, it seems, can be detached from external stimuli, have random associations and even hallucinations similar to dreaming. Another similarity between dreaming and daydreaming is that they often share “styles” (Starker, 1974, 1977). The three individual styles of dreaming described by Singer and Antrobus (1963, 1972) can be linked with styles of daydreaming. These styles are as follows: 1 Conflictual or negative daydreaming which is dominated by guilts, fears, hostilities, and ambitions. 2 Positive daydreaming which involves vivid imaginal experiences. 3 Anxious, distractible daydreaming involving anxiety, absorption in frightening or bizarre fantasy, and poor attentional control (Singer & Antrobus, 1963). Most individuals display a tendency towards one style of dreaming and daydreaming and we tend to have the same style of each, especially regarding affective quality and bizarreness. Starker argues that “dreams and day-dreams appear to be highly interrelated aspects of the fantasy process, sharing important affective and structural components” (Starker, 1977, p. 411). Positive daydreamers tend to daydream and dream in an enjoyable, vivid, and imaginal style while the same continuity is displayed by conflictual and anxious daydreamers who are more prone to negative

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dreams and nightmares. This continuity gives another reason to compare dreaming and daydreaming as it suggests similar mechanisms. My view is that dreaming involves both perceptual and imaginative elements (see Chapters 4 and 5), and although Foulkes’ findings suggest that imagining can be hallucinatory, rather than concluding that dreaming is thus a type of imagining, it is more plausible to consider experience, from the first person perspective, to be on a spectrum that involves perception at one end and imagination on the other without clear demarcations between each. If we compare even the most intense imagination to dreaming, it is likely that dreaming is generally more multimodal, employs a wider variety of senses, and involves more realistic embodiment and immersion. Although Foulkes’ research suggests that mindwanderers can forget that they are mindwandering occasionally and given the right conditions, this is the norm for dreaming. In fact, lucid dreaming, the realisation that one is dreaming, is very rare. The imagined world is less likely to stand up to scrutiny than the dream world. In prelucid dreams, the dreamer often fails to realise that they are dreaming despite initially questioning that they might be in a dream. There is no evidence to suggest that there is an analogous pre-lucid imaginative or mindwandering state. Since mindwandering occurs in a relaxed state, this suggests that preludicity or scrutiny of the world would result in failure to evoke the desired state. The main focus here is not to describe the similarities and differences between dreaming and mindwandering in general, although that discussion occurs in later chapters. Instead, focusing on bizarreness, I briefly discuss dreamed and imagined content regarding bizarreness, comparing the relative bizarreness of each state. I argue that evidence suggests that dreaming is generally more bizarre than imagining. Dreams, like fantasies, can be bizarre or banal, but according to Williams and colleagues (1992), dreams rate higher on the bizarreness scale. Sixty home-based dream reports were compared with sixty waking fantasy reports taken from 12 college students. Williams and colleagues found that “bizarreness was twice as prevalent in dream reports as in wake-state fantasy reports of the same subjects. Further analysis of the reports also showed differences in other features including the number of persona and remoteness of time and place” (p. 172). The bizarreness density of dreams in this study was 0.223, or 1 bizarre element for every 4 or 5 elements, whereas waking fantasies rated 0.089 – only 1 bizarre element for every 11 or 12 elements. This would suggest bizarreness density of imagination is significantly lower than dreams. Hobson and colleagues (1987) found in a sample of 110 dream reports that incongruities of character or place (A2) accounted for 44.5% of

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bizarre items, with vague character or place and vague thoughts (A3/B3) occurring in 24.3% of cases, and discontinuous characters or place (A1) accounting for 9.3%. A sample of fantasy reports was subjected to the same analysis. On average, Hobson and colleagues found that there are decreased levels of bizarreness in fantasies compared to dreams, especially A1 events. By subjecting dreaming and fantasising to the same procedure, the problems mentioned earlier about Hobson’s scale being too specific are no longer an issue since over-counting, if this is indeed a problem, would apply to both fantasising and dreaming. Domhoff (2007) argues that these findings may partly be due to failure to take into account waking concerns which can explain or contextualise elements, making them seem less bizarre. In an early Hall (1953) dream study, one dream report involved elements such as a ripped wedding dress, the dreamer’s husband suffering from tuberculosis, and a missing stone from her wedding ring. The dreamer, on reflection, had concerns about her unhappy marriage. Domhoff reports: the results of detailed studies of unusual elements in the [dream journal] series suggest that some of them may well be expressions of figurative thinking, as the Freudians would expect, but that others are more likely due to cognitive defects in the dreaming state, just as activationsynthesis theorists would insist. The conclusion that some unusual elements probably have no figurative meaning is reinforced by the finding that there are more bizarre features in dream mentation at sleep onset. (Domhoff, 2007, p. 19) One could argue, however, that not all bizarre elements can be explained away given context. Since the aforementioned Hobson and colleagues’ study subjected waking and dreaming reports to the same analysis, it is unclear why the dream reports would seem less bizarre given context but not the fantasy reports. Domhoff’s description is consistent with a pluralistic view of dream bizarreness. Context matters – it can explain away some bizarre elements but it can also make apparently mundane elements bizarre. Domhoff does not take into account that context can also increase bizarreness. My apparently bizarre martial arts dreams seem less bizarre when martial arts training sessions are considered, but not completely normal considering that in these dreams I fight what seem to be real elaborate battles. I sometimes have super-human abilities and the dreams also have other bizarre, mismatching features. Further, a dream that would seem normal to many people, let’s say, one in which I go to a party and hug all my friends, would be bizarre considering I usually avoid hugging people. More nuance and information about the individual’s life is required to

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assess bizarreness, but given a neutral analysis, it seems that dreams are indeed more bizarre than average mindwandering. Dreams are not fundamentally bizarre and prima facie bizarre elements may reveal themselves to not be bizarre on further analysis. Further, apparently mundane elements could reveal themselves to be bizarre given context. “That reminds me syndrome” doesn’t seem to account for all bizarre elements in dreams, although it may decrease bizarreness to some extent, as Flanagan’s example suggests. Hobson’s (2005) assessment that different interests of research groups may lead to different findings seems plausible. Foulkes, Snyder and others discussed previously studied the extent to which dreams are continuous with waking life, whereas Hobson and colleagues focus on differences between waking and dreaming. Both approaches are valuable so long as no claims about continuity or discontinuity in general are made. A reductive view that defines dreams as fundamentally bizarre or continuous with waking is not supported by empirical evidence. A philosophical issue regarding continuity and discontinuity relates to exactly what we mean by these terms. What aspects of waking are we comparing dreams to, experiences of waking events or waking mental states? The nature of dreaming will be discussed more in the following chapters, but here I argue for a pluralistic view of dream content: dreams resist being defined by a set of necessary conditions. I instead assess the extent to which dreams can vary. Regarding bizarreness, dreams may be convincing replicas of waking life, bizarre and incoherent or anything in between. Dreams that are generally wake-like with a few bizarre features seem to be the most common while waking life replicas or entirely fantastical dreams are rarer. The conflict between research groups boils down to disagreements about the ratio of bizarre to mundane dreams. Hobson admits we should begin by agreeing that there are both similarities and differences between waking and dreaming mentation. We can argue until the cows come home about just how much of each there is, but that is not as interesting, to me at least, as getting on with the job of explaining the differences. (Hobson, 2005, p. 23) While I agree that explaining the differences is of great interest, explaining any experiential similarities is equally interesting given the differences in inputs, outputs, and processing. Dreams which convincingly replicate waking experience are fascinating in part because the experience is internally generated. It is remarkable that the sleeping brain can do this, as I discuss in Chapter 5. It is also astonishing, as I discuss in the following, that we usually fail to realise that we are dreaming.

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We have established that many dreams involve bizarre elements, however, we rarely realise we are dreaming. Realising one is dreaming, known as lucid dreaming, is exceedingly rare (Gackenbach et al., 1986; LaBerge, 1993). One possible explanation is that we lack metacognitive ability – the ability to think about our own mental states, while we dream. In the following, impairments to dream cognition, with a focus on metacognition, are discussed. I argue that dream cognition is not fundamentally impaired, although impairments are common. As with dream bizarreness, dream cognition is highly varied. 2.3 How cognitively impaired?

Dreaming cognition is fascinating. Emotions (Nielsen et al., 1991; Schredl & Reinhard, 2010; Sikka et al., 2018), the ability to pay attention (Malinowski & Horton, 2021; Stumbrys et al., 2015; Thomas et al., 2015) and the sense of agency (Rosen, 2015, 2018, 2021b) all undergo interesting changes. A key alteration that has received significant attention is metacognition, or cognition about cognition. Metacognition is the ability to think about, monitor or assess our own cognitive abilities, functions, and processes. An important and often overlooked distinction in the dream literature, however, is between the frequency and accuracy of metacognitive thought. It is difficult to assess how frequently we metacognise in dreaming compared to waking, although metacognition, when apparent, is easier to assess for accuracy. I assess the impairment of metacognition in dreaming by looking at claims about the absence of dream metacognition and then the accuracy of metacognition that does occur. I argue for a nuanced approach: both the frequency and the accuracy of metacognitive thoughts need to be assessed to determine metacognitive ability. I argue that metacognition is not absent from dreams, although there are many instances in which, if we were able to metacognise, we might expect an explicit thought such as “I must be dreaming” to occur but rarely does. However, lucid dreams are one example of highly metacognitive dreams, and non-lucid dreams can be highly metacognitive. Pluralism is also true for cognition in sleep: metacognition is present at waking levels in some dreams, but severely deficient in others. 2.3.1 Metacognition

The term “metacognition” (Flavell, 1979) was initially used to describe a learner’s knowledge or ability to monitor learning processes and control learning strategies. More recently, the term generally refers to activities such as “thinking about one’s own thinking” or “cognitions about

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cognitions” (Georghiades, 2004, p. 365) as well as “what people know about cognition in general, and about their own cognitive and memory processes, in particular, and how they put that knowledge to use in regulating their information processing and behavior” (Koriat, 2007, p. 219). Metacognition allows us to reflect upon and exert control over internal mental processes and cognitive abilities as well as feelings and other states of being. When we metacognise, we can contemplate the reliability of perceptions, judgements, and memories, and we can choose what to think about. Metacognition can be cashed out in several ways. The “object-level” and “meta-level” (Koriat, 2007; Nelson, 1990; Shimamura, 2000) refers to the distinction between basic object-level cognitive functions or information processing such as encoding, rehearsing, and retrieving information and the meta-level monitoring of these processes. Studying and attempting to memorise information involves object-level processes whereas judging that I have studied sufficiently or memorised a fact is a meta-level “judgement-of-learning” (JOL). Koriat explains that “the meta level is assumed to oversee object-level operations (monitoring) and return signals to regulate them actively in a top-down fashion (control)” (Koriat, 2007). This involves simulating a “dynamic model” of the object-level based on sensory feedback and it monitors either a change or no change in state (Nelson, 1990, p. 126). The object-level can be controlled and changed by initiating, continuing, or terminating actions. When studying, say, a model of object-level processes such as reading and repeating is generated by the meta-level which then initiates, continues, or terminates study based on whether sufficient study is judged to be achieved. An alternative way of dividing metacognitive processes is into tasks of selecting a stimulus to focus on, maintaining information in the working memory, updating memories with new information and rerouting cognitive processes by inhibiting the current stimulus and reselecting (Shimamura, 2000, p. 316). The phenomena of interest include metacognitive knowledge which is the understanding of our own cognitive processes and metacognitive skills which allow us to exert control over our cognitive processes (Desoete, 2008; Desoete & Ozsoy, 2009). Different types of metacognition involve different types of experimental paradigm. For example, metacognitive knowledge can be studied using self-report questionnaires while metacognitive skills are usually judged by observing behaviour or “think-aloud” protocols: discussing one’s cognitive processes with a third-party observer during set tasks. We also have metacognitive feelings (Flavell, 1979) or experiences (Desoete & Ozsoy, 2009) that relate to our judgements. These include

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feelings-of-knowing (FOK), the sense that something has been learned, and tip-of-the-tongue phenomena (TOT), which is when we feeling that we know something without the ability to access the knowledge. This could either be due to an inability to access the information or the feeling being false. For my purposes, FOKs and TOTs can be of use to dream research as their presence in a dream report can indicate metacognition was occurring during the dream. They can also help researchers judge the accuracy and frequency of metacognition, an important distinction to be discussed later. Although in the dream literature, the focus is often on whether dreamers can reflect on their surroundings and question whether they are dreaming, metacognition is not limited to conscious reflection about our own cognition. Metacognition can be explicit – a type of conscious reflection, or implicit – occurring beneath the level of awareness (Frith, 2012). While explicit metacognition is generally slow and deliberate, “concerned with generating reportable knowledge about the processes underlying our behaviour” and requiring “explicit mentalizing”, implicit metacognition, like other unconscious processing, is “rapid, automatic and occur[s] without awareness” (ibid., p. 2214). As we are unaware of such processes, they are unwilled and unreasoned. Both implicit and explicit forms involve two levels of cognition – the meta-level reflects on the object level – but implicit metacognition can be difficult to study. We cannot report implicit experiences as they are not reflected in awareness. However, indirect measures can probe implicit metacognition, such as how good the individual is at tasks that require unconscious metacognitive monitoring of other cognitive processes. Since metacognition can be implicit or explicit, different metacognitive processes require different testing paradigms, but Desoete and Ozsoy note “how we test influences what we find” (2009, p. 2). For example, delays between tasks and reporting or filling in a questionnaire can affect memory. Thinking aloud reduces the delay between the activity and the report, but this requires using additional cognitive faculties to the target task, perhaps even untargeted metacognitive faculties. This could possibly lead to less accurate or slower cognition relevant to the target task.3 An important distinction for dreaming is between what I will call metacognitive accuracy and frequency. Whereas waking research often focuses on whether one’s metacognition is accurate, for example, whether I am correct when I judge myself to be a fast learner, how frequently metacognitive thoughts occur is a main focus for dream research. When I dream, it seems that there are situations that I fail to have an expected metacognitive thought. A common example is when I fail to notice that an

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event or object is bizarre. Frequency is difficult to determine due to our reliance on reporting and memory. Simply reporting one’s thoughts requires metacognition since the task involves metacognitive monitoring. A more general reporting task, such as “report every time you monitor your progress” may also increase monitoring since the participant pays more attention and monitors more regularly. Metacognition is generally not part of one’s reporting schema, as discussed in the following, so setting a more general reporting task that doesn’t specify metacognition to avoid unnaturally increasing metacognition might simply leave metacognitive thoughts or experiences unreported. Lastly, monitoring the initiation, continuation, or termination of an action involves metacognitive awareness, thus distinguishing between different metacognitive judgements and other mental states to determine metacognitive frequency proves challenging (Nelson, 1990). Even a choice to not change state is a metacognitive judgement, so it is unclear if we are ever not engaged in metacognition. If we include implicit metacognition in our analysis, one could argue that all cognition is accompanied by metacognition since these processes occur without awareness. For this reason, I focus on explicit metacognition in dreaming. It is commonly thought that explicit metacognition is lacking or even absent in dreams. However, clearly, given the variety of forms of metacognition that occur in waking, more nuance is required when making these claims. 2.3.2 Metacognition in dreams

According to the cognitive deficiency view, metacognition and other cognitive features are severely impaired in dreaming (Flanagan, 2000; Fosse et al., 2003; Hobson, 2005; Hobson & Schredl, 2011; Hobson et al., 1987; Hobson et al., 2000; Kahn & Hobson, 2005; Muzur et al., 2002). Dream thought is both impoverished and non-logical. While some inferential reasoning is present in dreaming, many illogicalities that would demand cognitive attention during waking go unnoticed during sleep. (Hobson et al., 2011, p. 1). Dream reports often suggest a lack of reflection or metacognitive capacity of the dreamer. We are unable to monitor or control our thoughts and actions and we appear to act irrationally. Kahn and Hobson (2005) observe that we are unable to “step outside the scene in [a] dream to make a cognitive judgment about the veracity of the scene”

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(p. 432). When bizarre events occur in dreams, we do not realise they are unusual: they often go unnoticed or are judged to be normal, and this can lead to irrational behaviour and decisions. I am with some people outside, a man and a woman, like we are going through a resort area, and I see a huge dragon’s head laying on the ground; the rest of its body sprawled behind? … . Is it alive? … . I go up to touch it, and I can see yes, it is alive … . (KB Journal 2021 KB 12-212020 sleepanddreamdatabase.org) Inability to notice bizarre events indicates reduced metacognitive capacity in terms of frequency since were we to notice, say, a dragon in a resort, we would most likely question our perceptions or even question whether we are dreaming. We irrationally accept bizarre events, suggesting lowered metacognitive frequency or alternatively, explain them away, suggesting reduced accuracy. Believing the dragon is real instead of, say, a sculpture seems irrational and then checking if it is alive by touching it is not the most rational choice of action on the assumtion that it is real. Of course, metacognition is not absent, but instead lacks accuracy. The dreamer comes to the wrong conclusions about the situation, but is assessing the scenario. Further to this, metacognitive inaccuracy does not occur in all dreams. It is not clear that cognition in dreaming is necessarily deficient (Ichikawa, 2008, 2009; Kahan & LaBerge, 1994; LaBerge, 1992; Sosa, 2005). While it is true that dream reports give strong evidence for impaired metacognition in many dreams, there is reason to think that at times, the dreaming mind can equal the cognitive powers of the waking mind. Lucid dreams are one example of dreams that can reach high metacognitive accuracy and frequency; however, regular, non-lucid dreams can also have wake-like cognition. The reduced ability to reflect upon unusual experience is a main discussion point about the metacognitive abilities in dreams, but this feature is less relevant to the waking metacognition literature. While in waking, we would not expect a participant to fail to notice a bizarre occurence, our inability to notice dream bizarreness is a prominent feature and a good indication of cognitive deficiency. [S]elf-reflection in dreams is generally found to be absent (Rechtschaffen, 1978) or greatly reduced (Bradley et al., 1992) relative to waking and, when present, often involves weak, post hoc, and logically flawed explanations of improbable or impossible events and plots. (Hobson et al., 2000, p. 799)

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Since the metacognitive literature about waking has a strong emphasis on metamemory and learning, responses to bizarre and unusual features of the environment are not commonly studied. These features are common in dreams, however, and they provide a good probe into metacognitive frequency. Dreams could also be assessed for metamemory and learning monitoring as we do for waking cognition, but it is more common to look for the ability to recognise bizarreness, as is the focus of the following experiment. Kahn and Hobson (2005) asked 26 subjects about their 178 dream reports that were submitted over a two-week period: 1 Would your thinking when awake be the same as it was in the dream if the event that occurred in the dream occurred while awake? (Y, N, ?). Comments (how did dream thinking differ, if it did)? 2 Would your thinking when awake be the same as your thinking in the dream regarding the occurrence of the event itself? (Y, N, ?). Comments (how did thinking differ, if it did)? (p. 431). Although participants often answered yes to the first question, most judged that there was a clear difference regarding the second question – that their thinking about an event would be different. In dreams … we are unable to detect how outlandish or bizarre the dream event may really be because our ability to access knowledge about how the world works is impaired. When this kind of thinking is impaired one finds it very difficult to perceive bizarreness. (p. 435) This, according to the deficiency view, is due to an impaired ability to reflect on the plausibility of an event. The inability to reflect on bizarre occurrences is common in my own dreams. I often dream of turning up to a presentation unable to remember preparing, what I am going to talk about, or any of the details leading up to the event. I experience dread and helplessness standing in front of an audience with nothing to say. This, as of yet, has not happened in waking life since presentations always receive weeks of work and I’ve never had this kind of complete mind blank. In the dream, however, I can’t seem to assess the implausibility of the situation. This suggests that metacognitive monitoring thoughts occur less frequently in dreams than during waking. However, it’s implausible to conclude that metacognition was absent entirely, since there were feelings of not knowing which are metacognitive assessments. Metacognitive frequency was reduced but not absent. Further, metacognitive accuracy was present for feelings of not knowing.

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Changes in cognition in dreams have been related to deactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during REM and NREM sleep (Hobson & Pace-Schott, 2002, p. 111). Positron emission tomography (PET) and quantitative EEG studies and found deactivation of the prefrontal cortex during sleep compared with waking (Muzur et al., 2002). Neural pathways that are reactivated during REM sleep include the prefrontal limbic cortex, but this excludes the DLPFC, “thus depriving dream mentation of logical reasoning capacities” (Muzur et al., 2002, p. 479). Since the frontal lobes of the brain contribute to the task of metacognition and impairments to metacognitive monitoring occur in patients with frontal lobe damage (Shimamura, 2000), metacognitive impairments while dreaming may be due to deactivation of these frontal areas. Further evidence for this is that increased insight, such as prelucidity and lucidity, correlate with increased frontal activity (Dresler et al., 2015). Exactly which mechanisms are responsible for metacognition are yet unknown, however. DLPFC activation in dreams, it should be noted, is not cut and dry. Some experiments have found frontal activation in REM sleep, and claiming this area of the brain is “deactivated” is inaccurate (Kubota et al., 2011). It is more likely that activation shifts, even within stages, so that there may at times or often be reduced activation. Further, we cannot map between neural and cognitive changes (Klein, 2010; Sutton, 2009). Which neural pathways account for metacognition are yet unknown. Perhaps there is some other explanation for the ostensive cognitive deficiency found in dream reports beside changes in neural activation. Our ability to judge whether a scenario is bizarre has led researchers to assume metacognition is absent in dreams, however, an alternative is that, despite appearances, dream cognition is not deficient. I will argue, however, that this approach is not plausible and we do indeed have good reason to class some dreams as cognitively deficient. It is more likely that, instead, dreaming cognition is highly varied. A pluralistic approach most accurately captures cognitive functions and dysfunctions in dreams. One way to deny that dream cognition is dysfunctional is to offer an alternative explanation to what appears to be cognitive deficiency in dream reports. I refer to these as “deflationary tactics” that explain away cognitive dysfunction in dreams. One such tactic is to say that dreaming is simply a form of imagination, and thus we should expect not to be surprised by bizarre dream events. The imagination model posits that dreams are imaginative rather than hallucinatory. The main difference between dreaming and imagining with eyes closed is that dreaming occurs during sleep. In support of this view,

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Ichikawa (2008, 2009) argues that the imagery we experience in dreams is neither perceptual nor sensory, and we do not believe the dream content is true.4 If I dream or imagine about flying pigs, I needn’t question whether this imagery is bizarre, unusual, or impossible since I can imagine nearly anything, and my imagination is often bizarre, unusual, and discontinuous with reality. When I imagine, the imagined scene does not present itself as reality, and I need not reality check it. Compare this with seeing an optical illusion in real life – a clever painter has made it look like there is a crevasse on the sidewalk using optical trickery. For an instant, you might question whether that is indeed a deep crack in the sidewalk, then think better of it. Your suspicion is confirmed when someone walks over the image that is simply drawn onto the flat ground. In contrast, if you only imagine a crevasse in the sidewalk, you need not reflect on whether it is real. Imagination does not present itself to you as if it is real (Rosen & Barkasi, 2021) so need not be questioned. Similarly, under the imagination model, the absence of metacognitive thoughts in response to dream bizarreness should be expected. We need not question the plausibility of dreaming or imagination and we don’t mistake either for reality. Rather than specifically not believing that what is happening in the dream is true, as we do when we imagine, alternatively me may simply suspend disbelief as we do when watching an engaging movie or fiction. The dream may be so engrossing we are in some sense “hypnotised” by it (McGinn, 2005, p. 69). Just like with watching movies or reading books, we emotionally respond to dreams, feeling sadness, joy, fear, or any of the wide range of emotions. Emotional responses to fiction have been referred to as the “paradox of fiction” (Lamarque, 1981) since we feel emotions towards a scenario that we realise is not real. Whatever accounts for these emotions, they are widely experienced and the effects can continue after engaging in the fiction. A good horror film can make us feel paranoid about murderers or intruders hiding in shadows.5 Similarly, we can also emotionally respond to our imagination (Rosen & Trakas, fn). The implication of both the imagination model and the belief suspension view is that we should not expect dreamers to question the veracity of their dreams, just as we do not question the veracity of our imagination or fictions. The dream world, like an imagined world or fictional world, has different rules than the waking world. States (2000) argues that dream logic makes sense within the context of the dream narrative just like the internal logic of a fictional narrative. A feature of dreaming that is unlike watching fictions is “that reminds me” syndrome (p. 183). One dream event reminds the dreamer of another event, and since dreams are internally generated, the scenery changes to what the dreamer has been

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reminded of. This could explain both a strange scenario shift and also why the dreamer is not surprised by it (Hobson & Friston, 2012). For example, your dream character reminds you of an old friend, so the scenery shifts to the friend’s house. As with imagination, the narrative need not be well formed since the dreamer already knows the relevant background of what they are thinking. Another reason why we may be unsurprised by the dream world’s bizarreness is that we are predisposed to accept whichever world that we are immersed in as the real world (States, 2000). Questioning the existence of the world around us, awake or dreaming, is not common. Contradicting my earlier analysis about turning up to a lecture unprepared, a fellow philosopher of mind6 who reported also having similar nightmares of being unprepared for a lecture, did experience something similar in real life. After an email request went to his spam filter, he had to give a short impromptu lecture that he was unprepared for. Despite how unusual this occurrence was (why had they not asked whether he was able to give the lecture in the email? Who tells someone to give a lecture without expecting a confirmation reply?), he did not question whether he was dreaming. So perhaps we tend not to question our reality even when unusual occurrences happen – we just accept the weirdness and try our best not to mess up the lecture. Lucid dreams provide an apparent contrast case in which our reflective capacities are heightened (Yu & Shen, 2020). States argues that lucid dreams do not disprove his view because “one can never tell whether the awareness-of-dreaming within the dream was not programmed into the dream as part of the dream incentive, rather than being an independent insleep discovery that somehow rises above the curtain of sleep—during sleep” (States, 2000, p. 189). However, the view that lucidity is part of the context of the dream rather than insight gained whilst asleep does not provide convincing support to his view. Despite the aforementioned attempts to explain away apparent cognitive deficiency using the imagination model, fiction view, and immersion theory of dreams, I remain unconvinced. We cannot deny that cognitive deficiency is a common feature of dreams. Dreams should be considered unlike fictions and imagination in several important ways. There are several strong arguments against States’ (2000) view. Firstly, dreamers do at times question whether they are dreaming, known as the pre-lucid stage. It is thus implausible to claim that we always accept the reality of the world we are immersed in. Waking individuals also, at times, question their existence. Just like pre-lucid and lucid dreaming, I think that there are equivalent states of pre-lucid and lucid waking. We are lucid when we correctly assess whether we are awake or dreaming. When either

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dreaming or awake, we can perform simple “reality check” experiments (Kahan & LaBerge, 2011) to ascertain if this is a dream. Examples include self-pinching, the idea being that pinching doesn’t hurt in a dream, and turning the light on and off, since we expect machinery to work differently in dreams. Further, text in dreams is often unstable, so we can look to see if words on a page change, or alternatively, try to do impossible actions such as levitating (see LaBerge, 2000). I can try out these techniques right now and conclude that this is not a dream. Without intending to gain lucidity, bizarre incidents that occur whether waking or dreaming can cause us to question our reality. We might search for an explanation of the occurrence and gain lucidity as a consequence of this. Signal-verified lucid dreaming, dreamers’ ability to signal lucidity with eye flicks, strongly suggests, contrary to States’ (2000) assessment, that lucid dreaming is indeed a type of in-dream insight. Eye flicks are learned whilst awake and then performed whilst dreaming which are correlated with dream reports of lucidity. This method makes it highly unlikely that lucidity is part of the context of the dream or, alternatively, that the eye flicks are a coincidence. Further, our increased control over certain elements in lucid dreams suggest that dreams display a variety of features, some of which are unlike spontaneous thought (Windt & Voss, 2018). Finally, States (2000) does not explain why when we wake up from a nonlucid dream, the imagery does seem bizarre to the waking self and why we remember believing that we were awake while dreaming. Compare dreams with States’ preferred analogy, internal speech. Although bizarre thoughts can indeed “pop” into our heads, there is no analogy with “waking up”. The act of waking is usually what allows the dreamer to realise that the dreamed event was bizarre. There seems to be no kind of equivalent waking up to reflect on our waking internal speech. Bizarre thoughts can indeed pop into our heads but we assess them as such when they occur. Dreaming seems to have different features in this regard. I find the above deflationary tactics unconvincing. We should acknowledge that cognition can be deficient in dreams, although dreaming is not best described as simply lacking metacognition. While dream reports often do suggest cognitive deficiency, a broad variety of cognitive features occur, and dreams can at times be highly metacognitive. Extensive research has been carried out into the variety of experiences that occur in dreams (Kahan & LaBerge, 1994, 2011; LaBerge, 1992; LaBerge & Gackenbach, 2000). This research suggests that metacognition is present in most dreams, both lucid and non-lucid. While the deficiency view is not without merit, cognitive deficiency, according to Laberge and colleagues, has been overstated.

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While lucid dreams can have exceptionally high levels of metacognition and disprove any theory which states that dreams lack metacognition entirely (Pålsson, 2018), there is more to say about non-lucid dreams. Simply the act of attaining lucidity indicates metacognition since this “requires evaluation of experiences as they happen in the dream, a process termed as ‘metacognitive monitoring’ in the cognitive psychology literature” (Kahan & Laberge, 1994, p. 251). Yet this means metacognition occurs in advance of lucidity. The pre-lucid stage, which often precedes lucidity, involves questioning the nature of reality, a highly metacognitive process. As aforementioned, we can also question reality while awake, but often we do not. One might argue that although lucidity in dreaming is rare, lucid waking is also rare if it involves explicit awareness of the nature of waking qua waking. We usually accept our current reality without reflection or explicit awareness. Importantly, experiments which compare dream reflection with how someone believes they would think in a similar scenario whilst awake, such as Kahn and Hobson’s (2005) study, can be speculative. It is unclear if people are good at assessing how they would think in the equivalent waking scenario (Kahan & LaBerge, 1994). We might be much more accepting of bizarreness than we realise. I can only speculate that if I saw a flying pig, dragon, or other inexplicable object whilst awake, I would question whether I am dreaming, but perhaps I would merely be amazed. I might question my perception but not my reality. Metacognition occurs in both lucid and non-lucid dreams. In an experiment testing the frequency of metacognitive, affective and cognitive experience (MACE) in dreams (Kahan & LaBerge, 2011, p. 229), participants displayed: the same range of cognitive skills for their dreaming and waking experiences, including the high-order skills of choice, planning, and focused attention. […] Dreaming and waking possessed comparable levels of internal commentary, sudden attention, thwarted intentions, focused attention, public self-consciousness, emotion and selfreflection. (ibid., p. 244) We make choices in dreams, such as choosing which path to take. This requires metacognition and displays assessment and simple control over actions. We can be self-conscious in dreams, such as during the everpresent lecturer’s nightmare of turning up to class unprepared. Our intentions can be thwarted as we struggle to achieve our goals (Rosen, 2021b) and we might feel fitting emotions, such as embarrassment and focused attention on the task at hand. A common judgement of learning

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(JOL) occurs in nightmares when you realise you have not studied for an exam. Kahan and Laberge’s statistical analysis suggests that metacognitive thoughts about being a good learner or having better maths skills than our friends are almost as common in dreams as during waking (Kahan & LaBerge, 1996, 2011). Highly skilled dreams (Rosen, 2021a) also suggest high levels of metacognition. One reason for thinking dreams lack metacognition, according to Kahan and LaBerge (1996) is that it is difficult to assess how common metacognitive thoughts are in general. Most metacognitive processing goes unnoticed or unreported in both waking and dreaming as reports usually focus on narrative features and events, not mental states. Think about a time you told someone you completed a task, such as finishing an exam ten minutes early. We are unlikely to describe what lead to the decision to stop writing, judgements and feelings of knowing, or other mental states. More important to our narrative “schemas” (Foulkes, 1985; Foulkes & Schmidt, 1983) are items and events like the person who kept coughing, the weird hat someone in the front row was wearing, and the unexpected questions in the test. At times, monitoring thoughts or judgements might be relevant or interesting, such as starting to answer a question in the text and then, just in time, realising that you had misunderstood it initially. This error in judgement, monitoring, and reassessment of one’s knowledge might be unusual and memorable, becoming an important part of the narrative of the report. However, “metacognition [is] less likely to be included in a spontaneous narrative report, partly because these ‘processes’ are typically not part of one’s recollection ‘schema’ or ‘agenda’” (Kahan & LaBerge, 1996, p. 237). Generally, reporting metacognitive thoughts is uncommon for both dream and waking reports. This tendency not to report metacognition in normal life makes it harder to assess, while, as previously mentioned, asking individuals to pay attention to and report metacognition can inflate metacognitive frequency. Further, if asked, retrospectively, how often in the last few minutes I have had metacognitive thoughts, I might judge inaccurately. This would be especially difficult to judge in a dream. Dreaming is restricted to subjective reports after waking which often causes rapid memory loss and can cause confabulation (Rosen, 2015). Further, dreaming individuals are very limited in their ability to carry out requested tasks or do, for example, think-aloud protocols, which, with current technology, can only be done after waking, not during the dream. Waking experiments that use metacognition questionnaires and selfratings aim at evoking metacognitive thoughts which can then be rated for accuracy (Desoete & Ozsoy, 2009). Learning, for example, can be

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compared with metacognitive assessments about how good at learning one is. Evaluating dream accuracy is difficult, however, since problem-solving skills are often impaired, but such impairments can vary greatly. “I am better at maths than my friends” may be true while I am awake but not in a highly cognitively impaired dream. Further, our reporting schema or agenda may differ between dreaming and waking reports. For example, we might be more likely to report metacognition in waking reports than in dreams. This is, however, difficult to confirm or disprove and remains a speculative confounding factor. The main point here is that it is difficult to assess dream metacognitive accuracy. Lucid dream experiments can involve greater controls, yet, as previously argued, lucid dreams are not a good indicator of average dream cognitive ability. While there is good evidence to show that metacognition occurs in dreaming and it can in fact be equivalent to waking in some cases, it is hard to deny that many dreams are indeed cognitively impoverished. Although some speculation is indeed required to describe dream cognition, especially metacognition, such speculation – or analysis of dream reports – can be a good indicator of similarities and differences between waking and dreaming. While I may be a poor judge of how I would respond to bizarre “dream-like” events were they to occur in waking life, I can compare some dreamed events with how I did respond to similar bizarre waking events. When I see an illusion in waking life, I may not necessarily consider whether I am dreaming, but I am surprised, curious, and often seek explanations for the strange experience. I usually do find a plausible explanation for the event, thus not needing to consider whether I am dreaming. In similar dream scenarios, I am often far less critical and inquisitive. Further, dream cognition does appear highly impaired at times, and whether or not “questioning whether I am dreaming” should be seen as an appropriate response, it is hard to deny that dreamers are often irrational and unreflective. There are many situations where a lack of metacognition is indeed apparent in dreams. If I dream of showing up to school wearing only underwear, I may exhibit public self-consciousness as Kahan and LaBerge (2011) describe but fail to notice how bizarre this situation is. Why am I back in primary school? How did I get here? At times, metacognition does become part of our reporting “schema”. After waking, we are surprised that we didn’t notice the bizarre imagery. We often make such reports since dream cognition can be interesting and salient. Metacognitive failure may become interesting enough to report when there is a large and noticeable discrepancy between my FOK and actual ability. An example from a waking experience, I used to think I could understand spoken French. My lack of ability became highly salient when I was unable to

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understand a French speaker. Similarly, I’ve had dreams in which I am confident I remember something but, upon waking, I realise that the memory was entirely false. Finally, it is not common to only realise that an event was bizarre after it occurred while awake, whereas this is very common in dreams. Dreaming of arriving unprepared for an exam is a common nightmare (LaBerge & Rheingold, 1991, see Chapter 10), but a variety of metacognitive features may be present in these dreams. Feeling unprepared is a judgement of learning, perhaps accompanied by a feeling of not knowing (FOK). In this case, the dreamer is making metacognitive judgements. Whether they are accurate depends on context. The dream may be about a real exam that you have studied for sufficiently in waking life. Perhaps, your dreaming mind has forgotten what you learned, which is an object-level memory deficiency. Alternatively, the feeling of not knowing may simply be an inaccurate metacognitive judgement: you falsely believe that you have forgotten. Either way, the failure to realise that this is not a real exam could be seen as metacognitive infrequency. In one of my many nightmares about speaking at a conference, the paper I was to present was a real paper I had written while awake. In waking life, I knew the paper well, but in the dream, I had inaccurate FOKs. I believed that I had no knowledge of the paper. It is unclear whether I lacked access to these memories (object-level) or was unable to accurately monitor my knowledge. I lacked metacognitive frequency regarding executive control since I was unable to control my actions based on rational decision making: in real life, I might cancel the talk and leave or quickly download a copy of my paper. Further, if the same situation occurred in waking life, I would think it strange to show up to a conference unprepared with no knowledge of how I got there. I seemed to lack the inquisitiveness that I have when awake, a feature that appears common in dreams. Importantly, both lucid dreams and pre-lucid dreams can also demonstrate metacognitive failure and can indeed be cognitively impaired compared to waking. Pre-lucid dreams do not always lead to ‘full’ lucidity. Instead, the dreamer might confabulate an explanation of the bizarre scenario experienced. I might question why I have turned up to school in my underwear, but then rationalise that I was clearly pranked. Pre-lucidity can return to non-lucidity, which demonstrates metacognitive inaccuracy. Further, a lucid dream can also slip back into non-lucid dreaming, or if lucidity is maintained, the dreamer may still be cognitively impaired or not fully realise the implications of being in a dream.

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Wandering about again, I see some money on a table – a big stack, with a $1 bill on top. A minute later, it’s a smaller stack with a $20 bill on top. I pocket it. Around this time the light flashes (DreamLight) and I reflect that it doesn’t matter what I do ’cause it’s a dream. But it doesn’t sink in yet, and I‘m a bit worried about being caught. (Levitan, 1994, p. 39) This dreamer gains lucidity but still worries about being caught, which suggests they don’t fully understand the implications of dreaming. This demonstrates lowered metacognitive frequency in a lucid dream. Waking levels of rationality and metacognitive ability are not necessarily unlocked when lucidity is achieved. Lucidity is only one type of insight. Dreams can range from highly cognitively impaired to equal with waking. As we will see in later chapters, some dreams can provide a convincing model of the waking world that lacks bizarreness and gives the dreamer no reason to question their reality. Realistic false awakenings, a type of dream in which the dreamer believes they have just woken up, is a good example (Buzzi, 2011). Such reports can seem similar to waking reports in terms of content and cognition and the dreamer may even be unsure whether the dream was real after waking (Rosen, 2015). I have experienced very convincing false awakenings. I ‘wake up’ and see that my friend has sent me a text message saying they are coming over later. I then wake up (for real) and need to check my phone to see if my friend is actually coming over. There is no text, so I realise it was a dream. (Personal dream report, 2009) In this dream, the room was a convincing replica of my real room and my cognition seemed to be quite normal. This would have to be an aberration according to the deficiency view, but the previous arguments and evidence count against this. Dreams display a wide range of cognitive functions and dysfunctions and dreaming is neither, by definition, a state of cognitive deficiency nor of cognitive equivalence. While there are methodological difficulties with assessing metacognition which are exacerbated by poor dream recall and our inability to directly report dreams, evidence suggests dreams are highly varied. The most salient aspect of metacognitive failure in dreaming is our inability to notice and judge bizarreness as such, suggesting lowered metacognitive frequency. Pre-lucid dreams which revert to non-lucid dreaming are a form of metacognitive inaccuracy since we falsely assess that the dream is real, although this is, in fact, a metacognitive process in itself. I argue that some dream reports do display infrequent and inaccurate metacognition when

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we compare them with what we would expect in the same waking scenario. However, in other dreams, metacognition does occur at a variety of levels, with lucid dreams and realistic false awakenings being just two examples where cognition can be equivalent to waking. It should also be noted that we may not gain full cognitive capacity in lucid dreaming. Despite realising we are dreaming, we can display irrational behaviour and lack metacognition, such as asking dream characters if they know it is a dream. If we were fully rational, we would realise that the dream characters are also not real. This supports a pluralistic view of dream cognition: dreams cognition can be wake-like, highly impaired or anywhere in between. 2.4 Conclusion

Dream content and cognition are highly varied and attempts to define dreaming as “bizarre” or “cognitively impaired” are implausible. A pluralistic account of dreaming that attempts to describe and explain the variety that occurs in dreams can reveal much about our dreaming and waking minds. While we stereotypically assume dreams to be bizarre and irrational, this does not describe dreaming in general. Many dreams do display a lack of metacognition, both in terms of the absence of expected metacognitive thoughts and the inaccuracy of those that occur. However, dreaming can at times be cognitively equivalent to waking. We may experience a variety of realistic or bizarre features, and irrational or rational thoughts when we dream. Focusing on this variety and resisting implausibly reductive definitions of dreaming, which I refer to as dream pluralism, not only provides a plausible description of dreaming but is also a useful approach to the study of dreams. This pluralistic approach extends to other aspects of dreaming beyond content and cognition. In this view, much of the contention about dreaming is due to failure to take into account the breadth of dreaming. What are the limits of this pluralistic approach? We have little reason to think that our cognition is enhanced in dreaming compared to waking. Further, one highly contentious theory is that dreams are not experiences we have during sleep at all but rather they simply are the reports we make upon waking. This view contradicts pluralism as pluralism does not deny that experiences occur in sleep. However, it is possible, in fact likely, that the reports we make when we wake up do not always reflect dream experiences that occur in sleep. In the following chapter, focusing on the theories of Norman Malcolm and Daniel Dennett, I argue that while “anti-experience” views of dreaming are overly reductive, scepticism of dream reports is to an extent justified.

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Notes 1 There is some debate about whether there is indeed a first-night effect that wears off over time ( Domhoff & Kamiya, 1964; Piccione et al., 1976). 2 Thirty-eight per cent of reports demonstrated control maintained over thoughts with full awareness of being in a lab and participating in an experiment. Uncontrolled and wandering thoughts where the subject maintained awareness of being in an experiment (Foulkes refers to this as mindwandering) occurred in 20% of reports. Twenty-two per cent were “lost in thought” – unaware of being in a laboratory but without hallucination. Fifteen per cent reported no contact with reality and had hallucinatory experiences. The remaining 4% showed discrepant patterns, simultaneously believing their percepts to be true but also realising they were still in a lab. 3 In contrast, Ericsson and Simon (1993) argue that think-aloud protocols only affect the speed of cognition, not the accuracy. Since think-aloud protocols are not applicable to dreams, here I simply highlight possible limits in the study of metacognition rather than weigh in on the debate. 4 See Chapter 4 for an in-depth analysis of this view. 5 There is a wide literature on affective response to fictions ( Friend, 2022; Walton, 1990). 6 Thanks to Robert Cowan for this example.

References Bradley, L., Hollifield, M., & Foulkes, D. (1992). Reflection during REM dreaming. Dreaming, 2(3), 161. Buzzi, G. (2011). False awakenings in light of the dream protoconsciousness theory: A study in lucid dreamers. International Journal of Dream Research, 4(2), 110–116. Colace, C. (2010). Children’s dreams: From Freud’s observations to modern dream research. Karnac Books. Dement, W. C., Kahn, E., & Roffwarg, H. P. (1965). The influence of the laboratory situation on the dreams of the experimental subject. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 140(2), 119–131. Desoete, A. (2008). Multi-method assessment of metacognitive skills in elementary school children: How you test is what you get. Metacognition and Learning, 3(3), 189. doi: 10.1007/s11409-008-9026-0 Desoete, A., & Ozsoy, G. (2009). Introduction: Metacognition, more than the Lognes Monster? Online Submission, 2(1), 1–6. Domhoff, G. W. (2003). The scientific study of dreams: Neural networks, cognitive development, and content (1st ed.). American Psychological Association. Domhoff, G. W. (2005a). Refocusing the neurocognitive approach to dreams: A critique of the Hobson versus Solms debate. Dreaming, 15(1), 3–20. doi: 10.1037/1053-0797.15.1.3 Domhoff, G. W. (2005b). A reply to Hobson (2005). Dreaming, 15(1), 30–32. 10.1037/1053-0797.15.1.30 Domhoff, G. W. (2007). Realistic simulation and bizarreness in dream content: Past findings and suggestions for future research. In D. Barrett & P. McNamara (Eds.), The new science of dreaming (pp. 1–28). Praeger Publishers.

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Domhoff, G. W., & Kamiya, J. (1964). Problems in dream content study with objective indicators: A comparison of home and laboratory dream reports. Archives of General Psychiatry, 11(5), 519–524. Dresler, M., Wehrle, R., Spoormaker, V. I., Steiger, A., Holsboer, F., Czisch, M., & Hobson, J. A. (2015). Neural correlates of insight in dreaming and psychosis. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 20, 92–99. Ericsson, K. A., & Simon, H. A. (1993). Protocol analysis. Overview of Methodology of Protocol Analysis. (Revised edition) Flanagan, O. J. (2000). Dreaming souls: Sleep, dreams, and the evolution of the conscious mind. Oxford University Press. Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive–developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 34(10), 906. Fosse, M. J., Fosse, R., Hobson, J. A., & Stickgold, R. J. (2003). Dreaming and episodic memory: A functional dissociation? Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15(1), 1–9. Foulkes, D. (1979). Home and laboratory dreams: Four empirical studies and a conceptual reevaluation. Sleep, 2(2), 233–251. Foulkes, D. (1982a). Children’s dreams: Longitudinal studies. John Wiley & Sons. Foulkes, D. (1982b). A cognitive-psychological model of REM dream production. Sleep, 5(2), 169–187. Foulkes, D. (1985). Dreaming: A cognitive-psychological analysis. L. Erlbaum Associates. Foulkes, D. (1996). Dream research: 1953–1993. Sleep, 19(8), 609–624. doi: 10. 1093/sleep/19.8.609 Foulkes, D. (1999). Children’s dreaming and the development of consciousness. Harvard University Press. Foulkes, D., & Fleisher, S. (1975). Mental activity in relaxed wakefulness. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 84(1), 66. Foulkes, D., & Schmidt, M. (1983). Temporal sequence and unit composition in dream reports from different stages of sleep. Sleep, 6(3), 265–280. Friend, S. (2022). Emotion in fiction: State of the art. British Journal of Aesthetics, 62(2), 257–271. Frith, C. D. (2012). The role of metacognition in human social interactions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 367(1599), 2213–2223. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2012.0123 Gackenbach, J., Snyder, T. J., Rokes, L. M., & Sachau, D. (1986). Lucid dreaming frequency in relation to vestibular sensitivity as measured by caloric stimulation. The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Vol. 7, No. 2/3, Special Issue: Cognition and Dream Research (Spring and Summer, 1986), 277–298. Georghiades, P. (2004). From the general to the situated: Three decades of metacognition. International Journal of Science Education, 26(3), 365–383. Hall, C. S. (1953). A cognitive theory of dreams. The Journal of General Psychology, 49(2), 273–282. doi: 10.1080/00221309.1953.9710091 Hall, C. S. & van de Castle, R. L. (1966). The content analysis of dreams. Appleton Century Crofts, New York. Hobson, J. A. (2002a). The dream drugstore: Chemically altered states of consciousness. MIT Press.

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Hobson, J. A. (2002b). Dreaming: An introduction to the science of sleep. Oxford University Press. Hobson, J. A. (2004). A model for madness? Nature, 430(6995), 21. Hobson, J. A. (2005). In bed with Mark Solms? What a nightmare! A reply to Domhoff (2005). Dreaming, 15(1), 21–29. doi: 10.1037/1053-0797.15.1.21 Hobson, J. A., & Pace-Schott, E. F. (2002). The cognitive neuroscience of sleep: Neuronal systems, consciousness and learning. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3(9), 679–693. doi: 10.1038/nrn915 Hobson, J. A., & Schredl, M. (2011). The continuity and discontinuity between waking and dreaming: A dialogue between Michael Schredl and Allan Hobson concerning the adequacy and completeness of these notions. International Journal of Dream Research, 4(1), 3–7. Hobson, J. A., & Friston, K. J. (2012). Waking and dreaming consciousness: Neurobiological and functional considerations. Progress in Neurobiology, 98(1), 82–98. doi: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2012.05.003 Hobson, J. A., Pace-Schott, E. F., & Stickgold, R. (2000). Dreaming and the brain: Toward a cognitive neuroscience of conscious states. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23(6), 793–842; discussion 904–1121. Hobson, J. A., Hoffman, S. A., Helfand, R., & Kostner, D. (1987). Dream bizarreness and the activation-synthesis hypothesis. Human Neurobiology, 6(3), 157–164. Hobson, J. A., Sangsanguan, S., Arantes, H., & Kahn, D. (2011). Dream logic—the inferential reasoning paradigm. Dreaming, 21(1), 1. Horton, C. L. (2017). Consciousness across sleep and wake: Discontinuity and continuity of memory experiences as a reflection of consolidation processes. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 8, 159. Ichikawa, J. (2008). Skepticism and the imagination model of dreaming. Philosophical Quarterly, 58(232), 519–527. Ichikawa, J. (2009). Dreaming and imagination. Mind and Language, 24(1), 103–121. Irving, Z. C., & Glasser, A. (2020). Mind‐wandering: A philosophical guide. Philosophy Compass, 15(1), e12644. Kahan, T. L., & LaBerge, S. (1994). Lucid dreaming as metacognition: Implications for cognitive science. Consciousness and Cognition, 3(2), 246–264. doi: 10.1006/ccog.1994.1014 Kahan, T. L., & LaBerge, S. (1996). Cognition and metacognition in dreaming and waking: Comparisons of first and third-person ratings. Dreaming, 6, 235–249. Kahan, T. L., & LaBerge, S. P. (2011). Dreaming and waking: Similarities and differences revisited. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(3), 494–514. doi: 10. 1016/j.concog.2010.09.002 Kahn, D., & Hobson, J. A. (2005). State-dependent thinking: A comparison of waking and dreaming thought. Consciousness and Cognition, 14(3), 429–438. Kind, A. (2016). Introduction: Exploring imagination. In The Routledge handbook of philosophy of imagination (pp. 1–11). Routledge London. Klein, C. (2010). Images are not the evidence in neuroimaging. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 61(2), 265–278. doi: 10.1093/bjps/axp035

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Klinger, E. (1999). Thought flow: Properties and mechanisms underlying shifts in content. In J. Singer , & P. Salovey (Eds.), At play in the fields of consciousness: Essays in honor of Jerome L. Singer. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Klinger, E., & Cox, W. M. (1987). Dimensions of thought flow in everyday life. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 7(2), 105–128. doi: 10.2190/7k24g343-mtqw-115v Koriat, A. (2007). Metacognition and consciousness. In E. Thompson, M. Moscovitch, & P. D. Zelazo (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kubota, Y., Takasu, N. N., Horita, S., Kondo, M., Shimizu, M., Okada, T., … Toichi, M. (2011). Dorsolateral prefrontal cortical oxygenation during REM sleep in humans. Brain Research, 1389, 83–92. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2011. 02.061 LaBerge, S. (1992). Physiological studies of lucid dreaming. In J. S. A. M. Bertini (Ed.), The neuropsychology of sleep and dreaming (pp. 289–304). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. LaBerge, S. (1993). Lucidity research, past and future. Nightlight, 5, 329–335. LaBerge, S. (2000). Lucid dreaming: Evidence and methodology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23(6), 962–964. LaBerge, S., & Rheingold, H. (1991). Exploring the world of lucid dreaming. Ballantine Books. LaBerge, S., & Gackenbach, J. (2000). Lucid dreaming. American Psychological Association. Lamarque, P. (1981). How can we fear and pity fictions? The British Journal of Aesthetics, 21(4), 291–304. Levitan, L. (1994). A fool’s guide to lucid dreaming. Nightlight, 6(2), 1–5. Malinowski, J., & Horton, C. (2021). Dreams reflect nocturnal cognitive processes: Early-night dreams are more continuous with waking life, and latenight dreams are more emotional and hyperassociative. Consciousness and Cognition, 88, 103071. McGinn, C. (2005). The matrix of dreams. In C. Grau (Ed.), Philosophers explore the matrix. Oxford University Press. Muzur, A., Pace-Schott, E. F., & Hobson, J. A. (2002). The prefrontal cortex in sleep. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(11), 475–481. Nelson, T. O. (1990). Metamemory: A theoretical framework and new findings. In Psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 26, pp. 125–173). Elsevier. Nielsen, T. A., Deslauriers, D., & Baylor, G. W. (1991). Emotions in dream and waking event reports. Dreaming, 1(4), 287. Pålsson, J. (2018). Neural correlates of lucid dreams: The role of metacognition and volition. Undergraduate dissertation, University of Skovde, Sweden. Parsons, C., & Rosen, M. G. (2018). Reporting your ‘dream self’. The Psychologist, 31: 40–43. Piccione, P., Thomas, S., Roth, T., & Kramer, M. (1976). Incorporation of the laboratory situation in dreams. Sleep Research, 5(5), 120. Rechtschaffen, A. (1978). The single-mindedness and isolation of dreams. Sleep, 1(1), 97–109.

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Rosen, M. G. (2015). I’m thinking your thoughts while I sleep: Sense of agency and ownership over dream thought. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 2(3), 326–339. doi: 10.1037/cns0000064 Rosen, M. G. (2018). Your dream-body: All an illusion? Commentary on Windt’s account of the dream-body in dreaming. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 25(5-6), 44–62. Rosen, M. G. (2021a). I could do that in my sleep: Skilled performance in dreams. Synthese, 99(3), 6495–6522. Rosen, M. G. (2021b). Sleeper agents: The sense of agency over the dream body. Human Studies, 44, 693–719. Rosen, M. G., & Barkasi, M. (2021). What makes a mental state feel like a memory: Feelings of pastness and presence. Estudios de Filosofía, 64: 95–122. Rosen & Trakas (in review) Are dream emotions fitting? Schredl, M. (2008). Laboratory references in dreams: Methodological problem and/or evidence for the continuity hypothesis of dreaming? International Journal of Dream Research, 1(1), 3–6. Schredl, M. (2018). Researching dreams: The fundamentals. Springer. Schredl, M., & Hofmann, F. (2003). Continuity between waking activities and dream activities. Consciousness and Cognition, 12(2), 298–308. doi: 10.1016/ S1053-8100(02)00072-7 Schredl, M., & Reinhard, I. (2010). The continuity between waking mood and dream emotions: Direct and second-order effects. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 29(3), 271–282. Shimamura, A. P. (2000). Toward a cognitive neuroscience of metacognition. Consciousness and Cognition, 9(2), 313–323. Sikka, P., Revonsuo, A., Sandman, N., Tuominen, J., & Valli, K. (2018). Dream emotions: A comparison of home dream reports with laboratory early and late REM dream reports. Journal of Sleep Research, 27(2), 206–214. Singer, J. L., & Antrobus, J. S. (1963). A factor-analytic study of daydreaming and conceptually-related cognitive and personality variables. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 17(1), 187–209. Singer, J. L., Antrobus, J. S. (1972). Daydreaming, imaginal processes, and personality: A normative study. In Sheehan P. W. (Ed.), The function and nature of imagery (pp. 175–202). New York, NY: Academic Press. Snyder, F. (1970). The phenomenology of dreaming. In L. M. L. Snow (Ed.), The psychodynamic implications of the physiological studies on dreams (pp. 124–151). Thomas. Snyder, F., Karacan, I., Tharp, V., & Scott, J. (1968). Phenomenology of REM dreaming. Psychophysiology, 4, 375. Sosa, E. (2005). Dreams and philosophy. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 79(2), 7–18. Starker, S. (1974). Daydreaming styles and nocturnal dreaming. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 83(1), 52. Starker, S. (1977). Daydreaming styles and nocturnal dreaming: Further observations. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 45(2), 411–418. States, B. O. (2000). Dream bizarreness and inner thought. Dreaming, 10, 179–192.

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3 ARE DREAMS CONSCIOUS?

3.1 Introduction

Two things seem obvious about dreams: they are experiences, and they occur during sleep. We know about these experiences because we sometimes remember and report them when we wake up. Not only is this widely accepted in the literature,1 but it is also the commonsense view, supported by the experiences of anyone who has remembered a dream. To deny this view is to deny our own lived experiences and, unsurprisingly, challenges to this view rarely surface. Yet, a few brave philosophers take a sceptical approach which I will refer to as anti-experience views: they are sceptical about the occurrence of conscious experience during sleep. “Dreams”, whatever they are, are not experiences that occur during sleep. Malcolm (1956, 1959) rejects the received view of dreams based on a verificationist criterion of experience whereas Dennett (1976, 1979) argues that we have reason to be sceptical, although not to the extent ofrejecting the recieved view outright. For Malcolm, dreams are logically dependent on the reports we make when we wake up, but despite these reports, we cannot verify that any experiences occur during sleep. We can interpret this view as being that dreams are just reports, but he doesn’t say this outright nor speculate on what causes us to make dream reports. All that we know is that we tend to make certain kinds of reports upon waking. While Malcolm focuses on epistemological questions concerning the nature and justification of our beliefs and not on the ontological status of dream events, Dennett creates an alternative explanation for dream reports that he classes as equally probable. According to this DOI: 10.4324/9781003367710-4

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“cassette theory”, dreams are cassette-like memories that are stored and replayed upon waking. Dennett made this argument in the mid-1970s and at that time, he argued that our knowledge of consciousness and sleep was insufficient to support the received view over the cassette theory. Further, some empirical evidence supports this rival theory over the received view, and he concludes that although the cassette view is a “foil” (Dennett, 1979), it is a legitimate alternative and the “received view might simply turn out to be false” (Dennett, 1976, p. 158). Questioning the received view caused quite a stir when Malcolm did so in the late 1950s and again over a decade later when Dennett rekindled the debate. However, given today’s empirical evidence, it is implausible to deny that conscious experience occurs in sleep at all. Nonetheless, we should take on a weaker kind of scepticism. While we should reject the strong anti-experience thesis, according to which consciousness does not occur in sleep, we should question whether individual dream reports necessarily indicate that a conscious experience that occurred during sleep is accurately described by that report or occurred at all. Due to a variety of factors about our reporting conditions, the content of these reports does not always reflect sleep experiences but rather are often confabulated narratives created by the waking mind. I will refer to this as the narrative confabulation conjecture. Narrative confabulation is itself an interesting phenomenon worthy of detailed analysis and forces us to question what we know about dream content. My view is that some dreams can be accurately reported, but we can never guarantee that any particular dream report accurately represents dream content. There is no failsafe method to ensure accuracy. After a critical evaluation of Malcolm and Dennett’s views, I propose two alternative challenges to the received view’s contention that dream reports accurately represent experiences that occur in sleep. Firstly, narrative confabulation occurs when we report dreams. While we cannot determine exactly the extent of this confabulation, dream report confabulation is likely more frequent and severe than for most waking reports. The most extreme form of confabulation is when the dream report is entirely composed upon waking, which may be the result of an incoherent experience or the misremembering of when an experience occurred. I propose that the waking brain often confabulates disjointed dream content into a coherent narrative, in particular, bizarre dreams can be rationalised into mundane experiences. Further, our poor memory of dreams can increase the occurrence of confabulation. Although dream reports can be more or less accurate and they should not be defined as entirely unrepresentative of dreams, we cannot determine the specific

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reliability of individual reports. There is good reason to believe that certain conditions increase the chances of gaining an accurate report. We therefore need to find ways to investigate how often, and under what conditions, different forms of narrative confabulation are more likely to occur. Philosophical progress can be made when apparently conceptual disputes between opposing views can be turned into tractable, empirically accessible questions. Thus, an important question to ask is: to what extent are dreams confabulated? How can this be determined? What conditions reduce confabulation? Issues that complicate matters are individual differences, such as imagination inflation, which may lead to some individuals confabulating more than others. However, imagination inflation can be tested independently, so individual differences can be estimated. While individual differences exist, we have reason to suspect that poor memory and cognitive defects that are common in dreams (see Chapter 2) lead to dream report confabulation in everyone, but not consistently. Cognitive deficiency is common but not a defining feature of dreaming, so we should not claim that all dream reports are confabulated. As of yet, we cannot determine to what extent any individual report has been confabulated, however, due to features of the sleep state, some reports may be confabulated to the extent that they do not reflect the content of a dream at all. 3.2 Dreaming as dream reporting

For Malcolm (1959), to dream is to make a report upon waking. Whether these reports represent an experience that occurs while we sleep is not verifiable and perhaps the idea is even nonsensical. Malcolm challenges the received view, that dreams are experiences we have during sleep, by arguing that dreams are logically dependent on dream reports as opposed to experiences that cause us to make these reports. Everything we know about dream content comes from the reports we make about them. Dreams as experiences that occur in sleep cannot be externally verified, thus, according to Malcolm (1959), dream reports are the sole criterion of dreams, and dreams are logically dependent on such reports. Although Malcolm does not deny the metaphysical possibility of having experiences during sleep, some theorists, such as Dennett (1976), take this as an implication of Malcolm’s discussion. In contrast with Malcolm’s solely epistemological thesis, Dennett proposes a potentially testable antiexperience hypothesis that attempts to explain why such reports would be made in absence of experience occurring in sleep.

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3.2.1 Dreams and verification

Malcolm (1959) claims to remain neutral on the nature of dreams, instead, arguing that reports cannot verify experiences that occur in sleep. I am not trying to maintain that a dream is the waking impression that one dreamt. This would be self-contradictory. Indeed I am not trying to say what dreaming is: I do not understand what it would mean to do that. I merely set forth the reminder that in our daily discourse about dreams what we take as determining beyond question that a man dreamt is that in sincerity he should tell a dream or say he had one. (p. 49) Experiences that occur during sleep are unverifiable in this view since we cannot assert or judge that we are dreaming. In fact, simply asserting anything shows that one is not asleep. To learn about another’s internal states, we observe behaviour and testimony, but asking if someone is sleeping should only get “no” as a response or not reply at all. Saying “yes, I am asleep” can only be sarcastic. Sleeping individuals are prone and unresponsive, thus an outside observer cannot verify that one is dreaming. It is not possible to make a true, noncontradictory statement “I am asleep” nor exhibit specific behaviours that show I am asleep, aside from no behaviour at all. Since I can never correctly state “I am asleep” or behave as if I am asleep, I cannot learn how to judge I am asleep. Under “the normal criteria … in the ordinary sense” (Malcolm, 1959, p. 30), someone who is sleeping – must be prone, unaware of their surroundings and unresponsive to stimuli; any response is evidence of being awake. Malcolm admits that sleeping people can make some responses, with an altered tone of voice or slow response. Sleep talking – saying odd and nonsensical things – and sleepwalking – getting up and walking around – are common. However, this doesn’t happen when we are “sound asleep” which involves being inert and unresponsive. Sleepwalking and talking involve “qualified assertions” (p. 29) about non-stereotypical sleeping states – we are not fully asleep when this occurs. Empirical evidence suggests that Malcom makes a fair point here – indeed sleep talking and walking do appear to occur in partially awake states (Foulkes, 1999). Malcolm refers to this as a “border region between being fully asleep and not being fully asleep” (Malcolm, 1959, p. 99). Yost and Kalish (1955) give an example of someone believing they are suffocating in a dream but waking up to find they are having an asthma attack. Since the feeling occurred in reality, Malcolm classes this as a border region of sleep. Further, asserting that something occurred in a dream is to assert that it

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did not really happen.2 Since the suffocation really did occur, it should be described as … partly dreamt and partly real. Because there is a criterion in the present behaviour for this feeling of suffocation it does not belong to the content of a dream, in that pure sense of “dream” that has as its sole criterion the testimony of the awakened person. (Malcolm, 1959, p. 99) Any experience of bodily stimuli or response to the external environment indicates being not fully asleep. However, as I will argue, this criterion for being sound asleep is not empirically justified. Because experience during sleep is outwardly unverifiable, in Malcolm’s view, dreams are unverifiable. Firstly, I cannot assert that I am asleep, as asserting anything indicates being not sound asleep. If I cannot assert, I also cannot judge that I am asleep. According to Malcolm’s verificationism, to be able to judge what state I am in, I must first understand the definition of the phrase “I am in this state”, and learn how to appropriately apply the phrase, but “no one will think that a sleeping person might be given an ostensive definition [of the phrase ‘I am asleep’]” (Malcolm, 1959, p. 9). We can be given an ostensive definition of “he is asleep”, but not “I am asleep”. Malcolm supports Wittgenstein’s view that the concepts expressed by language must not be derived from purely subjective experience. The intersubjective practice of discourse during waking gives intelligibility to language. The phrase “I am dreaming” cannot be held to be true whilst awake, so the phrase lacks an ostensive definition. For Wittgenstein, “if language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also […] in judgments” (1958, p. 242). Understanding “he is asleep” involves being able to apply the phrase appropriately during discourse. We can appropriately say, for example, “I think he has fallen asleep” when a friend appears inert and unresponsive. If I were to try to learn how to judge that I was asleep by asking an observer whether I had just been asleep and then thinking back to what I felt just then, it is unclear what condition I should be remembering. If I remember being aware of my body, then I was not asleep,3 so it can’t be a bodily condition, and being asleep is not a type of experience that I can remember. Having conscious experiences is not what is meant by sleep, so, “the statement ‘Jones is asleep’ is not false because there is some experience or other that Jones does not have” (Malcolm, 1959, p. 12). This, in my view, conflates the concept of sleep with dreaming. I later argue that it is possible to appropriately use the phrase “I am asleep”.

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When an individual is awake, reports and behaviour indicate what state they are in. Experiencing pain causes clutching the painful body part, saying “ouch” and so forth. However, for dreams, we can only rely on reports that occur after waking since being sound asleep implies no behaviour or reporting. Unfortunately, dream reports alone do not confirm whether the impression of the dream is a memory from a sleeping experience or merely an impression. Judgements about dreaming rely on waking inferences about previous states. In contrast, waking memory can be corroborated by other observers. If I say “I was in pain” after hopping around and grabbing my foot, this demonstrates understanding of the use of the phrase. Behaviour cannot corroborate dream reports so we can’t know if the person is using the phrase “I was dreaming” appropriately. There is no behavioural difference between dreamless sleep and dreaming. From this, Malcolm concludes that dreams are unverifiable. Malcolm is correct to distinguish dream memory from waking memory, although I have different reasons for doing so. Dream memory is often highly unreliable compared to normal waking memory. Nonetheless, Malcolm’s conclusion about the unverifiability of dreaming is implausible. Testimony and behaviour give observers indirect access to internal states. Sometimes behaviour and testimony conflict and the observer must decide whether to trust testimony, behaviour, or neither. We are more likely to trust pain behaviour when a person denies they are in pain while grimacing. A person who lies prone and unresponsive during a film but later recounts the events that occurred in the film gives strong evidence that they were only pretending to sleep. However, if a person claims to have made a judgement whilst they were asleep, there was no outward behaviour and they could not have judged “I am asleep” whilst sleeping, so they also could not plausibly assert that they made a judgement while sleeping. We cannot verify whether a judgement took place whilst asleep or before falling asleep. Our concept of dreaming derives from the reports we make upon waking, not experiences had during sleep. This does not mean that dreams are identical to reports we make upon waking, but rather that we cannot know whether experiences occur during sleep. While pretending to be asleep can be verified, reporting a dream does not verify that an experience occurred while sleeping. Finding out an impression is of something that happened in a dream, say, that I was just running in a race, is the same as finding out the impression is false. I was not running in a race after all.4 I may find out my impression was false and then infer that the event was in a dream, not reality. Malcolm suggests that perhaps all dreams are inferential in this way. Some cases may be unclear, such as if I wake with the impression that I had leg pain last night. If my housemate heard groaning or noticed other

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pain behaviour, this suggests I did really experience leg pain. If, however, I didn’t display any pain behaviour, I might conclude that the event didn’t really happen. I have an impression that is false. When someone says he dreamt so and so, he does not imply that while he was sleeping he was aware of being asleep or was aware of dreaming. When he says ‘I dreamt so and so’ he implies, first, that it seemed to him on waking up as if the so and so had occurred and, second, that the so and so did not occur. There is simply no place here for an implication or assumption that he was aware of anything at all while asleep. His testimony that he had a dream does not involve that nonsensical consequence. (Malcolm, 1959, p. 66) Dreams, for Malcolm, are not hallucinations, since dreamers do not say “last night, it seemed to me as if …” If the individual sat up in bed, pointed and shouted “watch out for the tiger”, we could conclude that they were hallucinating, not dreaming.5 Malcolm reasons that dreams, in this regard, have a similar status to imagining since we rely solely on reports about them. We do not react in response to dreaming or imagination. However, unlike dreams, we can use “I am imagining” in normal discourse, so judging “I was imagining” has a stronger epistemic status. Aligning dreams with REM (rapid eye movement) sleep was popular when Malcolm’s Dreaming (1959) was written, and the scanning hypothesis, the view that the REMs tracked the dream scene, was developed in this period (Dement & Kleitman, 1957a, 1957b). Eye movements were seen as a way of verifying dream reports if, say, the eye movements correlated with reports of events in the dream such as moving the eyes horizontally back and forth during a dreamed tennis match. Malcolm rejects this evidence, arguing that using eye movements during REM sleep as the criterion of dreaming derives counterintuitive outcomes. In this case, “people would have to be informed on waking up that they had dreamt or not – instead of their informing us, as it now is” (ibid., p. 80). For Malcolm, making correlations between eye movements and reports presupposes that the eye movements themselves are the criterion for dreaming: we must first have dream reports to make such correlations. There is indeed reason to think that the eyes can move during sleep without dreams co-occurring (Rosen, 2019). Rejection of the scanning hypothesis is reasonable since eye movements do not always correlate with dream reports, and indeed, eye movements have not replaced dream reports as evidence for dreaming. When eye movements and dream reports do not correlate,6 reports are taken to be primary evidence of dreaming, not eye movements. However, in my view, eye

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movements need not be the criterion for dreaming to provide evidence for dreaming. Due to the unverifiability of dreaming, Malcolm concludes that “dreams and waking impressions are two different things: but not two logically independent things” (ibid., p. 60). While dreams are not defined as waking reports, they are logically equivalent. Attempting to remain agnostic on the metaphysics of dreaming, for Malcolm the question about the “real existence” of dreams, i.e., whether dreams take place in logical independence of waking impressions, and whether the latter correspond or not to the dreams, is a purely metaphysical question that does not arise in the ordinary commerce of life and language. (ibid., p. 84) So, whether dreams occur during sleep is irrelevant to how we talk about dreaming. Sleep experience is outside the scope of verifiable knowledge, thus, dream discourse refers only to the impressions we have upon waking. Many theorists, the author included, find this view implausible. It contradicts both our common-sense view that waking impressions are memories of “dreams” had whilst asleep and current empirical evidence about dreams. There is strong evidence against Malcolm’s view, but we should, I argue, retain some scepticism about dream reports. 3.2.2 Contra Malcolm

Empirical evidence strongly counts against Malcolm’s scepticism towards dreaming. Dreams have been defined as an “altered” or “paradoxical” state of consciousness (Jouvet, 1999), and this account goes some way towards deflating Malcolm’s worry about experience occurring during a state of inertness. While we are inert, unresponsive and in fact paralysed during REM sleep (see Chapter 1), the conscious mind becomes active. Three challenges to Malcolm’s view are, firstly, that his definition of sleep is outmoded, secondly, that sleep behaviours provide evidence for sleeping experiences, and thirdly, that neuroimaging data suggests experience happens in sleep. Malcolm’s contention that behaviour indicates an individual is not sound asleep is not empirically accurate. Malcolm is therefore misguided in his rejection of all behavioural evidence supporting the received view. Reports are indeed necessary for any knowledge about dream content, but other evidence can corroborate dream reports. We have verified that

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experience occurs in sleep, although, in my view, we should be less sure about how closely individual reports relate to actual dreams. While correlations between sleep behaviour and dream reports have indeed been tenuous, the strongest evidence against Malcolm’s view is that lucid dreamers can signal that they are dreaming (discussed in Chapters 1 and 2), which verifies that experience does occur during sleep, even if dream reports can be inaccurate at times. I conclude that although Malcolm raises some important reasons to be sceptical of dream reports, there is strong evidence establishing the received view of dreams. For Revonsuo (1995), Malcolm’s argument relies on faulty assumptions about sleep. Sleep stages are defined by neuropsychology: specific behavioural and brain criteria rather than a simple lack of behaviour. For example, REM sleep is associated with bodily paralysis but also REMs, strong activation in the visual and motor cortices and a particular type of bursts of delta and gamma wave activity (Bernardi et al., 2019). REM paralysis is disrupted in REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) in which the dreamer appears to act out their dreams. Experiments have correlated dream reports with RBD behaviour (Schenck et al., 1987), such as dreamers acting out smoking cigarettes and eating. Scientists consider abnormal cases such as RBD to be under the criterion of REM sleep. Malcolm, as aforementioned, argues that if someone sat up in bed and acted as if they were hallucinating, this would not be regarded as dreaming but instead hallucinating. So perhaps he would regard RBD as a type of hallucinating and not dreaming. This, however, conflicts with the expertise of sleep researchers, who confirm via neurophysiology that RBD occurs during REM sleep. Further to this, Malcolm’s assessment that the man with asthma cannot be asleep is incorrect. He may be fully asleep but still experience suffocation since we can be both asleep and have some stimulus filter into sleep or “integrate” into the dream (Windt, 2017). Malcolm’s argument relies on the claim that correlating a dream report with a real event verifies that the event did not occur while the person was fully asleep, but neuropsychological verifications have determined that such occurrences do happen in sleep. We should reject Malcolm’s account of “sound asleep”. Behaviours such as eye movements and muscle twitches are characteristic of different stages of sleep. Early theorists achieved some success correlating such behaviour with dream reports (Dement & Wolpert, 1958). The scanning hypothesis of REM sleep did not pan out as a theory of all dreaming since dreaming can occur when the eyes are not moving, and eye movements can occur in dreamless sleep (Rosen, 2019). Therefore, we can’t claim that the scanning hypothesis supports the received view. However, the fact that individual correlations can be made

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between some eye movements and dream reports, especially in lucid dream research, does indeed support the received view. Although, as Malcolm argues, sleep talk does at times occur in a halfway stage between sleep and wakefulness (Foulkes, 1999), Arkin and colleagues (Arkin, 1966, 2018; Arkin et al., 1970) found significant overlap between dream reports and sleep talk that occurred during REM sleep. In an examination of dream reports and sleep talk of a habitual sleep talker (S), higher rates of sleep talk could be invoked by hypnotising S before he fell asleep. A post-hypnotic suggestion (PHS) “tonight you will sleep normally and naturally and talk in your sleep in the same manner as you do at home, but more abundantly” (Arkin, 2018, p. 295) was used before sleep and then EOG and EEG compared eye movements and brain activity to verify that the speech occurred during REM. The content of the sleep-talking sessions, according to Arkin and colleagues, correlated strongly with the content of the dream reports. For example, the sleep talk: “Now viewing a film of past experiences in gallery for small admission charge” correlated with the dream report: “Uh-[pause]-there’s a theatre that you pay admission charge and they run films of your life-that’s all I remember except that I was in one of those theatres a minute ago” (ibid., p. 305). Most aspects of hypnotised sleep replicated non-hypnotised sleep, with similar brain activity and similar but somewhat gentler eye movements. However, there are some concerns regarding these studies. Firstly, correlations between reports and sleep talk were often vague. Unclear, mumbled words are often assumed to correlate with the report, which is not always justified as it is a form of bias. Secondly, hypnotism may affect the quality of reports or the content of dreams. For example, memory reports involving hypnotism are subject to increased confabulation. Hypnotism can cause a subject to be susceptible to suggestion, and can hence lead a subject to entertain false memories (Ofshe, 1992). Therefore, dream reports after hypnotism may be false. This evidence does not strongly verify dream reports. Research showing that sleepwalking and to some extent, talking, rarely corresponds to dream reports (Foulkes, 1999) is reason to be sceptical of the aforementioned study. Many sleep behaviours, in alignment with Malcolm’s view, do not verify the content of specific dream reports. The best correlations made to date are from lucid dream studies, which do indeed provide strong evidence for a metaphysical claim against Malcolm. Lucid dreamers can carry out specific, prearranged tasks during a lucid dream and signal whilst they are performing these tasks, known as signalverified lucid dreaming (LaBerge, 1980; LaBerge et al., 1986). However, lucid dreaming, as we will see, is not indicative of all sleep phenomena, and non-lucid dreams remain difficult to verify. Thus, while we have

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reason to doubt the accuracy of many, perhaps even most, dream reports, we should not deny that experience occurs in sleep. Malcolm’s claim that dream reports and not brain activity must remain the criterion of dreaming is plausible, but Malcolm’s scepticism is excessive. While it is true that neuroimaging on its own cannot confirm whether a subject is having an experience let alone the specifics of that experience, correlations between neuroimaging and reports strengthen the evidence we already have of experience occurring during sleep. Preliminary evidence suggests that we can read basic information about dream content from neuroimaging (Horikawa & Kamitani, 2017); however, we still rely on reports in the first place to be able to make these inferences. Using neuroimaging data to correlate dream reports with neural activation is a popular approach (Baird et al., 2019; Hobson & McCarley, 1977; Kubota et al., 2011, LaBerge, 1992; Maquet et al., 1996) under the assumption that neuroimaging data can help verify the content of dream reports. Malcolm rejects this view. Even if a neural process, X, that occurs when we are awake correlates with mental state Y, we cannot infer the same correlation between X and Y when asleep. He argues If it were established, for example, that whenever a person makes a judgment the electrical output of a certain region of his brain rises or falls in some characteristic way, the occurrence of this electrical phenomenon in a sleeping person would not provide any probability that the sleeper was making a judgment. The imagined correlation would, of necessity, have been established only for the case of people who were awake, since the criteria for saying some person made a judgment could not be fulfilled when he was asleep. This attempt to extend the inductive reasoning to the case of sleeping persons would yield a conclusion that was logically incapable of confirmation. It would be impossible to know whether this conclusion was true or false. (p. 43) Malcolm’s scepticism here is excessive. While it may be true that the same neural activation could constitute a different mental state in waking and sleeping, we do not attempt to read off brain states alone. If one displayed similar brain activation when they were asleep at time 2 as an earlier time 1 when they were awake, but no report was generated on being woken up at T2, we could not infer that they were having the same experience at T2 as during T1. However, correlations are based on individuals reporting an experience such as fear during sleep which is then correlated with neural activity related to fear in waking individuals. It seems like too much of a coincidence if an individual, at T2, reports having felt fear in a dream that occurred at T1, just before awakening, and

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this correlated with neural activation at T1 that would indicate fear in waking. While there is scepticism about what information can be drawn from neuroimaging (Coltheart, 2006a, 2006b; Harley, 2004; Klein, 2010a, 2010b), we should not deny the usefulness of studying the brain’s physiology for dream research. Using multiple methods of neuroimaging can provide independent support for reports of dream experience, although this is limited by our ability to correlate specific activations with specific experiences. Progress is being made in this regard, however. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to predict the content of dreaming. This method faces some limitations, for example, predictions can only be read off neural images after over 50 fMRI scans are correlated with specific visual content and this repetition is required for each new subject (Horikawa et al., 2013). We cannot, for example, predict the experience of dreamers who have not been pre-scanned. However, despite the complex process, this research, at a minimum, provides evidence that experience occurs in sleep. To this extent, Malcolm’s scepticism isn’t justified. A further problem for neural imagining research of dreams is that brain activation alone cannot yet determine whether an individual is conscious. An example of this is highlighted in the study of persistent vegetative states (PVS); it is still unclear to practitioners whether some unresponsive patients have conscious experience. We cannot simply look at brain activation to determine this (Durham, 2021; Noh, 2022). Levy (2006) describes experiments using instruction probes, where a PVS patient is asked to imagine playing tennis, or alternatively, navigating their room, and corresponding brain activity is then measured. The ability of patients to neurally respond to instructions has been interpreted as good evidence that some PVS patients are in fact conscious, despite displaying no other behaviour (see also Carey, 2006; Hopkin, 2006; Laureys, 2005). Potentially, this kind of research could also allow patients who are “locked in” to respond to yes/no commands, imaging playing tennis for “yes” for example. But this can be seen as a kind of behavioural task. We can’t, for example, determine whether the brain of someone who doesn’t respond to such tasks, for whatever reason, is conscious or not. A highly active brain isn’t necessarily conscious. Levy notes that most cognitive processes occur unconsciously. Unconscious patients exhibit distinct brain activation when they encounter sentences with congruent versus incongruent endings, suggesting that such processing doesn’t require consciousness. If such complex linguistic tasks can be carried out unconsciously, it is hard to determine what tasks require consciousness. Some studies suggest we can have complex and sustained unconscious cognitive processing (Silverstein et al., 2015), whereas previously it was assumed that sustained processing required consciousness

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(Dehaene & Naccache, 2001; Greenwald et al., 1996). Perhaps, then, even responding to instructions to “imagine playing tennis” can be unconscious, although these tasks do give strong evidence for consciousness. Just as with PVS patients, we cannot look at the brain of a sleeping individual and determine whether they are conscious. As aforementioned, signal-verified lucid dreaming gives strong evidence that the dreamer is conscious. Given these controls along with neural images correlated with dream reports, this together is very strong evidence of consciousness during sleep. However, there are alternative explanations. Dennett, as discussed in the following section, proposes a metaphysical anti-experience thesis according to which experience does not occur during sleep, but rather we only falsely remember a dream upon waking. While there are some reasons to be intrigued by Malcolm’s sceptical position, his anti-experience view cannot be maintained. Firstly, Malcolm’s characterisation of “sound asleep” is inaccurate. Secondly, although correlations between sleep behaviour and non-lucid dream reports have been very difficult to achieve, making it unlikely that sleep behaviour can reliably verify specific dream content, in general, sleep behaviours give evidence of consciousness occurring in sleep. Thirdly, while Malcolm’s scepticism towards correlating brain activity with experience receives some support from modern researchers, his scepticism is too extreme. It is possible to verify that experience occurs during sleep even if it is difficult to verify specific dream content. In the following, I outline Dennett’s metaphysical anti-experience view. Despite the improvements to Malcolm’s approach, this cassette view is still not plausible given current evidence. 3.3 Why we report dreams

Daniel Dennett (1976), taking on the challenge of dream scepticism, proposes an explanation for dream reports under the assumption that experience does not occur in sleep. Despite Malcolm’s verificationist approach being “too drastic” (p. 159), Dennett also finds the received view to be problematic, supporting Malcolm’s intent to “undermine the authority of the received view of dreams” (p. 151). Dennett’s cassette view is that dream reports are caused by memories being inserted like cassettes into consciousness upon waking. Although he does not argue that this theory should replace the received view, he instead argues that it is a plausible alternative. 3.3.1 The cassette view

Under the cassette view, dream narratives are experienced only upon waking. Malcolm rejects this kind of explanation because, as he argues, it

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is also unverifiable. Dennett, in contrast, considers why one might make such a conjecture. He describes a type of suspense dream during which suspense builds up to an event that coincides with some sensory stimulus from the external world. In a recent dream of mine I searched long and far for a neighbor’s goat; when at last I found her she bleated baa-a-a-and I awoke to find her bleat merging perfectly with the buzz of an electric alarm clock I had not used or heard for months. Many people, I find, have anecdotes like this to relate. (Dennett, 1976, p. 157) Stimulus “infiltrating” or being “incorporated” into dreams is a wellknown phenomenon (Windt, 2017). However, it is unclear why some dreams seem to build up towards these infiltrated stimuli. Dennett describes several anecdotal examples as well as reports from dream experiments. One involves a dream set in an old-fashioned saloon. After being challenged to a duel, the dreamer is shot and the bang from the gun causes them to wake. On waking, the dreamer discovers that the sound was made by a real car backfiring. Another example comes from an experiment in which different stimuli were used to wake the dreamers. One subject was wakened by dripping cold water on his back. He related a dream in which he was singing in an opera. Suddenly he heard and saw that the soprano had been struck by water falling from above; he ran to her and as he bent over her, felt water dripping on his back. (p. 158) The key element is the seamless incorporation of the stimulus into the dream narrative. The external stimulus does not disrupt the narrative of the dream, but instead seems a continuation of it. If the dreamer had heard a bang and turned around to see that a gun had gone off, no issue would arise. However, if there is suspense building up to the gunshot, and if the received view is correct, in Dennett’s view this suggests that the dreamer is prescient. It appears as if the dreamer was expecting the stimulus to occur, but this is highly improbable. How might a dream be only experienced on waking? The dream could be composed quickly after the external sound is heard during the process of waking so that the narrative is created to fit the stimulus. This would mean no prescience is required. Alternatively, the dream could be composed backwards but remembered forwards: the stimulus initiates the shooting, and afterwards, the dreamer returns to the saloon to be challenged. Dennett’s preferred view is that memories that are generated

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during an earlier period are inserted into consciousness upon awakening. A library of undreamed dream “cassettes” that have various endings are stored in the mind and can be replayed in response to relevant external stimuli. The sound of a car backfiring would stimulate the replaying of a dream that involves a loud banging sound, while the feeling of water dripping would cause the mind to replay an ocean-themed cassette. We mistake the playing of “cassettes” for remembering something that had just occurred whilst asleep. Despite the inconsistency between the cassette view and our pretheoretic intuitions about dreams, Dennett argues that this view is nonetheless consistent with current empirical evidence, or at least was when he wrote his article. REM sleep is a good candidate for when the unconscious process of generating these “cassettes” could occur and would explain the increased neural activation during this sleep stage. Complex unconscious neural processing occurs during REM sleep to create a dream narrative which is only experienced upon waking. This possibility is supported by Levy’s (2006) aforementioned example of an unconscious patient displaying complex cognitive processing of tasks such as language comprehension. This would require sustained unconscious narrative processing, which has some support from unconscious (Dehaene & Naccache, 2001; Greenwald et al., 1996) and subliminal (Silverstein et al., 2015) processing research. Dennett’s cassette generation process would indeed require complex, sustained mental activity. The correlations between dream report length and REM length is explained by the length of time required to generate longer narratives. While Dennett admits that cassette generation is difficult to explain, we do not have a universally accepted explanation of dream generation according to the received view, either. This is still true today. According to Dennett, the lack of behaviour during dreaming is not explained by the received view, but the cassette theory provides a tidy explanation. Dennett asks us to imagine that late one afternoon, a man reports having seen a ghost earlier that day at 11 am. However, at 11 am, he showed none of the behaviours we would expect – no fear, surprise, or any indication of seeing a ghost. Most would conclude that his memory in the afternoon is false. His lack of expected behaviour at 11 am is stronger evidence that he did not see a ghost than his memory in the afternoon of seeing one. Applied to dreaming, a report of wild hallucinations, emotions, and bizarre scenarios that occurred during sleep is insufficient evidence given the lack of observable behaviour. False memory, for Dennett, is a more plausible explanation and the cassette theory is one possible option of how this could occur. What about lucid dreaming? For Dennett, reports of lucidity can be explained in a way that is consistent with the cassette theory. A lucid

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dream is not a dream in which we are aware we are dreaming; rather it is a sense when we wake up that the generation of the “cassette” had an element of conscious intention. Instead of realising we are dreaming while dreaming, “the composition process inserts traces of itself into the recording via the literary conceit of a dream within a dream” (ibid., p. 138). Although this is a clever attempt to explain lucid dreaming, as we will see, this is not plausible given current empirical evidence. The main distinction between this view and the received view, according to Dennett, is the method of presentation. In either theory, dreams are composed during sleep, for the cassette view, dreams are experienced only upon waking. 3.3.2 Rejecting the cassette view

The cassette theory is counterintuitive and goes against our waking impressions that we had an experience during sleep. Nir and Tononi (2010) note the cassette view is hard to refute conclusively (just as it is hard to prove conclusively that one is not a zombie when awake), it seems implausible; when one has just experienced a vivid dream, it seems hard to believe that it was made up in a flash during an awakening. (p. 89) Although such intuitions are not a sufficient argument, empirical research provides further evidence. Lucid dreams are problematic for both Dennett’s and Malcolm’s views despite Dennett’s attempt to incorporate them into the cassette theory. Signal verification, the ability of lucid dreamers to signal that they are dreaming by performing a series of learned eye movements (LaBerge, 1980)7 is convincing evidence that these experiences occur during sleep. If lucidity is merely a sense of having been aware during the dream upon awakening, thus a confabulation, it is unclear how lucid dreamers can carry out pre-learned eye movements. Perhaps these eye movements are simply an automatic response that occurs after they are learned and rehearsed, but this is implausible. The eye movements correlate only with lucid dream reports, not with non-lucid dreams, which we would expect to see if they were automatic responses. In fact, an automatic response could occur during any session of REM sleep, or perhaps even other sleep stages. Further, recent experiments suggest that two-way communication between scientists and dreamers is possible (Konkoly et al., 2021), which is very difficult to account for in the cassette view. Communication involves lucid dreamers responding to softly spoken questions using eye flicks. For

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example, when asked to calculate a simple sum, dreamers respond with the correct number of flicks. The simplest and most plausible explanation is that these lucid dreamers are aware that they are dreaming. This strongly suggests that at least some experience occurs during sleep, although lucid dream signalling is not indicative of all dream phenomena. Further to this, contrary to Dennett’s worry about the lack of behaviour that occurs during sleep, sleep paralysis provides a plausible explanation for this. Dennett (1976) admits if it turns out that sleep, or at least that portion of sleep during which dreaming occurs, is a state of more or less peripheral paralysis or inactivity; if it turns out that most of the functional areas that are critical to the governance of our wide awake activity are in operation, then there will be good reason for drawing the lines around experience so that dreams are included. If not, there will be good reason to deny that dreams are experiences. (p. 169) Indeed, such paralysis has been verified. In REM sleep, we enter a state of near paralysis due to “post-synaptic inhibition of the motor neurons in the brain stem and the spinal cord” (Windt & Metzinger, 2007, p. 5), which Hobson et al. (2000) refer to as the “output blockade”. Occasional external stimulus filters into our consciousness and we do twitch and have some movements that may respond to dreams, but we are otherwise mostly isolated from external stimuli and paralysed. Sufferers of REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) show what happens when paralysis fails – they act out their dreams (Arnulf, 2019). The cassette view cannot easily explain RBD. Most reports of suspense dreams are anecdotal and not well documented, a weakness that Dennett admits to. There is little discussion of such dreams outside Dennett’s article (Rosen, 2015). There are two ways the received view could account for such dreams. First, these dreams are rare, and the suspense element could be coincidental. Secondly, some dream narratives may be flexible enough to seamlessly incorporate a variety of external stimuli. The car back-firing stimuli could fit into a variety of narratives. Often, however, stimuli that infiltrate the dream do not get incorporated seamlessly or suggest any build-up. A third explanation that I will discuss in the following is that confabulation occurs when we remember and report dreams. The dream narrative in part or even entirely could be structured by the waking mind out of the unstructured experiences that occur during sleep, allowing us to comprehend, remember, and report otherwise unintelligible experiences. Before considering this view, I will outline one more attempt to rescue

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the cassette view, a discussion that will be delved into in more depth in Chapter 8. 3.3.3 Consciousness requires recognition or clout

Perhaps, despite the preceding argumentation, dreams are not conscious after all under a more nuanced philosophical understanding of the term “consciousness”. If consciousness requires “clout”, as Dennett (2001) himself argues, namely, integration with other cognitive processes or recognition to be conscious, dreams that lack these features while we sleep would remain unconscious. Clout requires a mental state to be retained in memory long enough to be recognised. If a painful stimulus is forgotten before being recognised as pain, for example, no conscious feeling of pain occurs. Most dreams are forgotten, and cannot be reported (Domhoff, 2003; Hobson, 2005). One interpretation is that these dreams, due to being forgotten, do not achieve sufficient clout for consciousness. Dennett (1979) proposes a thought experiment in which a paralysis drug curare leaves patients completely immobile but fully awake and aware during an operation. A memory-loss drug, “amnestic”, is used to completely wipe the patient’s memory of the operation before the curare wears off, preventing them from being able to behaviourally respond to the surgery, remember it or report it afterwards. While forgetting the surgery just before the paralysis wears off would not prevent pain from having been felt, imagine instead that the amnestic causes “continuous amnesia of the specious present. Such a ‘forgetting’ of each passing moment would cause a complete disability of perceptual analysis and ultimate recognition, and, so goes the theory, a pain not recognized is no pain at all” (Dennett, 1979, p. 437). For Dennett (2001), consciousness involves competition for influence. Neural processes fight to have their time in the “spotlight”. He argues that “consciousness is not a momentary condition, nor a purely dispositional state, but rather a matter of actual influence over time” (p. 221). Processing that is “forgotten” before perceptual analysis never achieves the clout of consciousness. Dreamers are similarly paralysed and, more often than not, immediately forget their dreams. The question then is whether dreaming, upon waking, involves what I will call memory “wiping” (Rosen, In review), just a form of forgetting, or a “continuous amnesia of the specious present”, making it possible that such states are unconscious. The latter option makes it possible that only remembered and reportable dreams are recognised as experiences. A further option is that no dreams are conscious during sleep, but only involve retroactive consciousness (see Chapter 8) brought about by the state change upon waking.

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Most would deny, however, that a curare and amnestic combination would truly eliminate pain. O‘Brien and Opie (1999) argue that instantaneous consciousness is not a single, monolithic state, but a complex amalgam of distinct and relatively independent phenomenal elements […] phenomenal consciousness is not an emergent product of complex information processing, nor of sufficiently rich and widespread information-processing relations; rather, consciousness is the mechanism whereby information is explicitly encoded in the brain, and hence is a fundamental feature of cognition. (p. 146) In this view, we can have phenomenal consciousness even if we instantly forget a mental state; consciousness is a mechanism of encoding that isn’t necessarily undone by amnesia. Putting this issue aside for discussion in Chapter 8, here I discuss instead an alternative sceptical view of dream reports that does not deny that consciousness occurs in sleep, but rather questions what dream reports can tell us about these states. 3.4 Narrative confabulation of dream reports

If the received view of dreams is true, why are correlations between eye movements and dream reports so tenuous, and why do sleep behaviour and sleep talk so rarely correlate with dream reports? What about suspense dreams? While these issues are not sufficient to deny that consciousness occurs in sleep, further analysis of the accuracy of dream reports is warranted. An alternative, empirically justified approach that explains the inconsistencies of the received view is the narrative confabulation hypothesis. Dream reports often involve confabulated elements, in particular, the narrative of the report, meaning the report is not an accurate depiction of the dream experience itself. Here, it should be specified that confabulation is distinct from intentional report fabrication. Confabulation is a type of memory error that can arise from neurological disease, but to a lesser extent can occur in response to normal forgetting. Memories may be entirely false or mixed up with real memories, causing them to be inaccurate (Kopelman, 2010). While reporting conditions can minimise confabulation, we have good evidence for the occurrence of confabulation in dream reporting and the extent to which it occurs cannot be entirely known. Dream reports are particularly prone to confabulation compared with other memory reports for several reasons. First, dream bizarreness leads to the rationalising of bizarre content. Some dream experiences may be so unlike waking they are incomprehensible to the waking mind, and to remember and report them, a

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narrative must be generated. Second, memory of dreaming is poor, so the waking mind must fill in the blanks. This occurs in waking also, but in dreaming it is exacerbated. 3.4.1 Rationalisation and bizarreness

Dreams often include nonsensical content. Memories of strange occurrences, as we will see, can be rationalised over time. Although rationalisation can be reduced by taking the report earlier, we cannot know the extent to which rationalisation in dreaming occurs, and there are no failsafe conditions to guarantee that an individual dream report will be accurate. While there are methodological reasons for trusting dream reports, progress cannot be made without relying on them, after all (Windt, 2013), an in-depth analysis of the potential for confabulation is warranted. Flanagan (2000) describes dreams as “simply noise left over from the work a mind designed for a day job continues to make on the night shift” (Flanagan, 2000, p. 40), which is then interpreted into narratives by the conscious mind on waking. Foulkes (1985) similarly describes dreams as the sleeping mind’s attempt to organise unconscious activation of memory units into narratives. Mostly, our minds do a good job of composing a plausible narrative, which explains why lab-based reports only occasionally contain unrealistic or bizarre features. Both Flanagan and Foulkes suggest that the narrative of the dream is generated by semi-chaotic neural activation. Another possibility that the narrative is created by the waking mind. If all dreams were simply disordered phenomenal sensations without narrative, it is unclear why we sometimes report narratives and sometimes just sensations that lack narrative, such as hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations during sleep onset and arousal (see Chapter 1). Even bizarre dream reports can contain narratives whereas hypnagogic hallucination reports involve mostly simple sensations or visual images. The simplicity of hypnagogia makes them easy to report, for example, a man who felt “dryness in his mouth which was filled out by something crumpled or jagged” (Sperling, 1957, p. 120). Complex, chaotic sensations during REM sleep would be difficult to report as random, fluctuating sensations would be difficult to comprehend and remember. For the received view, dreams that occur during REM sleep are not chaotic sensations but involve the experience of internally generated events that are reported as narratives upon waking. Some evidence supports a “continuity theory” according to which dreams are convincing simulations of waking life and concerns (Domhoff, 2007; Snyder, 1970, p. 127; Snyder et al., 1968), but

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it is unclear if the apparent continuity between dream reports and waking life is due to dreams being life-like or, alternatively, our reporting schema imposing these similarities. The waking mind can contribute to ordering, rationalising and simplifying dream experiences. There is also evidence that dream reports are more likely to be confabulated than waking memory reports, thus we should be cautious when assuming that reports are accurate. If confabulation occurs extensively, the content of the dream would be distinct from the report, contradicting the second part of the received view, which claims that we report our dreams upon waking. This weaker scepticism shares similarities with Malcolm’s view but fits the empirical findings. In the following, I consider evidence for confabulation. Depending on the bizarreness or incoherence of a dream, reporting such an experience may require interpretation or confabulation into a coherent or memorable narrative. As with waking confabulation, the dream reporter is mostly unaware of this, barring when intentional fabrication occurs (Parsons & Rosen, 2018). Confabulation may occur as we are waking up or after waking when we attempt to remember or report the dream. On the other hand, we may have some awareness of this process, for example, when an item is forgotten, and we guess what happened next. One reason for confabulation is that we tend to rationalise bizarre reports, both in waking and sleep. Several forms of selectivity occur in dream reporting when the dreamer has time to confabulate (Foulkes, 1979, 1999). Foulkes (1979) compared the same subjects’ reports from REM and NREM lab awakenings with their morning reports. He found that there is a tendency to rationalise dreams in morning reports. Subjects assume that they would make rational decisions and that outcomes would be rational, but this is not necessarily true in dreams. Foulkes notes that there can be, during dreaming, a remarkable dissociation, by waking standards, of feeling and action. One commits atrocities, with no remorse. One stands naked, with no guilt or shame. What may happen in [morning] recall is that waking rationalization supervenes and imposes feelings on events wherein none were in fact experienced: “Because I did this, or because this happened to me, I must have felt this”. (1979, p. 246) During one REM awakening, the subject initially reported being chased but feeling no fear during the dream. Later, the same dream was described as being scary (Foulkes, 1999, p. 26). Since it is more plausible that being

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chased is scary, the waking mind, according to Foulkes, misremembers the experience in a more plausible light. Dreams lack appropriate “binding” of multiple sensory modalities (Revonsuo, 1999; Revonsuo & Salmivalli, 1995; Revonsuo & Tarkko, 2002), the unconscious mental process of joining together aspects such as shape, colour, emotions, sounds, beliefs, and so forth into a single, coherent experience. Seeing a face and recognising it as a friend evokes positive emotions and beliefs, for example. In a dream, in contrast, features may be inappropriate – a stranger being “recognised” as a close friend (Rosen, 2022). These odd features, however, may be rationalised away. Rationalisation also occurs in waking experience. Bartlett (1932) asked subjects to remember a story called “The War of the Ghosts” which involved many supernatural elements such as a spirit leaving a body and a war between ghosts and humans. Many subjects, when asked to recount the story, left out the supernatural parts despite how important they were to the narrative. Participants remembered living warriors instead of ghosts; a spirit arrow was remembered as a real arrow, and participants left out reference to the soul leaving the body. Supernatural aspects were replaced with more familiar cultural symbols or behaviours. One subject described the dying man’s face turned white, a common description in Western culture but not part of the original story. Alba and Hasher (1983) describe this as a schematic process in which the memory is selected, some information is chosen while some is excluded or abstracted, a “process that stores the meaning of a message without reference to the original syntactic and lexical content”, interpreted, which draws on prior knowledge, and integrated, or made into a holistic memory representation (Alba & Hasher 1983, p. 203). Rationalisation of unusual elements thus is not restricted to dreams. However, in dreams we can only compare an earlier report with the later report of the same dream, never with the original experience itself. Foulkes’ aforementioned study compares reports within a few hours instead of a few months, as was the case with the war of the ghosts. This suggests that confabulation of dreaming can occur rapidly. However, despite Foulkes’ descriptions of the many ways in which dream memory goes awry, he argues that under the appropriate conditions, dreams can be accurately reported. Foulkes (1999) distinguishes two types of dream phenomena. Dream A refers to what we usually think of as dreaming, an “involuntary conscious experience of mentation during sleep and some other states, most often in the form of momentary and if sequential narrative imagery”. Dream B is what we report, “a person’s everyday account of an experience described with greater or lesser accuracy and with greater or lesser conviction, as having occurred during sleep” (p. 36).

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Dream B – the reports – are responsive to the personal and social situation of the person when they are awake. Few of us, for example, want to report embarrassing dreams (Parsons & Rosen, 2018). As with Foulkes’ chase dream mentioned earlier, memories change over time, but controlled lab settings, especially REM sleep awakenings, where the dreamer reports immediately upon waking, improve the chances of gaining an accurate report so long as the report collectors are impartial. Further to this, highly controlled lucid dream experiments are likely to evoke the most accurate dream reports due to the improved memory, attention, and the ability to even ‘report’ parts of the dream scene while dreaming using eye movements (Konkoly et al., 2021). In the future, it may be possible for dreamers to give more detailed accounts of the content of the dream given improved methods (Rosen, 2013). However, we cannot control for confabulation occurring before reporting, even during REM awakenings. In my view, even REM awakenings might still elicit confabulated reports. Poor memory may exacerbate dream confabulation, as I discuss in the following. 3.4.2 Poor memory and confabulation

Memory of dreams is notoriously poor. Many dream impressions fade rapidly and completely upon waking. A common experience is that of having dreamt but being unable to remember any details. This may at times be caused by “white dreams”, dreams which have no narrative content (Siclari et al., 2017), although there is some debate about what exactly causes reports of these “dreams“ (Fazekas et al., 2019). Many of us have had the experience of a dream that seems to wash away from memory upon waking. For most dreams to be remembered, mental effort is required. You may have experienced attempting to retain the residual impressions of the experience before it gets “memory wiped“. During this process, we may also unintentionally assemble impressions into a coherent narrative. One might argue that memory always involves reconstruction (Sutton, 2003) but dreaming memory seems to be particularly problematic. Training and practising remembering dreams and making dream reports may improve accuracy, but it is not clear to what extent. Rehearsal of content does help retain the dream memory until the dream can be recorded, but, as discussed later, rehearsal can also bias individuals towards remembering what is rehearsed and not the original experience (Horton, 2011). Arkin (1966) hypnotised subjects before sleep in an attempt to improve dream recall and cause dreamers to sleep talk in order to verify reports . Analysis of their reports, however, suggests they are often pieced together as the dreamer attempts to remember.

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Uh-uhm-uh-gee I- something about- yeah- a hat- belonging to you know- one of those old sheep herder hats- I don’t remember what it was all about though. This report was correlated with sleep speech: Mm- mmm- how about this hat (?) from India where- where it was made by camel driver- damn thing [pause] pretty little bugger. (The (?) indicates a word which was unclear). (Arkin, 1966, p. 205) Although this report was made after an REM sleep awakening, the details are very vague and much of the dream appears forgotten. The sleep talk is also quite different from the report which does not mention a camel driver, that the hat was pretty, or India. It is unclear whether the speech is about a hat at all since the researchers assumed that an unclear word was “hat”, and he doesn’t mention a sheepherder. Even direct REM sleep awakening reports, it seems, are subject to rapid memory loss, and elements change between sleep talking and dream reporting. This contrasts with Foulkes’ view that REM sleep awakenings necessarily elicit accurate reports. Although waking directly from a dream does generally increase the accuracy of the report, an accurate report is not guaranteed. I have quite poor dream memory, similar to Hobson, who records around one dream per month (Hobson, 2005). This is far less than the two to three per week found in some home-based experiments (Schredl & Reinhard, 2008). To remember my dreams, I have to rehearse the content before it slips away as I wake. However, such rehearsing can affect the narrative and content reported. In a study of 56 participants, Horton (2011) compared a group who rehearsed their dream reports with a group who did not. Rehearsal did not increase the richness of detail of memory, but instead, it led to dreams being remembered precisely as initially reported. The group that did not rehearse remembered and reported different dream elements at different times. One interpretation is that the non-rehearsal group was more prone to confabulating, the different details added after the original report we not accurate, but an alternative argued by Horton is that rehearsal led to the report being remembered instead of the dream itself. Horton concludes while rehearsal may not increase the amount that is subsequently recalled, it alters the phenomenology of what is recalled, such that precisely the same information is brought to mind, in precisely the same structure. These data demonstrate how covert rehearsal may influence which qualities of autobiographical memories are subsequently

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recalled. This shows that the effect of rehearsal can limit what is later recalled, as well as enhance it. What is recalled is the report, rather than the original dream or event itself. (Horton, 2011, p. 12) If memories of the dream are altered by rehearsal, we cannot rely on rehearsal to improve the accuracy of a dream report. However, if the dream is collected before rehearsal is required, more accurate reports can be gained. Yet, as we will see, there may be issues even in such conditions. An important point is that in whether awake or asleep, memory faces problems. We forget and confabulate waking and dream reports. Memory is often misconceived as a notebook or film recording in which information and events are stored for later retrieval. Memory, however, is complex and both storing and retrieving memory involves multiple events entwining as well as forgotten items getting filled in by distinct events and even imagination. Sutton (1998) describes memories as being “blended, not laid down independently once and for all, and […] reconstructed rather than reproduced” (p. 2). We often structure the memory of a particular event with elements of many separate events. Schechtman (1994) argues that it is precisely insofar as our memories smooth over the boundaries between the different moments of our lives, interpreting and reinterpreting individual experiences in the context of the whole, that we are able to produce a coherent life history. It is by summarizing, condensing, and conflating the different temporal portions of our lives in memory that we are able to see them as part of an integrated whole, and this integration blurs the distinction between different moment of our lives. (p. 13) In Sutton’s (2003) view, reconstruction does not necessarily render memories false, rather, all memories, both veridical and false, are constructed. Remembering involves interpreting and integrating memory traces. For example, we sometimes remember events from an “observer” perspective, looking down from above, instead of the original “field” perspective. These, Sutton argues, can still be veridical despite being from the “wrong” perspective. Remembering viewing the event from an angle which the rememberer did not initially perceive is a well-known phenomenon (Rice & Rubin, 2009). Although the original perspective is not represented accurately, the events portrayed in the memory can still be accurate. Reinterpretation, argues Sutton, is the norm, not the exception. If reinterpretation doesn’t necessarily lead to false memories, perhaps the same should be said of confabulated dream memories. There is reason, however, to still be particularly wary of dream reports.

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Dream memories fade rapidly and are more difficult to retain than waking memories (although perhaps similar to memory of imagination, see Crespin & Rosen, In review). Most dreams are forgotten immediately, especially if we do not wake during the appropriate stage of sleep. As Hobson (2005) remarks, memory for dreams in subsequent waking is notoriously poor. […] I am a relatively good dream recaller, and I consistently record those that I remember. My collection of reports is on the order of 400 entries in a journal that I have kept for 30 years. That is just a bit more than 1 a month! If we assume that I had as few as 5 dreams a night (which is conservative), my recall rate is 400/54,000, or less than 1%. If I were that amnestic in waking, I would be in a mental hospital. (p. 27) Hobson is a highly trained dream researcher with strong motivation but still cannot report a dream every morning. Even those with significantly better memory than Hobson forget most of their dreams since multiple sessions of REM sleep occur every night and dreaming occurs in most of these sessions as well as many NREM sessions. Eighty to ninety per cent of REM sleep awakenings and up to 40% of NREM awakenings lead to reports (Domhoff, 2003, p. 17), but even individuals with very good dream call rarely report more than one dream upon waking. Even if I remembered a dream every night, I have probably forgotten five, perhaps up to ten dreams. While it is true that we often forget real events, for instance, I can’t remember what I had for lunch a week ago, dream forgetting is extreme. Moreover, we can check whether waking memories are accurate by seeking external evidence such as asking another observer of the same event or by assessing memories for plausibility. The dream environment, being internally generated, has no plausibility conditions and cannot be checked by other observers. 3.4.3 Dreaming what it’s like to be a bat

The types of altered states of consciousness that occur in dreams give evidence that some dreams cannot be accurately reported, even in ideal conditions (Rosen, 2022; Rosen & Sutton, 2013). The dreaming brain at times exhibits increased activation in sensorimotor areas, visual areas, and emotional centres, whilst there is decreased activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and memory storage and access areas (Hobson et al., 2000, see Chapter 1). There are complex shifts in neuromodulation and activation that are associated with abnormally

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functioning consciousness. The altered state of the dreaming brain might generate experiences that are at times difficult for the waking mind to comprehend. As an analogy, Nagel (1980) argues that the experience of being a bat may be incomprehensible to humans as we are incapable of comprehending what it is like to have perceptual capacities we lack. It is equally incomprehensible to try to imagine what it’s like to see ultraviolet. One question Nagel doesn’t consider is, what if we could experience what it’s like to be a bat for a day and then resume being a human the next day? Would we then know what it was like to be a bat, to “see” using sonar8 and enjoy delicious insects caught on the fly? It is unclear that a human mind like mine could even then comprehend the mind of a bat, or that I could retain an understanding of my day as a bat after I had shifted back to my normal self. Perhaps I could only understand bat experience whilst I was a bat, with the appropriate neural machinery to be able to process this information. Perhaps I couldn’t be a bat and still be me.9 Here an analogy can be made with the dreaming mind. Dreaming as an altered state of consciousness involves significant alteration to the brain and mind. While some dreams are indeed mundane, as discussed in Chapter 2, others may be sufficiently bizarre so that they are incomprehensible to the waking mind. If the dream experience is sufficiently different from our waking experiences, the waking mind might need to confabulate to make sense of the experience and report it. The possibility that the dream self may not even retain my identity, as discussed in Chapter 6, provides further support for this view. Comprehension of such states, let alone accurate reporting, may be impossible; the waking mind may only be able to report analogous waking experiences. This rationalisation process is more extensive than simply confabulating a few bizarre elements; rather the entire narrative is a confabulation. Some evidence suggests that there is a carry-over state after waking in which some of the attributes of the brain in REM sleep persist. Feeling confused, disoriented, and failing to realise they were just dreaming is an experience had by many (Balkin et al., 1999; Reinsel et al., 1992). Some argue that dreams reported during this period have higher accuracy since the carry-over effect allows for the mind to remain in an altered state. This may also explain why 80–90% of REM awakenings elicit reports while morning reports are relatively rare. However, it is unclear whether this waking stage retains the altered state of REM sleep, or whether it is an inbetween state. Neurophysiological evidence of the shift between states is inconclusive. During this carryover state, clear and coherent dream reports are often not elicited. A confused and disoriented person is less likely to

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report accurately, as was shown in the previous Arkin (1966) example. The participant mumbles about a hat and a camel driver in a barely coherent way, and the later report only shows some similarities with the sleep talk. From this report, the narrative remains quite unclear and confabulation seems to have occurred. In a more extreme example, I have experienced waking up and being entirely confused about what was occurring in the dream, not simply because I forgot it but because the experience was too unusual to comprehend. Although not a common experience – I don’t recall this happening frequently, many others may also have experienced this on occasion. Although here I simply report not understanding the experience, the waking mind may also at times impose a new narrative and structure to try to comprehend what just happened. The issue of confabulation of dream reports is complicated by two further features: certain types of experience may be more likely to be confabulated than others, and certain individuals may be more susceptible to confabulation than others. 3.5 Individual differences in dream confabulation

To what extent do we confabulate when we report dreams? This is difficult to answer. While a comparison between the dream itself and the report would be required to determine this with certainty, and this option is not available, there are several features that are likely to increase confabulation. It is probable that incoherent or bizarre dreams undergo increased confabulation. Difficult-to-remember dreams, those that require increased effort or rehearsal to be able to recall, are also likely to be confabulated. Another confounding factor is that some individuals are likely to be more prone to confabulation than others, although dreams are, on average, a type of experience that is more prone to confabulation than waking. While memory may not simply replay events and it may necessarily involve reconstruction, it is plausible to say that when imagination is heavily drawn upon to fill in the blanks of memory, at a certain point the “memory” is no longer accurate, and perhaps is no longer a memory at all. Further, some experiences are more likely to be confabulated than others. Garry and colleagues (1996) found that when we imagine events, we often later believe our imagination was in fact a memory. They used the term imagination inflation to refer to adult subjects’ tendency to judge imagined childhood events as more likely to have occurred than events they did not imagine. Imagination inflation of future events also occurs in that imagining a future event increases how likely we think it is to occur (Carroll, 1978; Gregory et al., 1982). Some individuals are more prone

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to imagination inflation than others, meaning that there are individual differences in how likely we are to confabulate. One interpretation is that remembering is goal-driven as opposed to being primarily accuracy-driven (Conway, 2005; Sutton et al., 2010). It is important that memory both corresponds with events that occurred and coheres with the narrative individuals form of events over time in a way that makes sense to them. Accurate portrayal of past events is only one important aspect of memory (Boyer & Wertsch, 2009), although, for my purposes here, accuracy is the target feature. Garry and colleagues’ (1996) results suggest that imagination affects memory and predictions, and my argument is that this effect is likely increased for dream memory due to the similarities between dreaming and imagination (see Chapter 4). When we imagine events, this is likely to increase confabulation of dream memories even more so than waking memories. We may be unable to distinguish between imagining and memory of dreaming. Although at this stage, my arguments are hypothetical and not based on experiments, as I argue in Chapter 4, dreaming itself likely involves imaginative elements, and some dreams may be difficult to distinguish from imagination. Thus, if one imagines having dreamt something, due to these similarities, we are even more likely to experience imagination inflation. Further, because of poor memory, bizarreness, and inability to assess the likelihood that a dream event occurred by judging its plausibility, we are even more likely to rely on imagination resources. For example, imagining something bizarre or impossible such as flying unaided to the moon is unlikely to cause an individual to mistake this imagination for a waking memory since it fails the test of plausibility. The same cannot be said for a memory of a dream in which flying or other impossible events occur, however, since physical impossibilities are possible in dreams. Thus, for several reasons, memory inflation is likely to affect dream reporting, possibly more so than waking memory. Some individuals inflate their imaginations more than others. Heaps and Nash (1999) found that some are not only more likely to mistake imagination for real childhood events than others, but these individuals are also more likely to respond to hypnotic suggestion and experience dissociativity, defined as failure to “distinguish and integrate memories, fantasies, motivations, and actions in awareness” (Heaps & Nash, 1999, p. 314). Although this poses difficulties in dream research, it may be possible to control for individual differences. Although hypnosis is sometimes used for recovering lost memories, suggestions from the hypnotiser can cause individuals to falsely remember the suggested events and some individuals are more prone to this kind of confabulation than others (Heaps & Nash, 1999). In one famous case, Paul

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Ingram began to report false memories after hypnosis (Ofshe, 1992). The hypnosis was used to attempt to reveal suppressed memories, but instead, he began to report events suggested to him by the hypnotiser, such as abusing his daughters, and it was later shown that several of the events he reported could not have happened. This gives further reason to be sceptical of the aforementioned experiments of Arkin and colleagues (1966, 1970), who attempted to improve dream recall using hypnotism. Heaps and Nash used the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (Gudjonsson, 1984) to identify interrogative suggestibility (susceptibility to the influence of an authoritative questioning source) and hypnotic suggestibility (susceptibility to influence under hypnosis) in test subjects. Unsurprisingly, individuals who are prone to hypnotic suggestion are also more prone to imagination inflation as well as dissociativity, which causes disrupted memory and confusion of real events with fantasy. Subjects were asked how likely it was that they had experienced certain events, like breaking a window with their hand before the age of ten, and two weeks later, were asked the same questions a second time. Of those who initially reported not experiencing a particular event, dissociative individuals and those prone to hypnotic suggestion were more likely to report experiencing the event in the second interview. According to Heaps and Nash, dissociative individuals rely less on their memories and more on inferences and external evidence because they find it difficult to distinguish between memories and fantasies. Relying on external evidence occurs also in non-dissociative individuals, but to a lesser extent. In another experiment, participants were asked to draw a Roman numeral clock and almost all drew the 4 in the clock as “IV” despite Roman numeral clocks using “IIII” instead. French and Richards (1993) explain that individuals rely on schematic knowledge that makes the most sense rather than memory in such cases. Everyone experiences instances in which they cannot rely on their memories, and when this occurs we use schematic knowledge to fill in the blanks. However, dissociative patients are forced to rely more heavily on such knowledge due to memory deficits. Heaps and Nash explain that “dissociative subjects experience frequent disruptions in episodic memory, often finding external evidence or confirmation of events that are not remembered […] such subjects may consequently adopt a lower criterion for accepting memories as real” (Heaps & Nash, 1999, p. 317). Importantly, dream experience is often dissociative, and our memories of dreams are poor. Therefore, although dissociative patients may confabulate to a greater extent, we are all prone to confabulating dreams to a greater extent than waking memory. Memory deficits, implausible narratives, and the inability to reality monitor affect us all when it comes to our dreams.

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Individuals who are prone to hypnotic suggestion or dissociation may be more prone to dream confabulation than average due to their decreased ability to distinguish between dreams, imagination, and other memories. It may be particularly difficult, for example, to distinguish between pre-sleep fantasising and the content of dreams. If dissociative individuals find it hard to distinguish between imagination and waking memory, it might be even more difficult to distinguish between dreams and imagination, since dreaming involves imaginative elements. Although I have argued that we all experience the same deficits as these individuals when it comes to dreaming, the dissociative condition may further enhance dream confabulation. This could be controlled by screening research samples for those dissociative individuals, although a separate test may be required to ascertain these specificities, and sufficient samples are already difficult to attain in dream research. It would be difficult to empirically test whether dissociative individuals really do confabulate more in dream reports since we cannot verify the content of dreams in order to determine how much confabulation has occurred in the report. In the following, I will delve more deeply into the idea of dreaming itself being a dissociative state. Dreaming and dissociation appear to share many cognitive features, such as poor memory and several cognitive deficits including metacognition (Barrett, 1995). Johnson and colleagues’ (1984) subjects found it difficult to discriminate between their own dreams and others’ dream reports. They argue that this is not simply an issue of poor memory, but that dreams are “deficient in conscious cognitive operations that help identify the origin of information generated in a waking state” (p. 329). The unconscious, internal generation of dreaming lacks important cues that assist in distinguishing imagined from experienced events. Dreams, according to some theorists, are in fact a form of imagination, although it is more plausible, in my view, that they contain imaginative elements (see Chapter 4 for a discussion on the imagination theory of dreaming). The imaginative content of dreams may make them difficult to distinguish from waking imagining. While waking memory can be judged as plausible if it is consistent with other waking events, dream memories need not be plausible as they are often bizarre or even impossible. We cannot reality test either dreaming or imagining to determine how likely it was that the dream or imagination in fact occurred. Dream reports, I have argued, are more prone to confabulation than waking memories, sometimes to the extent that we cannot be sure whether the dream report is an accurate representation of the dream content or narrative. However, this view, despite being a weaker form of scepticism than either Malcolm’s or Dennett’s, faces some challenges.

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3.6 Evidence against dream narrative confabulation

The fact that lucid dreamers signal that they are dreaming while they are dreaming is, as previously argued, a strong indication that experience occurs during sleep. Dennett and Malcolm’s attempts to explain lucid dreams have no convincing response to signal-verified lucid dreaming. One might apply the same reasoning to narrative confabulation. However, despite the convincing evidence from lucid dreaming, we still have reason to suspect that confabulation is common. Lucid dreaming often involves enhanced cognitive capacities and improved memory compared to non-lucid dreaming, which makes lucid dreams less prone to confabulation. Yet lucid dreams are rare, and this is consistent with my pluralistic approach that stresses the variety of dreamed experience. Setting up signal-verified lucid dreaming tasks in which a lucid dreamer performs activities and signals their completion is the strongest confirmation of specific dream content. However, such an experiment would still not be a failsafe against all confabulation, just as any waking report can involve confabulation. Focused on the task at hand, the dreamer may not accurately report other events occurring in the dream or the order of events. Certain aspects of dreaming, such as one’s own mental states and feelings of control, for example, are often left unreported as previously discussed. Lucid dreams can still involve a strange setting or events which themselves can be confusing and confabulated in the report. Finally, as aforementioned, lucid dreams are rare and are unrepresentative of the more common non-lucid dreams. They tend to have improved cognitive features that are associated with reduced confabulation, such as improved attention and memory. Lucid dreams thus cannot replace non-lucid dreams in research for the purpose of minimising report confabulation if we want to learn more about dreaming in general. REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) is strong evidence against the anti-experience thesis. However, RBD is caused by neurological disorders that can also affect dream content (Schenck et al., 1987), such as increasing the average frequency of violence in dreams. Like lucid dreaming, RBD is rare and not indicative of all dreaming. Further, while RBD actions can verify certain activities that the dreamer is performing, it cannot verify the full narrative of the dream. The dreamer’s actions are all that the experimenter can see and they can be used to infer what the dreamer is responding to or correlated with reports. Schenck and colleagues (1987) reference a man with RBD who threw punches while asleep and then woke up to report dreaming of fighting a squirrel in the attic. Mahowald and colleagues (2005) describe a man who killed his girlfriend while dreaming of fending off an intruder. While the correlation between report and action provides strong evidence

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for some of the dream content, the behaviour does not inform an outside observer of any specifics. There is no way to know that the first man was attacking squirrels, or that the second was fending off an intruder, let alone any other aspects of the dream, until the report is made. Thus, RBD affords only a small window into the dream world. It is also possible that the reported dream and the behaviour were not from the same session. People with RBD often have violent dreams but do not act all of them out, so the report could refer to an earlier dream. I acknowledge that the previous interpretation, that the behaviour correlated with the specific report, is the simpler and more plausible interpretation, nonetheless. Some theorists argue dream report accuracy depends on reporting conditions. I agree that conditions do increase the likelihood of an accurate report, but confabulation can never be entirely eliminated. Foulkes’ scepticism about delayed reports is justified, but I think we cannot claim that confabulation only occurs between REM sleep awakenings and morning dream reports; REM reports may also involve confabulation. There is reason to believe that any dream report can be subject to confabulation, confusion with imagination, rationalisation, and rapid memory loss. This occurs for dreaming to a greater extent than waking. As Malcolm points out, we are unable to compare dream reports with dream experiences, so the accuracy of REM sleep awakening reports cannot be determined. REM awakenings are more likely to elicit accurate reports due to the closeness in time between the experience and report, and it is possible to accurately report dreams in theory. However, an experimenter can never guarantee that a specific dream has been reported accurately because confabulation is always likely given the cognitive features of many dreams. Bizarre dreams and cognitively deficient dreams are more likely to be confabulated, so mundane dream reports and lucid dream reports are more likely to be accurate. Dreams that do not suffer from memory and cognitive deficits are the most likely to be reported accurately, but from the perspective of the researcher, it is hard to determine when dream memory is good. Control methods increase the chance of accuracy but do not guarantee it. 3.7 Conclusion

While there is reason to be sceptical of our dream memories and the reports we make about them on waking, it is hard to deny that experiences occur in sleep. Malcolm’s verificationist criteria for dreaming and to a lesser extent Dennett’s cassette theory are implausible given the current scientific evidence. Anti-experience views should be rejected due to strong contradictory evidence. Yet we should not assume that dream reports are generally accurate of dream narratives. While both dreams and waking

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memories can be misleading or outright false, dream reports are less reliable evidence for dream experience than waking reports are for waking experience. Dream reports are often confabulated because of poor memory, confusion during the sleep-wake transition, bizarre dream content and changes in cognition. These conditions make dreams difficult to remember and report, and confabulation is one way of making sense, remembering, and allowing us to report dreams. There is evidence of confabulation between REM sleep lab awakenings and subsequent reports that occur later in the day. We have further reason to suspect that confabulation has already occurred by the time the original report is made. We rationalise strange elements in any kind of narrative, and dreams can indeed be strange or even incomprehensible. In particular, subjects tend to leave out or normalise supernatural or bizarre elements when reporting waking memories of stories, as exemplified in Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts. Confabulation is exacerbated in dreams by rapid memory loss and bizarre dream content. In waking, our memories involve reconstruction and the blending of elements, but unlike waking, we cannot reality test dream memories or confirm them independently since dreams are experienced by the dreamer alone. Elements of dream experiences seem akin to imaginative elements, and memory of such experiences is poor (Crespin & Rosen, In review). In sum, our access to dreams suffers from diminished memory, bizarre content, and source confusion. Moreover, dream reports cannot be confirmed with external evidence or by multiple observers. Although significant evidence, including RBD and lucid dreaming, supports conscious experience during sleep, we cannot verify the specific content of dreams, nor rule out report confabulation. It is unlikely that all dream reports are inaccurate just as it isn’t the case that our cognition is always impoverished while dreaming (see Chapter 2). Some dreams involve higher cognitive functioning that can equal waking cognition. We have better memory, can make logical inferences and act rationality in such dreams, allowing us to improve the reliability of our reports. Evidence of such cognitive features can be present in the report and can be confirmed by signal-verified lucid dreaming. Dream reports should nonetheless be seen as, in general, less accurate than waking reports, and further, we can never confirm the extent to which dream reports are accurate of the original dream experience. Notes 1 Hobson, Metzinger, Domhoff, Revonsuo, Jouvet, Windt, and Flanagan, to name a few, support the received view. In fact, it is easier to name those who do not support the view than those who do, namely, Malcolm and Dennett.

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2 Sosa (2005) makes a similar argument about anything occurring within a dream being under an “in the dream” operator. Events, objects, thoughts, and beliefs that occur in dreams do not, in fact, occur. See in Chapter 4. 3 Malcolm doesn’t acknowledge the possibility of being aware of a dream body, which is an interesting phenomenon I discuss in more detail in Chapter 5. 4 It is of course possible that I recently did run in a race, but this did not occur while I was asleep. 5 REM sleep behaviour disorder, as discussed later, provides evidence against this point. 6 In Chapter 1, I noted that the scanning hypothesis was rejected because of insufficient correlations between eye movements and dream reports. 7 See Chapter 1 on lucid dreaming for further discussion. 8 Some research into human echolocation has shown that humans can “see” using sound ( Bower et al., 2011; Kish, 2009), but whether humans’ and bats’ experience of echolocation is the same kind of experience is a separate matter. 9 I discuss the possibility that the dreaming self is not the same person as the waking self in Chapter 6.

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Klein, C. (2010a). Images are not the evidence in neuroimaging. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 61(2), 265–278. doi: 10.1093/bjps/ axp035 Klein, C. (2010b). Philosophical issues in neuroimaging. Philosophy Compass, 5(2), 186–198. doi: 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2009.00275.x Konkoly, K. R., Appel, K., Chabani, E., Mangiaruga, A., Gott, J., Mallett, R., … Mazurek, C. Y. (2021). Real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep. Current Biology, 31(7), 1417–1427. e1416. Kopelman, M. D. (2010). Varieties of confabulation and delusion. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 15(1-3), 14–37. Kubota, Y., Takasu, N. N., Horita, S., Kondo, M., Shimizu, M., Okada, T., … Toichi, M. (2011). Dorsolateral prefrontal cortical oxygenation during REM sleep in humans. Brain Research, 1389, 83–92. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2011. 02.061 LaBerge, S. (1980). Lucid dreaming: An exploratory study of consciousness during sleep. Stanford University. LaBerge, S. (1992). Physiological studies of lucid dreaming. In J. S. A. M. Bertini (Ed.), The neuropsychology of sleep and dreaming (pp. 289–304). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. LaBerge, S., Levitan, L., & Dement, W. C. (1986). Lucid dreaming: Physiological correlates of consciousness during REM sleep. The Journal of Mind and Behavior, 7(2/3), 251–258. Laureys, S. (2005). Death, unconsciousness and the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6(11), 899–909. Levy, N. (2006). Consciousness and the Persistent Vegetative State. Neuroethics and Law Blog. Available at: http://kolber.typepad.com/ethics_law_blog/2006/ 12/more_on_the_con.html Mahowald, M. W., Schenck, C. H., & Bornemann, M. A. C. (2005). Sleep-related violence. Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports, 5(2), 153–158. Malcolm, N. (1956). Dreaming and skepticism. The Philosophical Review, 65(1), 14–37. Malcolm, N. (1959). Dreaming. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Maquet, P., Péters, J.-M., Aerts, J., Delfiore, G., Degueldre, C., Luxen, A., & Franck, G. (1996). Functional neuroanatomy of human rapid-eye-movement sleep and dreaming. Nature, 383(6596), 163–166. Nagel, T. (1980). What is it like to be a bat? In The language and thought series (pp. 159–168). Harvard University Press. Nir, Y., & Tononi, G. (2010). Dreaming and the brain: From phenomenology to neurophysiology. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(2), 88–100. doi: 10.1016/ j.tics.2009.12.001 Noh, H. (2022). Behavioral vs. neural methods in the treatment of acutely comatose patients. Ramon Llull Journal of Applied Ethics, 1, 13. O’Brien, G., & Opie, J. (1999). A connectionist theory of phenomenal experience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(1), 127–148. Ofshe, R. J. (1992). Inadvertent hypnosis during interrogation: False confession due to dissociative state; mis-identified multiple personality and the satanic cult

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hypothesis. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 40(3), 125–156. Parsons, C., & Rosen, M. G. (2018). Reporting your ‘dream self’. The Psychologist, 31, 40–43. Reinsel, R., Antrobus, J., & Wollman, M. (1992). Waking fantasy. The Neuropsychology of Sleep and Dreaming, 1992, 157–184. Revonsuo, A. (1995). Consciousness, dreams and virtual realities. Philosophical Psychology, 8(1), 35–58. Revonsuo, A. (1999). Binding and the phenomenal unity of consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition, 8(2), 173–185. doi: 10.1006/ccog.1999.0384 Revonsuo, A., & Salmivalli, C. (1995). A content analysis of bizarre elements in dreams. Dreaming, 5(3), 169. Revonsuo, A., & Tarkko, K. (2002). Binding in dreams-the bizarreness of dream images and the unity of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 9(7), 3–24. Rice, H. J., & Rubin, D. C. (2009). I can see it both ways: First-and third-person visual perspectives at retrieval. Consciousness and Cognition, 18(4), 877–890. Rosen (In review) Retroactive consciousness of dreams: What do we remember when we wake up? Rosen, M. G. (2013). What I make up when I wake up: anti-experience views and narrative fabrication of dreams. Frontiers in Psychology, 4. doi: 10.3389/ fpsyg.2013.00514 Rosen, M. G. (2015). I’m thinking your thoughts while I sleep: Sense of agency and ownership over dream thought. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 2(3), 326–339. doi: 10.1037/cns0000064 Rosen, M. G. (2019). Dreaming of a stable world: vision and action in sleep. Synthese, 198(17), 4107–4142. Rosen, M. G. (2022). Dreaming as a virtual reality delusion simulator: Gaining empathy whilst we sleep. International Journal of Dream Research, 15(1), 73–85. Rosen, M. G., & Sutton, J. (2013). Self-representation and perspectives in dreams. Philosophy Compass, 8(11), 1041–1053. doi: 10.1111/phc3.12082 Schechtman, M. (1994). The truth about memory. Philosophical Psychology, 7(1), 3–18. Schenck, C. H., Bundlie, S. R., Patterson, A. L., & Mahowald, M. W. (1987). Rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder: A treatable parasomnia affecting older adults. JAMA, 257(13), 1786–1789. Schredl, M., & Reinhard, I. (2008). Dream recall, dream length, and sleep duration: State or trait factor. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 106(2), 633–636. doi: 10.2466/pms.106.2.633-636 Siclari, F., Baird, B., Perogamvros, L., Bernardi, G., LaRocque, J. J., Riedner, B., … Tononi, G. (2017). The neural correlates of dreaming. Nature Neuroscience, 20(6), 872–878. Silverstein, B. H., Snodgrass, M., Shevrin, H., & Kushwaha, R. (2015). P3b, consciousness, and complex unconscious processing. Cortex, 73, 216–227. Snyder, F. (1970). The phenomenology of dreaming. In L. M. L. Snow (Ed.), The psychodynamic implications of the physiological studies on dreams (pp. 124–151). Springfield, IL: Thomas.

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4 THE IMAGINATION MODEL OF DREAMING

4.1 Introduction

It is widely accepted that dreaming is some kind of experience that occurs during sleep, but the nature of this experience remains contested. The most common description of dreams is that they are hallucinations, that waking perception and dreaming are “intrinsically alike, though different in their causes and effects” (Sosa, 2005, p. 7). Sosa, Ichikawa, and others reject this standard view. Instead, they argue that dreams are intrinsically like imagining. Dreaming is just like closing your eyes and sensorily imagining objects and events-- “to dream is to imagine, not to hallucinate” (Sosa, 2005, p. 7). This view is compelling, since it describes certain dreams that are left out of the standard model, nonetheless I argue that it is overly reductive. While the imagination model of dreams as a description of dreaming in its entirety should be rejected, here and in Chapter 5 I argue for a pluralist view of dream content, according to which dreams involve both perceptual and imaginative elements and some dreams are best described as imaginative. The imagination and hallucination models are not in fact competitors, rather, they each describe aspects of the dream experience and dreams can fall anywhere along a spectrum from perceptual to imaginative. These experiences likely correlate with sleep stages, with REM dreams and sleep onset being more likely to be hallucinatory and NREM dreams being more imaginative. However, it is also possible for a dream session to involve a variety of experiences, some of which are imaginative and some perceptual, or to shift between the two. Both imagination and hallucination models as a description of all DOI: 10.4324/9781003367710-5

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dreaming exclude too many experiences from the category of “dreaming” and cannot explain the wide variety of reported sleep experiences and phenomena. 4.2 Dreaming as imagining

Although there is much debate on the nature of imagination (Liao & Gendler, 2011; Nanay, 2016), here I will take imagination to refer to our ability to bring up visual imagery and other sensory faculties in the mind’s eye. We can, for example, close our eyes and imagine being on a beach. In contrast, hallucination is the presentation of apparently perceptual stimulus in absence of any real object (Macpherson, 2013). If, at work, you were to hallucinate being on a beach, it would look or feel to you like you were on a beach despite really being in your office. The common-sense view is that dreaming is a type of hallucination. We “perceive” or hallucinate the dream world, and from the first-person perspective, it appears just as the waking world appears. In most dreams, we cannot tell we are dreaming, we usually mistake our dreams for reality, and we assume we are awake. However, some think dreaming is a type of imagination, not hallucination. According to the imagination model, dreams are more like vivid imagination, perhaps of the type we engage in when we daydream or mindwander. Unlike Malcolm’s and Dennett’s anti-experience theses (see Chapter 2), dreams do involve experiences during sleep, but “they do not involve percepts – the kinds of sensory experiences we experience when engaging with the world around us” (Ichikawa, 2009, p. 105). Rather, dreams only involve nonperceptual or non-hallucinatory imagination. Dreaming of being chased by a lion is like closing your eyes and imagining being chased by a lion, since “when one dreams that he is being chased by a lion, he is imagining that he is being chased by a lion, while still tacitly believing himself to be safe in bed” (Ichikawa & Sosa, 2009). Thus, in contrast with most intuitions we have about dreaming, we do not think we are awake in dreams. Despite what we report about our dreams, for Sosa (2005), the idea that dreamers actually believe they are being chased by a lion is implausible given that they still tacitly believe that they are in bed. Ichikawa (2016), in agreement, argues that dream experiences differ in many important ways from waking perception and instead resemble daydreams. Dreams are neither perceptual nor do they contain beliefs about dream content being true. 4.2.1 Beliefs and dreams

We normally believe what we see. If I look around and appear to be sitting in bed, then I probably believe that I am sitting in bed. Believing what I see

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is a common part of perception but not imagination.1 If I imagine looking around and being in bed, but my perceptual experience suggests I am elsewhere, I will not believe I am in bed. Perception, however, is not always accurate, and I do not always believe what I see or sense. I might conclude from a high-pitched buzzing sound that I have ear damage from listening to loud music. There are several optical illusions I enjoy looking at because of their misleading nature. Perception is subject to realitytesting, I can measure the parallel lines in the Muller-Lyer illusion and determine that they are of the same length even if they look different. Yet as I go about my day, I usually think my perception accurately represents the real world. When I imagine, in contrast, reality testing is not relevant to my experience as imagination is not presented as reality (Rosen & Barkasi, 2021). Imagination is internally generated by the mind and is usually experienced as such. It can correspond to reality – I might try to imagine what my bedroom looks like right now and do so quite accurately, but it often does not. Hallucination model theorists think that during dreams, we usually believe that the dream world is the real world. The hallucination model doesn’t entail that dreams are highly realistic world replicas – hallucinations aren’t necessarily convincing just as illusions aren’t always misleading. I might realise when I am hallucinating. However, many theorists think dreams can indeed be convincing. Hobson (1988, Hobson et al., 2000), Flanagan (2000), Domhoff (2003), Solms (2000), Solms and Turnbull (2002), and others support this view (see Chapter 1) as well as, famously, Descartes (René Descartes, 1986; René Descartes & Cress, 1998). Dreams might even be virtual realities (Hobson et al., 2014; Revonsuo, 1995; Windt, 2010). When I dream of walking down the street, it seems to me like I am walking down the street and I also believe I am doing so. This is a strong intuition for most of us, so imagination theorists have their work cut out for them. One could support a version of the imagination model whilst claiming that we do not realise that we are dreaming, but Sosa and Ichikawa maintain we do not believe dreams are real. If in dreams, I believe the dream is reality, dreaming of walking down the street would require that I also believe that I am not currently in bed. Since at any time, most of our beliefs remain latent or unconscious, then, Sosa argues, there is reason to think that latent beliefs, such as the belief that I am currently in bed, carry over into dreams (Sosa, 2005). Latent beliefs are still beliefs – we do not cease to believe X just because we are currently not thinking about X. My belief that “eating a polar bear liver causes deadly hypervitaminosis” is not something I think of often; it remains latent but can be accessed and recalled in the rare instances when it is relevant to a conversation or what I am writing. When I go to sleep,

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I may entertain the beliefs “I am in bed” and “I left my shoes next to the bed”, but these can become latent beliefs. If we are to say that my belief of being in bed remains my belief while dreaming, a dream about walking down the street conflicts with my latent belief that I am in bed. Sosa argues that “it is hard to see how one could then concurrently believe that one is being chased by a lion, rather than lying in bed, with the shoes a certain distance and direction from where one lies” (Sosa, 2005, p. 9). For Sosa, it is not plausible that we entertain conflicting beliefs whilst we dream, and further, it is not plausible that we lose all our tacit beliefs. It is more plausible, in Sosa’s view, that I do not believe I am walking down the street in the dream since we don’t usually hold such conflicting beliefs as “I am in bed” and “I am walking down the street” simultaneously. Certain types of contradictory beliefs in waking life are relatively common, however. I could believe that sexism and racism are bad, but simultaneously hold sexist or racist beliefs. However, “I am walking down the street as well as being in bed” doesn’t seem to be the kind of contradictory belief we tend to hold. Believing in the veracity of the dream world would require a sudden, wide-scale uptake of multiple contradictory beliefs. This “does not seem to fit the model of, for example, instances of self-deception in which subjects might be said to have contradictory beliefs” (Ichikawa, 2009, p. 112). Neither Ichikawa or Sosa attempt to demonstrate that this type of contrary belief cannot or does not occur, but rather Sosa places the burden of proof on orthodox theorists who need to explain this apparent wholesale acceptance of contradictory beliefs. It is not contradictory, however, to imagine being chased by a lion whilst believing you are sitting in bed since we do not believe that what we imagine is really occurring. Beliefs are usually gained or rejected gradually, not wholesale as the hallucination model of dreaming suggests. Ichikawa argues that not only it is implausible that we suddenly hold a broad set of contradictory beliefs, but also it is unlikely that we can suddenly cease holding our tacit beliefs and instantaneously replace them with a set of different beliefs. We would then, of course, have to suddenly gain back our tacit beliefs upon waking. If dream beliefs are beliefs, and contradictory longstanding beliefs temporarily disappear, then we have nightly cases of belief revision that are wildly different from the standard models we encounter in waking life; the orthodox theorist owes us an explanation for such unusual patterns. (Ichikawa, 2009, p. 113) Orthodox theorists, in Ichikawa’s view, have not yet provided such an explanation.

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4.2.2 The “in the dream” operator

Any thoughts, beliefs, actions, and sensations that occur whilst dreaming fall under what Sosa refers to as the “in the dream” operator. This entails that dream thoughts, beliefs, and actions do not “really” occur. When I wake up, I conclude that what I was just dreaming didn’t actually happen. I was not really being chased by a lion: it was only occuring in the dream. We might think that this applies to actions but not beliefs, thoughts, or other mental states, for example, if in a dream I was being chased by a lion and though “that’s a scary lion”, the “in the dream” operator means I wasn’t really being chased, but didn’t I really have a thought? For Sosa, however, mental states are also under the “in the dream” operator. With my hand in view, I may ask: Do I now think I see a hand? Well, might it not be just a dream? Might I not be only dreaming that I think I see a hand? If I am only dreaming, then I do not really think I see a hand, after all. (Sosa, 2005, p. 11) Ichikawa (2009), in agreement, argues that: [believing something in a dream] does not entail beliefs; all parties grant that in the dream I believe these things; in dispute is whether in fact I believe them. The in the dream operator should be thought of as analogous to the in the fiction operator that is used to explain truths about fictional events.2 (p. 111) Dreaming of asserting “I see a lion” or believing “I see a lion”, or even thinking “I see a lion”, means not really asserting or believing or thinking “I see a lion”. To be asserting, believing, or thinking something (as opposed to just dreaming that I am asserting, believing, or thinking), I must be awake just as I must be awake to be chased by a lion. Applying the “in the dream” operator over “I am doing X” or “X is occurring” implies that you are not really doing X, or X is not occurring for any X. Dream affirmations are only “quasi-affirmations” (Ichikawa 2008, p. 523) such that I can only quasi-affirm that I am being chased by a lion. In this sense, we do not really believe dreams are true whilst dreaming, or, for that matter, have beliefs at all, since “in the dream, I believed the dream was reality” does not imply “I really believed the dream was reality”. Dreams involve imagination, not any “misleading sensations and false beliefs” (Ichikawa, 2009, p. 103). One might in contrast, believe that we can be misled by dreams despite them being imaginations, if they are, for example, “non-sensory episodes that merely seem sensory to the subject” (Smith, 2008, p. 5). Why support an imagination view?

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4.2.3 Phenomena that support imagination

In support of his argument that dreams are imagination and not hallucination, Ichikawa (2009, 2016) presents several arguments that together form an inference to the best explanation about the nature of dreaming. While not intended to be deductively valid proofs that dreams consist of imagery alone, “collectively, I take them to suggest a preponderance of evidence in favor of imagery over percept” (2009, p. 108). This provides a strong challenge to the hallucination model. However, later I argue that these are not sufficient to support a reductive imagination model. Rather, taking the evidence into account, an inference to the best explanation supports a pluralistic model according to which dreams are neither solely imagination nor hallucination. A common view, shared by both Ichikawa and Augustine, is that we are not morally responsible for what we do in a dream. Augustine argues You commanded me not to commit fornication … You gave me the grace and I did your bidding … But in my memory … the images of things imprinted upon it by my former habits still linger on. […] When I dream, they not only give me pleasure but are very much like acquiescence in the act […] Yet the difference between waking and sleeping is so great that even when, during sleep, it happens otherwise, […] I was not responsible for the act, although I am sorry that by some means or other it happened in me. (Augustine, 1876) For Augustine, then, differences between waking and dreaming mean we are not morally culpable in dreams. Ichikawa provides two further reasons in support of this view: dream acts have no consequences, and they occur under the “in the dream” operator. Thus, dream acts and intentions are not real acts or intentions. This is one way in which dreaming and imagining are the same since it is neither wrong to imagine nor dream about murdering someone. If we imagine or dream of intending to murder, we are still not morally culpable. The fact that dreams have no consequences is one reason to support the imagination model. When we are awake, our actions have effects. Similarly, what happens in the waking world affects us. This is true whether we are awake or asleep. When sleeping, a car backfiring will most likely wake us up. On the other hand, if a car backfires in the dream, it will not wake us up. This, according to Ichikawa, demonstrates the differential causal power of a percept and a dream occurrence. Dreams do not have the same causal power as external percepts. Ichikawa argues that we have no reason to believe, say, that it’s something specific about sound waves hitting our ears

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that wakes us. Rather, this is just another way that dreams are more akin to imagination. Our dream “beliefs” also have no causal power, since dream beliefs do not appear to play many of the same functional roles as do prototypical beliefs. They are not connected with perceptual experience in the way that typical beliefs are, and they do not seem to motivate action in the way that typical beliefs do. (2009, p. 114) Waking beliefs are causally efficacious, whereas dreamed and imagined “beliefs” are not. If I imagine what it would be like to believe in unicorns, the imagined belief has no causal power, whereas really believing in unicorns would cause me to plan a trip to see one or read about them. Dreams, like imaging and not like perceiving, can be indeterminate in terms of presentation. For example, the experience of the body can be underrepresented (Windt, 2015). Schwitzgebel (Schwitzgebel, 2002, 2003, 2017; Schwitzgebel et al., 2006) provides an example of indeterminacy of colour. In the 1940s and 1950s, many reported dreams in black and white, leading some to believe that all dreams are experienced this way. However, aside from this period, dreams have generally been reported in colour. What might explain this? Schwitzgebel considers three options. First, that black and white media changed the content of dreams, second, that media changed the way dreams were reported and third, that dream content is indeterminate in colour. It is unlikely that media would have a stronger influence on dreaming than life in general, since most of our experience is in colour, excluding the first option. The second option requires explanation and evidence as to why our reporting would change despite the experience remaining the same. The last option is Schwitzgebel’s preferred theory. If you find yourself disinclined to think that novels, or the images evoked by novels, are properly described as being either in black and white or in full color, then you might likewise find yourself hesitant to apply the terms ‘black and white’ or ‘colored’ to dreams. Perhaps dream-objects and dream-events are similar to fictional objects and events, or to the images evoked by fiction, in having, typically, a certain indeterminacy of color, neither cerise nor taupe nor burnt umber, nor gray either. (Schwitzgebel, 2002, p. 756) If this is the case, that makes dreaming more like imagining, which can also be indeterminate in colour. In contrast, visual percepts could not be of indeterminate colour. According to Ichikawa,

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if our actual experiences in dreams are of indeterminate color, much as the experiences we often experience while imagining fictions are, then it shouldn’t perhaps be too surprising if, after the fact, we turn to our common experiences with visual experience in fiction-based, imaginative contexts, to describe our experiences. Those of us who are used to imagining along with color stories, because we see them on television and film, will describe our dreams as colored. […]. So the imagination model may provide the best explanation for disagreement about color sensation in dreams. (Ichikawa, 2009, p. 109) If the best explanation for the historical change in dream colour reporting is that dream colour is indeterminate, then according to Ichikawa, the imagination model is the best description of dream phenomenology. There is also empirical evidence in support of the imagination model. While it is a common belief that babies, perhaps even foetuses, can dream, Foulkes (1999) argues that children learn how to dream as they learn to imagine spatial imagery. Young children tend to report simple imagery upon waking up rather than full-fledged dreams. This could mean that imagining and dreaming require the same cognitive mechanisms. There is also a correlation between the ability to dream and imagine in adults, since “performance in waking imagery tests is a good predictor […] of dream frequency in adults” (Ichikawa, 2009, p. 109). People with aphantasia, the inability to imagine visually, at times report non-visual dreams (Keogh et al., 2021; Solms, 2014). Foulkes’ conclusion that “imagination must be a critical skill in dream-making” (Foulkes, 1999, p. 90). This view is “very friendly” to the imagination model according to Ichikawa. Overlapping cognitive mechanisms are evidence that dreaming is a type of imagining. You may have experienced falling asleep whilst daydreaming and having the daydream shift into a dream. For Ichikawa, this supports the imagination model. For there to be a “smooth experiential transition between the waking daydream and the sleeping dream” (Ichikawa, 2009, p. 115), daydreaming and dreaming must be phenomenally similar or even indistinguishable. It is unlikely that we can have such a seamless transition between imagining and hallucinating. Rather, when we fall asleep during daydreaming, we simply shift from one type of imagining to another. Further to this, dreaming, like imagination, is subject to the will in a way that is distinct from perception. Imagination is subject to the will in that we can choose to imagine whatever we like. I can imagine a purple elephant that flies around in my childhood home. Perception involves agentive interaction with the environment, and although I can choose where to look, whether to close my eyes or pick up objects to inspect them

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more closely, I cannot decide to see things differently. If I percieve a red cup in front of me, I can’t decide to see it change colour if I want it to. It does not even make sense to try to consciously choose to see a red cup as blue or feel pleasure instead of pain. Although we do not have complete control over dreams, “it is possible for something to be subject to the will, and not yet under voluntary control” (Ichikawa, 2009, p. 116). It makes sense, in a dream, to try to make a red object look blue, although one might not succeed. Like annoying songs stuck in our heads, dreams are both involuntary and subject to the will. We can try to banish the annoying song from our thoughts, and we may succeed or fail. Lucid dreams, dreams in which we realise we are dreaming, often allow the dreamer to control the dream environment, sometimes to a high-level (Lemyre et al., 2020). This demonstrates that dreams are indeed subject to the will. Even in non-lucid dreams we are “unconsciously authoring our dreams; authoring is an active notion” (Ichikawa, 2009, p. 117). We create our dreams without realising our agency. Some of us have had the experience of waking up and then consciously deciding to re-enter the dream that just occurred. Although rare, this is a further reason that dreams are subject to the will. After re-entering a dream, “there is often a consciously introspectable transitional period in which one experiences the dream with more reflective access than is typical; such experiences can be much like waking imagination” (ibid., p. 115). Dreams are, thus, more like imagining than perceiving. While compelling, we have strong reason to reject a reductive imagination model of dreaming. Hallucination can indeed occur in dreams even if dreams are not by definition hallucinatory. 4.3 The imagination model is overly reductive

The imagination model does not account for dream phenomena that are best understood as perceptual, thus the imagination is not a plausible account of all dream experiences. I argue that dreams can at times be hallucinatory, but they vary along a spectrum between imagining and hallucinating. A single dream can involve both imaginative and perceptual features or be one or the other. To support this view, first I respond to the arguments made by Sosa and Ichikawa. 4.3.1 Countering arguments for imagination

Here I argue that the previously outlined evidence in support of a reductive imagination model of dreaming is insufficient considering the broad range of dream experience that occurs. Rather, Sosa and Ichikawa make a

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more plausible argument against hallucination as a full description of dreaming. In contrast with Sosa and Ichikawa’s view about forgetting our waking memories or simultaneously holding inconsistent memories, there are two convincing reasons to think that forgetting and replacing memories in dreams is likely. Firstly, dreams are considered by many to be delusional (Rosen, 2022; Scarone et al., 2007; Wilkinson, 2015; Yu, 2009, 2010). Dreamers, like those undergoing delusions, can entertain implausible beliefs. Secondly, dreams are amnesic-- we lack access to our latent beliefs-- so it is plausible that I forget that I am in bed. Hobson and colleagues (2000) argues that “dreams are delusional; we are consistently duped into believing that we are awake unless we cultivate lucidity” (p. 799) while Solms describes the main characteristics of dreaming as “hallucination, delusion, disorientation, negative affect, attenuated volition, and confabulatory paramnesia” (Solms, 2000, p. 848). A rough characterisation of delusions is that they are belief – like mental representations that manifest an unusual degree of disconnectedness from reality. Delusions are problematic to categorize because they seem to exhibit features of both belief and imagination. […] [While a person with] Capgras delusion might act differently toward their friends and family as a result (the delusion thus can motivate like belief), she might not draw all the inferences on her overall worldview that her delusional thoughts demand (the delusion thus is circumscribed like imagination). (Liao & Gendler, 2011, p. 87) Delusional beliefs can be irrational and inconsistent with our other beliefs, and this seems to be the case in many dreams. Dreams are often compared with waking delusions that seem to share many cognitive and experiential attributes (D’Agostino et al., 2013; Gerrans, 2014; Hobson & Voss, 2011; Rosen, 2022; Wilkinson, 2015). Many of us have experienced dreams in which a person who looks like a stranger is identified as someone familiar. This “delusional misidentification or hyperidentification for people [that occurs in dreams] corresponds to a well-known neurological condition, called Frégoli syndrome, whereby an unknown person’s face is erroneously recognised as a familiar person, despite the lack of any obvious physical resemblance” (Schwartz and colleagues, 2005, p. 435). This is apparent in the following dream report: “[…] I had a talk with your colleague, but she looked differently, much younger, like someone I went to school with, perhaps a 13-year-old girl” (p. 434). Similarly, Capgras delusion, the delusional belief that one’s loved ones have been replaced, is also experienced in dreams.

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I am at one of those mad bidding auctions, where someone starts bidding on an object that they are not too keen but gets carried away and very much into it. It seems that the person bidding is my father, but it really isn’t. (Rosen, 2022, p. 77) Delusions, unlike dreams, are often associated with brain lesions. Patients with Frégoli syndrome have damage to right ventral temporal areas and prefrontal regions of the brain. This leads to impaired experience of inputs, in particular, a change in affective response towards their relatives, partners, or close friends. Such injury might lead to the observed disconnection between face recognition and emotional response areas of the brain (Anderson, 1988). Similarly, Capgras delusion may be caused by brain lesions from injury or drug use (Corlett et al., 2010). While the dreaming brain is not lesioned, it does display specific hyperactivations and deactivation that could serve the same functions as a lesion, as discussed in Chapter 1. The variation of activation, both between stages and within stages, explains why an individual may experience different delusions at different times. Schwartz and colleagues (2005), for example, note that Frégoli-like symptoms in dreams might relate to an activation of the FFA and temporal areas in the absence of selective reciprocal constraints between these regions and in the absence of monitoring from prefrontal areas (that are deactivated during human sleep as revealed by PET studies), accompanied by an activation of the amygdala providing a feeling of familiarity. (p. 435) In general, the deactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and area of the brain that is implicated in the ability to make rational inferences and evaluate perception, and the lack of binding in dreams (Revonsuo, 1999) may contribute to this delusion-like experience. Thus, the altered brain can explain why we have irrational beliefs that conflict with waking beliefs. Further to this, dreams appear to display a wide variety of delusions that are akin to waking monothematic, or singlethemed, delusions. Dreamers can experience something akin to “delusional misidentification syndromes” or “reduplicative paramnesia for places” (Schwartz et al., 2005, p. 435). Places in dreams can appear familiar despite having no similarity to the identified location, such as being in my house despite the house looking completely different. Discussed in more detail in Chapter 7, dreamers also seem to have experiences akin to reverse intermetamorphosis, which is “the belief that there has been a physical and psychological change

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of oneself into another person” (Breen et al., 2000, p. 75). Patients with this disorder believe they are someone else, and when confronted with a mirror, may describe features entirely different from their own. Breen and colleagues (2000) report of RZ, a female patient in her 40s who believed she was her 60-year-old father. She described her reflection as being of a man with a beard. Some dream reports contain similar features, and we can dream of being someone else. Dreams also demonstrate grandiose delusions, the beliefs of having powers, such as telekinesis, or being special (Rosen, 2022). Dreams at times seem more like delirium (Hobson, 1997), a type of polythematic or multiple themed delusion, instead of specific monothematic delusions described earlier. However, for simplicity here I will focus on examples of monothematic delusions. Monothematic delusions have a single theme in contrast with polythematic delusions which can have a variety of changing themes. According to the two-factor approach to monothematic delusions, there is a first neuropsychological impairment that presents the patient with new (and false) data, and the delusional belief formed is one which, if true, would explain these data. […] There is a second neuropsychological impairment, of a belief evaluation system, which prevents the patient from rejecting the newly formed belief even though there is much evidence against it. (Coltheart, 2005, p. 154) Delusions, in this view, occur when a patient experiences false data but is then unable to evaluate it for plausibility and does not reject implausible explanations. Capgras delusion causes a lack of affective response towards familiar people (Ramachandran & Blakeslee, 1998). Under the two-factor explanation, Capgras patients may then question whether their loved one has been replaced by a robot or clone. The second impairment prevents the odd explanation from being rejected. While there are competing one-factor theories (Pacherie, 2009) two-factors seem to capture both the unusual experience and the odd inferences that occur in dreams. The dream itself plays the part of the first factor, causing strange experiences. Binding failure, the inappropriate bringing together of multiple features of experience (Revonsuo, 1999; Revonsuo & Tarkko, 2002) could lead, for example, to a lack of affective response towards a dreamed loved one, as with Capgras, or a sense of familiarity towards strangers, as with Frégoli. The lowered cognitive capacity during dreams plays the second factor, causing dreamers to accept unusual explanations, such as a stranger in fact being a loved one. Dream reporting has several limitations, one being that we cannot compare what is reported with what was originally experienced (see Chapter 3). Other nuances arise in this context, however, making it difficult

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to determine the nature of the experience. Let’s say I report a dream about being my father. When confronted with a mirror in a dream, the reflection shows my father’s face. If I report this, should it be assumed that I see my father in the mirror? When RZ reports seeing her father’s face in the mirror, it is unclear whether she actually hallucinates and sees a person with a beard, or if there is some other explanation for her report, such as delusional confabulation. In other words, it is unclear whether this is due to a first factor hallucination when looking in the mirror or something to do with the second factor, cognitive deficits. When I wake up and report the dream, it is a non-delusional person making the report since I have woken and am not delusional when awake. This might make us interpret the dream as one in which my father’s face was indeed in the mirror since we usually take dream reports at face value, excuse the pun (Windt 2013). In contrast, RZ continues to be delusional when making the report. Waking delusions are “immune to rational revision” (Metzinger, 2003, p. 380); the patient cannot be convinced to change their belief irrespective of conflicting evidence. RZ’s relatives unsuccessfully try to convince her that she is not her father. Delusions can make the individual confused as to what is going on. Reduced cognitive capacity leads to this occurring in dreams, but after waking I can make a report using all of my cognitive faculties. I don’t believe the dream is real, but I realise weird experiences can occur in dreams, so reporting seeing my father’s face in the mirror may be accurate of the experience. The two-factor approach to delusions provides a plausible explanation for some dream experiences, although not all dreams are delusional, as discussed in Chapter 2. Dream delusions, however, seem inconsistent with dreaming as imagination, since these types of delusions do not normally occur while imagining. When we wake up from dreaming, we are at times puzzled by the weird beliefs and inferences we made in the dream. This suggests that we do indeed have beliefs about the dream world while dreaming and that they can be irrational or even delusional, contradicting Ichikawa and Sosa’s arguments. Similarly, the imagining mind may at times display reduced cognitive capacities when an individual engages in relaxed mindwandering, however, as Ichikawa acknowledges, imagination does not involve irrational inference-making in the way dreams and delusions seem to. The delusional nature of dreaming seems a plausible explanation for how we can hold dream beliefs that conflict with our waking beliefs.3 Not only can dreams appear delusional, but they also suffer from memory deficits (see Chapters 2 and 6). Contradicting Sosa and Ichikawa’s claims about latent beliefs, there is reason to believe that can we forget our waking autobiographical, semantic, and procedural memories. Dreamers appear to experience temporary amnesia. Ichikawa’s point that this isn’t the usual way memories are forgotten and replaced is fair,

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but the dream state does not necessarily emulate “usual” wake states. It might seem odd that our latent beliefs are entirely replaced in dreams, but that need not be the case, they simply become inaccessible due to changes in sleeping cognition. I can truly believe I am being chased by a lion in sleep since I no longer have access to memories of being in bed. Although we aren’t always entertaining unusual, irrational beliefs when dreaming, we do usually forget having gone to sleep even in mundane dreams. I might be in bed, close my eyes, then later find myself walking down the street. This kind of dream seems mundane, and my actions appear rational, but I may not pay attention to how I got there or what happened a few minutes ago. Such absence of scrutiny seems common and a consequence of changes to the sleeping brain. Further to this, some dreams can be entirely rational, such as false awakening in which I believe I have woken up in bed, or lucid dreams in which I realise I am dreaming. These dream beliefs may not contradict any of my waking beliefs, although it seems these types of dreams are relatively rare. Amnesia and delusion-like experience does occur in dreams. These arguments provide a plausible explanation as to why dream beliefs can contradict waking beliefs. What should we make of these delusional beliefs, or dream beliefs in general? I find the “in the dream” operator account of dream beliefs and other mental states implausible. In my view, action, belief, and thought require separate analyses and different categorisation. Let’s look at the proposition “if I dreamed I was doing X, then I was not, in fact, doing X”. It seems plausible, in most circumstances, that dreaming of doing something entails not doing it, although it is possible to dream of doing the thing you are actually doing. “I dreamed I was lying down” does not, for example, imply that I was not lying down. Rather than saying dreaming of doing X implies not doing X, perhaps it is more plausible to say that dreaming of doing X doesn’t imply doing X. This issue aside, what about the proposition “if I dreamed I was thinking of X, then I was not, in fact, thinking of X”. This seems less clear. Cases of believing and thinking in dreams are not obviously analogous to cases of acting or events happening. If I wake up and report “in the dream, I thought about Descartes’ Meditations”, it would appear that I am remembering thinking about the Meditations. It is counterintuitive to say that “I was only dreaming about thinking, so I was not really thinking anything at all”. The memory of having thought about the Meditations would have to be a false memory. Remembering “I was being chased by a lion” is false because no real lion was involved, but remembering “I had an experience as if I was being chased by a lion” may be true. In the same way, I can remember imagining being chased by a lion, and the memory of the experience, as long as it is an

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accurate depiction of the experience, is not false. If I was to report “in the virtual reality I thought about Descartes’ Meditations”, whatever we are to say of the nature of VR experience, the thought about Descartes occurred as normal. Being in a virtual reality does not imply that no thoughts really occur. I am thinking about Descartes’ Meditations regardless of whether I am in a virtual reality or dreaming or imagining at the time. Perhaps the confusion here comes from the idea of “imagining that I am thinking about Descartes’ Meditations”. It is conceivable to imagine being on a beach and also to imagine that I am thinking about the Meditations without actually thinking about them. One can also imagine feeling pain without actually feeling pain or counterfactually imagine experiencing an emotion that I am not feeling now (Rosen and Trakas, fw). However, one can also imagine a scenario and feel real emotions in response to it, such as imagining being at a loved one’s funeral, or alternatively, thinking about the Meditations while imagining that you are doing so on a beach. So, the “in the imagination” operator is more complex and doesn’t automatically negate any mental state that falls under it. Similarly, “in the dream”, like “in the virtual reality” doesn’t imply that one does not in fact think. I can think of X whether in a dream, in a virtual reality, awake in the real world, or while imagining. To claim that any thinking that occurs whilst asleep is not really thinking seems implausible. There are some further complexities, however. I could have a dream at T2 during which I remember thinking about the Meditations two weeks ago, at T1, despite the fact that I had not really been thinking about them at T1. This, however, is analogous to a waking false memory of thinking about the Meditations at T1. We can certainly have false memories in dreams as we do when awake. I can also misremember what state I was in when something occurred. I might think about Descartes in a dream and then misremember that I was awake when this thought occurred. In my assessment, thinking about Descartes can occur in a dream, so the only error I am making is about what state I was in when that thought occurred. The fact that it occurred in a dream does not mean the thought never really occurred. Another reason to reject this distinction between real thoughts and dream thoughts comes from one of Ichikawa’s own arguments. If I can be daydreaming and seamlessly transition into a dream, I might start off thinking about Descartes, then continue this line of thought as I daydream and then, as I fall asleep, continue thinking about Descartes in a dream. It seems arbitrary to say that my transition from thought while awake to dream thought in sleep negates the continuation of the thought. It is more plausible to say I simply continue thinking about Descartes throughout waking, daydreaming, and then dreaming. A real thought that occurs during a dream episode is just that, a real thought.

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As suggested in the previous discussion about delusions, dream beliefs are interesting and can be complicated to categorise. Further to the irrational and delusional nature of some dream beliefs, one could say that dream beliefs refer to the dream world instead of the real world. Since the dream world is not real, perhaps dream beliefs are not real either because they are about something that is not real. Let’s consider the proposition “in my dream, I believed that Descartes did not write the Meditations”. The dream world may be one in which Descartes did not write the Meditations, thus the belief, in some sense, is true. I can also have waking beliefs about the dream world. I might believe (now) that in the world of my dream last night, the Meditations were written by Descartes’ mother. These beliefs are about the content of a separate world and are a type of belief even if it is not clear what the truth conditions for these beliefs are. Can I be wrong about who wrote the Meditations in my dream? I might, during a lucid dream, believe Descartes did not write the Meditations in the real world, but when I wake up, I realise that my dream belief was false. This does not imply that I did not entertain the belief, rather it was just a false belief. This contrasts with waking up from a dream about flying and realising I was not flying at all. The truth or falsity of a belief held during a dream may depend on which world the belief refers to, but whether I hold the belief is a separate issue. Simply saying that I did not have any beliefs because they occurred under the “in the dream” operator is not a plausible approach. What makes a proposition a belief (not just a quasi-assertion, or, say, an acceptance, see Dub, 2017) is whether it has certain functional relationships with other activities in mind. Being asleep is insufficient to entail that any propositions entertained cannot be beliefs. Another argument against the “in the dream operator” approach is the realisation that I am dreaming. In a lucid dream, I come to believe that I am dreaming. It seems this is both an actual belief and a true belief. Sosa argues, “if one is only dreaming, then one cannot be pondering any such question as whether one might be only dreaming” (Sosa, 2005, p. 18). In this view, however, it is hard to explain lucid dreamers who can signal that they are dreaming (see Chapter 1) or the well-documented pre-lucid dreams in which, during a dream, one considers whether one might be dreaming (Windt & Metzinger, 2007, p. 46). Ichikawa argues that lucid dreams support the imagination model in terms of agency; they demonstrate that dreams are potentially subject to voluntary control, but he does not explain exactly what should be made of the belief “I am dreaming” when it occurs in a dream. Perhaps since the thought “I am dreaming” falls under the “in the dream” operator, I cannot really believe that I am dreaming. This would be consistent with Malcolm’s view (see chapter 3). However, if my decisions to control the dream also fall under the “in the

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dream” operator, it is unclear whether this is real agency or only quasiagency. This seems to be a contradictory aspect of Ichikawa’s argumentation. He appears to deny actual beliefs but accepts dreams as being subject to the will. However, we should either say that actual beliefs occur, which supports my previous argument, or deny that dreams are subject to the will since I would only be dreaming of willing. We should accept that the belief “I am dreaming” during a dream is an actual belief for three main reasons. First, as discussed in Chapter 1, lucid dreaming is often the consequence of performing reality tests such as trying to levitate, watching the words on a page morph, and noticing a bizarre event. If I perform a reality test and then, from this, conclude that I must be dreaming, this displays rational thinking and belief formation similar to how beliefs can be adopted during waking. The burden of proof lies with those who wish to deny that the belief “I am dreaming” is not a “belief“ in the normal sense. Secondly, lucid dream thoughts and beliefs can carry over from the dream to waking. On waking from a lucid dream in which I believe “this lion is a dream-lion”, usually I would maintain the same belief. There is little reason to think that the in-dream belief is a quasi-belief which then morphs into an actual belief on waking. Ichikawa notes “from an internal point of view, for the dreamer quasi-affirmation is importantly like affirmation and indistinguishable from it” (Ichikawa, 2008, p. 523). In the lucid dream case, however, the belief is indistinguishable from the perspective of the waking person also in that I continue to maintain the belief after waking. Thirdly, signalling while lucid dreaming affirms the dreamer’s belief to an outside observer. The affirmed belief is not only true and justified but also causally efficacious. It causes the dreamer’s real eyes to move and causes external observers to then analyse these eye movements . It is thus hard to deny that actual beliefs occur during sleep. If real beliefs occur in lucid dreams, we should carry this logic forward to non-lucid dreams also. Finally, if dreams are a type of imagining, both dreaming and imagining should involve quasi-beliefs and not actual beliefs. When I imagine fighting a dragon, I believe I am imagining fighting a dragon, but not that I really am fighting a dragon. I might also believe that fighting a dragon is fun or scary, or a variety of other imagination-related beliefs. One might say I quasi-believe I am fighting a dragon, or that I make believe that I am fighting a dragon, but this does not apply to all related beliefs. It is also possible to temporarily lose touch with reality and believe I am fighting a dragon (see section 4.3.2). If lose touch with reality, I may entertain false beliefs as opposed to quasi-beliefs. Either way, not all imagination-related beliefs are quasi-beliefs.

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Can we be morally culpable in dreams? Ichikawa argues that since dreams and imagination are not subject to moral judgement, whereas other thoughts and actions are, dreams are more like imagining than perception. However, in my view, we can be morally culpable for actions that we dream and that we imagine. Matthews (1981) argues that moral responsibility is judged primarily on whether we have agency or control over a thought or action. Bad thoughts could be immoral if I have agency over them. If I gleefully imagine torturing my boss and enjoy revelling in the gory scene, it seems I am doing something morally wrong. Matthews uses an example from Jesus’ sermon on the Mount “whosoever looks at a woman to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (ibid., p. 50). Although an extreme interpretation, it is plausible that both imagining and dreaming are subject to ethical assessment. Intentionally torturing someone in a dream and gaining pleasure from it could be considered immoral. Moreover, using lucidity techniques to intentionally enter or try to enter a dream in order to experience carrying out immoral acts can be morally wrong (Cowan, 2023). While many dream actions are not subject to voluntary control, this is not necessarily the case for all dream actions. Lucid dreaming might be a poor example since knowing you are dreaming usually means knowing you aren’t really torturing your boss, so this might not be morally wrong. However, we can still have agency while failing to realise we are dreaming (Rosen, 2015, 2018, 2021). Ichikawa contends that dreams are subject to the will, in which case we should also consider them as subject to moral assessment. Further, if we can be morally culpable for waking action, dreaming, and imagining, then this is not a convincing argument to support the imagination view. I disagree with Ichikawa’s contention that dreams are necessarily causally inefficacious. Ichikawa’s first argument, that external sounds but not dream sounds wake us up, is not convincing. Firstly, dream sounds can wake us up. Scary or surprising sounds in nightmares as well as surprising imagery or intense emotions can wake the dreamer. In fact, the definition of “nightmare” is a scary or disturbing dream that wakes the dreamer up (Gieselmann et al., 2019). Further, external sounds are only likely to wake us up in certain stages of sleep (Rosen, 2019). Arousal thresholds alter depending on the stage of sleep and the age of the subject. As we age, we are more likely to be woken by sounds and our arousal threshold to sound is higher in stage 4 NREM sleep than in REM sleep (Busby et al., 1994). This indicates that the causal efficacy of dream sounds and external sounds varies depending on circumstance. If we take for granted that external sounds are more likely to wake a dreamer, this is still not a good argument for causal efficaciousness.

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Sounds may be the most efficacious in the world in which they occur. A loud noise in the dream would cause us to turn towards the sound or react within the dream. This is also the case when we are awake – we react in the waking world. External sounds cause us to wake up because they have the strongest effect in the waking world and emanate from the waking environment. Alternatively, these sounds can sometimes be incorporated into the dream narrative without waking us up (see Chapter 3). Sounds that cannot be incorporated into the narrative may cause a jarring effect, possibly explaining why stimuli from either within the dream or external to it can sometimes wake us up. We are more likely to be aroused when shocked or startled. External sounds are likely to be more difficult to incorporate into the dream narrative than internal sounds. This doesn’t mean that they are more causally efficacious, however. I also disagree with Ichikawa’s claim that dreams do not motivate behaviour. Firstly, a dream certainly can motivate action within the dream. Sosa and Ichikawa regard all such action as being under the “in the dream” operator, thus it does not count as actual action, so I will leave this disagreement aside. Of course, when I wake up from a dream of being chased by a lion, I do not continue to act as if I am still being chased by a lion because I realise I am safe in bed. Yet one might not realise they were dreaming for a period after having a convincing false awakening. I once had to check my phone to see if a friend had messaged me because I dreamt of getting a message and didn’t realise I had only been dreaming. Further, strong emotions in dreams can have lasting effects after waking, such as continuing to feel fear after waking from a nightmare (Lara‐Carrasco et al., 2009). Some dreams might even be disturbing enough to contribute to trauma (Bonamino et al., fn). Dreams have many effects on the body while asleep, such as sweating, twitching, and eye movements, all of which occur outside of the “in the dream” operator. A more extreme example is REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) in which sufferers act out their dreams (see Chapter 2). Here, dream beliefs can have similar causal power in the real world as waking beliefs. Murders have been carried out by people with RBD whilst asleep (for example, see Mahowald et al., 2005). Similarly, imagination and make-believe can have an affective response; we cry or laugh when reading a fictional tale, although Walton (1990) refers to such emotions as quasi-emotions. Irrespective of how we should class these emotions, this is another type of causal efficacy. Another line of argument not taken up by Ichikawa or Sosa but that might support their view is that dream intentions are inefficacious because it is the dream self who intends. The dream self is not the waking self, and the dream scenario may be different from real life to the extent that that

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the waking self never forms an intention at all. Although in Chapter 6 I argue that the dream self may indeed be a different person from the waking self, this is not the case for all dreams. In fact, “vicarious protagonist” dreams are rare. Some artists claim to be influenced by their dreams such as Salvador Dali, who was inspired to paint scenes from his dreams. Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” was inspired by dreams and Otto Loewi’s medical discovery that led to a Nobel Prize was attributed to an idea he had in a dream. There is some evidence to suggest that practicing an activity in a dream can improve one’s waking performance (Schädlich et al., 2017). Thus, dreams do impact waking life. It is not clear why Ichikawa thinks that imagination itself is causally inefficacious as it can play an important role in forming intentions: visualising can inspire and help me achieve my goals, and mental rehearsal can also help improve my performance (Carruthers, 2006). Imagination certainly plays an important role in predicting future events, mental rotation tasks and countless other functions. I thus find Ichikawa’s discussion about causal efficaciousness unconvincing. I am also unconvinced by the argument from the indeterminacy of dream colour. If dreaming is a type of imagining, why was imagining not reported in black and white in the 1940s and 1950s? If we dream and imagine in an indeterminate colour, and watching TV only affects how we report dreams, not imagination, we require some explanation of why this occurs. There isn’t evidence for imagining being reported as black and white during this time period, although it is undoubtedly possible to imagine this way. Further, it is also possible for perceiving to be indeterminate in colour. Noë and colleagues (2000) note that, despite our beliefs about colour perception, we only perceive colour across a small area of our visual field. The appearance of colour in our peripheries is created by our previous experiences and inferences about how things should look, and by the fact that the eyes move around so that we remember what colour objects are, not direct perception of colour stimulus. This might be interpreted as experiencing indeterminate peripheral colour: it feels like we see colour, but these colours are indeterminate. If this is the case, it is another commonality between perceiving, dreaming, and imagining, not an argument for the imagination model. While the argument about dream development in children is compelling, I find it also unconvincing. The ability to mentally conjure a multimodal space without input from the external environment requires complex cognitive abilities. Foulkes, arguing that dream experience is “imaginal”, notes that “you have to be able, in your mind’s eye, to simulate, at first momentarily and later in more extended episodes, a conscious reality that

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is not supported by current sense data and that you’ve never even experienced before” (1999, p. 117). Simulating a novel “reality” requires complex cognitive processes which may develop along with our ability to perceive and comprehend the external environment as well as with our ability to remember or imagine an external environment. Further, the ability to report complex narratives may also develop during this period, meaning that children are learning to report their dreams and imagination, not necessarily learning to have them. Blindness occurring before the age of 5–7 causes an absence of visual dreams as well as the inability to visualise imagery, whereas blindness after this stage does not prevent visualisation or visual dreaming. There is clearly a link between the processes of dreaming, perceiving, remembering, and imagining. However, if all capacities develop together, then this provides no support either for imaginative or perceptual theories. When an expert tool user imagines using their tools, similar neural mechanisms fire as when that tool is being used (Théoret & Pascual-Leone, 2002). This doesn’t mean that imagining using tools and using tools are exactly the same process. Currently, we cannot rely on evidence of neural mechanisms to define whether phenomenal content is imaginative or perceptual since we do not know the distinct, specific neural correlates of perceiving or imagining. Overlapping brain areas only gives us a vague understanding of the cognitive picture. Neural evidence is neutral on the issue of whether dreaming is imaginative or perceptual. It only shows that, potentially, mechanisms for perceiving, imagining, and dreaming develop together. Further, contra the aforementioned evidence about aphantasia, the inability to imagine visually, some individuals with aphantasia do dream visually (Whiteley, 2020), providing an argument against the view that dreaming and imagining involve the exact same mechanisms. Ichikawa’s description of imagining that shifts seamlessly into dreaming is anecdotal. Firstly, the most immersive types of dream typically occur in REM sleep (see Chapter 1), which is preceded by other sleep stages, so it is unlikely that daydreaming seamlessly shifts into a full-blown immersive REM dream. Perhaps imagining can indeed shift into more imaginationlike dreaming that occurs in the early stages of sleep. Hypnagogic hallucinations and sleep thoughts usually occur during sleep onset, so it is more likely that a daydream would develop into a sleep-onset type dream than an REM dream (Hobson, 2002). Secondly, as discussed in Chapter 3 and in the following section, daydreams can contain hallucinatory elements. If imagination can become more hallucinatory during sensory deprivation, then the onset of sleep, which shuts out much of the external environment, could potentially become hallucinatory. There may be a seamless shift from imagery to perception that starts before the

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individual falls asleep. The possibility of shifting between imaginative and perceptual experience, as we will see, supports a pluralistic model of dreaming. The most plausible explanation is that dreams can involve imaginative and perceptual elements; sleep onset dreams may be more imaginative, whereas REM dreams are more hallucinatory. Finally, are dreams really subject to the will, as Ichikawa suggests? The distinction between being “subject to the will” and being “voluntary” is a difficult matter. Smallwood and Schooler (2006) argue that “mind wandering is a situation in which executive control shifts away from a primary task to the processing of personal goals” (p. 946). So executive control is less involved in such cases of mindwandering, a type of mental activity that is primarily an automatic and less goal-driven process during which the mind is distracted from the task at hand. Since these processes are automatic and unconscious, mindwandering can be seen as less voluntary than, say, intentionally imagining, but it might still be “subject to the will”. However, I would argue that some cases of imagining, for example, intrusive thoughts caused by post-traumatic stress, are neither voluntary nor subject to the will. Like having a song stuck in your head, sufferers of thought intrusion can experience a sense of lacking agency over their thoughts, but in extreme cases, individuals known as “voice hearers” (David, 2010), form the belief that their thoughts are not their own and emanate from an external source. Ichikawa defines an experience as being subject to the will if it makes sense to attempt to exert one’s will over it. For “voice hearers”, it may not make sense to attempt to control the voices since they do not think of them as internally generated, and they have no success trying to control them. Many unconscious mechanisms are not subject to the will. In contrast, some percepts can be controlled; you can choose to see the duck/rabbit illusion as either a duck or a rabbit. Similarly, dreams may be more or less voluntary with lucid control dreams being highly subject to the will (Gackenbach & LaBerge, 2012). There is reason to think that some dreams are not subject to the will. If we lack a sense of agency over such dreams (Rosen, 2021), it might not make any sense to try to control them. Assuming that non-lucid dreams are subject to the will because unconscious processes internally generate them seems question begging. Unconscious processes generally are not subject to the will and are usually involuntary. I have attempted to show that a reductive imaginative model of dreams is not well founded. Now I argue that a pluralistic account according to which dreams can be either imaginative or perceptual or contain elements of both is a more plausible account of dream experience.

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4.3.2 A Spectrum

It is not clear whether imagining and hallucinating can be strictly demarcated, at least from the first-person perspective. There is some debate as to whether hallucinating should be seen as a kind of perception or quasi-perception (Nanay, 2016). If we define perception as needing a “relation to an actual token object” in the external environment (p. 127), hallucination lacks this necessary feature, so it is not perceptual. Dreaming also lacks relation to token objects, thus if hallucination is not perception, neither is dreaming. Defining perception in relation to real objects may be theoretically problematic (Siegel, 2005). For my purposes here, I’ll leave aside the issue of relations with objects, and think of hallucination as being at least perception-like from the first-person perspective. What, then, distinguishes imagination from perception? One possibility that Ichikawa (2009) rejects is phenomenal vividness. One might think hallucinations, perceptions and illusions are vivid in that they, for example, are clearer, more saturated and more detailed that imagined objects. However, Ichikawa makes a good point that strong images can be more vivid than weak percepts. Imagination simulates nonimaginative states, and these simulations can be more or less vivid. Those with hyperphantasia have particularly vivid imagination (Zeman et al., 2020) whereas someone with poor eyesight sees less vividness. However, generally speaking, perception tends to be more vivid, involve greater “mental strength” (Morales, 2018) and has a sense of presence – objects of perception appear to be real, accessible, and able to be interacted with (Rosen & Barkasi, 2021). Ichikawa thinks that being subject to the will is a better indicator of perception than vividness, but as we have seen, being subject to the will is contentious. In normal circumstances, we seem to easily be able to distinguish between images and percepts.4 Even if we realise that something is a hallucination or illusion, it appears present. Normally, my imagination and perception are easy to distinguish; this may not be due to the vividness of the experience, but perhaps one of the aforementioned qualities. However, there is a complex relationship between imagination and perception, and at times they may be difficult to distinguish. While there are clear ends of the spectrum that are easily discerned as imagining and perceiving, and this is the norm, the inbetween cases make it likely that there is a spectrum between the two. Further, I argue that dreaming can be anywhere along the spectrum between imagining and hallucinating. Contradicting the imagination model, some types of dreams are best classed as hallucinatory. From the first-person perspective, the distinction between hallucination and imagination can, at times, be surprisingly unclear. Subjects left in a

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dimly lit room and allowed to let their minds wander reported bizarre imagery with vivid hallucinatory content, sometimes forgetting they were in a lab (Foulkes & Fleisher, 1975). In 15% of the 118 reports, subjects stated that they forgot that they were in a lab whilst experiencing vivid “hallucinatory” imagery. Another 4% “represented discrepant patterns such as the subject believing in the reality of his percept, but also knowing that he is in the laboratory” (p. 69). This contrasts with 38% of subjects who retained full contact with reality and control of thoughts with no hallucinatory experience. Twenty per cent did not control their thoughts but retained awareness of being in a lab and had no hallucinations, while 22% did not experience hallucinations but lost awareness of being in a laboratory. Although hallucinating whilst mindwandering is not the norm, these experiments suggest that it is relatively common in certain settings. It may be that the mind is more likely to hallucinate instead of imagine in situations where there is not much competing imagery or sensation. Or perhaps the relaxed state means participants pay less attention to the nature of their experience. Foulkes’ work suggests that imagination can involve vivid hallucination-like experience. Further, the lack of grounding in reality suggests that these mental states are less subject to the will than, for example, intentional or effortful imagination. This weakens the distinction between mindwandering and hallucinating . Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH), when a subject believes someone is talking to them but the stimulus is hallucinated, provide another example of the unclear distinction between hallucination and imagination. AVH is common in those with schizophrenia (Brasić, 1998) but AVH can be experienced by anyone. One influential explanation is that AVH is caused by an impairment in one’s ability to monitor internal speech, which is misidentified as external sound (Frith, 1992; Frith & Done, 1989). Langdon and colleagues (2009) found that in individuals suffering from AVH, “the self-monitoring of inner speech is defective, but that inner speech per se need not be unusual” (p. 662). If a simple misattribution of the speech source changes internal thought to hallucination, this suggests the phenomenal difference between the two is minimal. Perhaps one’s belief about whether the stimulus is internally or externally generated is the major distinction. While imagination can be misattributed as perception, alternatively, perception may also shift towards imagination. Hobson and colleagues (2000,) hypothesises that waking perception can be divided into several sub-states, some induced with psychoactive drugs, sleep deprivation, or hypnosis. Sleep deprivation often causes one’s experience of the world to have a surreal quality or appear less vivid. When psychoactive drugs induce hallucination, subjects can often distinguish between real and

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hallucinated objects. Thus, hallucinations can lack realism, which suggests that hallucinations can fall along the spectrum between perception and imagination. In opposition to Ichikawa’s description of imagination being exclusively subject to the will, hallucinations can also be consciously influenced. Perception can also be mischaracterised as hallucination: a bizarre event occurs and the perceiver doesn’t believe what they see. They could also mistake a perceived object as imagination. Although perception and imagination are distinct and they are often clearly distinguishable from a first person perspective, there are some inbetween states or unclear cases that share elements of both. In light of this, imagining and perceiving can at times be difficult to distinguish, suggesting a continuum between imaginative and perceptual experience. Perceiving tends to be more vivid, detailed, realistic, less subject to the will, involve a sense of presence and is experienced as externally generated. Imagining is usually faint, less realistic, and perceived as internally generated. Nonetheless, the above examples show that this is not always so. There are a variety of in-between states, and some experiences can shift between the two, such as inner speech shifting to auditory verbal hallucination. 4.4 Both perceptual and imaginative

A non-reductive, pluralistic conception of dream content captures a greater variety of dream phenomena than the reductive imagination model. Dreaming can be imaginative or hallucinatory, but at times contains elements of both. In the following section, I outline dream elements which are best classed as hallucinatory but will continue this discussion in more detail in Chapter 5, where I discuss the hallucination model. 4.4.1 Dreams which are perception-like or hallucinatory

Hypnagogic hallucinations, the sensations we have upon falling asleep, usually consist of vestibular sensations, the feeling of the body moving in space. Many hypnagogic hallucinations involve the feeling of falling, rocking, or flying. Such sensations are often not associated with a dream narrative, but can be sufficiently intense to wake the dreamer up, for example, “as soon as I fell asleep I could feel myself moving just the way the sea moved our boat when I was out fishing today” (Hobson, 2002, p. 7). I often feel as if I am falling at sleep onset and wake abruptly, flinging my hands in front of me. One might class these sensations not as full-fledged dreams, however, they do provide evidence that hallucinatory sensation does at times occur during sleep. Vestibular sensations are also a commonly reported element of REM sleep dreams. If these

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sensations feel so real that they can cause a dreamer to wake up with a start, it is plausible that they are similar to perception and involve aspects of hallucination. Some have argued that such sensations are in fact illusions instead of hallucination, that the feeling of falling is in fact awareness of the loss of the sense of the real body (Windt, 2015, 2017). However, if this is the case, then certain elements of dreaming are indeed perception – they are simply illusory rather than hallucinatory. Further, the fact that hypnagogic hallucinations and REM dream sensations can wake the dreamer up is another example of causal efficacy in dreams. An equally compelling example of hallucinatory dreams is false awakenings in which the dreamer believes they have woken up despite still dreaming (Buzzi, 2011). Metzinger (2006) notes that false awakenings can be “a near perfect facsimile of the dreamer’s actual sleeping environment” (p. 61). Metzinger refers to the belief that one was just dreaming as “postlucidity” (p. 63). Although mindwandering can be quite realistic, it is unlikely to have the same level of convincingness as a false awakening. After all, in the Foulkes & Fleisher experiments mentioned earlier, subjects were instructed to relax and let their minds drift. In contrast, those undergoing a false awakening can be very attentive to their surroundings. Unlike imagining, when you really do wake up after a false awakening, it can be hard to discern if it was a dream. I have had several experiences in which I could not tell the difference between the dream room and my real room after waking. I have at times had to carry out checks to see if the things that occurred in the dream really did occur, such as the previously mentioned case of checking to see if a friend had messaged me. An empty message box confirmed that the event was a false awakening. This exemplifies both the causal power of dreams and the possibility of dream belief carrying over into waking, contradicting Ichikawa’s argument about dream beliefs and causal efficacy in the waking world. If the “in the dream” operator applies to false awakenings, I would only have a quasi-belief that I had woken up. However, the fact that I can wake up for real and continue to believe that a false awakening was a real awakening seems problematic for this view. This means I now have the actual belief, at least temporarily, that the dream was real, but this is based on a quasi-belief that arose during the false awakening. Imagination model theorists must explain how a quasi-belief can become an actual false belief simply by waking. The best explanation in my view is that I continue to have a false belief, not that my quasi-belief becomes a false belief. Hypnagogic hallucinations and false awakenings are not the only examples of hallucinatory dreaming. I argue that many dreams involve perceptual elements. Most dreams occur in REM sleep, although dreaming can happen at any stage. Dreamers report vestibular and proprioceptive

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sensations as well as visual and auditory hallucinations. As with auditory verbal hallucinations, speech from dream characters is often experienced as being externally generated. However, one might simply argue that we are unable to pay attention to the nature of our experience due to cognitive incapacities that occur during sleep and falsely remember hallucinating. Lucid dreams, although rare, are good evidence against this interpretation. Lucid dreamers often report that, upon gaining lucidity, they can pay close attention to the dream world and are surprised by the vividness and realistic nature of the dream. Jouvet (1999) discusses a lucid dream report taken by Van Eeden (1913), in which he carries out experiments on the dream world: I dreamed that I was standing in front of a table near a window. Various objects were lying on the table. I was fully aware that I was dreaming, and I thought about the experiments I could perform. […] I took a fine crystal glass from the table and gripped it in my fist as hard as I could, thinking all the time how dangerous it would be to do that while awake. The glass did not break, but when I looked at it later, it was broken! It had broken as it should have, but a little late, like an actor missing his cue! This gave me the very curious impression of being in a fake world, very well faked, but with small mistakes … (Jouvet, 1999, p. 77) The description of the sensation of being in a fake world is more indicative of a virtual reality – a perceptual experience of being in a world as opposed to imagination. The close attention paid to the world also suggests this is not simply a case of mistaking imagination for hallucination. Dreams, it seems, can be multimodal, immersive experiences involving both imaginative and perceptual elements. I have outlined the most compelling examples of perception-like dream elements. However, certain elements of dreaming are more accurately described as imagination-like. 4.4.2 Imagination in dreams

Not all dreams are vivid, realistic, and convincing. Rather, some consist primarily of thoughts and simple images. A sleep percept, in Hobson’s terminology, occurs when the sleeping mind wanders, often reflecting on waking concerns. “I kept thinking about my upcoming exam and about the subject matter that it will contain” (Hobson, 2002, p. 7) This example is similar to imagination or mindwandering (Foulkes, 1975). Jouvet (1999) also gives examples of imagination-like dreams

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reported after slow wave sleep awakenings that display thought-like mentation and simple imagery. “I had been dreaming about getting ready to take some kind of an exam. It had been a very short dream. That’s just about all that it contained. I don’t think I was worried about it” (p. 66). Hobson claims that these experiences do not fit the criteria of “dreaming”. In agreement, Jouvet describes these experiences as “closer to thinking than dreaming, less vivid, less visual, more conceptual, subject to greater voluntary control, more related to everyday life, and it occurs during lighter sleep. The content is less emotional, even pleasant” (1999, p. 66). Hobson argues that this type of dream can be explained simply in terms of brain activation that reflects, in sleep, the dreamer’s […] concerns about the future (anxiety about the exam). The residual brain activation of sleep onset and early night sleep is enough to reproduce faithfully a very small part of waking experience. (Hobson, 2002, p. 10) However, one reason to consider sleep thoughts and sleep mindwandering as part of the wide variety of dream phenomena is that, as previously argued, we can shift from more perception-like to more imagination-like dreaming. It is unclear where to draw the line between imagining and hallucinating. Further, phenomena that do not fit a “standard model” as described by Hobson should not necessarily be disregarded since the standard model is based on assumptions about these phenomena. While some dreaming is best described as purely imaginative, we can also imagine while perceptually dreaming. In such cases, one imagines an event that is not occurring in the dream. Dreams that involve imagining are common, especially lucid dreams where the dreamer experiments with their surroundings by trying to cause an event to occur by imagining it. For example: While swimming with dolphins, I visualize scooping water with my hands. I think the streaks of bubbles might entertain them. The imagined movement becomes very vivid as my visual field is suddenly filled with bands of shimmering water … (Keelin, 2007, p. 50) Here, the imagination becomes hallucinatory, and I suspect this occurs in many dreams. The imaginative mind consciously or unconsciously leads to the hallucination of what has been imagined. The same could be true for drug-induced hallucinations, where imagination can affect the

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perceived hallucination. However, here it should be kept in mind that some dream experiences themselves are more akin to imagination and imagining whilst dreaming is a separate case. In the following report, a dreamer attempts to maintain control over their experience during sleep onset. While falling asleep, they pay close attention to the sensations experienced and imagine events in the hope of causing them to happen. As I relaxed more deeply, I felt my entire body become paralyzed although I could still seem to feel its position in bed. I reasoned that this feeling was most likely a memory image and that actual sensory input was cut off just as much as motor output. I was, in short, asleep. At this point, I imagined raising my arm and experienced this imagined movement as if I had separated an equally real arm from the physical one I knew to be paralyzed. Then with a similar imagined movement I, as it were, “rolled out of my physical body entirely.” I was now, according to my understanding, wholly in a dream body in a dream of my bedroom. (LaBerge & Rheingold, 1991, p. 87) The dreamer appears capable of imagining events that are not part of the dream world, although this can cause the imagined event to subsequently occur. It is conceivable that one can also imagine during a non-lucid dream. Further, this suggests a spectrum between imaginationlike experience and perception-like experience in a dream. The dreamer seems to, at times, imagine and this can shift into hallucination, as previously argued. If dreaming is a type of imagination, according to Gregory (2023) it is implausible that we could imagine whilst dreaming just as it is implausible to independently imagine two things at once. Similarly, McGinn describes that while you are dreaming about swimming in mud, say, you cannot find yourself contemplating other things, such as what to do about the sagging gutter in your roof. But, of course, in real life you can easily be swimming in mud (well, water) and be thinking about your gutter problem: your mind can wander from what you are currently perceiving and you can still be perceiving it. (McGinn, 2005, pp. 138–139) Dreaming, according to McGinn, is like watching an engaging film: our attention is rapt and unable to stray. However, if the dream world necessarily captures our attention in such a way, or alternatively, it is a type of imagination, we should not be able to dream of one scenario while

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imagining something else. It seems that in lucid dream experiments, however, dreamers do just that. While lucid dreams should not be seen as representative of all dreams, this does provide an argument against the imagination model and McGinn’s view for some dreams. One way around this would be to argue that only lucid dreams are not imaginative, but none of the imagination theories discussed here take this route. For McGinn, we simply pretend to believe the dream content or suspend our disbelief and become engaged in the experience as we do when watching movies or reading fictional stories (McGinn, 2005, 2006, see Chapter 2). Similarly, some lucid dreams could be seen as a type of pretence since, after we realise that the dream world isn’t real, we still go about navigating and interacting with it. Yet this suggests that non-lucid dreams are not a form of pretence. False awakenings, REM sleep behaviour disorder and hypnagogic hallucinations in particular provide good evidence that not all dreams are pretence. Dreams can at times be engaging, and at times be like pretence, but in many dreams, we simply believe we are awake. Like the imagination model, McGinn’s view is overly reductive and fails to describe the wide variety of dream experiences. 4.5 Conclusion

The imagination model of dreams, that to dream is to imagine and not to have perceptual hallucinations, captures important features of some dreams. However, this view is overly reductive and does not describe all dreaming. The evidence suggests that perception-like experience does occur in dreams, especially in false awakenings and hypnagogic hallucinations. REM sleep behaviour disorder and lucid dreaming provide further evidence against such a reductive view. However, in the next chapter, I argue against the hallucination model as a complete explanation of dreaming. Rather, dreams contain both imagination-like and perception-like elements. Here I have argued against Ichikawa and Sosa’s view that beliefs, agency, morality, and the development of dreams support a strong abductive argument for dreaming as imagination. Further, I have argued that although there are clear and distinct cases of each, perception and imagination exist on a spectrum in which there are in-between, unclear cases. This sets the stage for the pluralistic approach towards dream phenomenology argued in more detail in the following chapter. Evidence for a spectrum view of perception and imagination is that imagining while relaxing in a dark room can lead to vivid hallucinatory content which is similar to perception. Further, perception can contain unrealistic and non-vivid content.

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I argue that dreaming can fall anywhere on the spectrum between imagination-like and hallucination-like experience, and a single dream can contain a variety of hallucinatory and imaginative elements. Stages of sleep correlate with, although do not necessitate, what kind of dream experience occurs. For example, imaginative dreams are more likely during slow wave sleep dreams while REM sleep is more closely correlated with hallucination. Thought-like and less vivid mentation and imagination can also occur during a perceptual dream, whereas some perceptual elements can occur during an imaginative dream. Elements that are clearly perception-like are vestibular sensations that have the causal efficacy to wake the dreamer up. This may occur during sleep onset where dreaming is experienced mostly as thoughtlike but interspersed with some sensations. The variety of experiences that can occur during sleep supports the view that dreaming is a multifaceted phenomenon, and a pluralistic account best captures this variety. Notes 1 There are cases in which imagination can entail such beliefs, but this is less common, as I discuss later. 2 McGinn’s (2005, 2006) fiction model of dreams is that when we dream, we suspend disbelief the same way we do when we watch engaging movies or read fictional stories. Our absorption in the story explains our response to dreams, including emotions and thoughts. I briefly argued against this view in Chapter 2. 3 Note that a “global deficit in reasoning abilities” ( Kunert et al., 2007, p. 197) seems to not apply accross the board. Monothematic delusion sufferers only seem to have poor reasoning capacity in regard to the specific delusion. However, it does seem that dreamers often have global reasoning deficits. 4 Belief that one is perceiving and not imagining does not entail that one is perceiving since we can be wrong about the nature of our mental states, however, it is a strong indicator.

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Carruthers, P. (2006). Why pretend? In The architecture of the imagination: New essays on pretence, possibility, and fiction. Oxford University Press. Coltheart, M. (2005). Conscious experience and delusional belief. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 12(2), 153–157. Corlett, P. R., Taylor, J. R., Wang, X. J., Fletcher, P. C., & Krystal, J. H. (2010). Toward a neurobiology of delusions. Progress in Neurobiology, 92(3), 345–369. doi: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2010.06.007 Cowan, R. (2023). Dreams, morality and the waking world. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 104(1), 2–29. D’Agostino, A., Aletti, G., Carboni, M., Cavallotti, S., Limosani, I., Manzone, M., & Scarone, S. (2013). Are delusional contents replayed during dreams? Consciousness and Cognition, 22(3), 708–715. David, A. (2010). Why we need more debate on whether psychotic symptoms lie on a continuum with normality. Psychological Medicine, 40(12), 1935–1942. Descartes, R. (1986). Meditations on first philosophy with selections from the objections and replies (J. Cottingham, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. Descartes, R., & Cress, D. A. (1998). Discourse on method. Hackett Publishing. Domhoff, G. W. (2003). The scientific study of dreams: neural networks, cognitive development, and content (1st ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Dub, R. (2017). Delusions, acceptances, and cognitive feelings. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 94(1), 27–60. Flanagan, O. J. (2000). Dreaming souls: Sleep, dreams, and the evolution of the conscious mind. Oxford University Press. Foulkes, D. (1999). Children’s dreaming and the development of consciousness. Harvard University Press. Foulkes, D., & Fleisher, S. (1975). Mental activity in relaxed wakefulness. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 84(1), 66. Frith, C. D. (1992). Consciousness, information processing and the brain. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 6(3), 436–440. Frith, C. D., & Done, D. J. (1989). Experiences of alien control in schizophrenia reflect a disorder in the central monitoring of action. Psychological Medicine, 19(2), 359–363. Gackenbach, J., & LaBerge, S. (2012). Conscious mind, sleeping brain: Perspectives on lucid dreaming. Springer Science & Business Media. Gerrans, P. (2014). Pathologies of hyperfamiliarity in dreams, delusions and déjà vu. Frontiers in Psychology, 5(97). doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00097 Gieselmann, A., Ait Aoudia, M., Carr, M., Germain, A., Gorzka, R., Holzinger, B., … Lancee, J. (2019). Aetiology and treatment of nightmare disorder: State of the art and future perspectives. Journal of Sleep Research, 28(4), e12820. Gregory, D. (2023). Imagining a way out of dream skepticism. Erkenntnis, 1–18. Hobson, J. A. (1997). Dreaming as delirium: A mental status analysis of our nightly madness. Paper presented at the Seminars in Neurology. Hobson, J. A. (2002). Dreaming: An Introduction to the Science of Sleep. Oxford University Press.

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Hobson, J. A., & Voss, U. (2011). A mind to go out of: Reflections on primary and secondary consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(4), 993–997. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2010.09.018 Hobson, J. A., Pace-Schott, E. F., & Stickgold, R. (2000). Dreaming and the brain: toward a cognitive neuroscience of conscious states. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23(6), 793–842; discussion 904-1121. Hobson, J. A., Hong, C. C.-H., & Friston, K. J. (2014). Virtual reality and consciousness inference in dreaming. Frontiers in Psychology, 5(1133). doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01133 Ichikawa, J. (2008). Skepticism and the imagination model of dreaming. Philosophical Quarterly, 58(232), 519–527. Ichikawa, J. (2009). Dreaming and imagination. Mind and Language, 24(1), 103–121. Ichikawa, J. (2016). Imagination, dreaming, and hallucination. Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Imagination, 149–162. Ichikawa, J., & Sosa, E. (2009). Dreaming, philosophical perspectives. In T. Bayne, P. Wilken, & A. Cleeremans (Eds.), Oxford companion to consciousness. Oxford University Press. Jouvet, M. (1999). The paradox of sleep: The story of dreaming. MIT Press. Keelin, B. (2007). Diary from lucid dream camp. The Lucidity Institute. Keogh, R., Pearson, J., & Zeman, A. (2021). Aphantasia: The science of visual imagery extremes. In Handbook of clinical neurology (Vol. 178, pp. 277–296). Elsevier. Kunert, H. J., Norra, C., & Hoff, P. (2007). Theories of delusional disorders: An update and review. Psychopathology, 40(3), 191–202. LaBerge, S., & Rheingold, H. (1991). Exploring the world of lucid dreaming. New York: Ballantine Books. Langdon, R., Jones, S., Connaughton, E., & Fernyhough, C. (2009). The phenomenology of inner speech: Comparison of schizophrenia patients with auditory verbal hallucinations and healthy controls. Psychological Medicine, 39(4), 655–663. Lara‐Carrasco, J., Nielsen, T. A., Solomonova, E., Levrier, K., & Popova, A. (2009). Overnight emotional adaptation to negative stimuli is altered by REM sleep deprivation and is correlated with intervening dream emotions. Journal of Sleep Research, 18(2), 178–187. Lemyre, A., Légaré-Bergeron, L., Landry, R. B., Garon, D., & Vallières, A. (2020). High-level control in lucid dreams. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 40(1), 20–42. Liao, S. Y., & Gendler, T. S. (2011). Pretense and imagination. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 2(1), 79–94. Macpherson, F. (2013). The philosophy and psychology of hallucination: An introduction. Hallucination: Philosophy and psychology (pp. 1–38). MIT Press. Mahowald, M. W., Schenck, C. H., & Bornemann, M. A. C. (2005). Sleep-related violence. Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports, 5(2), 153–158. Matthews, G. B. (1981). On being immoral in a dream. Philosophy, 56(215), 47–54.

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McGinn, C. (2005). The matrix of dreams. In C. Grau (Ed.), Philosophers explore the matrix. Oxford University Press. McGinn, C. (2006). Mindsight: Image, dream, meaning. Harvard University Press. Metzinger, T. (2003). Phenomenal transparency and cognitive self-reference. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2(4), 353–393. Metzinger, T. (2006). Reply to Hobson: Can there be a first-person science of consciousness. Psyche, 12(4), 2. Morales, J. (2018). The strength of the mind: Essays on consciousness and introspection. Columbia University. Nanay, B. (2016). Imagination and perception. In A. Kind (Ed.), Routledge handbook of philosophy of imagination. Routledge. Noë, A., Pessoa, L., & Thompson, E. (2000). Beyond the grand illusion: What change blindness really teaches us about vision. Visual Cognition, 7(1-3), 93–106. Pacherie, E. (2009). Perception, emotions, and delusions: The case of the Capgras delusion. Delusion and self-deception: Affective and motivational influences on belief formation (pp. 107–125). Psychology Press, Taylor and Francis Group. Ramachandran, V., & Blakeslee, S. (1998). The unbearable likeness of being. Independent on Sunday, 22, 22–24. Revonsuo, A. (1995). Consciousness, dreams and virtual realities. Philosophical Psychology, 8(1), 35–58. Revonsuo, A. (1999). Binding and the phenomenal unity of consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition, 8(2), 173–185. doi: 10.1006/ccog.1999.0384 Revonsuo, A., & Tarkko, K. (2002). Binding in dreams-the bizarreness of dream images and the unity of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 9(7), 3–24. Rosen, M. G. (2015). I’m thinking your thoughts while I sleep: Sense of agency and ownership over dream thought. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 2(3), 326–339. doi: 10.1037/cns0000064 Rosen, M. G. (2018). Your dream-body: All an illusion? Commentary on Windt’s account of the dream-body in Dreaming. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 25(5-6), 44–62. Rosen, M. G. (2019). Dreaming of a stable world: vision and action in sleep. Synthese, 198(17), 4107–4142. Rosen, M. G. (2021). Sleeper agents: The sense of agency over the dream body. Human Studies, 44, 693–719. Rosen, M. G. (2022). Dreaming as a virtual reality delusion simulator: Gaining empathy whilst we sleep. International Journal of Dream Research, 15(1), 73–85. Rosen, M. G., & Barkasi, M. (2021). What makes a mental state feel like a memory: Feelings of pastness and presence. Estudios de Filosofía, 64, 95–122. Scarone, S., Manzone, M. L., Gambini, O., Kantzas, I., Limosani, I., D’agostino, A., & Hobson, J. A. (2007). The dream as a model for psychosis: An experimental approach using bizarreness as a cognitive marker. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 34(3), 515–522. Schädlich, M., Erlacher, D., & Schredl, M. (2017). Improvement of darts performance following lucid dream practice depends on the number of

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5 DREAMING AS HALLUCINATION

5.1 Introduction

Many of us think that when we fall asleep, we have vivid, realistic hallucinations that are sometimes bizarre but can also be convincing replicas of waking reality. This description of dreams, however, is quite perplexing. How does the mind generate these experiences when it is mostly shut off from the environment? How realistic are dreams, really? If dreams are instead, simply imaginative, this gives a relatively simple explanation to these questions. Whatever mechanisms generate waking imagination would be sufficient for dream generation too. However, in the previous chapter, I argued that imagination is not a full explanation of dream experience. Our intuitions about hallucination are right, I argue, at least about some dreams. While dreaming shares many commonalities with imagining, it is plausible that we do sometimes hallucinate in sleep. The hallucination model is considered a perceptual model of dreaming by those who consider hallucination a type of perception. According to perceptual theorists, when I dream that I am walking down a street, I perceive that I am walking down the street although I am not perceiving in the normal sense. There is no real environment causing my experience, but rather it is internally generated by my mind. Revonsuo and colleagues (2015a, 2015b) and Metzinger (2009, 2013) refer to this as perception of a “virtual world”, whereas Hobson and colleagues (Hobson, 2002b; Hobson et al., 2000) and Windt and Noreika (2010, 2017a; Windt & Noreika, 2011) describe dream perception as similar to a waking hallucination except mostly shut off from the external world. DOI: 10.4324/9781003367710-6

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Some dreams are indeed very convincing simulations of waking experience and have aspects similar to waking hallucination or even virtual reality. However, just as the imagination model is an overly reductive description of all dreaming, the hallucination model, similarly, doesn’t tell the whole story. Likely, some dreams are not hallucinatory. I begin by discussing the dream world and the extent to which we can consider it hallucinatory or like a virtual reality, arguing for a “pluralistic” model of dreams. I then discuss the dream body, focusing on the variety of body representation that can occur in dreams. The most realistic dream bodies, I argue, can be represented as having both body image and body schema. 5.2 Dreaming as hallucination

The hallucination model is intuitively appealing since when we wake from dreams, we report experiencing a dream world that can be quite convincing. We very rarely realise that the dream world is only dreamed, which counts against the idea that dreams are imagination. While some theorists define hallucination as a type of perception in the absence of real objects, others instead claim that the word perception should only apply when real objects are involved (Nanay, 2016). For my purposes here, I will refer to hallucinated sensations as perceptions, although I acknowledge that this is not universally accepted. Since dreamed “percepts” mostly do not involve stimuli from the external environment, most percepts experienced in dreams must be hallucinations. Crane (2005) defines a hallucination as “an experience which seems exactly like a perception of a real, mind-independent object, but where there is no mind-independent object of the relevant kind being perceived” (Crane, 2005, p. 40). One might argue that hallucinations need not be exactly like a veridical perception – they may involve less detail or be less stable and we may realise that a hallucination is not real; however, hallucinations appear to be “present” -accessible to the experiencer (Rosen & Barkasi, 2021). Hobson and colleagues (Hobson, 2002b; Hobson et al., 2000) and Windt (2010) describe dreams as hallucinations that occur during sleep when we are under an “input blockade” (Hobson et al., 2000, p. 825) that causes the senses to be offline. In contrast, one might think that dreams also involve some “illusions”, perception of real sensations from the sleeping body that are misinterpreted as coming from the dream body and world (Windt, 2015, 2017b). However, if we do experience illusions, this is evidence that dreams involve perception rather than simply imagination. Dreaming and waking hallucinations appear to share common phenomenological features. However, some features should not be considered hallucinations.

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I argue that while many dream elements can be appropriately described as hallucinations, the hallucination model does not take into account all dream phenomena. 5.2.1 Hobson’s hallucinations

The hallucination model is the most commonly held view of dreams (Hobson, 1988; McCarley & Hoffman, 1981; Snyder, 1970; Zadra et al., 1998). Like waking hallucinations, dreams involve internally generated imagery and other sensory modalities such as touch and sound. Waking hallucinations, however, are usually not isolated from the external environment, so we experience some hallucinated and some veridical perceptual elements. When we dream, in contrast, we experience “formed hallucinatory perceptions, especially visual and motoric, but occasionally in any and all sensory modalities” (Hobson et al., 2000, p. 799) while under an input and output “blockade”. We recieve little, if any, sensory stimulus from the environment and we are paralysed. Along with these hallucinogenic phenomenal properties, we undergo delusional thinking such that dreaming can be described as delirium. According to Kahn and Hobson (2005), during dreaming we are unaware that we are hallucinating, we cannot step back and reflect on the hallucination. This inability to step back and reflect is similar to what happens in waking during delirium (Hobson, 1997; Hunt, 1989), and by some psychotic patients. This component of thinking in dreaming is akin to delirium. (Kahn & Hobson, 2005, p. 436) The hallucinogenic nature of dreams is consistent with empirical findings which show that “regional brain autoactivation of the limbic and association cortex […] is at the root of the hallucinosis and emotional intensification while demodulation of the frontal cortex is at the root of the cognitive defects” (Hobson, 2005, p. 4), providing a neural explanation for why we undergo such experiences. According to this view, dreams are vivid hallucinations experienced during periods of cognitive deficit and rational incapacity. Dreaming is a type of delirious hallucination of the self in a world. Like waking hallucinations, dreams can be vivid and convincing (Jacobs & Trulson, 1979). More often than not, they are mistaken for veridical perception, and we only realise we were dreaming after waking. Jacobs and Trulson (1979) hypothesise that a decrease in serotonin reception and increase in dopamine function in the brain that occur both during

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hallucinogenic drug use and REM sleep partially cause the phenomenological similarities between dreaming and waking hallucinations. … certain aspects of hallucinogenic drug action, dreams, and amphetamine psychosis share phenomenological effects which are, in part, directly attributable to decreased central serotonergic neurotransmission. This is manifest primarily as changes in visual perception and affect. Additionally, an activation of brain dopamine function may also be involved, either directly or indirectly (as a result of decreased inhibitory control over dopamine-containing neurons). (p. 279) Neural similarities between the dreaming and hallucinating brain suggest dreams should be more like waking hallucinations than normal waking perception in terms of bizarreness and cognitive features. It is, of course, important to acknowledge the limits in our ability to read from neural images to determine phenomenal and cognitive features, as argued in Chapter 4. There are overlapping mechanisms between dreams, waking experience, hallucinations, and imagining. Also, the brain is in a state of flux while we are asleep. We rely primarily on reports to determine the content of dreaming. From dream reports, it appears that dreams are generally more multifarious and multimodal than waking hallucinations. We can experience any of the senses, although vision is the most commonly reported. Dreams can be bizarre, but at times they can be quite realistic and mundane (see chapter 2). Hobson (2005), however, denies that “dreaming (D) = waking (W) – afferent input (I)” (p. 5) because of the altered neuromodulation and activation. The dreaming brain supports a highly altered state of consciousness. When we are asleep “our brains are activated and fed internally generated data but we lack important cognitive capacities because our brain is aminergically demodulated. No wonder we can’t think straight in our dreams and can’t remember them later” (Hobson, 2005, p. 4). However, later neuroimaging studies suggest a more varied dreaming brain as well as dream experience (Kubota et al., 2011). Dreams, unlike most waking hallucinations, are immersive. We feel like we are in the dream and that the dream is the waking world. We also hallucinate a body that is distinct from, but can feel similar to, our waking bodies. Dreaming as hallucinogenic delirium does not describe the highly convincing, realistic dreams discussed in Chapters 2 and 4. With a focus on this immersive nature, Windt argues for an alternative to Hobson’s delirium account: the immersive spatiotemporal hallucination model.

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5.2.2 The immersive spatiotemporal hallucination model

Windt (2010) describes the phenomenological core of dreaming as immersive spatiotemporal hallucinations. In later works (2015, 2017a), she describes the experience of the body as primarily illusory; however, there is good reason to hold that the visual scene of the dream is hallucinatory. Many of the properties exhibited in dreams, such as bizarreness, intense emotional responses, vivid imagery, and low cognitive capacity, are not defining features of dreams in Windt’s view, since dreams are not necessarily bizarre or cognitively impaired (see Chapter 2). To define dreams, we need to describe the essential features that all dreams share in common. These features, for Windt, are their immersive experiential nature and the presentation of a dream world. Dreams are heterogeneous and variable (Hunt, 1989; Nielsen, 2019). While it is important to characterise the stereotypical features, certain dreams differ systematically from the standard description (Windt, 2010, p. 295). Lucid dreams can be cognitively equivalent to waking, false awakenings can be mundane and realistic, and not all dreams are visual, for example. Windt argues for a “minimal definition of dreaming” which is a set of “necessary and sufficient conditions for dreaming to arise, i.e., these conditions would be constitutive of dreaming in the metaphysical sense” (p. 296). While, for example, visual perception is one of the most common features, lesions on the occipital-temporal area can cause loss of visual dreaming and those who are blind from an early age do not dream visually (Kerr & Domhoff, 2004). From my own studies collecting dream reports,1 some individuals with aphantasia, the inability to imagine visually, report dreams in which they are blind. Dreaming does not, by definition, replicate waking life, though this may be common and is a key function of dreaming according to simulation theorists (Revonsuo et al., 2015b; Tuominen et al., 2019; Valli & Revonsuo, 2009). One debate is between discontinuity and continuity theorists, who, as the titles suggest, disagree about whether dreaming is continuous or discontinuous with waking life (Collerton & Perry, 2011; Hobson & Schredl, 2011; Horton, 2017). It is hard to deny, however, that many dream reports are bizarre whereas others can be quite mundane. Whether bizarre or mundane, for Windt (2010), a necessary feature of dreams is that they involve a self in a world. It should be noted that the dream self need not have a body (Occhionero et al., 2005; Occhionero & Cicogna, 2011). The self can be represented in a variety of ways “ranging from the absence of a self, to passive observation, to active participation, and to a double representation of the self” (Windt, 2010, p. 300). By absence of “self”, we might think of an absence of a bodily representation,

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but the dream self always has a first-person perspective. The dreamer may be an observer, not an active agent in the dream, and can be a bodiless perspective. The sense of spatial and temporal presence may be a crucial factor that distinguishes dreaming from dreamless sleep, but there is always a hallucinatory scene that is organized around an internal, spatiotemporal first-person perspective (1PP) as well as a sense of spatiotemporal self-location, i.e., the sense of occupying a space (even a point will be extended in a minimal sense), plus an experienced “now” and the experience of duration. (Windt, 2010, p. 303) Windt proposes that what is necessary for dreaming is the perceptual experience of immersion in a hallucinated space involving temporal duration. The experience need not have a specific sensory mode, such as visual, but can be in a variety of modes that are hallucinatory, immersive, and spatiotemporal. Importantly, of course, dreams occur during sleep, but interestingly, Windt is less confident about this feature. Given appropriate conditions, in Windt’s view, dreams can be reported accurately (Windt, 2013). Windt acknowledges reportability is not a necessary attribute and if, for example, it could be shown that dreams can occur during waking, she would concede this point. In this way, Windt is perhaps more inclusive than I am, as I would exclude experiences that don’t happen in sleep. The key element and one that is relevant to the discussion at hand is that dreams are immersive spatiotemporal hallucinations (ISTH). If dreams are a type of non-veridical perception, they might involve hallucinations, illusions, or both. Illusions are misperceptions of the properties of mind-independent objects. A half-submerged stick looks bent, and this is an illusion because it involves the misperception of the properties of the stick, not the perception of an object that doesn’t exist. An example of illusion in dreaming is when hospitalised burn victims feel pain from their injuries in their dreams (Nielsen, 1993; Raymond et al., 2002). Why might we consider these sensations as illusions rather than veridical perception? Firstly, the dreamer is misperceiving the pain as coming from the dream body, not the real body, thus they are in a sense misperceiving. Further, these sensations can be distorted. The experience of a pressure cuff can feel as if the dream arm is swelling, and the feeling of being horizontal can be misperceived as movement (Windt, 2015, 2017a). If there is a strong input blockade that is only occasionally infiltrated by real sensations, illusions would only be an occasional feature of dreams, so a hallucination model that includes some illusion is more plausible than an

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illusion model. Windt’s later work (2015, 2017a), however, argues for an illusion model of the dream body but a hallucination model of the visual dream world. It is difficult, however, to ascertain to what extent stimulus really does filter into dreams (Rosen, 2018, 2019) and it is unclear whether bodily experience should be classed as illusory or hallucinatory with some illusory components. The locus of the self in the immersive spatiotemporal model involves a “core body” present even in “selfless” or disembodied dreams. In bodiless dreams, this body is underdetermined; lacking visual representation or normal felt presence of a body but rather consists of a feeling of spatial presence; being located somewhere within a space. This phenomenological property of “being located at” does not require specific sensory data. There may be no visual or auditory data, for example, rather just a sense of occupying space. Also, this does not require a stable location as location can shift abruptly in dreams. Dreams can be a “bare feeling of spatiotemporal presence” (Windt, 2010, p. 304) but this is rarely reported, either because it is less commonly experienced or because the experience is more likely to be forgotten (Fazekas et al., 2019).2 Even in dreams where the dream body is represented, it may still be underdetermined due to the fact that we lack experience of specific body parts or sensations may be muted compared to waking experience (Windt, 2017b, 2018). The sense of spatiotemporal presence in dreaming is what distinguishes dreams from dreamless sleep. Interestingly, this means that hypnagogic hallucinations, internal percepts, and sleep thoughts (as discussed in Chapter 1) are not dreams. Several theorists disregard hypnagogic hallucinations as dreams (Alcaraz Sanchez, 2021; Hobson et al., 2000; Mavromatis, 1987). For Windt, hypnagogia should be classified instead as a sleep-wake transitions, not a dream. A minimal definition should help distinguish dreaming from types of conscious experiences during sleep or sleep–wake transitions that are typically considered as non-dreaming. Residual perceptions and sleep thinking, which are often thought to occur during NREM sleep, are an example of the former (see Hobson et al., 2000), hypnagogic or hypnopompic imagery occurring at sleep onset or upon awakening, from now on referred to as “hypnagogia,” is an example of the latter. (p. 296) Hypnagogia, unlike dreams, often involves snapshot-like representations, a simple sensation, or the sense of looking at some visual pattern rather than the sense of being immersed in a world, which excludes them from her definition of dreaming.

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While the immersive aspect of the ISTH thesis does convincingly describe of a wide range of dream phenomena, I argue that even Windt’s (2010) minimal conditions exclude many dream experiences unnecessarily. These minimal conditions for dreaming provide an arbitrary boundary between similar sleep experiences such as simplistic dreams and hypnagogia, and this view doesn’t account for the possibility that dreaming can shift between experiences. I argue that hallucination and sense of spatiotemporal presence are not necessary attributes of dream experience. Virtual reality models of dreaming, like ISTH, stress the importance of immersion but describe dreaming as a specific type of hallucination, a virtual reality. Interestingly, for Metzinger (2009) and Revonsuo (1995), there is a weaker distinction between mind-dependent and mindindependent objects than in commonly accepted. This leads them to the view that both dreams and waking experience are, in a sense, virtual. Dreams are merely virtual realities that are not restricted by external stimuli. 5.2.3 The dream world as virtual reality

Metzinger and Revonsuo describe dreaming as a perceptual experience of an internally generated virtual model. Dreams, while sharing many similarities with waking, are distinct from most waking hallucinations in that they are more multimodal and complex. Dreaming, for Metzinger (2009), not only contains the appearance of a world but also (in most cases) creates a fully embodied, spatially extended self moving around in a spatially extended environment. The virtual self thus born is an exclusively internal phenomenon in an even stronger sense than that of the waking self. (p. 135) Waking hallucinations, instead, are “typically restricted to an isolated type of phenomenal content in one or two of the sensory modalities” (Windt & Metzinger, 2007). Dreams involve a three-dimensional virtual global world model; we experience a dream as a world and not as simple images or other stimuli. The dream world model is integrated into a virtual window of presence; like waking, this world, from a first-person perspective, appears directly presented to us and we can interact with it. Most dreams are transparent: experienced as reality, not as a model of a world. Lucid dreaming, however, is a notable exception (Metzinger, 2003) since we realise the dream world is only a model of reality in such dreams.

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Waking is in fact a lot like dreaming, except that it is restricted by external stimuli. Waking experience also consists of a world model that is not a direct experience of the world around us. What is presented as the real world is composed by our senses and experienced transparently. Whatever world we are in, “the ontology of all the phenomenological worlds we enjoy – whether those of dreams, computer-generated models or waking ‘reality’ – is basically the same: the realities experienced are always ‘virtual’” (Revonsuo, 1995, p. 50). Further, both waking and dream experience are largely composed of inferences and predictions about the body and its place in the world (Hobson et al., 2014). This view contrasts with “naive realism”, the view that the phenomenology of perception is determined by objects in the environment, not internal representations (Beck, 2019). For the virtual world model view, the real world and dream world models differ only in that the generation of the real world model is restricted by sense data. Dreams involve a wide variety of conscious experiences that satisfy a certain set of constraints as opposed to an “all or nothing affair” (Metzinger, 2009, p. 2). On this we agree, however, our views diverge regarding the constraints. For Metzinger, dreaming involves the experience of a phenomenal self-model (PSM) that interacts with an environment (world model). This interaction is a “continuous and self-directed process tracking global properties of the organism” (Metzinger, 2010, p. 42). Dreaming consists of representations of a self in a world and our interactions with the environment are processed by the “processing system” (ibid., p. 29) in the brain. This involves, as with waking, conscious and unconscious processes that compose a spatial environment around us and the experience and control of a body that interacts with it. The world model is generated by complex data processing and sensorimotor integration and our first-person perspective is the mode of processing in which we determine the self (PSM) as being the perceiver of the world model or environment. From this, “a genuinely conscious self emerges at exactly the moment when the system is no longer able to recognize the self-model it is currently generating as a model on the level of conscious experience” (Metzinger, 2010, p. 42). A PSM navigates both the real world and dream world model, although dreams consist primarily of internally generated data. The generation process, both in dreams and waking, is transparent to the mind that does the generating. We never experience these models as such; but rather we experience worlds. We go about as naïve realists as if our experiences are of the external reality. Sometimes in dreaming, however, we become aware that we are dreaming. When we lucid dream, for Metzinger, we lose this transparency and sense of naïve realism that we

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experience both in non-lucid dreaming and in waking life. The sense of being in direct contact with reality disappears. The sense of reality is replaced with the knowledge that one is in a virtual reality which is “simulational” and “misrepresentational”. When we become lucid, “the conscious model of reality is suddenly experienced as a model” (Metzinger, 2003, section 7.2.5). Lucid dreaming may be the only state in which transparency is lost to such an extent. It can be argued, however, that despite realising the dream is virtual, we still do not gain access to the generation process that creates the environment. The world itself is still generated by the unconscious mind, so perhaps even lucid dreams are not entirely transparent. Although we may realise that what we experience is a dream and gain control over some of the elements in the dream, few if any lucid dreamers can entirely control the dream environment generation process and many lucid dreamers still report that their dream experience is realistic and wake-like. Under a predictive processing account, perception involves subconsciously forming predictions and inferences about the world which can be generated more quickly than stimuli can be processed (Wiese & Metzinger, 2017). Thus, much of what we experience is a prediction rather than sense data from the world. This view makes an even stronger appeal to the waking world experience being a model. We are usually very accurate in our predictions, which is necessary for navigating the world, but our world model often includes misrepresentational aspects. In the rubber hand illusion (Botvinick & Cohen, 1998), subjects experience that their sense of ownership over their real hand shifts to a rubber hand. This is done simply by concealing one’s real arm and placing a rubber hand in view, then simultaneously stroking the real hand and the rubber hand. Many subjects, after 60–90 seconds, feel as if the rubber hand is their own hand. This effect has been replicated also in full-body illusions (Salomon et al., 2013). This shift in body ownership may occur due to the absence of visual information about the real hand leading to prediction errors. When a correlation between sense of touch and concurrent visual appearance of a “hand” being stroked is perceived, our self-model shifts to incorporate this rubber hand. Our perceptual experience of the visual field of colour is also, in a sense, an illusion. Since colour cones are mostly situated near the focal point of our retinas (Mather, 2016), we unconsciously infer colour in our peripheral vision, known as the “uniformity illusion” (Otten et al., 2017). This illusion is so convincing that most (myself included) will deny peripheral colour-blindness and find it surprising when tests, such as trying to guess the colour of a card in the periphery, reveal it to be the case.

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Predictions are also required for our bodies to interact with objects and to move in space. This is because the integration of stimuli into the world model is slow and complex, whereas predictions are more rapidly integrated and only need to be sufficiently accurate to avoid dangers and complete tasks. Phantom limb syndrome, the experience of having a limb despite the real limb being amputated, can happen when these predictions go wrong (Brugger, 2006). This false stimulus is a prediction about how the limb should be situated in space while the phenomenal self-model continues to form a model of the missing limb (see Section 5.2). These illusions reveal ways in which our perception of the real world is a model that is sometimes incorrect. Since dreaming is not restricted by external stimuli, dreaming can be seen as a “pure” form of consciousness (Revonsuo, 2006). Further to this, dreams demonstrate that external stimuli are not part of the minimal requirements for consciousness since they are neither sufficient nor necessary for conscious experience. According to this view, dreaming is an example of the barest form of consciousness – experience of a “self in a world”. Consciousness is a subjective virtual reality and dreaming is the purest form of this, unconstrained by stimuli. The phenomenal self-model immersed within a world model, in my view, describes many dreams, but excludes others. An opposing view, however, denies that dreams can be virtual realities entirely. 5.2.4 Not The Matrix

Virtual realities (VRs) that are indistinguishable from normal reality are not currently possible but are depicted often in the science fiction genre. These stories describe possible futures in which we cannot tell if we are in the real world or a virtual one. Prima facie, it seems that dreams are like these VRs. One might argue, however, that dreams are not virtual realities because they lack the kind of full blown consciousness we have while awake (Noë, 2007, see also Chapter 8) or that they are instead a type of imagination (see Chapter 4). Here, instead, I focus on Clark’s (2004) view that rejects dreaming as virtual reality due to their altered cognitive features. Realistic, immersive VR programs are improving rapidly, but the technology is not currently at the level that they could convince a user that the VR is the real world. Current VR games are experienced as world models, and do not have the transparency nor multimodality that dreams have, as described by Metzinger. However, we can look to sci-fi examples such as The Matrix (1999) or Existenz (1999) or countless others which depict computer-generated world models that are experienced

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transparently as if they are the real world. In these examples, the characters often cannot tell if they are in the VR or reality and navigate through the VR world model as if they are in the real world. In Existenz, while initially realising they are in a VR, the characters continually tap into virtual realities that exist within the main VR system, eventually forgetting which world is the real world. This also occurs in the dream within a dream scenario described in Inception (2010), where lucid dreamers forget they are dreaming, slipping back into non-lucid dreaming, or they experience false awakenings which they think are real. In The Matrix, the characters are unaware that they are in a simulation because they were born into it, but are eventually informed that what they see is only virtual. In each scenario, the system is indistinguishable from real life. The characters’ awareness of being in a VR is not due to the simulation being unrealistic, but due to being told that they are in a simulation or remembering entering the simulation. While the levels of dreaming in Inception do not depict dreams accurately -- entering dreams within dreams within dreams -- false awakenings, believing that you have woken up while still being in a dream, certainly do occur (Buzzi, 2011). For Metzinger and Revonsuo, as aforementioned, all perceptual experience is in a sense virtual, dreaming, or awake. In this view, the distinction between dreaming, waking, and being immersed in VR are the restrictions imposed by each system. The VR system is restricted by the rules of the computer program, the waking world by external stimuli, but the dream world is not restricted by any external source. Dreamers usually report that during the dream, they were unable to tell they were dreaming. This supports the view that dreams can be realistic virtual realities. However, Flanagan (2000, p. 168) and Sosa (2005)3 note that there are reliable indicators that we are not asleep. While awake, the events that we experience are reliably connected to other experiences that occurred earlier in the day. This is usually not the case in dreams. It is in fact our dysfunctional cognitive capacities in sleep that prevent us from realising we are dreaming while we are dreaming. After waking up, however, we can easily distinguish between waking and dreaming. In this view, dreams are not convincing world models like in Existenz, The Matrix, or even Inception. The only reason we cannot tell the difference between the poorly designed dream world and the real world is our cognitive impairment. For Clark (2004), like the scenarios in The Matrix or Existenz, when we dream, we believe the dream world is the real world, but unlike these sci-fi examples, in dreams we also believe bizarre occurrences are normal. When bizarre events occur in real life, we question whether our perceptions are correct, or what would possibly explain the strange occurrence. When

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programming errors lead to “glitches” in The Matrix or the experience of “déjà vu” in its inhabitants, these experiences are seen as odd and lead some people to question their reality, like the protagonist, Neo. When, later in the film, Neo accomplishes impossible feats, observers are amazed, and some realise that reality is not what it appears to be. As Clark notes, “Neo’s flying is seen by everyone as something remarkable, as proof of superhuman prowess, and is not simply accommodated courtesy of dampened critical and executive processing” (2004, p. 194). If I were to dream of Neo flying around, the bizarreness of this would likely go unnoticed due to my dampened critical and executive processing. Bizarre and even impossible events are unremarkable. It is only when pre-lucidity is achieved that the dreamer questions their surroundings. Pre-lucidity, thus, is more like a Matrix scenario where, like the protagonists of the film, we question our existence. However, unlike VR, lucidity in dreams is difficult to achieve and a lucid dreamer may slip back into unreflective, non-lucid dreaming after a short period (see Chapter 1). In The Matrix, once a character realises what is going on, they remain “woken up”. So, Clark maintains, dreams are not convincing VRs. Dreamers simply fail to question their surroundings due to cognitive defects brought about by the sleeping brain. In Clark’s view, dreams are not like the waking world or sci-fi VR. In waking reality and VR, we control our interactions with external objects and have a sense of agency, whereas in dreams we do not. In our dreams, we are not in control. Real dreaming, unlike many popular philosophers’ fictions, is an altered state, closely related to the states induced by chemical manipulations such as the use of (certain) medical or recreational drugs. The dreaming brain is not like the wakeful brain. Normal sensory input is blocked, attentional capacities are impaired or lost, memory is distorted, reasoning and logic are weakened, narratives run wild, self-reflection is dampened or destroyed, emotion and instinct are hyperstimulated, and forms of ‘top-down’ willed control and decision-making diluted and easily overwhelmed. (Clark, 2004, p. 177) Clark cites Hobson’s (2002a) work about the distinct changes in neural activity and modulation that we undergo during dreaming. To allow individuals to survive in a VR, it would need to preserve the sleep/wake cycle. Sleep cycles are, after all, necessary for maintaining regular neural functioning (see Chapter 1). Presumably, dreaming would also occur. The multiple layers of false awakenings described in Inception are all still sleeping states with sleeping neural activity, and, as aforementioned, these layers don’t in fact occur during dreaming, so this is not analogous to

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falling asleep in a VR and does not describe a real scenario. Finally, Clark notes that there are many real inhabitants in the Matrix, and they regularly interact with each other. In contrast, dream characters are created by the dreamer’s own sub-personal processes. We could, however, conceive of a Matrix that only has one “real” inhabitant amongst simulated individuals (as occurs in some of the practice simulations in the movie). However, because these simulations are programmed by someone other than the real inhabitant, they could, for example, know things that she does not know. Since dream characters are all generated by the dreamer, you couldn’t have a character that could, say, teach the dreamer to speak in another language, whereas this could occur in the Matrix. In my view, Clark’s arguments rely on a reductive view of dreams in which dream experience is necessarily characterised by a lack of control and reduced cognitive capacity. However, as discussed in Chapter 2, this is not the case for all dreams. Some dream cognition equals waking cognition. While lucid dreams are one example of this, we can be cognitively competent in non-lucid dreams as well. Further, while neural activity helps distinguish different stages of waking and sleep, we should not refer primarily to brain states as the deciding factor for whether conscious states are similar. Brain states can be used to support evidence from dream reports and other physiological data, but if, say, a person reports paying attention in their dream, we should not deny that they did indeed pay attention, even if, on average, the frontal lobes of the brain associated with attentional capacity are less active during sleep. Phenomenal aspects of dreaming from dream reports are needed to compare with the VR scenario. Brain activation and modulation can alter during waking or during sleep, so although, the waking brain is more often aminergically modulated,4 for example, it can shift to cholinergic modulation whilst awake, and the dreaming brain also shifts in modulation and activation. The frontal lobes are not entirely deactivated but can be more or less so in sleep (Gustafsson, 2022; Kubota et al., 2011). Finally, the fact that we can fall asleep and dream whilst in a VR is not reason to discount dreams as a type of VR. Rather, we should look to the features of the experience itself to determine whether dreams involve hallucinatory generation of world models. In response to Clark’s argument about interacting with people in VR, this is a fair distinction between VR and dreaming, but not one that should make us consider dreaming to not be VR. Firstly, from a first-person perspective, the dream characters seem real. We may not be able to learn new information from them, but the generation of dream characters and the dream world is, as aforementioned, transparent to the dreamer, and

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the events of the world and actions of the dream characters can surprise the dreamer due to the fact that their generation process occurs unconsciously. We generally have no awareness of the creation of these characters nor control over them. Further, take the sci-fi example of Inception, in which individuals use futuristic technology to enter each other’s dreams. The main difference between “incepted” and “regular” dream characters seems to be that incepted characters know things that the dreamer doesn’t know; however, phenomenologically, both types of character may appear the same. The important aspect of VR is whether the simulation is a convincing world simulation, and, unless we were to beg the question against dreaming, it seems that internally generated experiences could be VR, at least in theory. We should distinguish between incepted and normal characters simply because one is internally generated and the other externally generated. An important distinction between dreaming and waking is that while awake, we use external objects to “offload” cognitive processes, for example, we may solve a jigsaw puzzle by physically moving the pieces instead of mentally rotating them, or we might use a notebook to remember items. In a VR like The Matrix, the computer simulation can play this role as it provides virtual objects that we can use to cognitively offload. We can store information in a virtual notebook or rotate the virtual objects without relying on our own cognitive resources. Objects in the dream, in contrast, are all internally generated, so we cannot “scaffold” our cognitive processes onto dream props as they are generated by our own cognitive processes. For Clark, cognitive offloading is a key element of experience and embodiment in an environment. The world itself, in fact, partially composes our waking cognition in his view. This contrasts with Metzinger and Revonsuo’s sceptical view that even waking experience is virtual. Since mind-dependent objects cannot provide the same extension of cognitive abilities, dreaming is not like waking experience. Dreaming, in this view, cannot be “pure consciousness” since the cognition that supports normal consciousness is extended. In Chapter 7, I discuss the “extended mind” thesis and cognitive offloading in more detail. However, in response to Clark’s point, I think certain offloading could potentially occur in dreams. The dream environment, after all, is generated below the level of consciousness, unlike when we, say, intentionally imagine a block during a mental rotation task. Mental rotation in imagination uses conscious cognitive resources in a way that, for example, picking up an object and rotating it in a dream may not. If the dreaming unconscious mind can create a stable world, which we have reason to think that it can (although doesn’t always, see Chapter 3 and Rosen, 2019), the dream environment may compete for less conscious

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resources than the imagined environment, allowing for a type of in-brain scaffolding. In opposition to Clark, I think that some dreams are best described as a phenomenal self model embedded within a virtual world as Metzinger and Revonsuo elucidate. However, this does not describe all dreams. 5.2.5 Hallucination is common but contingent

Not all dreams are multimodal. Some consist of simple images, thoughts, or sensations, and do not involve a PSM. We could exclude these phenomena from a theory of dreaming but this would be circular reasoning if our intention is to show that all dreaming involves a PSM. Further, dreams can involve states in between having and not having a PSM, making drawing the line between “dreaming sleep” and “dreamless sleep” difficult. Isolated hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations, that, respectively, occur during sleep onset and awakening, simplistic dream images, especially those of children,5 and dream thoughts that are not accompanied by sensory experience do not necessarily involve a sense of self as occupying a particular point of view. While I do not argue that any conscious mental state that occurs in sleep should be described as dreaming, a more inclusive definition is justified. NREM dreams have been described as having less hallucinatory content, and in general are more thought-like and conceptual (Martin et al., 2020). Nonetheless, not all dreams during NREM are thought-like while some REM dreams themselves can be thought-like (Scarpelli et al., 2022). Some dreams that are vague, involve less vivid content, and less immersion in the dream world or are more thought-like, whether in REM or NREM, are better described as imaginative rather than perceptual. According to my pluralistic view, these phenomena should be considered as dreams. Dreams can be more or less complex, sometimes involving only single sensations, or at other times, multiple modalities. One could have, for example, a sleep onset hypnagogic hallucination about falling off a bicycle, which is more complex than the feeling of merely falling. If we are to exclude unimodal hypnagogia from our definition of dreaming, it is unclear where a theorist should draw the line between simple dreaming and hypnagogic hallucination. Hypnagogia is a plausible addition to our theory of dreams. Windt (2010) notes that though more closely associated with hypnagogia, sleep onset can also give rise to full-fledged and complex dreams, and hypnagogia can gradually shade into dreaming. While the precise moment of transition

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from hypnagogia to dreaming may be hard to pinpoint in some cases, [the ISTH model] nonetheless provides a conceptual distinction and empirically testable hypotheses. (p. 308) Distinguishing between dreams and hypnagogic hallucinations presumes a definition of dreaming in which three dimensional spatial hallucination is necessary. Nir and Tononi (2010) also describe hypnagogic hallucinations as different from “typical” dreams (p. 95), although do not specify whether we should call them “untypical dreams”. Rejecting hypnagogia as dreaming requires the presumption that dreams require spatiotemporal experience. The same can be said for rejecting imagination-like dreams. Children’s dreams in particular are described as more imaginative than perceptual, often involving simple, snapshot-like visual experiences (Foulkes, 1999). The rejection of snapshot-like phenomena as dreaming would mean that children’s sleep experiences are not dreams. In my view, it is more plausible to consider children’s dreams as imaginative dreams. One reason for not rejecting imagination-like sleep experiences as dreams is the unclear boundary between imagination and hallucination (for discussion on this boundary in general, see Chapter 4). Children’s dreams develop over time to be more hallucinatory, so, if young children do not ‘dream’ it would be impossible to determine when the shift from sleepimagining to dreaming occurs. Dreams can be more or less vivid, convincing, immersive, interactive, multisensory, embodied and have more or less “presence”, but there is no clear delineation between imaginative and hallucinatory dreaming. I concede that simply having propositional thoughts during sleep should probably not be considered dreaming, as propositional thinking can be distinctly delineated from, say, imagining. In contrast, it is unclear if imagination can be delineated from hallucinating. For these reasons, I think that some dreams are best described as imagination, although we should draw the line at propositional thoughts. These might occur during a dream but should not be considered as dreaming in themselves. While a virtual reality model of dreams is too reductive and the omission of imagination-like dreams is unjustified, I agree that complex dreams can involve a PSM within a dream world. Some dreams are convincing virtual realities, providing evidence against a reductive imagination model of dreaming. Dreams which are imaginative count against a reductive hallucination view of dreams. Dreaming is neither necessarily perceptual nor imaginative: it can be either or involve both elements. Could dreaming instead be illusory? Windt (2010) notes that some dreams can involve the integration of mind-independent stimuli, such as the sound of a car backfiring, or flashes

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of light from a “dreamlight” (LaBerge & Levitan, 1995). These experiences are better classed as illusory than hallucinatory. Further, we might even consider some aspects of the dream experience as entirely illusory (Windt, 2015, 2017b). Schönhammer (2005) gives the example of the sensation of falling as a distorted interpretation of the feeling of the body being isolated from stimuli by sleep, a common experience (Rosen, 2018). Could some dreams be entirely illusory? Such dreams would only involve sensations from the external world that have been misperceived. I think this is certainly possible, but it would be difficult to test empirically. For example, if I fall asleep on the train while watching a film, I might misperceive the movement of the train as movement of drifting through space, while the lights from the screen might also infiltrate the dream and be misperceived as an ambient glow or stars. I might also hear the train tracks and misperceive them as sounds in space. Were this to occur, it would be an entirely or at least primarily illusory dream. It is unlikely that such illusory dreams are a regular occurrence, as Windt (2015, 2017b) argues, the visual dream scene is most likely primarily hallucinatory. The dream scene is unlikely to be perceived directly from the waking world since our eyes are closed and dream vision is usually too complex. However, illusions in dreams are probably quite common and at least some dreams may be primarily illusory. This is a strong argument against the definition of dreaming as hallucination or imagination; while dreams are often hallucinatory, non-hallucinatory dreams likely occur, and contrary to the imagination model, certain features, at least the illusory ones, are perceptual. This makes it difficult to define dreaming with a minimal set of necessary conditions other than experiences that occur during sleep6, although Windt allows for the possibility that even this is not a requirement (see above and Windt, 2010). From this, I conclude that a pluralistic approach to dreaming is the most plausible. While the focus until now has been mostly on the dream world, in this final section I shift focus to the dream body. In my view, some but not all dreams involve a convincing simulation of the waking bodily experience. One way of describing the experience of the waking body is that we have a body “schema” and a body “image”, and this, I argue, occurs in some dreams. However, some dreams are significantly unlike waking experience, where the dream body is an entirely different body, or we may even be disembodied. 5.3 The dream body

Immersive dreams not only involve experience of a world but also the coordination of a “dream body” that can, but doesn’t always, feel like a

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real, waking body. We often believe that our dream body is real. Here I focus on the extent to which the dream body can replicate waking embodied experience. I argue that, at times, the dream body can be conceived of as a phantom body akin to a phantom limb syndrome, which occurs when a limb is perceived where no physical limb is present. The dream body, however, is generally more multimodal than phantom limbs, in particular, it is more likely to be represented visually. The experience of the waking body has been characterised as having both a “body image” and a “body schema”. The inability to update one’s body schema after amputation is a potential explanation for phantom limb syndrome. However, there are a variety of types of body representation that can occur in dreams that are unlike waking experience. The experience of the body provides evidence that dreams are, at times, realistic virtual simulations, but this is not a good argument for the reductive hallucination model. 5.3.1 Dream bodies and disembodied dreaming

Frederik van Eeden, who coined the term “lucid dreaming”, kept a long and detailed dream journal. Several reports suggest that his dreamed body felt very realistic and like his waking body. I dreamt that I was lying in the garden before the windows of my study, and saw the eyes of my dog through the glass pane. I was lying on my chest and observing the dog very keenly. At the same time, however, I knew with perfect certainty that I was dreaming and lying on my back in my bed. And then I resolved to wake up slowly and carefully and observe how my sensation of lying on my chest would change into the sensation of lying on my back. And so I did, slowly and deliberately, and the transition – which I have since undergone many times – is most wonderful. It is like the feeling of slipping from one body into another, and there is distinctly a double recollection of the two bodies. (Van Eeden, 1913, p. 443) Van Eeden concludes that the dream body accurately replicates the experience of a waking body. An important aspect of this report is that he is lucid. This allows him to pay close attention to the sensations of his dream body. Under lucid scrutiny, the dream body can still feel like a real body. He describes shifting from dreaming to waking as slipping from one body to another, allowing for direct comparison. His description is analogous to full-scale reduplicative out-of-body experiences (OBEs) (Brugger, 2006). OBEs, when awake, involve the hallucinatory experience

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of shifting to a different perspective from one’s normal, first-person perspective, sometimes inhabiting a body that is detached from the physical body. For van Eeden, the dream body is so convincing that it feels like his real body even when he directly compares the two. When he introspects about the feeling of lying on his chest while remembering his sleeping position, he has an odd experience of double memory or double sense of self. From this first-person perspective, the dreaming body is experienced as highly realistic. However, this is not the case in all dreams. Occhionero and colleagues (Occhionero & Cicogna, 2011, 2016; Occhionero et al., 2005) describe the dream body as being represented in many ways: not all dream selves inhabit a wake-like body. The dream body may not be human, or there may not be a body at all. For example, “I was inside a gigantic photocopying machine; I knew I was inside, as an abstract entity, as a mind, I was the machine, so I couldn’t see myself” (Occhionero, 2005, p. 80). The dreamer might “morph” into different body shapes during the dream (Rosen, 2021) or simply inhabit a different body throughout the dream. The dream self can also be “a pure thinking agent” (Occhionero & Cicogna, 2011, p. 1012) without a body. The dreamer may even be represented by two bodies or shift between different bodies with different perspectives. These are good reasons to consider the dream body as not always an accurate representation of the waking body. Despite being relatively uncommon, alternative body representation gives reason to adopt a pluralistic view of dream body representation. The phenomenology of these cases is also an interesting area of enquiry, but a strong argument for a hallucination model of some dreams is that the dream body, like the waking body, not only has a phenomenal image but also an unconscious schema. 5.3.2 Body image and schema

Dream body perception provides strong support for the view that some dreams are realistic and hallucinatory. This is because the dream body has features that are more akin to a hallucinated body that, experientially, is like the waking body and not like an imagined body. There is little reason to think of imagined bodies as having both body image and schema, whereas the dream body, at times, may involve both. My view is that some dreams feel like we are inhabiting a realistic virtual body while others are more akin to an imagined body. During wakefulness, perceptual experience of and knowledge about the body – its movement, state, and position – involves interaction between the body parts, the central nervous system, and the brain, as well as bodily interaction with external, physical space and objects. In a dream, the input

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blockade prevents most stimuli from the body from reaching the brain. There are, as aforementioned, counterexamples to this in the form of “stimulus infiltration”, but the dream body interacts primarily with the internally generated dream environment which, as discussed, can be quite realistic. For Clark (2004), dreams don’t provide a realistic body model. A futuristic virtual reality system could perhaps produce the experience of “a real body, realized in the non-standard medium of bits of information” (Clark, 2004, p. 179), but dreams do not do so. However, there is reason to think that the dream body can feel real. One reason for thinking this is that, like the waking body, the dream body appears to involve both image and schema. These two aspects are theorised to be key aspects of normal waking experience. According to one view (De Preester & Knockaert, 2005; de Vignemont et al., 2021; Pitron et al., 2018), our experience of the waking body involves both an image and a schema. The schema refers to the unconscious coordination of multiple sensorimotor action spaces “anchored on a geotropically oriented postural frame” (De Preester & Knockaert, 2005, p. 98). We are not necessarily aware of having a body schema, but it contributes to our experience and behaviour. The function of the schema is “both descriptive and coercive” (de Vignemont et al., 2021) in that not only does it give information about the body and its position, but it also constrains what kinds of actions we plan to do and carry out. The body image is what we are consciously aware of. We experience a map of the body’s state and it can be contributed to by multiple senses including sight, touch, proprioception, vestibular sensation, and even sound (Ley-Flores et al., 2022; Tajadura-Jiménez et al., 2015). Gallagher and Meltzoff (1996) argue that this distinction is required to avoid mischaracterising bodily functions. Body image represents body perception, our conscious awareness of how our bodies look, occupy space, move, and function. In contrast, schema integrates processes that allow us to maintain posture and movement in a generally unconscious way but without which our conscious experience would be very different. Gallagher and Meltzoff (1996) explain that we can characterize the body image as involving perceptions, mental representations, beliefs, and attitudes where the intentional object of such perceptions, beliefs, etc. (that which they are directed towards or that which they are about) is one’s own body. The body schema, in contrast, involves certain motor capacities, abilities, and habits that enable movement and the maintenance of posture. It continues to operate, and in many cases operates best, when the intentional object of perception is something other than one’s own body. So the difference

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between body image and body schema is like the difference between a perception (or analysis or monitoring) of movement and the actual accomplishment of movement. (p. 217) While it’s easy to see the importance of having conscious awareness of the body in space, consider if you couldn’t maintain posture and movement unconsciously. This happened to Ian Waterman, who suffered from a loss of his sense of touch and bodily position (Cole & Montero, 2007). Although he managed to relearn how to move by visually supervising his limbs, constant conscious monitoring and control over his bodily movements was required. For most of us, it is easy to walk down the street and carry out most actions with eyes closed. Not only did Waterman lose the ability to unconsciously maintain bodily movements and posture, but, as Cole and Montero note, he also lost the joy of carefree movement. Thus, the ability to unconsciously update the body in space afforded to us by our body schema is necessary for normal waking perception and action and it also contributes to our enjoyment of movement. Waking bodily control without body schema is much more difficult. Our dream body, according to dream reports, clearly has some form of body image. We can see our own limbs, look at ourselves in mirrors, sense the body moving through space, touch things and experience a range of multisensory percepts. However, exactly how realistic this image can be and whether it has a schema is more difficult to ascertain. Gaining evidence of the body schema through dream reports is difficult since schema is an unconscious process, so we could not attain direct reports about it. If we could, for example, isolate the neural activation of the body schema as distinct from body image, we could investigate whether the same activation occurs during sleep, allowing for some direct evidence of dream body schema. However, we do not have this neural information, and it is unclear if it could even be isolated. I have argued previously that we should not assume that neural activity will be the best indication of phenomenal experience. Moreover, since body schema is not phenomenal, isolating the neural activation of body schema would be even more difficult. We can instead look to indirect evidence to determine whether the dream body has both schema and image. One waking case of body schema in the absence of a physical body part is the phantom limb case. If the generation of the body schema or image requires the presence of a real, physical body, then dreams would either not involve image and schema or they would be very “weak” since, although there is infiltration of stimulus, the input blockade prevents the majority of stimulus from the environment from being experienced. Windt’s weak phenomenal functional hypothesis (2015, 2017b, 2018) is consistent with this view,

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as the self in dreams is primarily underrepresented – we are only weakly embodied and much of the experience we have of the dream body is illusory. However, a straightforward case can be made for the view that the dream body has an image. Body image occurs even for an imagined body, although it is likely far less vivid, detailed, and realistic than the real body image. Body schema in a dream is less obvious. Without a physical body, postural monitoring, one would think, is not required. We might assume that the processes involved in the generation of the waking body schema, a causal relationship between stimuli to the limbs, the conveying of information along the central nervous system, and neural processing in the somatosensory cortex, the motor cortex, and other areas, does not occur when we are dreaming. Proprioception and the maintenance of posture involve feedback between the limbs and brain. Perhaps the physical body partially constitutes the body schema so is a necessary condition. One alternative is that the dream body is represented by image but not schema, as occurs when imagining. However, there is support for a dream body schema. 5.3.3 Dream body image and schema

The body image involves mental representations, perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes, and we can conceive of a dreaming person having such representations, attitudes, and beliefs about their dream body. It is therefore plausible to say that the dreaming person experiences a dreambody image. If I dream I am on a beach, I can have a mental representation of my body reclining on a towel, have certain beliefs about whether the sun is burning my skin, feel the sand between the toes and possibly even see my reflection. The dream body need not look like the waking body, as aforementioned, yet the dream body does often reflect the waking body, perhaps as much as 99% of the time (Schredl, 2020). We can even experience a distorted body image when awake, as occurs during body dysmorphia, Alice in Wonderland syndrome (Pitron et al., 2018), and somatoparaphrenia – the feeling that one’s limb does not belong to them (Vallar & Ronchi, 2009). This can be so severe that it causes the desire to amputate the offending limb (First, 2005). As we will see below, phantom limb syndrome is a revealing case. Body image, whether awake or asleep, need not map perfectly onto a physical body. In comparison, we can also imagine being embodied and carrying out actions, and knowledge of this imagined body can be represented as a body image. Therefore, the view that we can have a dream-body image is consistent with an imagination model of dreaming, so it doesn’t support the hallucination model in itself unless we can independently argue that this body image is hallucinatory.

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When we imagine, we need not unconsciously monitor the imagined body’s posture and movement so there is no need for a body schema. Although we imagine carrying out activities in the imagined world, we don’t experience the imagined body interacting with the environment in the same way – we don’t strive, struggle, and fumble unless we intentionally imagine doing so. Imagined fumbling is unlike real fumbling which, by definition, is unintentional. However, I argue that there is evidence to suggest that the dream body does at times involve such monitoring. Damage either to the limbs, central nervous system or brain can lead to problems with the formation of the waking body schema. Lesions or inheritable conditions including dysfunctions in the dopaminergic system that cause Parkinson’s disease (Lew, 2007) can affect the body schema by disrupting the body’s ability to maintain posture, causing uncontrollable shaking. Further, the loss of a limb can affect the body schema in unusual ways. In most cases, a lost limb is incorporated into both the body image and schema, although in phantom limb syndrome, the patient feels as if the missing limb is still present. One possible explanation of phantom limbs is that the absent limbs continue to be represented by the body schema, which fails to update (Gallagher & Meltzoff, 1996). Phantom limbs can be incorporated into the body image since there are reports that involve “descriptions of the appearance of the phantom – long, short, wrinkled, etc.” (Gallagher & Metzoff, 1996, p. 220), which suggests an image-based phenomenon. The phantom limb can also feel clenched and cause pain. If the patient has some conscious awareness of the limb’s appearance or sensations from the limb, this suggests the limb is part of their body image; however, inclusion into the body schema requires different evidence. This evidence comes from the fact that people often forget that the amputated limb is no longer present and continue to function as if the phantom limb were a real limb. [T]he phenomenon of forgetting suggests that the missing limb continues for a time to function schematically in a normal way in motor behavior. Such normal functioning, however, does not depend on a vivid representation or percept of the missing limb. Rather, forgetting is possible precisely because motor behavior does not ordinarily require that my limbs be the object of perceptual attention. So, in incidents of forgetting, missing (phantom) parts of the body remain operative within a motor schema. (Gallagher & Meltzoff, 1996, p. 222) This behaviour generally is below the threshold of consciousness, so not an issue of body image. Attention is only drawn to the missing limb when

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individuals fail to accomplish a task, such as dropping an object they are trying to pick up because they forgot the thumb is missing. If the individual functions as if they still have the body part, this is a good reason to consider the phantom, at least at times, as part of the body schema, providing evidence that a real limb is not necessary for there to be a schema. The dream body, in my view, is analogous to the phantom limb in that it functions similarly. Perhaps the dream body should be considered as a “phantom body”.7 The dream body can be a relatively realistic duplicate of the waking body under the input blockade in the same way a phantom limb duplicates the experience of the amputated limb. Dreamers report sensations, proprioception and movement of the dream body while the real body is paralysed by sleep. While the phantom limb appears to be “based on a subpersonal, automatic process of binding features together, of achieving coherence” (Metzinger, 2010, p. 34), the same could be said for the dream body. The experience of the phantom limb is due to unconscious, incorrect predictions about the location of a limb that is no longer attached. The dream body is also “phantom-like”, felt in the absence of physical limbs. We also monitor the dream body unconsciously for posture and movement since this phantom is a full-body phantom rather than one limb. Reports of the experience of vestibular sensations and proprioception in dreams suggest such monitoring can occur in the absence of a real body. Phantom limbs usually only come into existence after the amputation of a body part, and in the dream, we lose sensory access to the physical body because of the input blockade. “Aplasic phantom limbs” occur in those born without limbs (Poeck, 1964; Saadah & Melzack, 1994; Weinstein & Sersen, 1961), suggesting an innate body schema (Gallagher, 2006). There are even reports of phantom limbs in places where most humans do not grow limbs, such as a third arm growing out of one’s chest, known as “supernumerary phantom limbs” (Halligan et al., 1993). These cases, however, are quite rare, but phantom limbs in general might be due to the existence of a long-term body schema that can be relatively stable over time (De Vignemont, 2018) and does not get updated when the limb is amputated. However, there is evidence to suggest that, in most cases, the body schema can be rapidly updated (Pitron et al., 2018). Nonetheless, these rare cases are analogous to dream bodies which are unlike the waking body. We might dream of having a supernumerary arm, for instance, but the dream body has the potential to have a far wider range of representation. We might have no limbs but instead be a giant photocopier, as reported by Occhionero and Cicogna (2011). Since dreamers almost never realise they are dreaming, more often than not we “forget” about the real body. When my dream arm reaches

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for a cup, I fail to realise that this is not my real arm. In most dreams, the dreamer loses awareness of their physical body and even when stimulus “infiltrates” the dream, it is not usually recognised as coming from the “real world”. Lucid awareness is far less common than a phantom limb sufferer realising that their phantom is only a phantom, which happens regularly. When navigating the real world, an amputee would be reminded that their limb is missing as soon as they go to use it. In contrast, the dream world prevents such realisation from commonly occurring. We go about using our dream bodies to interact with the dream world and its objects. Cognitive impairments may further support our belief in the reality of the dream body, as we are less likely to realise that the body is not real even when bizarre events occur. We are not always thus impaired, as previously noted. False awakenings seem to be a good example in which we have no reason to expect that the world and body are only dreamed, and we can act and think quite rationally (see Chapter 2). One could argue that the dream body is, at least at times, a more convincing phantom than phantom limbs, as the experience is more multimodal and we believe the dream body is real. In contrast, beliefs about the existence of phantom limbs, when they occur, are short-lived. It seems as if this type of “forgetting” in dreaming supports the theory of a dream body schema just as it supports the continuation of a body schema for phantom limbs. Since, as Gallagher and Meltzoff (1996) argue, “forgetting” is good evidence that the phantom limb is incorporated into the body schema, such “forgetting” and navigating the dream world as if the dream body is real also provides evidence for a dream body schema. This is also another distinction between the dream body and the imagined body, as we don’t usually forget about our real bodies when imagining. In contrast with phantom limbs, the dream body is more likely to involve multimodal experience; we can see, touch, and manipulate the dream body, whereas the phantom limb is usually restricted to touch although occasionally, the individual can see their limb. Our dream bodies seem to be real while dreaming, and our experience can involve any or all of the senses; our dream eyes can see, dream hands can grasp objects and dream ears can hear. While forgetting about the absence of the limb is only an occasional feature of phantom limb syndrome, forgetting that the dream body isn’t real is the standard mode of experience for the dreamer. Lucidity, realising that one is dreaming, is after all, exceedingly rare. These features make a stronger case for the dream body having a schema than even phantom limb syndrome. One might find it harder to accept a fullbody “phantom” as having a schema in comparison to just a limb. This, however, is supported by several features of dreams.

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Dreams can display similar automatic reassessing of posture common to waking movements. Hypnogogic hallucinations, for example, are common sensations and have behavioural responses that occur during sleep onset. My hypnagogic experience often involves the sensation of falling, and my arms automatically fly in front of my face to break my fall. In such cases, the sensation is vivid enough to wake me. The automatic action of my arms suggests a body schema: despite the sensation not being real, motor signals are sent to respond to the stimulus and, because I wake up, my real body carries the action out. REM sleep behaviour disorder is another example of the real body responding to the signals that the dreamer thinks they are sending to their body in the dream. Dreamers real bodies react to in-dream stimuli automatically, responding to regain balance and posture. One interpretation of the hypnagogia case is that the real body reacts to internally generated sensations at a time that the output blockade is abruptly broken. Another interpretation is that these sensations are instead vestibular illusions that are generated by the real physical body but then reinterpreted by the brain in a semi-sleeping state. These are illusions rather than hallucinations. Similarly, the sensation of flying in dreams may also be due to vestibular illusions originating in the brain stem caused by a “reduction of peripheral sensual afferences (functional deafferentiation)” (Schönhammer, 2005, p. 25). The brain reinterprets the sensation of being disconnected from the real senses. If these sensations are illusions, the body schema of the dream body responds to input from the real body. While this seems plausible for many hypnagogic “dreams”, it is unlikely that this explains all dream body experience. Further, the input from the real body gives reason to think that the dream body involves schema, as we respond both to internally generated and externally generated stimuli. While hypnagogic hallucinations might have a real sensory explanation, it is hard to conceive of all bodily sensation during REM dreams in this way. When I walk down the street in a dream, postural alignment occurs for my dream limbs, and I can have a sense of loss of balance when I trip which causes my body to automatically realign and rebalance or fumble and fall (Rosen, 2021). In the Van Eeden case, he felt as if, upon waking, the orientation of his body shifted by sliding from one body to another, which suggests also that bodily sensations are not necessarily all illusions of physical body sensations. The kinds of sensations we have in bed are the touch of the sheets on our skin and pressure of the blankets. If these sensations explain all dream bodily sensation, it is difficult to see how we can, at times, have a strong sense of agency in dreams (Rosen, 2018). It is also unclear whether we can account for this by appealing to underdetermination (Windt, 2018). This seems to be an unlikely explanation, for example, for dreams in which we struggle, strive, and fail to achieve our goals.

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While awake, we have proprioceptive awareness of where our limbs are in space, furnishing the body image. The extent to which proprioceptive awareness exists in dreams as separate from illusions of real stimuli might be difficult to determine. When you close your dream eyes, do you have a sense of where your dream limbs are? Cole and Montero (2007) note that it is possible that the sensory pathways for affective proprioception include the same large fibre sensory afferents that conduct information elaborated into movement and position sense. This information is likely to feed to the many subconscious motor programming areas including the cerebellum, and the sensorimotor cortex, as well as to areas which are involved in attention. (p. 302) Whether these complex systems can be active during sleep is difficult to ascertain empirically. Most dream reports are vision-centric, and proprioceptive awareness is unlikely to be reported either in dreaming or waking reports (Rosen, 2015). Such experiences are often less salient to telling the narrative of an event. To solve this issue, it might be useful to analyse blind people’s dreams. Those who go blind before the ages of 5–7 do not have visual dreams (Kerr & Domhoff, 2004). Since blind dream reports are not vision-centric, they are more likely to describe other sensations experienced in the dream than a sighted person. For this reason, a blind dreamer might be better able to compare sensations, for example, of proprioception in dreams and while awake. The aforementioned Van Eeden example of shifting from the dreaming body to waking suggests that when the dream body is directly compared with the waking body, the represented body can be convincing. RBD is further evidence that our experience of the dream body is realistic, since our real bodies carry out actions. Although body schema itself is unconscious, it is important for the experience of waking life and we can learn about it through its effects on perception and behaviour. Further, learning about the dream body might reveal important information about how the mind generates bodily experience and the body schema in general. While further work, particularly in cognitive and behavioural science, is required to determine similarities between the waking body and dream body in terms of schema and image, I conclude that we have preliminary evidence to suggest that at times we can have both dream body image and schema. There may be, however, more illusory sensations in dreams than we realise (Schönhammer, 2005, Windt, 2015, 2017a). Furthermore, some dreams seem to be more akin to imagination than perception and do not involve a body schema. This supports a pluralistic

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view of dreaming; dreams are not simply imagination or hallucination but can involve either or both depending on the dream and sleep stage. Perceptual and imaginative elements can occur in dreams, but neither is necessary for a mental state to be considered a dream experience. Most perceptual views of dreams, similar to the imagination views discussed in Chapter 4, are overly reductive. While these theories do accurately describe some dream phenomena and provide strong challenges to opposing reductive views, they are not plausible accounts of all dream phenomena. 5.4 Conclusion

Hallucination and virtual reality models of dreaming provide an accurate description of many dream experiences. Some dreams are indeed multimodal, immersive virtual worlds and can be quite realistic, even when the dreamer is paying attention to the dream world while lucid. However, these models exclude some sleep phenomena such as imagination-like dreams, non-immersive dreams, and illusory dreams. While one could deny that illusory or imaginatory sleep experiences are indeed dreams, this is not plausible since dreaming can be more or less hallucinatory. There are many in-between cases, and it is not clear how to draw a distinction between imaginative and hallucinatory dream experience. I have highlighted some of the similarities and differences between the dream world, virtual realities, imagining, and the waking world, arguing that some, but not all, dreams can be described as realistic simulations. Similarly, the dream body is an important aspect of the dream experience that can be represented in a variety of ways. Sometimes, the dream body is not represented at all and at other times, it is a realistic model of the waking body, including both image and schema. There is a sense in which the phenomenal self-model of the dream body can seem as “real” as our waking body. Dreams often involve a first-person perspective that feels embodied within a spatio-temporal hallucinated world. Many dreams are best described as a virtual reality or hallucinatory. However, other dreams do not fit these descriptions. Dreams can be imagination or illusion. Hence, our definition of dreaming requires the inclusion of a wider variety of phenomena than the hallucination, perception or virtual reality models describe. Notes 1 A study being run during the writing of this book in 2022 and 2023. 2 See Chapter 2 for a discussion of how unusual or incoherent elements in dreams are likely to be forgotten. 3 See Chapter 4 for further discussion on the imagination model.

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4 See Chapter 1 for a discussion about neuromodulation in sleep. 5 See discussion of Foulkes in Chapters 1 and 2. 6 “Experience during sleep” may exclude pure propositional thought that occurs during sleep from our definition of dreaming if we consider experience to be phenomenal. Some theorists argue that propositional thoughts are not phenomenal, although there is much debate on this topic ( Bayne & Montague, 2011). 7 Brugger and colleagues ( Brugger, 2006; Brugger et al., 2006) suggest that certain kinds of heautoscopy, the experience of seeing one’s own body from a distance, or out of body experience, may be considered as a type of “phantom of the body”.

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presented at the Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Tuominen, J., Stenberg, T., Revonsuo, A., & Valli, K. (2019). Social contents in dreams: An empirical test of the Social Simulation Theory. Consciousness and Cognition, 69, 133–145. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2019.01.017 Vallar, G., & Ronchi, R. (2009). Somatoparaphrenia: A body delusion. A review of the neuropsychological literature. Experimental Brain Research, 192(3), 533–551. Valli, K., & Revonsuo, A. (2009). The threat simulation theory in light of recent empirical evidence: A review. The American Journal of Psychology, 122, 17–38. Van Eeden, F. (1913). A study of dreams. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Weinstein, S., & Sersen, E. A. (1961). Phantoms in cases of congenital absence of limbs. Neurology, 11, 905–911. 10.1212/WNL.11.10.905 Wiese, W., & Metzinger, T. (2017). Vanilla PP for philosophers: A primer on predictive processing. In T. Metzinger & W. Wiese (Eds.), Philosophy and predictive processing. Frankfurt am Main: Open MIND Group. Wiese, W., & Metzinger, T. (2017). Vanilla PP for philosophers: A primer on predictive processing. Windt, J. M. (2010). The immersive spatiotemporal hallucination model of dreaming. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9(2), 295–316. Windt, J. M. (2013). Reporting dream experience: Why (not) to be skeptical about dream reports. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7(708). doi: 10.3389/ fnhum.2013.00708 Windt, J. M. (2015). Dreaming: A conceptual framework for philosophy of mind and empirical research. MIT Press. Windt, J. M. (2017a). Dreams and dreaming. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition). Windt, J. M. (2017b). Predictive brains, dreaming selves, sleeping bodies: How the analysis of dream movement can inform a theory of self-and world-simulation in dreams. Synthese, 1–49. Windt, J. M. (2018). 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, 2577–2625. Windt, J. M. (2018). Précis of dreaming: A conceptual framework for philosophy of mind and empirical research. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 25(5-6), 6–29. Windt, J. M., & Metzinger, T. (2007). The philosophy of dreaming and selfconsciousness: what happens to the experiential subject during the dream state? In D. B. P. McNamara (Ed.), Praeger perspectives. The new science of dreaming. Cultural and theoretical perspectives (Vol. 3, pp. 193–247): Praeger Publishers/Greenwood Publishing Group. Windt, J. M., & Noreika, V. (2011). How to integrate dreaming into a general theory of consciousness—a critical review of existing positions and suggestions for future research. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(4), 1091–1107. doi: 10. 1016/j.concog.2010.09.010

6 THE SELF IN VICARIOUS DREAMS

6.1 Introduction

Who are you when you dream? In some dreams, it appears we are not “ourselves”. What is meant by this? “It’s the Second World War and I am a dark-haired, strongly built, Finnish male soldier. The enemies are probably German … [Later], I could see myself in a mirror. Now I was a blond, strongly built woman” (Revonsuo, 2005, p. 10). I might dream of being a famous historical character, or a Finnish male soldier, despite being neither male, Finnish, nor a soldier when I am awake. Is this dream character even me? To avoid making assumptions, let’s refer to the character in the dream who experiences the dream from the first-person perspective as the protagonist of the dream. If the protagonist was, say, Napoleon Bonaparte, when I remember such dreams, I may remember being Napoleon.1 These experiences have received little attention in the philosophical literature. In this chapter, I will approach these types of dreams from two main angles. Firstly, I evaluate who the first person pronoun “I” or “me” refers to when the protagonist thinks “I am a dark-haired, strongly built, Finnish male soldier”. A second, more perplexing question to answer, however, is to whom does the thought belong? Who is the protagonist? I begin by arguing that vicarious dreams are a real phenomenon that is uncommon but reported in the scientific literature of dreams. The main question, though, is what should we make of cases of dreaming of “being someone else”? I start by arguing that if we assume the protagonist of the dream is me because the dream is experienced from the protagonist’s perspective and the dream is generated by my brain, there is no clear DOI: 10.4324/9781003367710-7

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answer as to whom the first person pronoun refers, and whether this involves genuine or non-genuine reflexivity. This involves a comparison with imagining I am someone else. I argue that imagining and dreaming I am someone else have different implications. One solution to the dream problem is that the protagonist of my dream is not my waking self. Instead, this protagonist uses the first person pronoun in a genuinely reflexive way to refer to someone who is not me. This draws on a psychological continuity conception of the self. The claim “the protagonist of my dream is not me” is a counterintuitive outcome. However, evidence suggests that the protagonists of vicarious dreams can be psychologically distinct from their waking selves in a variety of ways. The protagonist of the dream can be a variety of entities, only some of which appear psychologically continuous with the waking self. Psychological continuity is disrupted by memory deficits, delusionlike experience, and isolation from the external environment. There is a strong sense in which such dream protagonists are temporary entities who, on waking, are often forgotten forever. 6.2 Vicarious dreams are a real phenomenon

When you wake up, you might remember having a dream in which the main character of the dream was “not you”. It’s as if, during the dream, you were someone else (Valberg, 2007), whatever that might mean. To avoid using the confusing phrase “you were someone else”, I’ll call this dream character the protagonist of the dream and say that the protagonist appeared to be a different person than the person having the dream, call them the dreamer. The dream protagonist is the one who experiences the dream from the first-person perspective. They might be of a different gender, have a different name and background, appear to live a different kind of life, and have different memories than the dreamer. While most dreams tend to be continuous with waking life and have a protagonist that appears to be the same person as the dreamer and who acts similarly to the dreamer’s waking self (Revonsuo, 2005), this is not always the case. I refer to dreams in which the protagonist is a different person than the dreamer of the dream as vicarious dreams. Do vicarious dreams really occur? You may not remember ever having one yourself. If they do occur, they are quite rare compared with waking-self dreams. There are, however, certainly cases of vicarious dreams in the literature and I have had such dreams myself. In one exciting dream, the protagonist was a male engineer on a starship who was trying to prevent the ship from crashing into the earth. My protagonists have been warriors, adventurers, and of a range of ages – once it was an old man having a heart attack in hospital. What should be made of such dreams?

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“The self” can be represented in a variety of ways in dreams and dreams can be remembered from a variety of perspectives (Schredl, 2020). Occhionero and Cicogna (2011) argue that the experience of self can be “expressed either by way of embodiment-in or identification-with other characters or even objects”. One subject reports dreaming of being surrounded by “a lot of beautiful actresses”, then, “I’m transformed and become a famous actor” (p. 1012), thus shifting from being their waking self to being a different person. The dream self can also be a bodiless, pure thinking agent (Windt, 2020; Windt et al., 2016), a partial body image, a passive observer or another character in the dream – for instance, when the dreamer is in the dream but a different character is the protagonist. Protagonists can even identify with inanimate objects. For example, “I was inside a gigantic photocopying machine; I knew I was inside, as an abstract entity, as a mind, I was the machine, so I couldn’t see myself” (Occhionero et al., 2005, p. 80). The first-person perspective can also shift between two or more characters that are active in the dream. This may, however, simply be a case of a person who, in the dream, has a different body than when awake. I may dream of being “me”, but my body has been replaced by a photocopier. Self-representation is distinct from body-representation. Altered body representation occurs if, in the dream, my body has been replaced by a giant photocopier, but otherwise, I am the same psychologically. Alternatively, I might be a passive observer of a dreamed event (Rosen & Sutton, 2013) but still identify as my waking self. Here, I focus on cases in which the protagonist does not think of themselves as the same person as the dreamer of the dream, in which they have altered selfrepresentation. Valberg (2007) describes such dreams as dreaming of being someone else. A person who is not Jerry Valberg (JV) can be the protagonist of JV’s dream. Valberg uses an example in which he dreams that there are two characters, X and JV. In this dream, the first-person perspective is occupied by X, not JV (himself). The protagonist might talk to the dream character JV and refer to JV as “him”, and when he wakes up, Valberg remembers the dream from X’s perspective. In the dream “I am not JV but X (X is me)” (Valberg, 2007, p. 62). If the protagonist feels pain and thinks, “I am in pain”, “I” refers to X, not JV. X’s pain is known about from a first-person perspective, but any pain felt by dream-character JV is only observed from an external perspective. It is not clear whether any dream character other than the protagonist can feel pain or have any mental states at all, but pain behaviour can be observed. Valberg’s description raises a puzzle: he calls the holder of the first-person perspective in his dream “me”, yet “me” does not refer to JV as it does when he is awake. What “I am not me in the dream”

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means is ambiguous. A topic-neutral analysis would be to say that the protagonist of the dream refers to himself, X, as “me” and later, on waking, Valberg remembers this episode from the first-person perspective of this protagonist. A further question is whether, or in what sense, Valberg and X are the same person. However, this exemplifies the possibility of a dream protagonist identifying themselve as “X”, and another character in the dream being identified as the person who is having the dream. By “having a dream” here, I mean generating the dream. It is not clear, as we will see later, whether the person whose brain generates the dream experiences the dream at all. A simpler case is one in which my waking self is not represented in the dream – there is no JV, just X. We might be tempted to say that there is no person “X”, there is just JV who refers to themselves as X. Alternatively, as Valberg says, his waking self might be X (2007) or perhaps X is no one at all (2008). Or finally, Valberg might not be in the dream, rather there is only X. In the next section, I analyse the use of the first-person pronoun in such a dream. What does the “I” in “I am a dark-haired, strongly built, Finnish male soldier” mean when we dream vicariously? 6.3 Self-reference and self-representation

If I have a dream in which Napoleon, NB, is the protagonist, and NB thinks, “I see the battle of Austerlitz”, to whom does “I” refer? “I” could refer to Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon, the famous historical figure, in real life is dead. Assuming historical figures are not reincarnated into dreams, the real Napoleon cannot be thinking anything, so he is not the thinker of the thought. As Bermudez (2002) explains, “the first-person pronoun is a linguistic type whose meaning is exhausted by the rule specifying that any appropriately uttered token of that type refers to its utterer” (p. 96). So, I cannot “appropriately” utter a first-person pronoun (FPP) and refer to someone other than myself. The utterance in the dream “I see the battle” may, instead of referring to NB, refer to my waking self, MR. This is problematic, however, since, if the protagonist were to utter “I am NB”, this would translate as “MR is NB”. “I” identifies the protagonist of the dream, so “I” refers to NB, but, obviously, not the real Napoleon. Perhaps vicarious dream protagonists are altered versions of our waking selves; the protagonist is me, but I refer to myself by a different name in the dream. Or perhaps I dream “in the mode of, or in the persona of, NB”.2 In the dream, I experience myself as a shorter, male, more megalomaniacal version of myself. Valberg’s case of the dream in which X is the protagonist and JV is a different character makes this solution less plausible, however.

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Perhaps the dream protagonist is neither MR nor the real Napoleon, but instead a dream entity that refers to themselves as NB. This would mean that some dream protagonists are separate identities from the dreamer and these entities only exist for a short period during a dream. This is analogous to Locke’s (1690) “day man” and “night man” – separate entities with no psychological link but share the same body and brain. Day man and night man have “two distinct incommunicable consciousnesses acting in the same body, the one constantly by day, the other by night” (Locke, 1690, Chapter XXVII, section 23). They do not share memories and are generally unaware of each other’s conscious experiences. Although somewhat analogous, dream protagonists, unlike the night man, do not share a continuity with other dream protagonists. The protagonist of last night’s dream is not usually aware of other dream protagonists. Dreams generally don’t start where the last dream ended. Tonight, I may dream of being Napoleon, but last night I dreamt of being Queen Elizabeth. A dream protagonist’s existence may be very short – one session of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, or even less, as was the case with the “famous actor” in the dream report above (Occhionero & Cicogna, 2011). Last night, I could have dreamed, consecutively, of being (1) Queen Elizabeth, (2) a male lawyer, (3) Napoleon, and then, (4) a female philosopher. Due to poor memory retention (Hobson, 2005), protagonist 2 has no recollection of 1, 3 can’t remember either 2 or 1 and for that matter, does not foresee being a female philosopher at 4. These protagonists may never be dreamt of again. As a further complication, the protagonist at stage 4 might be MR, continuous with my waking self, but not linked with 1, 2, or 3. A further distinction between dream protagonists and the night man is that they may not experience the same body as the dreamer. They may be a different size and shape, or even embody a giant photocopier. The idea that the dream protagonist may not be the same person as the dreamer is counterintuitive. After all, imagining that I am Napoleon does not evoke a crisis of identity, and perhaps dreaming of being Napoleon can be treated similarly. Yet dreaming, we will see, does not have the same account. 6.4 Imagining vs. dreaming that I am Napoleon

When imagining being someone else, I might imagine also using the first person pronoun to refer to the imagined individual and not myself. Velleman (1996), convincingly, argues that the use of the first person pronoun is unproblematic when imagining being Napoleon and thinking “I see the battle”. If dream protagonists have a similar account, then we

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need not appeal to temporary dream entities. However, in my view, Velleman’s account of imagining being someone else does not work for vicarious dreaming. 6.4.1 Imagining I am someone else

Imagining being someone else, or “transference imagination” (Fernández, 2022), is useful for empathising with others. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is an important aspect of human cognition. Perhaps dreaming is just like transference imagination. In Williams’ (1973) view, imagining being Napoleon involves two persons, the imaginer and Napoleon. Imagining being someone else is unproblematic since we are simply putting ourselves in a role. For Williams, “I can imagine being Napoleon as that Charles Boyer could act the role of Napoleon” (p. 45), neither case being problematic for personal identity. Velleman (1996) takes a different approach. If I imagine being Napoleon and uttering “I see the battle”, “I” is being used to refer to someone who is not the utterer (or, in this case, the thinker of the utterance). Non self-reflexive uses of an FPP are non-standard uses. The use of an FPP such as “I” or “me”, picks out the utterer without the requirement of specifying who the utterer is. Using one’s own name instead of an FPP picks the self out in a non-self-reflexive sense. In this way, according to Velleman, if I utter “I am MR”, this can be informative, because the FPP places the utterer, myself, at the centre of my perspective, and the use of the name, MR, picks the self out from an outside perspective. Velleman explains that such a phrase brings together a self-centred conception of the world “with a centreless conception of the world, as containing someone named ‘[MR]’. ‘I am [MR]’ is informative, then, because it shows how to transfer information between these two conceptions of the world” (p. 48). If the utterer of the phrase “I am NB” is not NB, the FPP cannot genuinely self-reflexively refer to NB. The difference between imagining being myself and imagining being someone else is that imagining being myself and using the FPP is done in a genuinely reflective way and imagining being someone else using the FPP is non-genuinely reflexive. When I think “I see the battle”, the first personal pronoun (FPP) “I” is a self-locating thought which provides separate information from using my name, MR, to refer to myself. “MR” is a centreless reference that can be used equally by anyone to pick out MR, although it is somewhat unusual to refer to oneself that way. When I imagine being someone else, I can also use the FPP to refer to the imagined individual. I imagine being NB and thinking “I see the battle”; however, here “I” refers to NB, not MR. For Velleman, I can use an FPP in a “genuinely reflexive” way to refer only to

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MR since “genuinely reflexive thoughts don’t rely on an antecedent specification of their target: they just point to the subject, at the centre of thought” (1996, p. 60). Usually “I” just refers to whoever it is at the centre of my perspective (myself). “I” requires no specification as to who that person is. When imagining being someone else, the FPP no longer automatically points out the centre of perspective, but an imagined person’s perspective. For Velleman, the reflexivity of the FPP has implications for personal identity. It is my perspective and the reflexivity with which I refer to myself that indicates my personal identity – at least to me. It connotes both identity and reflexivity, and either of these connotations might dominate when the word serves as a noun. On the one hand, a past self of mine might be one and the same person as me, identified at some time in the past. On the other hand, a past self might be someone in the past whom I can think of reflexively, in the firstperson. In the first sense, selfhood is a metaphysical relation that holds between persons at times, if they are the same person. In the second sense, selfhood is a psychological relation that holds between subjects who are on first-personal terms. (Velleman, 1996, p. 64) This “psychology of perspectives”, in other words, the “self-centered perspective that you occupy as an agent” (ibid., p. 47) is also important for the question of my continued existence. I believe that I will continue to exist in the future so long as I anticipate that there will be someone in the future that I can think of self-reflexively. It is the first-person perspective of memories or anticipations about future events that express what I want to know about my survival. If I anticipate experiencing from the first-person perspective in the future, then I anticipate surviving into the future. This may seem unsatisfying or potentially circular. To know that I can continue to use self-reference or that there is an individual for whom I can use the FPP with genuine reflexivity in the future, I have to already know that I continue to exist. I may be more interested in the conditions under which that individual, who refers to “me” self-reflexively, continues to exist. However, this question is about metaphysical identity, which for Velleman is a separate philosophical issue. Metaphysical identity will be analysed following the discussion of first-personal reference. Imagining being someone else finds a solution in talk of perspectival selfhood. Genuinely reflexive self-reference occurs when FPP unselfconsciously points to the centre of reference, whereas if the reference needs to be made self-consciously, it is non-genuinely reflexive. If I am currently thinking “I am typing on a computer” in an unselfconscious way,

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this is genuine, whereas if I imagine being NB typing on the computer, I must first appropriately frame the identity of NB as the centre of reference, after which the sentence can be ascribed to the person I am imagining being, NB. Conscious framing, in contrast with unconscious centre-of-perspective pointing, is not genuinely reflexive. The FPP about my imagining being NB involves consciousness of to whom the FPP refers, NB, whereas genuine reflexivity does not require consciousness of who MR is – it merely points out whoever happens to be at the centre of perspective. The thinker of the thought “I see the battle” is me, the “actual subject”, so although it is me who thinks “I”, this FPP does not refer to me. For Velleman (1996), “imagining that I am Napoleon is first-personal, but it is, so to speak, first-personal about Napoleon, in the sense that it is framed from Napoleon’s point of view” (p. 40). MR, the actual subject, is the one who frames the FPP to be from the perspective of the imagined centre of perspective or “notional subject” (NB). The actual subject thinks “I am doing X” after framing the thought so that the notional subject is the centre of perspective. An interesting consequence of this view is that not every instance in which I use “I” to refer to “MR” will count as genuine reflexivity. This is because Velleman’s framing of perspective only distinguishes genuine from nongenuine reflexivity, not whether “I” refers to the actual subject. “I” and “MR” are different ways of presenting information: the former picks out the centre of perspective, while the latter refers to an individual from a centreless perspective. If I were to imagine being NB, then imagine that MR replaces NB so that MR sees the battle, the use of the FPP that refers to MR is not genuinely reflexive since the thought must be framed so that MR is once again at the centre of perspective. Say I forget that I went skydiving but watch the video of this event and then imagine being the skydiver. “I see the ground rushing up to meet me” here refers to myself in a non-reflective way. Velleman also considers FPPs about his anticipated future self and remembered past self as not necessarily genuinely self-reflexive. These selves may, depending on the circumstance, require a framed perspective, although in standard cases, the remembered self is genuinely first-personal. Imagining being a world leader in the future who is addressing the nation may require framing. If I imagine being the world leader addressing the nation, but then specify that it is me, MR, in this scenario and not some different imagined world leader, this involves framing. I do not anticipate being this imagined self in the same way I might anticipate eating breakfast tomorrow. It’s a fantasy rather than anticipation, which is normally genuinely self-reflexive. Forming intentions about what to do tomorrow and anticipating carrying them out without the requirement of framing would be genuinely reflexive. Does this account work for dreams?

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Velleman’s unified framework is meant to apply to all relevant mental states, including remembering past and anticipating future events. However, as previously discussed, mental states that are about myself are not necessarily genuinely reflexive. Genuine reflexivity is a psychological relationship that links first-personal perspectives over time and although thoughts about myself are not necessarily genuinely reflexive, reflexivity is important for determining my survival or continued existence. My psychological identity depends on my ability to anticipate future experiences in which I have a first-person perspective. Velleman’s (2008, 2015) accounts of dreaming change in different works. While his 2008 approach seems to be independent of his 1996 work on imagination, his 2015 work applies the same reasoning to dreams (see also Rosen & Sutton, 2013, who take a similar interpretation as Velleman’s 2015 work). I argue that the disanalogy between dreaming and imagining means that we cannot use the same approach for both cases of self-reference. 6.4.2 Dreamed Napoleon vs. imagined Napoleon

Velleman (2008, 2015) discusses a case in which he dreams of being Ludwig Wittgenstein threatening Karl Popper with a fireplace poker. In his 2008 work, he does not draw on an analogy with imagining but instead describes the dreamed self as being no one. Similar to Ichikawa and Sosa’s “in the dream” operator discussed in Chapter 4, Velleman draws on the fact that the dreamed items do not exist. There was no poker, no Popper, and no experience of brandishing the one at the other – only a dream of such an experience. Hence there was no subject of the dreamed-of experience, either: there was only a dreamed-of subject. In my dream-report, then, the second “I” refers to a first-personal mode of presentation that, in its original occurrence, failed to pick out a referent at all. My dream had the content “I am Wittgenstein … ,” but there was no one of whom I was dreaming that he was Wittgenstein. (Velleman, 2008, p. 229) In this analysis, since there is no poker, Popper, or Wittgenstein, there is no problem of self-reference. “I” doesn’t refer to anybody. However, it is unclear from this what we should make of dreams in which he is JV. Further, the protagonist does seem to have some type of experience, and there needs to be a subject to have subjective experience. What should we make of this subject’s self-reference? Instead, we can compare the first-person pronoun in cases of dreaming vicariously with transference imagination. Perhaps when I dream of being

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Napoleon, the FPP is not used genuinely reflexively. If dreaming and imagining are analogous, then dreaming vicariously involves selfconscious framing which contextualises the FPP in the sentence “I see the battle”. If it is my dream, then MR is the actual subject and NB is the notional subject. Velleman (2015) adopts this view. In what sense, then, was it a dream about Wittgenstein and Popper? The dream-experiences must have been somehow accompanied by the thought “Wittgenstein brandishing a poker at Popper”. In this respect, a dream is like a game of make-believe. I can pretend to be Wittgenstein brandishing a poker at Popper, but I can’t do it just by waving a poker at you. I have to say, “Let’s pretend I’m Wittgenstein …” or something of the sort. I have to stipulate who “I” am in the make-believe; similarly, there must have been some silent thought stipulating who “I” was in my dream. (Velleman, 2015, p. 88) This would be a tidy solution, however, dreams do not easily fit into this framework. I argue that vicarious dream thoughts are not necessarily appropriately framed from the perspective of a notional subject. We are not necessarily playing make-believe when we dream. In Velleman’s analysis, NB is the notional subject and MR is the actual subject of imagination. If vicarious dreams are closely analogous, dreaming of being Napoleon would involve framing the first-person perspective as being NB’s perspective as opposed to MR’s perspective, a type of make-believe. Since transference imagining requires self-conscious framing, this would be the case also for dreaming. Of course, not all dreams are vicarious, so genuine reflexivity can occur in these dreams. In this analysis, the distinction between waking-self dreams and vicarious dreams is that waking-self dreams involve no perspectival framing whereas vicarious dreams do. Dreaming from my own perspective, like standard remembering, anticipating, or experiencing in waking life, is automatic and unselfconscious, and the use of the first-person pronoun identifies the centre of the perspective. For me, the centre is “MR”, but the thought need not be framed as the thought of MR since it is automatic. Indeed, as aforementioned, if framing about being MR occurs, even if MR is me, this is no longer genuine reflexivity. Vicarious dreams would involve an actual and a notional subject to be analogous with imagination. I think this description, however, is inaccurate. The Napoleon dream begins with the dream character looking over the battlefield and reflecting on what he sees. Yet the actual subject, MR, is not involved in any obvious sense. The dream character is not necessarily aware of the existence of two individuals, NB, and MR, or aware that

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they, themselves, are actually MR. If we take seriously the possibility that dreams can be vicarious along with the empirical evidence that the dream self can forget about who the dreamer is, it is possible that no obvious framing about the holder of the centre of perspective as being distinct from MR occurs. The character can just exist in the dream as NB, unaware of MR, just as my waking self can exist as MR, not thinking about NB. Transference imagining involves a clear distinction between the actual subject doing the imagining and the imagined, notional subject. It is not clearly the case for dreaming. Memory deficits and other cognitive changes between the dreamer and the vicarious protagonist may break their psychological link, as I will discuss in the following section. MR does not necessarily self-consciously dream of being NB; it is possible that, just like when MR is awake, the dream protagonist is the only subject present and they are not MR. But who is this subject, and are they notional or actual? In vicarious dreams and unlike in transference imagination, there is not always perceptual framing nor distinct actual and notional subjects. The protagonist of the dream often does not realise they are in a dream, whereas this generally cannot be said for imagination. A key to this discussion will be memory access. Dream memory can be deficient in several ways, both memories of dreams and memory access within dreams (Fosse et al., 2003; Hobson, 2005; Hobson et al., 2003). While the protagonist is generated by the brain of the dreamer, this protagonist may not realise they are part of MR’s dream. MR may not play any role in the dream but only remembers the dream from the first-person perspective after waking – assuming the dream is remembered. Since most dreams are forgotten, it is likely that we do not remember most of our vicarious dreams. As with dreaming, it might be possible to imagine being NB but forget that I am really MR whilst simultaneously forgetting that I was imagining. Waking fantasy can involve hallucinatory elements – when letting our minds wander in a dark room, we can lose track of reality (Foulkes & Fleisher, 1975). However, transference imagining without framing the perspective of the imagined individual would involve more than simply forgetting one was imagining – to start thinking “I am NB” without framing could be considered delusional. The cognitive and experiential profile of dreaming differs from that of imagining, making the case of unframed vicarious dreams more likely than unframed transference imagination in nondelusional people. If “I see the battle” in a dream can indeed refer to “dream NB” without the framing required by Velleman’s analysis, two options remain: either MR uses the FPP in a genuinely reflexive way to refer to NB, or MR does not enter the picture at all. What if the protagonist does realise they are dreaming, thus becoming lucid? One would expect a lucid dreamer to realise they are not NB.

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Perhaps framing occurs in these dreams: MR might self-consciously frame the thoughts of NB while being aware that they are dreaming. However, lucidity, as discussed in Chapter 2, does not necessarily come with full insight. I could have a lucid dream in which the protagonist is NB and believes that they are Napoleon but having a dream. This raises the same issues as the non-lucid case. The protagonist, lucid or not, may lack awareness of MR’s existence. Perhaps vicarious dreams involve “tacit” awareness of being MR, a type of awareness that one is not attending to or cannot report (Manning & Kartsounis, 1993) in the same way, according to Ichikawa, that we remain tacitly aware of our beliefs in dreams (see Chapter 4). We might tacitly frame the perspective of NB. Unselfconscious reference, however, indicates genuine self-reference in Velleman’s view, and tacit awareness is better aligned with unselfconsciousness. FPPs, without conscious framing, unselfconsciously point to the centre of perspective. To point to a notional subject, awareness is required. Alternatively, perhaps the protagonist consciously realises “I am NB”3 at the beginning of the dream the way Velleman suggests. However, firstly, it is not clear whether this happens in all vicarious dreams. Secondly, I may, in the course of a day, think “I am MR”, but this does not frame all subsequent thoughts and make them non-genuine. In the dream case, if “I” refers to “NB”, it does not also refer to “this person that I am (when awake)”. If the person at the centre of the dream perspective is NB and NB uses “I“ to refer to NB, it does not matter if NB previously “realised” that “I am Napoleon”. Dreams differ from imagining, since in imagining there are two relevant perspectives, the one of MR and that of NB. The dream protagonist, in contrast, can experience the dream world as if they are the actual subject, not the notional subject. Vicarious dreams are not analogous to imagining I am someone else and cannot be described by Velleman’s analysis of self-reference. We are left with a strange scenario in which it is not clear what to make of vicarious dream protagonists. In the following, the possibility that the dream protagonist is a separate, thinking entity is assessed. Despite the counter-intuitive nature of such a theory, this is consistent with psychological theories of the self. 6.5 Denying psychological identity

The protagonist of vicarious dreams doesn’t seem to be the same person as the dreamer of the dream. But what does this mean? Between waking and dreaming, there appear to be several psychological changes that are relevant to the sense of self. While issues of the dream body are of interest to the study of dreaming, the focus here will be the psychology of

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perspectives (Velleman, 1996) and psychological identity. The main issue here is to what extent the dream protagonist can be psychologically discontinuous with the waking individual. An extreme level of discontinuity between the waking and dream self would occur if dream cognition is altered to the extent that the experience of the dream is incomprehensible to the waking self. These dreams might be difficult or impossible to report, making them also difficult to verify or analyse. While individuals may at times report on waking that they don’t comprehend what was just experienced or that they can’t describe their dream, it is more likely that such experiences, when they do occur, are forgotten. It is not clear what becomes of the self during such experiences. The focus here is a disruption in psychological continuity which leads to the dream protagonist not believing themselves to be the same person as the dreamer. This discussion assumes that we consider psychological continuity to be important for the persistence of the self over time and sets aside issues of the physical structure of the brain or body, which do not significantly change throughout the usual sleep-wake cycle. If psychological continuity views consider the brain as the substrate that houses the self, by altering brain activation significantly, one brain could house more than one conscious entity (Thomson & Dancy, 2008). How much psychological change can occur while still retaining my personal identity? We may require that mental states be appropriately causally connectedness over time (Parfit, 1971, 1984) or alternatively, the life trajectory may determine survival (Schechtman, 2011, 2018). In particular, theories of identity that emphasise memory, I argue, should allow that there are at times distinct selves during dreams. Since memory is significantly altered during many dreams, if person stages are linked over time with memory, as argued by Locke (1690), Parfit (1971, 1984), Schechtman (2011), and others, there may be a disruption of self in dreaming. However, the question then is what kinds of memory are important for personal identity and in what ways is memory disrupted during sleep. Firstly, I make an analogy between dream protagonists and dissociative identity disorder (DID) “alters” and argue that the dream self provides a more plausible case of disruption of the self than DID. 6.5.1 Dream protagonists as “alters”

Dissociative identity disorder (DID), a disorder formerly known as multiple personality disorder (MPD), involves what appears to be one body housing multiple distinct conscious selves. Trauma in early life leads to DID patients’ psychology being “fractured” into multiple, dissociated personalities that present themselves at different times. Dennett describes that

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what they do, when confronted with overwhelming conflict and pain, is this: They “leave.” They create a boundary so that the horror doesn’t happen to them; it either happens to no one, or to some other self, better able to sustain its organization under such an onslaught--at least that’s what they say they did, as best they recall. (Dennett, 1993, p. 420) Vicarious dream protagonists are perhaps similar since the dreaming mind appears to house multiple selves. For Barrett (1995), dreams “parallel […] the observed phenomena of MPD” (p. 61). People with MPD report “dreamy” experiences that are highly dissociative, involve amnesia, and share similar cognitive and sensory features with dreaming such as hallucinatory qualities and a lack of alertness. Vicarious dream protagonists may simply be a type of DID alter. John Perry (2009, p. 5) argues that genuine cases of MPD/DID are not multiple selves but rather fractured selves of a traumatised individual. Trauma that causes DID occurs before the child is old enough to have developed a full, multifaceted self and well-developed autobiographical memories, which indicates that the self is fractured rather than multiplied. Moreover, “multiples” tend to be one-dimensional and simplistic personalities rather than, normal adult personalities. “Multiples” also share semantic, or fact memories and procedural memories, that is ability memories, if not autobiographical memories about events.4 As with MPD, dream states can involve the generation of individuals who appear to have distinct personalities from the dreamer. There can be a significant lack of shared autobiographical and other forms of memory. These protagonists can display different characteristics, personalities and even values. A kind, gentle, law-abiding individual may generate a protagonist who violently murders people. Perhaps, like with DID, dream protagonists are fractured selves but, as we will see, there are some clear distinctions between dreaming and DID. We might say that someone is no longer the same person if their personality changes due to illness or disease of the brain, or they lose a large proportion of autobiographical memories due to Alzheimer’s. For Perry (2009), however, when we talk of an individual not being the same person, it is not in a strong metaphysical claim about personal identity. Persons continue to exist despite memory loss. Could this also apply to my Napoleon dream? I am “NB” but with diminished autobiographical memory and some alterations to personality. The dream protagonist may be a fractured self. The analogy between DID and dreams only extends so far. Dream protagonists can be distinct from the waking self in a stronger sense than Perry’s examples of DID and Alzheimer’s patients. Dream personalities, for

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example, are not responses to trauma as is the case with DID. DID is a rare condition that comes about during childhood before a full personality can be formed whereas dreams are experienced by individuals of all ages and backgrounds. Dreams, unlike DID, can be the product of untraumatised, normally developed brains. Thus, Perry’s rejection of DID alters as fully developed persons may not apply to dreams: perhaps dream alters could have multifaceted personalities. Dream alters require an alternative explanation to DID, perhaps instead they are explained by neural changes during sleep. Another distinction between dreaming and DID is that “alters” could be seen as separate aspects of the same personality whereas the dream self does not necessarily appear to be a fractured part of the waking self, although this could be the case in some dreams. My waking self has a normal, three-dimensional personality, whereas my vicarious protagonists may display simple, stereotypical character traits that are entirely unlike my waking self. The kind of dream alters I am focussing on seem distinct from the waking self in surprising ways – distinct behaviour, desires, and memories to name a few. Dream protagonists, it would appear, should not all be considered as separate aspects of my personality. Further, unlike DID alters, dream protagonists are not necessarily recurring characters. A dream protagonist may only show up in a dream once. Many dreams involve the experience of being in an internally generated world that one takes as reality. Further, the experience of the dream body and waking body can be entirely distinct. Dream protagonists are likely isolated from the waking self to a greater extent than DID alters are isolated from each other. While dream alters have a distinct body and world from the waking self, DID alters share the same world and body. DID is not the perfect analogy for vicarious dreams; however, it demonstrates the possibility of fractured selves or multiple selves housed in one brain. It would not be plausible to argue that all dream personalities are alters since it is more common to have a waking-self dream than a vicarious dream (Schredl, 2020). Moreover, there are often less extreme alterations to cognition and self in dreams that are not entirely vicarious. I might dream of being MR but MR who is more violent and forgetful than my waking self. Wake and dream selves can be highly psychologically continuous, especially in lucid dreams (Yu & Shen, 2020). This raises the question of how much psychological change one can undergo and still remain the same person. Although the question of where to draw the line will not be analysed here, the focus instead is how much psychological change the dream self can undergo and whether a case can be made for distinct psychological entities. If memory is key to continuity, the dream self can undergo loss of autobiographical, semantic, and procedural memories while experiencing false memories that are not shared with

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the dreamer. In terms of sense of self, the dream self may not identify as the dreamer. This suggests that the vicarious protagonist may not be the dreamer in the psychological sense. 6.5.2 Psychological discontinuity and memory

What allows us to persist over time? The ability to perform mental time travel, or remember past events and anticipate future ones, is key to our sense of self if not also to our continued survival (Jaynes, 1976). Access to one’s personal memories may be necessary for attaining full selfconsciousness (Tulving, 1983). Psychological continuity may require many factors, including causal connectedness over time (Parfit, 1971), memory retention (Locke, 1690), and continuity of personality (Wilkes & Wilkes, 1988; Williams, 1973). The broad range of psychological discontinuities between the vicarious dream protagonist and waking self, especially memory retention and access, suggest a strong sense of distinction between selves. The isolation between vicarious protagonists and the waking self regarding different types of memory can be profound. An exceedingly large proportion of dreams is forgotten (Hobson, 2005; Domhoff, 2003), and whilst we are dreaming, access to our waking memories is limited (Horton & Malinowski, 2015; Malinowski & Horton, 2014). If dream Napoleon not only fails to identify as MR but also has no access to MR’s memories, he lacks psychological connection to my waking self in a profound way. Further, there may be borderline cases where it is unclear to what extent the dream self is disconnected from the waking self, adding further complexity. Recall of dreams and in dreams varies greatly. Memory access and retention in lucid dreams is more likely to equal that of waking memory, with normal access to memory faculties, reliable recall, and the ability to store memories. However, this is not the case in all lucid dreams – the dreamer might realise they are dreaming but not remember falling asleep. At the other end of the spectrum, dream memory can be greatly deficient. Knowledge of the waking self, events, and even skills can be inaccessible. While memory loss is a well-known feature of dreaming, some nuance commonly ignored in the literature is whether different types of memory face different levels of degradation. Discussions of memory in dreams are usually limited to autobiographical memory – memories of our own personal experiences; however, as I will argue, such memories are not the only ones that are relevant. Different types of memory together furnish our ability to recollect not only experienced events but also facts and abilities. Episodic memories,

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also known as recollective memories (Russell, 1921), are memories about my past experiences. In contrast, semantic memories, also known as propositional memories, are facts about the world that are not personal in the same way as episodic memories and lack narrative structure and multimodality. Memories of one’s trip to Paris are episodic whereas remembering that Paris is the capital of France is semantic. Both types of memory aim at truth and are about the past; however, procedural (Sutton et al., 2010) or skill memories (Ennen, 2003) are, instead, about how to do something. This is analogous to Ryle’s (1945) distinction between “knowing how” and “knowing that”. Although there is some debate about whether knowledge about propositions is sufficient for expertise (Fodor, 1968), for my purposes here, I will maintain a distinction between memories of facts and skills, since the maintenance of skill memories in the absence of episodic and semantic memories may be a route to psychological continuity between dreamers and their vicarious protagonists despite apparent discontinuity. In order to be sufficiently discontinuous, a disruption to all forms of memory may be required. I will argue that there are a variety of ways the protagonist may lack access to the dreamer’s memories, and lacking skill memories is one of them. Significant research suggests that access to episodic memories can be disrupted in dreams, yet there is less research into procedural dream memories (Rosen, 2021). Although memory-based views of personal identity usually focus on episodic memory, if procedural memories are also relevant to the continuation of the self, we could argue that since a dream protagonist retains competence abilities, the protagonist is not an entirely separate individual. In contrast, perhaps abilities are not important for personal identity and only episodic memories link psychological continuity over time. While it is intuitively appealing that memories of what I did as a child, such as riding a horse, are more important to my selfhood than remembering how to ride a horse, an argument for vicarious protagonists as psychologically distinct individuals will be stronger if there are a wider variety of psychological disruptions. What exactly is a procedural memory? Remembering how to perform an action can also be referred to as being able to perform an action, although this is ambiguous. I am able to score a hole-in-one in golf if I am very lucky, not because I know how to do it. For Maier (2010), abilities or powers “are typically expressed by the modal auxiliary ‘can’”. These can be disambiguated as competence, which is required to pick up a guitar and play it well, potentiality, which means I would be able to play the guitar if I practiced enough or opportunity, for example, being able to play only if I have a guitar accessible.5 In contrast, I lack competence when, given otherwise amenable conditions, I cannot speak

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Portuguese, I lack potentiality to, say, become a telepath no matter how hard I practise, and I lack opportunity to demonstrate excellent astronaut skills. It is competence that best describes procedural memories, although these distinctions are important when considering what kind of capacities a dream protagonist might have. Simply being able to carry out an action doesn’t prove my competence – especially in a dream (Rosen, 2021). In the following, I argue that although competence is relevant for personal identity, this aspect of the self can also be disrupted in dreams. Schechtman highlights the importance of episodic or autobiographical memories in accounts of personal identity, noting that these accounts “do not simply suggest that memory constitutes personal identity, but more specifically that identity is constituted through autobiographical experience memories” (Schechtman, 2011, p. 69). For example, Bernecker (2010) argues that memories that are not of one’s personal past could conceivably be transferred between individuals without any issues regarding personal identity. Factual and abilities memories are extroversive – not of one’s own mental state – and for Bernecker, they are identity neutral. Only introversive memory of one’s own mental state cannot be neutrally transferred. If introversive memory transfer was to occur, such a memory would either be delusional for the person “remembering” it or the memory would be stripped of context and no longer true to the original memory. Schechtman, however, disagrees with this exclusion of extroversive memories since our memories do not just give us information about the world; they give us information about ourselves. Even when they do not represent our inner lives or include first-person indexicals, our memories tell us about our lives and our trajectory through the world. (2010, p. 75) Extroversive memory may be important for one’s life trajectory. Forgetting skills or relevant factual knowledge for a surgeon could be more detrimental to her life than forgetting every birthday party they attended. Introversive or extroversive memories may be more or less important depending on their relevance to one’s life trajectory. While evaluating Schechtman’s argument is not my focus here, I take this memory-inclusive view as potentially setting a higher bar for the existence of truly vicarious protagonists since there is more than simply episodic or autobiographical memory disruptions to take into account. If we take this as the target view, assessment of the identity of the dream protagonist should not be limited to autobiographical memories alone.

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6.5.3 Disrupted psychology in dreams

Not only can disruption of all forms of memory occur in dreams, memories can also be replaced, by false autobiographical, semantic, or even procedural memories. This means that there is a very strong sense in which the dream protagonist and the waking self are distinct individuals. Forgetting semantic and autobiographical memories in dreams is often reported. A common nightmare involves being in an exam but having forgotten everything that was studied. Dreamers almost always forget that they fell asleep and dreams rarely “replay” memories. Elements from waking memory, however, can be recontextualised or confabulated in the dream. Baylor and Cavallero (2001) and Fosse and colleagues (2003) found that dreamers often experience images that relate to their waking lives but are taken out of context. Tetris players report imagery related to the game, such as falling blocks, at sleep onset, however, elements that would be present in an episodic memory, such as the computer screen and the player’s hands, are absent from these dreams. Tetris images were also found in amnesic patients, except that upon waking, the amnesic patients could not recall that the objects were from the game Tetris (Fosse et al., 2003). Elements of memories can thus be accessed without the accompanying episodic memory. Episodic memory can also be recontextualised as a semantic memory, or a semantic memory can be confabulated and remembered as an episodic memory in dreams. The dream protagonist, NB, has access to some factual memories about Napoleon that MR learned in school; the battle in Austerlitz, Maria Walewska, and being short in stature (apparently a common misconception, however). Information derived from these memories is taken by NB as being his own episodic memories. Memories about Maria Walewska are confabulated versions of MR’s semantic memories about the historical romance. Dreams can be highly amnesic but also display psychological disruption through recontextualisation and confabulation of the dreamer’s memories. Bernecker’s (2010) description of memory insertion can be taken as an analogy -- the memories “shared” between NB and MR but they do not indicate psychological continuity since they are not clear cases of autobiographical recollection. What about procedural memories? In the Napoleon dream, NB doesn’t know that he is in a dream and doesn’t know anything about the dreamer, but he has ability memories. Perhaps he knows how to ride a horse because the dreamer learned this in waking life, allowing some continuity between MR and NB. If procedural memories can be identity-constituting, they can’t be ignored in this discussion. However, procedural memory in dreams isn’t necessarily retained. Further, not only can competence be lost, but, more contentiously, new abilities could be gained.

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An expert guitar player falls asleep and dreams of playing the guitar. Let’s say that when awake, they play without conscious effort and playing is an important part of their life trajectory. Might they forget this skill when dreaming? Hobson (2002) reports the following dream. I arrive at a meeting […] and am greeting colleagues. Suddenly I notice Jouvet is there. He recognises me and smiles broadly (not his usual greeting). I am about to call out to him when I suddenly lose muscle tone in my legs and sink to the floor. I cannot communicate and feel lost. (Hobson, 2002, p. 154) Hobson feels a lack of sense of agency and loses the basic abilities to speak and walk. If one can “forget” how to speak, perhaps any ability could be forgotten in a dream. Yet there are alternative interpretations of Hobson’s dream. Instead of forgetting, he was paralysed or somehow prevented from walking, lacking the opportunity, not competence. An extreme view can be put forward; that all physical abilities are completely lost in dreams. In dreams, in a sense, we cannot perform any action. For Sosa and Ichikawa (2009) the “in the dream” operator implies no actions, thoughts or beliefs occur, thus we can’t be said to have any abilities. “While dreaming, I played the guitar”, implies “I did not actually play the guitar”. The same would apply to any ability in this view. Even dream competence implies I was not actually competent. This view is too strong, as it is hard to deny that mental states can occur while dreaming just as they can occur while imagining. But it is debatable whether dreams can actually provide opportunity to enact competence (Rosen, 2021). For Foulkes (1999), the ability to dream itself develops as children develop the ability to imagine three-dimensional space, hence dreaming is a skill in itself. If we consider the ability to simulate three-dimensional space to be an acquired skill, this skill is retained when we dream. Yet it’s hard to argue that this is an identity-constituting type of memory. These skills could be transferred between individuals without any implications about identity. On the other hand, as Foulkes argues, dream imagery and experience are furnished mostly by memories of waking experiences; a dream tree looks like a real tree, and this is based on waking memory of trees. However, “what a tree looks like” doesn’t seem to be an identity constituting memory, either. Further, these memories are recontextualised to come from the protagonist’s perspective, so it is unlikely that they should be considered as a psychological link – NB’s “episodic” memory of Maria may be quite distinct from my semantic memory of her. Access to procedural memories in dreams may be disrupted by cognitive deficits. Forgetting how to play the guitar due to a cognitive deficit is

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better interpreted as a loss of competence rather than a lack of opportunity. Compare Noë’s (2005) example of a former ski jumper who lacks the conditioning to ski. While she retains knowledge (competence), her body’s lack of agility and strength denies her the opportunity to use her skills. Dreamers experience severe cognitive deficits as opposed to simply physical deficits, so the skier example is unlikely a good analogy for dreaming. A better analogy might be a ski jumper who has suffered a brain injury, or even severe neurochemical changes as occur in dreams, and can no longer ski. A fitter body would allow the former ski jumper to be able to perform her jumps, but this is not the case for the brain-altered ski jumper. They would need to relearn their skills. While cognitive deficits in dreaming are temporary, the dreaming mind does functionally show similarities with brain damage (Rosen, 2022). Temporary lack of competence is a plausible description of some dreams due to these neurochemical changes. Is it possible to gain abilities in dreams? If a dream protagonist is not only isolated from the dreamer’s waking procedural memories but also has a separate set of abilities from my waking self, this is a further type of psychological disruption. Prima facie, dream “abilities” in the sense of opportunity seem unlimited. Flying, walking through walls, and even morphing into another creature are all possible. This shouldn’t be seen as gaining competence, I merely gain opportunity as the laws of nature no longer apply. My dreams of being a professional soccer player could involve scoring the winning goal, but it is implausible to think that I have suddenly gained the procedural knowledge required to achieve this: I don’t know which precise angle to kick the ball and how much force to apply. In some dreams, objects just act how I want them to. They can travel in ways that would be impossible in the real world. However, this is not always the case. I argue that competence can be gained in dreams. As a simple example, some dream abilities may require competence themselves. LaBerge and DeGracia (2000) argue the attempt to fly during any given lucid dream may be met with varying degrees of success. The lucid dreamer may fly readily, merely hover, or not be able to fly at all. Likewise, a lucid dreamer may not always be able to pass through walls. (p. 156) Lucidity itself is a skill that can be learned through practice, and as LaBerge and DeGracia suggest, flying is an ability that some can attain whilst others do not. Since these “abilities” do not align with real-world abilities, it is unclear exactly which procedural knowledge is required for,

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say, flying in a dream. It’s certainly not the same skill as real-world flying. Dream-specific competence, however, is an example of competence gained whilst dreaming. An alternative interpretation is that the competence needed to, say, fly in dreams or become lucid is gained while awake, but then dreaming affords the opportunity to enact this competence. Lucid dreaming can be learned by practising exercises while awake (Stumbrys et al., 2012), suggesting the competence to be lucid is gained while awake. Contrary to this interpretation, there are no reported cases of individuals who are always lucid when they dream. Even expert lucid dreamers only become lucid occasionally, so lucidity competence is only retained in some scenarios. Even if we reject lucid dreaming as a dream ability, there are other plausible cases to examine. Dream protagonists can have creative abilities that the waking individual lacks (Barrett, 2017). Dali’s dreams inspired his paintings, while Otto Loewi’s Nobel Prize winning medical discovery was inspired by a dream (Barrett, 1993). Schatzman (1983a, 1983b, 1986) found that in some dreams, characters assist the protagonist in solving problems that the waking individual was unable to solve. Problem-solving abilities appear to be gained in some dreams, although this is likely rare. The potential to learn abilities in dreams has significant support. According to the threat simulation theory (Revonsuo, 2000; Valli & Revonsuo, 2009), the evolutionary function of dreams is to allow dreamers to practice threat response in a safe, virtual environment. Dream practice can, according to this view, improve performance even if the dreams are not remembered upon waking since they have positive unconscious effects. The view that dreams have this – or any – evolutionary function is debated (Flanagan, 1995, 2000). However, even if dreams have no evolutionary function, empirical evidence suggests that we can indeed learn and improve our abilities in dreams. Preliminary evidence shows an improvement in the dart-playing ability of lucid dreamers who practised in their dreams (Schädlich et al., 2017) and lucid dreaming is correlated with an improvement in activities involving the balance (Gackenbach et al., 1986; Snyder & Gackenbach, 2020). Sport experts have been shown to practise their sports in dreams (Schädlich & Erlacher, 2018; Stumbrys et al., 2016). However, if these abilities carry into waking life, there is psychological continuity between the protagonist and the waking self, providing evidence that the dreamer is not entirely discontinuous with the protagonist. On the other hand, NB may also attain abilities that are forgotten upon waking, breaking the aforementioned psychological continuity. These would be completely isolated dream abilities, another discontinuity between the dream protagonist and waking self.

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While episodic and semantic memories are usually the focus of both psychological continuity theories of memory and the discussion of memory loss in dreams, the maintenance of procedural memory may provide some psychological link between the dream protagonist and the waking self. However, a genius chess player may be incompetent at chess in a dream. My dream protagonist may be more creative than me but lack knowledge of years of philosophical training – a plausible event, given the reduced rational capacities and heightened associative nature in dreaming. The psychological continuity in dreaming can be disrupted in many ways. This is an important phenomenon for theories of personal identity and the self to take into account. 6.5.4 Napoleon and personal identity

Dream protagonists can be severely psychologically disrupted and discontinuous with our waking selves. Perhaps the dream protagonist is a distinct individual, despite how odd this sounds. In other cases, the disruption may be less severe, thus the dream protagonist may be a hybrid self: partially me, but partially not me in some important sense. If selfhood comes in degrees, the dream protagonist may be more or less me and there is some threshold in which they become a distinct person. This is an interesting discussion in itself, but here I focus on the bizarre case of vicarious dreams in the full sense. NB has little life trajectory (Schechtman, 2011, 2018), existing for only a matter of minutes. His memories are false, some of which are my memories taken out of context. NB may not be a complete psychological entity in the full sense, but instead a fractured self, akin to DID alters. There are some key differences, however, including that the dream self inhabits a different world and body than the waking self. If dream protagonists could be psychological entities in the full sense, this might make the life trajectory theory or other psychological continuity theories of personal identity unintuitive. A psychological entity existing without a life trajectory, like a short-lived Boltzmann brain (Barrow, 1986), suggests psychological continuity is not necessary for selfhood. Other views that stress the importance of the physical body or causal connectedness between person states (Ayer, 1963; Langford, 2014; Olson, 2003) would handle the dream case differently. Body-based views may, for example, reject that there is a “dream protagonist” because it has no physical body. Perhaps our physical, sleeping body remains the seat of identity when we dream. Velleman’s perspectival view of the self, as previously argued, might allow for distinct waking and dream selves. If the protagonist, NB, has no

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memory of MR, cannot anticipate MR’s future, and has separate skills and knowledge, then MR and the protagonist could be distinct. Likewise, MR cannot anticipate being dream NB in the genuinely reflexive way Velleman describes. Dream content is difficult if not possible to predict, although MR might remember the dream from the perspective of NB. This possibility, that MR can have memories from the perspective of NB, is another quandary. Most dreams are forgotten, leaving no memory link between MR and NB. But if this was always the case, there would be no reports of vicarious protagonists. Sometimes, I remember looking through the eyes of NB. Is the fact that I remember this sufficient continuity between MR and NB even if the continuity is one-way? If not, how can MR remember a distinct individual’s experiences? Perhaps we should conclude that this is like memory insertion, but not a standard case since NB and MR share the same brain. Instead, it’s as if the memories of one entity cross over into the consciousness of a separate entity via sharing the same neural substrate. The disruption between MR and NB may not be complete, and in most cases of dreaming, it is not. A hybrid self may be partially MR, partially NB. Further, vicarious dreams are less common than waking-self dreams. My goal here was to argue that there are likely cases in which MR and NB are sufficiently psychologically disrupted to be considered as separate conscious entities. Vicarious dreaming provides a puzzling case for personal identity. 6.6 Conclusion

Who is dream Napoleon, “NB”? When he says “I see the battle”, in what sense is “I” used? In my view, the dream protagonist is not necessarily a notional subject of the waking self, as occurs when we imagine being Napoleon. There is reason to suggest a vicarious dream protagonist can be a separate individual from the waking self and that this protagonist can use genuine self-reference. This is quite counterintuitive. However, if causal connectedness via memory is an important aspect of personal identity, the psychological disconnectedness between the dreamer and their vicarious protagonist gives good reason to accept this separation. We might instead argue that the dream case should alter our intuitions about certain theories of personal identity. If my dream protagonist turns out to not be me, perhaps we should not put too much weight into the importance of memory or life trajectory for the continuation of the self. Episodic, semantic, and procedural memories are all susceptible to forgetting in dreams. Memories can also be replaced by false or confabulated episodic, semantic, and procedural

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memories. The dreamer might gain new propositional or skill memories within the dream world. However, the dream self does not have time to undergo normal adult development as separate from the dreamer – the dream self is not Locke’s “night man” – the same individual in each dream. Dream protagonists may instead constitute fractured selves or temporary conscious entities that are not true selves, whatever that may require. However, this means that each human brain, over a lifetime, can house a variety of temporary entities that exist only briefly, for a few minutes of REM or even NREM sleep. Experience during dreams is multifarious, and vicarious dreams provide an example of how altered the dream protagonist can be from the waking self. A vicarious protagonist comes into and then goes out of existence in a few short minutes. She can only hope to live on in the memory of the dreamer. Unfortunately, due to poor dream recall, many dream selves will be immediately lost, never to be thought of again. Notes 1 The protagonist may also be viewed from a third person perspective, but dreams which are remembered from the perspective of the protagonist are the most interesting for my purposes. 2 Thanks to John Sutton for this point. 3 This brings up further questions: how did the protagonist of my dream come to believe that they are Napoleon? Beliefs are generally gained over time with experience. NB’s beliefs, however, seem to have been gained immediately at the beginning of the dream, or over the short duration of the dream. Perhaps this could be explained by changes in the brain that lead to delusion, as discussed in Chapters 2 and 4. 4 Spanos (1996) argues that many cases of purported DID are brought about by hypnotism and it is unclear whether it is a real disorder. It is plausible, however, that at least some cases are genuine. 5 We can also distinguish between specific ability; being a position to carry out an activity now and general ability, being able to carry it out given certain specifications ( Maier, 2010).

References Ayer, A. J. (1963). The concept of a person. In The concept of a person (pp. 82–128). Springer. Barrett, D. (1993). The “committee of sleep”: A study of dream incubation for problem solving. Dreaming, 3(2), 115. Barrett, D. (1995). The dream character as prototype for the multiple personality alter. Dissociation, 8(1), 61–68. Chicago. Barrett, D. (2017). Dreams and creative problem‐solving. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1406(1), 64–67. Barrow, J. D. (1986). The anthropic cosmological principle. Clarendon Press.

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7 DREAMING VS. THE EXTENDED MIND

7.1 Introduction

One fascinating feature of dreaming is that the brain generates a realistic experience of navigating a world while mostly shut off from the real world. Prima facie, this seems problematic for any view of the mind or perception according to which interaction with real objects is necessary. Two views that highlight the importance of real-world interaction are the extended cognition view and the extended conscious mind view. While the extended cognition view doesn’t require interaction with the real world for cognition to occur, dreaming provides a variety of interesting thought experiments for this view. Moreover, what cognitive features occur in dreaming while we have no access to external objects should be of interest to extended cognition theorists. Our isolation from the environment while we dream does, however, provide a counterargument for any theory of extended consciousness that states that real-world interaction is necessary for perception. Here I analyse the implications of dreaming for the extended cognition view espoused by Andy Clark and David Chalmers, and the extended conscious mind view put forward by Alva Noë. Clark and Chalmers describe modern humans’ ability to offload complex cognitive tasks onto the environment as a type of “extended cognition”. Through this offloading, in their view, the environment can become incorporated into our cognitive systems. The isolation from the external environment that occurs in dreaming might, at first glance, provide support for such a view, since in this isolation, we are often DOI: 10.4324/9781003367710-8

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cognitively impaired. Yet, a better reason for this impairment is the neural changes that are common in sleep. Further to this, cognitive activity similar to that of waking can occur in dreams, especially lucid dreams in which the dreamer realises they are dreaming. However, there are interesting lines of exploration for dreaming through the lens of the extended cognition view. First, I analyse the view that dreaming is an example of cognition that is not extended because of the input and output blockade during sleep, noting potential counterexamples. Then, I evaluate the idea that dreaming could potentially be extended with futuristic “external” cognitive enhancement devices or possibly even with modern technology. I use a science fiction example in which external memory devices that utilise a Wi-Fi connection to the brain to augment memory. I then evaluate the possibility of using a modern technique of two-way communication between the dreamer and experimenters as a method that could be carried out using only tools that we currently have at our disposal. There is good reason to accept future technology, such as external neural enhancements, as examples of extended cognition in dreams; however, it is not clear whether current memory enhancement devices such as notebooks and modern digital diaries, even using two-way communication, can pass the “cognitive threshold”. Further to this, since Wi-Fi cognitive enhancement devices could “extend” dream cognition whereas other types of external tools cannot, this indicates higher levels of cognitive integration in the Wi-Fi enhancement case than with regular methods we use to, enhance our cognition. If extended cognition is a matter of integration, the ability to undergo a cognitive process during sleep indicates robust integration which is only possible with tools that somehow link directly to the brain without requiring the intermediary of perception. While dreaming shows only a restriction of extended cognition as opposed to a counterargument to it, perceptual experience during sleep appears far more problematic for the extended conscious mind theory. The view that the conscious mind extends beyond the brain, that coupled conscious systems formed between the brain, body, and objects, is seen as an extreme view by some extended mind theorists who apply their view only to cognition. Dreams, in my view, provide evidence against Noë’s extended substrate thesis. Noë’s rejection of dreams as a counterargument to the extended conscious mind rests on an unjustified and reductive account of dreaming. For Noë, external objects are necessary for “fullblown” conscious experience, but in opposition to this, I argue that dreaming can indeed be considered fully conscious experience that occurs in the absence of real objects.

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7.2 Extended cognition and dreams

Dreaming, under the hallucination model discussed in Chapter 4, is a mental state that involves interesting phenomenal and cognitive features (see Chapter 2) but is mostly isolated from the external environment. While dream experience is often but not necessarily isolated from the environment (Rosen, 2019, see Chapter 5), it seems that in normal dreaming, the type of extended cognition described by theorists could not occur. However, dream cognition could in theory extend given futuristic Wi-Fi cognitive enhancement devices. Although the cognitive enhancement device case is currently only a sci-fi thought experiment, it gives intuitive appeal to the possibility of extending the dreaming mind. Wi-Fi devices that could be used whilst asleep suggest that these devices would be robustly integrated with internal cognitive processes. However, the dream case separates Wi-Fi cognitive enhancement devices from other types of tools, such as modern memory storage technologies, digital diaries, or notebooks. There are, however, ways for a dreamer to “access” their notebooks using modern techniques in which experimenters can communicate with lucid dreamers. However, I argue that these types of access are not good examples of the extended mind. 7.2.1 Does cognition extend?

According to the “active externalism” version of the extended mind thesis, interaction between internal cognitive systems and the environment can form coupled cognitive systems (Clark, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2008, 2009; Clark & Chalmers, 1998). Clark and Chalmers argue that if as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it to go on in the head, we would have no hesitation in accepting as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (for that time) part of the cognitive process. (1998, p. 9) “Off-loading” a cognitive process onto the environment involves a specific kind of interaction with the environment. Tools, when used in the right way, can “fill in” for or enhance cognitive functioning beyond normal cognitive capabilities. For example, calculators allow us to calculate complex sums with greater speed and accuracy than we could without. Even using a pencil and paper to calculate large sums, or a child using their fingers to do addition, grants greater mathematical ability than we could achieve calculating in the head alone. It is not contentious that tools can enhance abilities; however, for Clark and Chalmers, in some

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circumstances our cognitive systems extend or form a coupled cognitive system that includes both the brain and external tools. The external environment partly constitutes our cognitive process. In recent years, this view has been quite influential both with philosophers and cognitive scientists (Farina & Levin, 2021). One debate is between the view described above, that the brain forms coupled cognitive systems with the environment, and the view that we simply “scaffold” our cognitive processes with tools. The first view is HEC, the hypothesis of extended cognition, and the second is HEMC, the hypothesis of embedded cognition (Rupert, 2004). According to this latter view, “certain cognitive processes lean heavily on environmental structures and scaffoldings but do not thereby include those structures and scaffoldings themselves” (Clark, 2008, p. 111). For HEMC theorists, external factors can be causally necessary for the cognitive process to occur, like a scaffold (Sterelny, 2010), but they do not partially constitute cognition. For Clark, although many of us find the extended mind theory counter-intuitive, the intuitions that support HEMC are often a form of “in-head chauvinism”. We think that only neurons have the power to form cognitive systems. However, in his view, this arbitrarily gives a special status to neurons. neural goings-on are not blessed with some intrinsic property that makes them alone suitable to act as the circuitry of the mind and intelligence […] there is no single, all powerful, hidden agent inside the brain whose job is to do all the real thinking and which is able to intelligently organise all those teams of internal and external supporting structure. (Clark, 2008, p. 136) The famous “Otto and Inga” thought experiment (Clark & Chalmers, 1998) is meant to demonstrate the intuitive force of HEC in a simple example. Two fictional people, Otto and Inga, are looking for the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). Inga remembers how to find the museum, whereas Otto, who has Alzheimer’s and uses a notebook to keep track of important information, looks up the directions to MOMA. Not only does Otto consult his notebook the way people without Alzheimer’s might consult their “internal” memory, but the notebook functions as part of his memory. It is the functional structure rather than the physical constituents of the process that matters for whether a process is cognitive. Since Otto and his notebook do have this function, they together form a coupled cognitive system. Not all tool use is a type of cognitive extension, however. Clark and Chalmers (1998, p. 17) suggest four necessary criteria that a

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system needs to meet to be considered extended: the external object used to enhance one’s cognitive abilities must be constantly accessible, it must be accessible without difficulty, the information in it needs to be automatically endorsed, and this endorsement is the consequence of past conscious endorsement. This type of cognitive extension may seem counterintuitive. One might argue that it is difficult to discern whether an external object should be considered constitutive of cognition or only causally necessary for cognition (Pandey et al., 2023). According to “the differences argument”, there are too many relevant differences between Otto and Inga to consider this a good argument by analogy (Rowlands, 2009). Otto’s access to his notebook is less reliable, slower, involves different kinds of beliefs and seems to be a different kind of process than what we do when we remember. Opposing this view, Clark and Chalmers argue that the action required to use the notebook and associated belief states about how to use it are not relevant to whether processes are cognitive. While it is true that Inga accesses memory without bodily movement and Inga’s memory is generally more reliable than Otto’s system, more difficult to tamper with, and faster to access, these differences are not relevant to the discussion at hand. Otto’s notepad and Inga’s memory may be entirely different physical structures, but both systems are appropriately integrated and serve the same kind of function. The HEC debate, according to Sutton (2010), had a first wave and a second wave that have some important distinctions. Sutton describes the first wave as focused on functional similarities and differences between internal and external processes. During this wave, theorists supported the extended mind using the parity principle (Clark & Chalmers, 1998). According to this principle, an external process can be considered as part of a cognitive system if it functions in a sufficiently similar way to our normal, internal cognitive processes. The shift to the second wave changed the focus of researchers to a complementarity principle according to which “different components of the overall (enduring or temporary) system can play quite different roles and have different properties while coupling in collective and complementary contributions to flexible thinking and acting” (Sutton, 2010, p. 293). For the complementarity principle, the more important feature of “coupled systems” is whether the external object is appropriately incorporated into the system for the same cognitive purposes. For Sutton, the type of integration is key, which requires features such as transparency, accessibility, and reliability. Focusing on this second-wave approach, I will primarily consider integration rather than the parity between internal and external processes. Firstly, I provide support for the view that integration is key for

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determining whether a process is cognitive. Secondly, I argue that dreaming provides evidence that external tools can potentially be highly integrated with internal cognitive systems, however, we require futuristic technology to use tools while we dream. This integration can be so robust that there is good reason to accept the possibility of coupled cognitive dream systems. I then argue that this kind of integration does not extend to modern technological tools. 7.2.2 Integration is key

Using a notebook and using our brains to access information seem very different indeed, but to decide whether cognition extends, according to the complimentary principle, we must distinguish between relevant and irrelevant characteristics of cognition. In this view, the most important thing is how well-integrated the internal and external systems are. Sutton (2010) argues that “it’s just because isolated items aren’t stored atomically in the brain that our relatively vulnerable biological memories are supplemented by more stable external scaffolding. Brains like ours need media, objects, and other people to function fully as minds” (p. 302). Because such external objects are so essential to our normal cognition, at times they can be considered coupled systems, but we need to determine the level of integration with the internal system before we can say a system is coupled. A notebook could only be part of an integrated cognitive system if it is used in a specific way. Integration is indicated by features such as transparency, accessibility, and reliability. Transparency refers to when a process occurs in an automatic way so that the mechanisms of the system are not apparent to the individual. One may initially think that tools are not used in such a way, but, for example, an expert carpenter may be so advanced that the tool becomes an extension of her arm. Tools can in fact be used automatically without thought. There is some debate on whether transparency is a good marker of extended cognition, since there are many cases in which our regular functioning becomes less transparent, and there is much individual difference (Andrada, 2020). It should be kept in mind, though, that this is one of a cluster of indicative features, not a necessary feature. However, while most internal cognitive systems are usually accessible as well as transparent, a carpenter’s tools may not be accessible when left behind in the workshop for convenience. Of course, accessibility, like transparency, comes in degrees for cognitive systems too. Memories can become inaccessible, we can be more or less rational, and our cognitive abilities are dampened if we are tired or drunk. Accessibility is related to reliability since a process that is less accessible will also be less reliable, although the

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two are distinct concepts. A process could be accessible but unreliable, for example, access to false memories. A well-integrated system will usually be more reliable than a less well-integrated system. Neurological disorders may lead to some cognitive processes becoming unreliable. Alzheimer’s negatively affects memory, both in terms of accessibility and reliability. This indicates reduced integration. Similarly, Otto’s notebook might be tampered with, making it unreliable and less integrated with Otto’s cognitive processing. However, this doesn’t mean that no tool could be considered sufficiently integrated to be cognitive. Otto might use his notebook in a way that is automatic, and the notebook may remain reliable and accessible. If it becomes inaccessible, say, someone burns it, it would no longer be part of his cognitive system. Other potential indicators include speed of processing, difficulty to corrupt, trust and constancy. Any of these features could be lacking during internal cognition, therefore they are not necessary conditions. However, as indicators, they may be useful for demonstrating the level of integration and thus determining if a system is coupled. Integration, that which determines whether a system is cognitive, may itself be discerned by the degree to which the aforementioned indicators co-occur. Today Inga’s memory may be somewhat less reliable than it was yesterday, and she doesn’t get the address of MOMA right. Nonetheless, she undergoes cognitive processing in attempting to remember where MOMA is because the process involves the other dimensions, such as transparency. In contrast, she may not be able to remember anything, meaning she does not undergo memory retrieval. A notebook may be integrated with the system if accessed regularly and automatically. However, whether a notebook can be sufficiently integrated to be considered a coupled system will depend on whether it can achieve a sufficient level of these dimensions of integration. One might argue that it will usually be much slower to access than memory, less constant and more corruptible, as someone else could change the information when Otto is not looking, but this is not necessarily the case. Arguing for or against the notebook’s inclusion as a coupled system is not the main focus here, but for my purposes here, dreaming almost necessarily excludes the notebook from access during sleep. Dreamers are usually mostly isolated from the environment but can nonetheless perform complex cognitive tasks, as argued in section 2.2. This seems to be an argument against the necessity of the external environment for cognition, although it is important to keep in mind that HEC theorists do not think extension is necessary for cognition. Further the possibility of extended dreaming in which external brain enhancements “offload” dream cognition is conceivable. The ability to offload

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cognitive tasks even in sleep would exemplify very robust integration between internal cognition and external tools. However, Otto cannot access his notebook while asleep, suggesting that his memory system is less well-integrated than the implant. Although modern techniques can give Otto access to his notebook, a lower level of integration is achieved by these methods. It should be noted, however, that some internal cognitive processes are also inaccessible in dreams, thus dreaming cognition should not be taken as a necessary condition for cognition, only an indication of high-level integration. 7.2.3 Extended dream cognition

Cognition in sleep occurs when an individual is mostly or even completely isolated from the external environment. Although external stimuli sometimes filter into dreams (see Chapter 5), this is not constant (Rosen, 2019), and it is unlikely to allow for regular interaction with external objects. However, dreams could in theory “extend” in certain circumstances. One example is a thought experiment involving futuristic cognition enhancements. An external device can, for example, be used to improve Otto’s memory during sleep, requiring that this device is robustly integrated with Otto’s internal cognitive systems. While Otto is asleep, unaware that he is dreaming and otherwise under the input and output blockade, the device remains accessible, is used automatically, and is reliable. Modern technology also offers the potential for dream access by using two-way communication between a sleeping person and an experimenter (Baird et al., 2021; Konkoly et al., 2021); however, it is unclear whether this kind of process should be considered sufficiently well integrated. Sci-fi cases of neural implants are relevant to the extended mind debate because they provide an intuitively appealing case of cognition that is not solely neural. Subjects can offload tasks onto the implant, for example, a difficult mental rotation task in which they have to discern whether a complex object fits into a socket. This agent, however, has the benefit of a neural implant which can perform the rotation operation as fast as [a] computer […] The agent must still choose which internal resource to use (the implant or the good old fashioned mental rotation), as each resource makes different demands on attention and other concurrent brain activity. (Clark & Chalmers, 1998, p. 7) Further to this, the neural enhancement device may not be implanted in the subject’s brain but instead stored in a warehouse, connected to the

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brain via a future version of Wi-Fi. There is good reason to accept that it doesn’t matter where the device is stored so long as the subject can use it. There seems to be no relevant difference between an internal device stored in the skull and a device that serves the same functions but is stored in the attic. An interesting feature of either an internal or external device is that it can potentially be accessed in a dream whereas Otto loses access to his notebook while asleep. To regain access to his notebook requires a complex experimental setup. I argue that cognitively enhanced dreaming Otto is a thought experiment that could provide a distinction between the potential integration of the computer chip and the notebook. Wi-Fi-enhanced Otto improves his memory with a cognitive enhancement device that avoids the need for surgery by using Wi-Fi-like technology. This device could be programmed to continue to work while Otto is dreaming. Perhaps in the future, industrious people want to use their dreams to come up with creative ideas, or, in a more dystopian future, workaholics continue working whilst asleep, or less depressingly, it could be used for dream research. While the enhancement device is robustly integrated barring some technological glitch, a disconnected notebook such as Otto’s could not be incorporated during normal sleep. The dream example shows one difference in terms of integration between Otto and enhanced Otto. The Wi-Fi device is better integrated with internal cognitive processes; however, this does not mean that paper notebooks cannot form coupled systems when awake. To find out where MOMA is, enhanced Otto accesses the forgotten information on his memory chip just as if he didn’t have Alzheimer’s. We can conceive of a variety of different ways the technology might work. A less transparent system might, for example, present the information visually. This is the mode of presentation for the cyborg in the movie The Terminator (1984) and its sequels, who receives visual descriptions of important environmental information. In this case, Otto is aware that the implant is feeding him information. A more transparent system would have the same phenomenology as normal memory retrieval – the information “pops” into Otto’s head. In the latter case, Otto may be unaware of the difference between accessing his own memory and accessing the information stored on the chip. Different retrieval methods work at different speeds – the latter method, when the information pops into his head, could be as fast or even faster than normal memory. A slower process might involve say, mentally scrolling through information stored on a search engine. Thus, this technology could be more or less integrated with Otto’s normal cognitive systems. When enhanced Otto falls asleep and dreams about going to MOMA, the Wi-Fi device could tell him how to get there, especially in the highly

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integrated and transparent version. Perhaps Otto’s memory device is even more accurate and reliable than Inga’s memory, particularly when she is dreaming. The Wi-Fi device could be designed not to be susceptible to the cognitive failures that can occur in dreams and make lucid dreaming more common. If integration is indeed what distinguishes between cognitive and non-cognitive systems, then the potential ability to access the memory stored on the Wi-Fi device, even whilst asleep, indicates a robust integration; transparency, accessibility, reliability, and even speed of processing, difficulty to corrupt, and constancy. Trust, however, will depend on the user and their previous use of the technology. The system is highly transparent if it can be used without realising that an external device is supplying the information. Accessibility, reliability, incorruptibility (through, say, hacking), and constancy depend on how well the technology is designed. Otto’s notebook cannot reach this level of dream integration. These devices could compensate for Otto’s Alzheimer’s or for any dreamer’s dysfunctional cognition by offloading the functions of memory and other cognitive attributes not accessible in dreams onto the device. It is possible, although it seems counterintuitive, for Otto to use his notebook while asleep. However, it is unlikely that this setup would count as a cognitive system. Modern techniques have been used to allow for two-way communication between researchers and lucid dreamers (Baird et al., 2021; Konkoly et al., 2021). The experimenter communicates with the dreamer by asking questions through headphones which can be heard via sensory infiltration (see Chapter 5). The dreamer responds to the questions with eye flicks. For example, the experimenter asks the dreamer to do a simple calculation (2 + 2) and the dreamer responds with the correct number of eye flicks (flick back and forth four times). We could conceive of a somewhat more complex communication system, say, using Morse code (Rosen, 2013), in which the dreamer asks the experimenter to look up information in their notebook and the experimenter communicates the correct information via the headphones, thus, allowing the dreamer to “interact” with their notebook. However, this would be a slow, complex process involving training, lucidity in the lab (which is hard to achieve), and a lot of luck for the dreamer to be able to hear the information. It seems that due to the lack of reliability, transparency, and consistency, this would not be a wellintegrated system. A better system might involve a digital diary that Otto can directly contact using EOG or eye-tracking technology. Otto, while dreaming, uses eye flicks to ask the digital diary (perhaps simply a phone) a question and then the information is given via headphones. While this requires novel methods, the technologies required to set this up already exists. It should be noted, however, that carrying out two-way

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communication is very difficult (see Konkoly et al., 2021) and it is unlikely that Otto could achieve this technique regularly and with the features required for robust integration. Otto might have an alternative, however. Patients with RBD (REM sleep behaviour disorder), as discussed in Chapter 3, act out their dreams, overcoming the output blockade. This disorder is more common in people with dementia, so Otto might have RBD because of his Alzheimer’s. When Otto dreams of using his notebook, he can simultaneously pick up and rifle through his real notebook. RBD Otto does interact with the external environment; however, he is still under the input blockade. Unfortunately, the information from the waking notebook would not filter into the dream, as his eyes would likely be closed. Rather, only a dreamed object would be experienced. Otto’s visual experience of the dream notebook is internally generated and could convey information he already has stored in his memory or false information, perhaps saying that MOMA is located in the land of Oz instead of New York. Although RBD Otto can manipulate his notebook whilst asleep, he cannot access the information in the notebook. He would have to overcome the input blockade as well as the output blockade to find the information he wanted. For the paper notebook, this simply means he would have to wake up, flip through the notebook and read the information on its pages. To remain asleep and use the notebook, RBD Otto would have to manipulate a digital version that gives audio responses to inform him of the directions to MOMA. Otto could possibly hear the information from the notebook in the dream just as the subjects in the previously mentioned experiment could. Causing a non-lucid dreamer to hear sounds, however, is particularly difficult as discussed in Chapter 1. So, while, on that odd chance, RBD Otto can occasionally access data from his digital notebook, it could not be done reliably. Secondly, RBD Otto would only accidentally access the information in his audio notebook. In the dream, he is manipulating his dream notebook, while it is only a coincidence that his sleeping body is manipulating his real notebook. It would have to be in the exact correct place for him to pick it up. Even if attached to his hand, it would have to have the same configuration as the dream notebook, which would be quite a coincidence. This type of interaction seems barely accessible, unreliable, and perhaps not transparent. Since RBD Otto cannot access his audio notebook reliably, we should not consider his interaction with his digital notebook to be a cognitive extension. Dreaming mind extension requires that Otto overcome the input barrier without waking up. The only convincing way of doing this with a sufficient level of integration would be with a futuristic wireless

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connection to an external device that feeds him information directly. Therefore, dreaming cognitive extension is theoretically possible, but not with current technology. We should not rule out the possibility that Otto can extend his mind with his notebook. While dream access is a very robust kind of integration that cannot be applied to the notebook, this does not mean that notebooks are not sufficiently integrated while we are awake. If integration is determined by accessibility, transparency, and reliability, a process that is potentially accessible and occurs transparently during sleep as well as during waking should be considered highly integrated, but not all cognitive processes are available during sleep. A notebook may be less well integrated than enhanced Otto’s memory device, but Otto and his notebook may form a cognitive system when awake. It is likely that there is a threshold of integration required to be considered “cognitive”. Dream access provides a strong case for the Wi-Fi memory device thought experiment as an example of cognitive extension, yet it is neutral about Otto’s notebook. To be able to access a hybrid cognitive system while dreaming, a high level of integration is required. The information on the memory device is highly accessible, and, depending on the quality of the technology, reliable, fast, automatic, and so forth. The extended dreaming mind thought experiment is consistent with a hybrid mind thesis, in which, as Menary (2006) states, “cognition is understood as the integration of internal non-classical vehicles and processes—like those commonly found in neural networks—with external classical vehicles and processes” (p. 330). The notepad can be considered as a less well-integrated hybrid system, or possibly it should not be considered as such. Indicators of cognition exist on a scale – a system can be utilised more or less transparently, automatically, reliably, and be more or less accessible. Not only external tools but also internal cognitive functions share this variation. It seems that either cognition requires a certain threshold of integration, below which a process should not be considered cognitive, or, alternatively, cognition may also be on a scale, such that a process can be considered more or less cognitive. If cognition is a scale concept, we might judge the level of integration in terms of the aforementioned indicators. A process that is more integrated is also more cognitive. For example, when memory is poor, it becomes unreliable, inaccessible, and perhaps less transparent. When we struggle to try to remember, our memory access is less well integrated, so may be judged to be less cognitive on a theory of cognitive degree. Similarly, we judge the level of cognition of hybrid systems based on integration level at a particular time or over time. Dream access might indicate a higher level

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of cognition so that the coupled system with the device is more cognitive than the coupled notebook system, for example. Despite having such a system, we would likely still have a cut-off level at which a system should no longer be considered cognitive. If cognition is instead a threshold concept, our threshold could be determined based on the level of integration indicators such as transparency, accessibility, and accuracy which all themselves exist on a spectrum. We might specify that low levels of one indicator, such as accessibility, could be offset by high levels of another, such as transparency. One could consider metacognition, in which one becomes aware of one’s own mental processes, for example, to be a less transparent process than the cognition involved in expert piano playing, which is done automatically without paying attention to cognitive features of the task. However, lack of transparency does not negate the cognitive nature of metacognition, which we could argue is nonetheless more accessible than piano playing. Further, different indicators might have different weight, for example, consistency may be more important than processing speed. While the Wi-Fi memory device seems more transparent, accessible, and reliable than Otto’s notebook, the level of integration required for a system to be cognitive may not be so high, allowing Otto’s notebook to reach the threshold. If both systems exceed the threshold of integration, then they both form hybrid systems. More work is needed to determine whether a notebook can be sufficiently integrated with other cognitive systems to be considered a hybrid cognitive system. Under a “degrees of cognition” theory, Otto’s notebook manipulation would be judged less cognitive than using his wellfunctioning Wi-Fi device. According to a threshold theory, if the notebook could pass the threshold for integration, both the notebook and Wi-Fi device should be considered equally cognitive. Dreams, however, provide an interesting case study of HEC because of their cognitive features and isolation from the external environment. I have argued that it is possible to extend dreams into hybrid cognitive systems despite the input and output blockade of regular dreaming. These blockades could be overcome with the use of Wi-Fi enhancement devices or two-way communication. The former appears to involve a robust integration between internal and external cognitive systems, whereas the latter is unlikely to form a cognitive system. Whether Otto and his notebook form a cognitive system is yet unclear. If cognition comes in degrees, we may consider tool manipulation less cognitive than the Wi-Fi device which involves a high level of accessibility, even while dreaming. If cognition is a threshold concept, we need to determine what level of integration is required for a coupled system to cross this threshold. Then we can determine whether

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Otto forms a cognitive system with his notebook. While dreaming does not provide evidence for or against HEC, it provides an interesting case for coupled systems. In contrast with HEC, however, the extended conscious mind theory becomes less plausible in light of dreaming. 7.3 Extended consciousness and dreams

Dreaming, I argue, provides a counterargument to extended conscious mind (ECM) views. According to ECM, consciousness as well as cognition extend beyond the skull. Noë claims that due to altered phenomenal and cognitive features, dreaming does not in fact provide a counterargument to ECM. I disagree, instead arguing that his view is based on an overly reductive account of dreams. Noë’s view is that the conscious mind forms a coupled system with external objects when we perceive them. Objects aren’t just important for our perception of them – they partially constitute phenomenal consciousness. For this reason, Noë thinks that dreaming does not replicate full-blown wake-like consciousness. However, this account conflicts with the pluralistic ontology of dreams set out in Chapters 4 and 5. 7.3.1 An extended substrate

According to Noë (2006, 2007, 2012), the narrow substrate thesis, that conscious mental states are all in the head, is implausible as it leads to theoretical inconsistencies. Instead, we should accept that factors external to the brain partly compose the conscious mind, the extended substrate thesis. This is because perception is enactive, requiring participation with objects in the environment and the causal history of a perceptual event partially defines what type of perception occurred. From this, Noë concludes that conscious perception is partially composed by the perceived external environment. Noë’s position is nicely summarised by Clark as a combination of “the dynamic entanglement plus unique temporal signature’ argument” (Clark, 2009, p. 978) or “DEUTS”. Perception requires “dynamic entanglement” involving embeddedness and interaction in the world and a “unique temporal signature” in which the causal history of that experience is a key element for defining the nature of the experience. We never experience a single “snapshot” of the environment but rather perception occurs over time, it is “active, embodied and embedded” (Ward et al., 2017, p. 365), and thus my experience is always partially determined by past events. Embodied interaction with the environment is necessary for normal, waking perception according to the enactive view. This, for Noë, contrasts

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with the snapshot view, according to which our visual fields are presented like photographic images; detailed, fully present pictures in full colour. Evidence suggests this view is inaccurate. One example of the lack of a detailed snapshot of visual perception is that we only have detailed and colourful vision in the visual focus. A visual image is formed by constant eye movements which register the colour and detail of objects and then this information is filled in via memory rather than direct perception. Clark describes that the strong feeling of rich visual contact is really a reflection of something implicit in the larger overall problem-solving organization in which moment-by-moment vision merely participates. That larger organisation “assumes” the (ecologically normal) ability to retrieve, via saccades or head and body movements, more detailed information as and when needed. (Clark, 2008, p. 41) This type of environmental interaction is not only important to gain detail but also necessary for any visual experience at all. One example is “snow blindness” which occurs in response to seeing the same visual stimulus for too long. Our eyes require a change in stimulus to keep functioning properly (Mather, 2016). Another condition, “experiential blindness”, occurs after an individual has cataracts removed. They cannot immediately comprehend visual stimuli, even though the brain receives the appropriate signals from the eyes. There is an “inability to integrate sensory stimulation with patterns of movement and thought” (Noë, 2004, p. 4). Sufferers are unable to make sense of what they see despite experiencing visual stimulation, and these experiences have no representational content. However, over time, people with this condition gain their sight back after interaction with the environment leads to understanding visual stimuli once more. This suggests that experiencing visual stimuli alone is insufficient for “seeing” – interaction with the environment is also necessary. Another example of the interactive nature of perception is the way in which objects appear fully formed to us. In a sense, when we look at an apple, we experience its occluded far side as being present to us despite the fact that we can’t see it. The apple doesn’t appear flat or hollow and the information on the opposite side feels as if it is present to us. This is because the information could be accessed if you moved in relation to it or picked it up. This feeling of accessibility comes from visual and sensory interaction. When we walk around the environment, different parts of objects are revealed, and this gives us a sense of the presence of what is not currently visually presented. Noë reasons that a modest conclusion from

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this is that “at least sometimes, the world itself may drive and so constitute perceptual experience” (Noë, 2004, p. 3). Both interaction with objects and the causal history of an experience are essential for what makes an experience a certain type. Noë (2007) states that experience depends on “the character of your embedding in and causal history in relation to your environment” (p. 485). We need to interact with objects over time and what has happened previously is part of what makes an experience of a certain kind now. Just like what makes a burn “sunburn” is that it needs to be caused by the sun (Burge, 1979; Putnam, 1975), interaction with a real apple is part of what makes my perceptual experience “seeing an apple”. Whether my mental state is a memory depends partially on whether I actually experienced it in the past. Perceptual states, for Noë, are heavily dependent on their causal history, interaction with the environment and embodiment. Dynamic interaction is what primarily distinguishes normal perception from hallucination. The fact that we can hallucinate shows that we can have perception-like experiences without dynamic interaction. While Noë (2007) allows that some types of conscious experience such as simple hallucinatory sensations could be internally generated, “full-blown, mature human experience” cannot be exclusively neural in its causal basis (p. 218). Scientists could directly stimulate the brain and cause the experience of a smell or a feeling, but this is not what it is like to experience the world in the normal sense. Our everyday, complex perception involves a wide range of senses that come together to form an experience of the world and objects that occupy space. This can only occur when the perceiver is embodied, embedded, and active in an environment. If we look at most waking hallucinations, for example, they don’t stand up to multisensory inspection. We might hallucinate an apple, but the image won’t be stable and we can’t investigate and interact with it. Dreams, according to Noë, have a similar description. Dreams are not a counterargument to the enactive view according to Noë. He rejects the common-sense view that dreams involve full-blown consciousness in the absence of external objects. One could do this in two ways, either by denying that dreams involve full-blown experience or denying that they are isolated from the external environment. While his main argument involves the former, that dreams are not full-blown conscious experience, he also claims that we have reason to suspect the latter, that dreams are not isolated from the environment. 7.3.2 Noë’s dreams

Wake-like full-blown human consciousness, for Noë, depends on interactions with the external environment over time. He rejects the standard

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view that dreams involve wake-like consciousness because, firstly, dreams are not full-blown conscious experience and secondly, dreams are not fully isolated. Interestingly, this second argument is not about sensory infiltration but instead a causal history argument. According to Noë, dreams are only minimally conscious, if conscious at all, and thus do not provide a counterargument to the extended conscious mind view. Since we lack the required interaction with the external environment, we can attain only a minimal conscious state whilst dreaming. Noë argues that dreams are unclear, vague, and lack detail compared to waking consciousness. It has been reported by the psychologist Stephen LaBerge (personal communication) that dreaming may differ from non-dream perceptual experience precisely in respect of the stability and richness of represented detail. For example, when you read a sign in a dream, and then look away and then look back, the sign almost always says something different. What explains this qualitative difference between dreaming perception and real perception may be precisely the fact that dream experiences, but not genuine perceptual experiences, do depend only on neural activity for their basis. Normal perceptual experience, in contrast, is anchored by our dynamic coupling to the world. (Noë, 2006, p. 20) For the enactive view, detail that furnishes our perception exists within the environment, not in the head, and perception feels detailed because objects are presented as accessible to us. By comparison, dreams are unstable and lack detail. This is because they aren’t anchored in the world and the information required to make them stable and detailed isn’t stored anywhere. Appealing to dreams in order to make a point about conscious neural states in the head only demonstrates “that dream experiences depend on neural states alone” (Noë, 2004, p. 20). Neural dream states are not full-blown conscious states, so the extended conscious mind view stands. If dreams can be vivid, realistic world replicas as discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, this would contradict Noë’s description of dreams, at least from the first-person perspective. This wouldn’t count against a disjunctivist position about perception that rejects the relevance of phenomenal similarity, however. Nonetheless, Noë argues that dreams cannot be convincing simulations of waking life because of their lack of real-world grounding. He thinks there is indeed a phenomenal difference, despite the fact that we may not realise when we are dreaming. Similarly, Sosa and Ichikawa’s imagination model of dreaming, discussed in Chapter 4,

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attempts to account for our belief in dreams using an alternative explanation than dream realism. Since we can tell the difference between dreaming and reality after waking, this is reason to think there is phenomenal difference. In agreement, Flanagan (2000) maintains that only cognitive dysfunction prevents us from realising how unrealistic a dream is. In order to provide evidence against ECM, dreams must be able to replicate detailed waking experience and not just from the perspective of the dreamer while dreaming. Noë argues there is some reason to think that full-blooded perceptual experience is not something we could undergo in a dream, for there is reason to think that dream experiences, whatever their nature, are not of the same basic kind as perceptual experiences. (Noë, 2007, p. 471) We cannot interact with nor experience objects as being within reach in dreams. Lacking “skilful access” to the world when we are dreaming (p. 472) means we cannot undergo the processes required for detailed perception. Further, we evolved to perceive the world by interacting with it, and our very mechanisms of perception are set up for such interaction. Noë argues that “it would be surprising if the mechanisms designed to secure knowledge of the world around us were such as to function entirely normally off-line” (p. 473). The extended substrate thesis predicts that due to our lack of grounding in the world while dreaming, we should have very limited richness of detail in dreams. This prediction, Noë argues, is supported by empirical evidence. Even if dreams are conscious, Noë argues, there is reason to suspect that they are not fully internally constituted. Instead of discussing sensory infiltration, however, he argues that dreams are limited to the amalgamation of past experiences of the world. There is probably reason to believe that what we can experience in a dream is limited by our past experience of the world. If that’s true, then dreaming shows only that a certain narrow class of experience—the dream experiences—can occur (must occur) when an animal whose life is normally spent in close engagement with the world is for a time decoupled in sleep. (Noë, 2007, p. 473) Since we cannot dream of something we have never experienced while awake, we should expect that interaction with the world is historically necessary for dreams. This relates to the temporal signature aspect of his theory. However, Noë only mentions this aspect of his argument briefly as

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an intuition and does not support it with further argument. Drawing on sensory infiltration might form a stronger argument, but due to the low likelihood of visual stimulus infiltrating a dream (Windt, 2015, 2017), it would be hard to argue that any of the apparent visual detail was due to illusory perception. For Noë, if dreams were isolated, this only shows that dream experiences satisfy the narrow substrate thesis, and they do not count as full-blown consciousness. However, it may not be the case that dreams are isolated since they can’t occur without the amalgamation of past experiences. Noë’s view, I argue, rests on insufficient evidence and depends on an implausibly reductive account of dreams. 7.3.3 Dreaming as full-blown consciousness

In my view, dreaming provides an example of full-blown consciousness that is isolated from the environment. Here I argue that the pluralistic view of dreams is inconsistent with Noë’s extended substrate thesis although is not inconsistent with the view that in waking, many perceptual states are enactive. Dreams encompass a wide variety of experiences and some of them, namely dreams that are discontinuous with waking life or imagination-like dreams, are consistent with Noë’s view. However, the fact that some dreams are convincing replicas of waking life is problematic for his view. Dreams are not always impoverished experience, and further, they are not dependent on waking memory in a way that would suggest they are extended consciousness. Based on the evidence from dreaming, Noë’s extended substrate thesis should be weakened to allow that fullblown adult consciousness can occur while isolated from the environment. Although there are differences between certain dreams and waking experience, these differences are not sufficient to support Noë’s extended substrate thesis. While it is true that some dreams include the features that Noë describes such as lack of continuity, I argue that such features might be due to changes in brain activity during sleep rather than being due to isolation from the environment. This is supported by the fact that certain dreams are not as Noë describes. Changes in the waking and sleeping brain relate to the changes in content and cognition in sleep (see Chapter 1). If Noë is correct, our lack of embeddedness in an environment explains why dreaming phenomenology is different from waking. In fact, detailed dreams should not be possible due to this lack of embeddedness, even if brain modulation and activation were similar to that of waking. Our reports of dreams are often vague and lacking in detail, which is consistent with Noë’s claims; however, it is unclear whether the input blockade is the reason for this.

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Different modulation of the brain, poor memory storage and poor memory access can cause confabulation of many aspects of the experience when we wake up (see Chapter 3). Alterations in brain activation during sleep correlate with reports of alterations in the dreaming experience. For example, the lack of volition, rational control and ability to detect bizarreness is correlated with a reduction in the activation of the prefrontal cortex (see Chapter 1). However, these changes, both neural and cognitive, are not necessary features of sleep and dreams (Kubota et al., 2011). For Noë, the input blockade is sufficient to explain the difference between dreaming and waking. However, Hobson and colleagues (2003) disagree with this assessment, arguing instead that “we do not regard the differences in input source to be an adequate explanation of the phenomenological distinction between waking and dreaming” (p. 832). Lacking a relatively stable external environment may have some effect on the way we experience many dreams; however variation is primarily due to the differences in neuromodulation and neural activation. The instability of dreams, including words shifting on the page as well as character and place instability may be explained by the reduced capacity for concentration and attention. For Noë, stability should not be possible when we are not in a real environment, although he might allow that changes in brain function and the lack of grounding relate to dreams being qualitatively distinct from waking experiences. These brain changes do not refute Noë’s extended substrate thesis, of course. However, if embeddedness were necessary for detailed experience, it would be impossible for any dream to replicate waking experience. Contradicting Noë’s view, some dreams are very life-like. Expanding on my discussion of the continuity hypothesis, here I argue that even highly realistic dreams are rare, their existence is problematic for Noë. A further complicating factor is that our poor memories when we wake up may lead to remembering dreams as vague and unclear even if the dream itself was clear and detailed. Poor memory rather than a lack of phenomenal vividness whilst dreaming may cause some of the unclarity in dream reports. Dreams can often be confabulated and memory deficits are a major cause of this (see Chapter 3). Memory loss is generally greater in dream reports than in waking reports, which leads to confabulation. This has been correlated with inhibition of memory-associated areas of the brain, as Hobson (2002) maintains, “the absence of episodic memory in dreams reflects the inaccessibility of hippocampally stored information to the dreaming brain” (p. 686). Hobson argues that many aspects of sleep such as reduced memory and rationality are the result of a change in

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neuromodulation, particularly in that “the shift from aminergic dominance in waking to cholinergic dominance in REM lowers the probability that consciousness will be exteroceptive, logical, and mnemonic while correspondingly raising the probability that consciousness will be interoceptive, illogical, and amnesic” (p. 686). Vague reports may not always indicate vague phenomenal experience. However, this argument can be applied in reverse. Perhaps when we report vivid dreams, this is due to confabulation. Since we cannot know the extent to which a dream has been confabulated, a better approach is to look at dreams in which it appears that our memory and cognitive features are well functioning and assess the phenomenal content of these dreams. It is often reported that dream characters, objects, and scenery shift and morph, which is consistent with Noë’s description of dream phenomenology. However, it is not clear if this morphing should be seen as a phenomenal difference or whether attention is simply lacking in some dreams. If the dream scene follows what the dreamer is attending to and their attention is poor, this could lead to a shifting of scenery and characters. Memory and attention are often reduced in dreams, and this can lead to inconsistency in dream narrative as well as the inability to notice that some of the elements of the dream are bizarre. However, not all dreams are cognitively impaired. Dreams which display higher levels of control and attention also display higher levels of narrative consistency (see Chapter 2). According to the continuity hypothesis, dreams reflect waking life, although, as I have argued, this is only accurate for some dreams. Many dreams involve normal activities, such as picking up an apple and taking a bite, and dream imagery does not constantly shift or morph – this is only an occasional feature. Noë’s description is thus only true of some dreams. In false awakenings, as discussed in Chapter 4, the dream world often accurately resembles my bedroom. This suggests that the features that distinguish dreams from waking reality may be due to attention rather than a type-difference in phenomenal content. The vividness, realism, presentness, or even ergonomic significance – ability to interact with objects (Matthen, 2005), can be wake-like. The dream content may be similar to the waking content even though we suffer from a lack of attention and other cognitive deficits. Dreams in which we do pay attention, particularly lucid dreams, suggest dreams can be stable and realistic. Many dream experiences are accurate simulations of waking life while others are as Noë describes. Noë’s argument that dreams cannot be fullblown consciousness, therefore fails. Hallucinations, veridical perceptions, and illusions, in Noë’s active externalist view, have different natures based on their grounding in reality.

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This is a type of “disjunctivism”, according to which perceptual experiences such as hallucinations, veridical perceptions, and illusions do not involve the same fundamental nature (Soteriou, 2009). Even if, from the first-person perspective, a hallucination and a veridical perception are indistinguishable, these two experiences are not of the same fundamental kind. First-person indistinguishability is not the key aspect for defining the type of experience. Thus, even if dreams were reported as accurate simulations of the waking world, according to disjunctivism, they would not be the same type of experience as veridical waking perception. In contrast, my view is that since dreams can be phenomenally indistinguishable from waking, this provides evidence against Noë’s version of the extended substrate view. For Noë, as aforementioned, our failure to regularly become lucid while dreaming is due to reduced cognitive capacity as opposed to dreams being convincing world simulations. However, as argued in more detail in Chapter 2, cognitive capacity is not reduced in all dreams. While cognitive incapacity might at times explain why, for example, highly bizarre or impossible dreams do not cause us to immediately realise we are dreaming, often we are quite rational. Many dreams lack cognitive impairment, but we still may report that they are convincing replicas of waking experience. Realistic false awakenings, as discussed in Chapter 4, can be particularly convincing simulations of waking life. These dreams can be so realistic that upon waking, the dreamer is unsure whether the false awakening had been a dream or a real experience. Lucid dreams can also be highly realistic. So, although I agree that many dreams seem bizarre and unlike waking life, and we can often be cognitively impaired, this does not accurately describe all dreams. It is plausible that at times, we believe we are awake simply because being in the dream is like being awake. Metzinger’s (2003) view, as discussed in Chapter 5, is that both dreams and waking experience are in a sense “virtual”. While awake, our brains generate world models that are largely based on predictions of body movements and assessments of how we can interact with objects rather than direct experiences of objects as they are. Rather than experiencing the world, we in a sense create a world out of predictions that are then modulated by sensory inputs. Prediction errors are corrected when the predictions conflict with inputs (Hobson & Friston, 2012). Perception of objects is often modulated by how we can interact with them rather than the presentation of truth about the world. Perception requires a lot of processing power and can be too slow if we need to respond to the environment quickly. Making predictions that are then corrected for errors when they occur is a quick and useful method for reducing the amount of information necessary to navigate an environment. We do,

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after all, have a limited attentional capacity. When we want to pick up an apple, we only require information that leads our hand to the correct orientation to grab it, not the highest fidelity detailed image. Noë and Metzinger agree about the importance of interaction for perception, but they come to different conclusions about what this means. For Metzinger, our interaction with the environment is causally necessary for experience, but it is the brain that dictates what the potential interactions with the environment are through simplification of our perception of objects. Our world model usually helps us navigate the world skilfully, but sometimes it fails – we make bad predictions, see illusions or, far less commonly, experience phantom limbs and out-ofbody experiences (see Chapter 5). Waking experience as well as dream experience, for Metzinger, consists of world models or virtual realities. The phenomenal self-model (PSM) view describes the dream state as a virtual reality created by the sleeping mind and this replicates the external waking environment, often very convincingly. We experience dreamed objects in the same way we experience objects in the waking world. In Chapter 5, I argued that the PSM accurately describes many dreams, especially highly realistic lucid dreams and convincing false awakenings. Dreams, in this view, do indeed provide a counterargument to the extended substrate thesis. Some dreams are as Noë suggests they should be, but even if only some dreams accurately represent the embodied sense of self in a world, this is enough to show that full-blown consciousness can occur in the head. Some dream states are vague and even imagination-like, others are convincing virtual world models. In this view, the presence of physical objects is not necessary for the mind to produce a convincing multimodal virtual world model. Noë’s description of dreaming as necessarily minimally conscious is thus overly reductive. While waking phenomenology is rich and vivid, dream phenomenology, in Noë’s view, is not. When we are awake, the world is not fully represented in our experience, but we perceive details as available for scrutiny. Dreaming, however, cannot be experienced in this way since there is no real environment that has detail to scrutinise. However many dream reports do suggest detailed experience. It seems the mind in isolation can generate a convincing world model. In particular, lucid dream reports often involve dreamers scrutinising the dream world. These dreamers are often impressed by the level of detail represented in the environment. For example, Steve and I are looking up at the sky and there’s a white parachute coming down—as it gets closer, I can see two people on the chute—one has skis on and is doing flips. I’m wondering aloud to Steve how this is

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possible and explicitly say, “This must be a dream—we’re dreamingthis is a lucid dream!” […] I remark on how stable the environment is— I find it hard to believe. We’re in a beautiful lush canyon area—lots of blue-greens and purples, water below. (Levitan, 1994, p. 41) Even as the dreamer scrutinises the environment, they are impressed by its detail and stability. False awakenings can be especially vivid (see Chapter 3) and involve accurate representations of the surrounding environment in which the dreamer fell asleep. While not always the case, at times the dreamer can be unsure after really waking whether the false awakening had been a dream or not. For Noë, dreams must be vague and, even if we do not realise that we are dreaming in the dream, they should always be distinguishable from waking once the dreamer has woken. Our failure to realise we are dreaming is simply due to reduced cognitive capacity. However, we aren’t always cognitively incapacitated and not all dreams are distinguishable from waking reality. Lucid dreams seem problematic for Noë. In response to correspondence with Stephen LaBerge, Noë argues that when we become lucid, objects are unstable and do not hold up to scrutiny. It is unclear whether LaBerge would agree that this is always the case in lucid dreams, since in lucid dreams one can reason clearly, remember the conditions of waking life, and act upon reflection or in accordance with plans decided upon before sleep. These cognitive functions, commonly associated only with waking consciousness, occur while one remains soundly asleep and vividly experiencing a dream world that is often nearly indistinguishable from the “real world”. (LaBerge, 2000, p. 962) This description seems to provide an argument for the narrow substrate thesis, not against it. As discussed in Chapters 2 and 5, both non-lucid and lucid dreams can be vivid, realistic, and involve cognition similar to that of waking. Vividness and phenomenal indistinguishability between dreams and waking contradicts Noë’s views about lucid and non-lucid dreams. Consider this lucid dream report from van Eeden (1913): I dreamt that I stood at a table before a window. On the table were different objects. I was perfectly well aware that I was dreaming and I considered what sorts of experiments I could make. … Then I saw a decanter with claret and tasted it, and noted with perfect clearness of mind: “Well, we can also have voluntary impressions of taste in this dream-world; this has quite the taste of wine”. (LaBerge & DeGracia, 2000, p. 295)

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This report suggests that the dreamer had a clear sense of tasting wine. Further, multiple senses come together – taste, touch, and vision – to emulate an experience similar to waking. Bizarreness and shifting scenery are less common in dreams than we might believe (see Chapter 2), and reports can indicate rich detail. LaBerge and DeGracia (2000) note that lucid dreams can include combinations of all the sensory modalities, for example, vision, audition, somatosensation, gustation, olfaction and the submodalities therein. […] The vividness and richness of the perceptual environment ranges from the “minimal” in which most or all sensory qualities are absent or greatly attenuated, through the “typical” much like everyday experience, to the “surreal” in which the environment is vibrantly, psychedelically alive with fantastic, extravagant detail. (LaBerge & DeGracia, 2000, p. 284) A surreal dream is one that appears to contain greater detail than normal waking perception. This seems problematic for Noë who dismisses rich, vivid experience in dreams. While lucid dreams can indeed be “bizarre” and include shifting features and discrepancies, this is not a consistent feature (LaBerge and DeGracia, 2000). There are many examples of vivid, highly detailed imagery in dreams. This supports the view that there isn’t any type of phenomenally conscious experience that occurs while we are awake that cannot also occur in a dream. Both lucid and non-lucid dreams can be convincing simulations of waking experience, which is important because while lucid, we can in general pay better attention to our surroundings, countering the cognitive deficiency excuse for reports of vivid dreams. Noë points to examples where detail appears lacking in dreams, such as the common occurrence of writing on a page that changes and morphs. He suggests that to experience fine, consistent detail, grounding in reality is required. However, it is not clear that we cannot read consistent text in dreams. Doing a word search in the sleep and dreams database (sleepanddreamdatabase.org) for the phrase “I read” suggests that dream text is not necessarily inconsistent. In the 50 reports analysed, the majority make no reference to words being difficult to read or shifting on the page. For example: […] Marty says something like, “here – you can look at the note,” and hands me a note in an envelope, it’s about two pages long and is written in what looks like a weak, shaky hand writing on what looks like thin, unstrong paper. As I read the note, I suddenly realize that

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everything they told me was a lie. (Dream Text: Last Night’s Dream – last_nights_dream), 709 words,brianna_journal:brianna [1997-1114] sleepanddreamdatabase.org) Not all text remains legible, however, for example, I am reading the morning newspaper. I see a headline that reads “Mortgage Rates Rise by 11%.” […] as I try to read the articles the words simply disappear or blur before my eyes. But I am able to go back and read the headline that is in large black letters. (Dream Text: Most Recent Dream – Q15, 71 words, krippner_survey1:kengm60 [Answer Date Unknown] sleepanddreamdatabase.org) Nonetheless, clearly, instability is not a necessary feature of dreams. Morphing dream text does not show that dreams are a different type of consciousness, just that some dreams can lack consistency and normalcy. Importantly, Noë’s argument hinges on the importance of availability of objects for phenomenal experience. Dream objects, however, can indeed appear present, accessible, and available. If wake-like perception requires visual stimulus coupled with a sense of presence and real, physical objects need to be present for the experience of accessibility to arise, then dreaming phenomenology should necessarily be quite a distinct type of experience than waking perception. What would dreaming be like in this case? An experience that lacks presence might be like imagining or remembering. Normally, we don’t experience imagined or remembered objects as things that we can interact with (Rosen & Barkasi, 2021). Perhaps dream objects are more like imagining, they might lack a sense of three-dimensionality, be “mentally weak” (Morales, 2018), or be presented to the mind as not present and unavailable for interaction. When I dream that an apple is in front of me, the apple may not appear as a real, spherical object with an accessible reverse side. While it is true that I can imagine picking up and interacting with an apple, there is certainly a distinct, unreal phenomenology and this that might be the same in dreams. However, dream reports seem to suggest that at least at times, dream objects are experienced as being accessible, present, and available to be interacted with. Perhaps dream objects are simply presented as being flat or even that all of their sides are visually perceived at the same time like in a Picasso painting. Although dreams are often bizarre and this type of perception may occur, this is not commonly reported. The apple in the dream, even in some lucid dreams where the dreamer is paying attention (LaBerge, 1981, 1993), looks fully present to us and usually only one side is seen at a time. Dreamers report navigating between objects, picking

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items up, and generally being convinced that the objects are real. They can involve smell and taste too, although vision, touch, and sound are more commonly reported. There can be bizarre occurrences such as the apple morphing into another object (Rosen, 2018), nonetheless, as I have argued, this is not a feature of all dreams. Moreover, it is conceivable that we can experience objects morphing into others while still maintaining a sense of presence. Imagine you are inspecting an animatronic toy that can morph into different objects. It first appears to be a robot but then becomes a car. We can also imagine future technology that can morph even more bizarrely using nanotechnology. Think of an advanced kind of prank in which a piece of fruit suddenly grows long legs and then becomes a spider, crawling off before you can pick it up. You might in the future enter a nanotech toy store full of constantly morphing, changing toys, which would be just like a very bizarre dream. Perhaps there would be less of a sense of presence for these objects, although this is unclear. Nonetheless, our phenomenal experience should still be considered “full-blown consciousness”. Even if dreaming was populated by constantly morphing objects, which is not the case in most dreams, full-blown conscious experience could still occur. According to many dream reports, dreams also feel detailed to us. We report highly detailed dreams, and it is not likely that this is simply due to cognitive deficiencies, since many dreams, lucid ones in particular, are not cognitively deficient. The waking environment is experienced as detailed, in Noë’s view, not because our perceptual faculties are designed to represent a high level of detail but rather because the detail is contained within the environment, ready to be accessed. When we need more detail, our eyes saccade and focus on an area or we navigate to get a better vantage point. Dreams do not contain a real environment so they should not be so detailed according to this view, yet it seems that they can be. Lucid dreamers marvel at the convincing detail in the dream. If a theory states that dreams must in principle be phenomenally impoverished, strong evidence is required to counter the many reasons we have for thinking that dreams can be highly realistic and detailed. Without such evidence, his argument is question begging. 7.3.4 Externally constituted dream phenomenology

If dreams can indeed be a type of full-blown consciousness, for Noë, this must be due to dreams themselves being partially constituted by the external environment. This is consistent with Foulkes’ view (1999) that young children learn to dream during the first few years of development.

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It is unlikely that a foetus, for example, could dream as adults do, and young children only have simple images for dreams (see Chapter 3 for further discussion). Perhaps, then, experience of the external world and memories of what the world is like are required for us to be able to dream. Foulkes’ analysis, however, does not provide strong support for Noë’s thesis. Firstly, it is unclear whether waking experience is causally necessary or constitutive of dreams. If we accept that there is an “input blockade” for many dreams, then only previous experiences of the external environment through memories would compose dreams. Noë does not explain the relationship between dreams and the real environment; however, this may relate to the unique temporal signature aspect of his theory. Even if my experience of a red apple is partially composed by a red apple, I might still deny that my memory of the apple is thusly composed. Although the causal history of perceiving an object in the past may be part of what makes a memory a memory, it is not necessarily constituted by this past experience. In the same way, sunburn is necessarily caused by the sun and defined by its causal history without being composed of the sun’s radiation. It is more likely that the past causally necessitates memories than constitutes them.1 In contrast with Noë’s view, it is not obvious that memories are composed of the experiences they represent. As discussed in Chapter 3, memory involves recreation and is not simply a replaying of past events. To support his view, we would have to argue first that memories are partially constituted by past experiences and that dreams are partially constituted by memories, and neither step is entirely convincing since memories are not usually simply replayed in dreams. However, there are other reasons to reject causal history as a part of mental extension. It’s hard to deny that memory is important for our dream experience (Rosen, fn), but this does not strongly suggest that dreams replay memory. Dreams can be vivid world model simulations, are argued in Chapter 5, so it is unlikely that they should be classed as phenomenally similar to memories – or at least to most memories (Rosen & Barkasi, 2021). Dreams may involve imaginative elements (see Chapter 4) or even novel experiences that are not based on anything we have experienced while awake. It is true that most dream reports are of objects that were previously experienced in waking life, and even fantastical dream items are often familiar items seen in in media, such as dragons. People don’t report having dreams involving, say, the visual perception of round squares or a colour that they have never seen before; however, novel experience may nonetheless occur in dreams. Detailed descriptions of entirely unique experiences would be nearly impossible to remember and probably impossible to report. Dreamers do, however, report having such experiences and being unable to describe them.

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I am going to visit my grandmother in an aircraft type of train to another city, and things look and feel alien. And I finally get there and her place is very modern. And it feels very far away almost as if it’s on another planet. I can’t describe the actual sensation only that is of another world totally unfamiliar to me. (sleepanddreamdatabse jordan_ series: Jordan 03-20-2014) Further to this, dreams with the hyper-intensity described earlier could be a type of novel experience. Hyper-stimulation of the visual cortex could cause experiences which are not based on memory and are novel. If a novel, full-blown phenomenal experience can occur when detached from the external environment, then, even if they are rare, at least some experiences are not partially composed by the external environment. This is empirically difficult to test; however, the possibility of novel dream experiences has some support via reports of having indescribable experiences. Finally, even if dreams do involve a unique temporal signature but are not embedded in the environment, then, in my view, we should not class dreams as being extended. Extension requires both dynamic entanglement and unique temporal signature or “DEUTS” as Clark (2009) describes. Some of the elements in dreams may be based on objects seen while awake, but the internally generated world models in which the dreamer is embedded and with which the dreamer interacts are not simply replications of waking experience. For Noë, an isolated mind should not be able to create such a convincing world replica, even if that world is populated with items from waking memory. When I pick up a dream apple, I am not interacting with a real apple from the past. The sense of accessibility of the dream apple is not caused by current interaction with a physical object or a replay of memory. Even if I only dream of apples because I have previously seen apples while awake, a dream apple, according to Noë’s theory, should not have a sense of accessibility. Dreams can involve vivid details and convincing, accessible objects that we interact with. Some dream interactions, it appears, are just like interacting with objects in the real world. 7.4 Conclusion

Dreaming has interesting implications for both the extended cognition and extended conscious mind theories. Counter-intuitively, dream cognition could potentially extend into the environment if we were to use Wi-Fi cognitive enhancements that are remotely connected and integrated into our “in the head” cognitive processing. This thought experiment shows

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that external tools can conceivably be highly integrated into our cognitive systems, so much so that they can be utilised during a dream. Interestingly, we can potentially “scaffold” our cognition using currently accessible technologies; however, these scaffolds, I have argued, would not pass the integration threshold required to be considered cognitive. Dreaming is not a reason to reject the extended cognition hypothesis despite the fact that, currently, dreaming does not involve cognitive extension. Conversely, dreams do provide a convincing reason to reject the extended conscious mind view if this hypothesis requires interaction with objects for normal consciousness to occur. Dreams, I argue, can be full-blown conscious experience that is isolated from the external environment. If the external environment was a necessary component of full-blown conscious experience, then complex, rich experiences of a dream world would not occur. Dreaming, although not always an example of full-blown consciousness, can indeed be at times. A plausible extended substrate thesis allows that the conscious mind can sometimes extend into the environment but does need to do so. To be plausible, the view must allow for conscious states to also occur without such extension when we have rich, convincing dreams. This is not a view that Noë supports, thus we should reject his version of the extended substrate thesis. Note 1 Some might even deny that memory requires a causal link to past events ( Michaelian, 2011), although I will not discuss this view here.

References Andrada, G. (2020). Transparency and the phenomenology of extended cognition. Límite: revista de filosofía y psicología, 15(20), 1–15. Baird, B., LaBerge, S., & Tononi, G. (2021). Two-way communication in lucid REM sleep dreaming. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(6), 427–428. Burge, T. (1979). Individualism and the mental. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 4(1), 73–121. Clark, A. (2001). Reasons, robots and the extended mind. Mind & Language, 16(2), 121–145. Clark, A. (2003). Memento’s revenge: Objections and replies to the extended mind. in The Extended Mind, ed. R. Menary, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 43–66. Clark, A. (2005). Intrinsic content, active memory and the extended mind. Analysis, 65(285), 1–11. Clark, A. (2008). Supersizing the mind: Embodiment, action, and cognitive extension. Oxford University Press. Clark, A. (2009). Spreading the joy? Why the machinery of consciousness is (probably) still in the head. Mind, 118(472), 963–993. Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58(1), 7–19.

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Farina, M., & Levin, S. (2021). The extended mind thesis and its applications. Handbook of embodied psychology: Thinking, feeling, and acting (pp. 127–147). Springer Nature. Flanagan, O. J. (2000). Dreaming souls: Sleep, dreams, and the evolution of the conscious mind. Oxford University Press. Foulkes, D. (1999). Children’s dreaming and the development of consciousness. Harvard University Press. Hobson, J. A. (2002). Dreaming: An introduction to the science of sleep. Oxford University Press. Hobson, J. A., & Friston, K. J. (2012). Waking and dreaming consciousness: Neurobiological and functional considerations. Progress in Neurobiology, 98(1), 82–98. doi: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2012.05.003 Hobson, J. A., Pace-Schott, E. F., & Stickgold, R. (2003). Dreaming and the brain: Toward a cognitive neuroscience of conscious states. In E. F. Pace-Schott, M. Solms, M. Blagrove, & S. Harnad (Eds.), Sleep and dreaming: Scientific advances and reconsiderations (Vol. 23, pp. 793–842). Cambridge University Press. Konkoly, K. R., Appel, K., Chabani, E., Mangiaruga, A., Gott, J., Mallett, R., … Mazurek, C. Y. (2021). Real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep. Current Biology, 31(7), 1417–1427. e1416. Kubota, Y., Takasu, N. N., Horita, S., Kondo, M., Shimizu, M., Okada, T., … Toichi, M. (2011). Dorsolateral prefrontal cortical oxygenation during REM sleep in humans. Brain Research, 1389, 83–92. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2011. 02.061 LaBerge, S. (1981). Lucid dreaming: Directing the action as it happens. Psychology Today, 15(1), 48–57. LaBerge, S. (1993). Lucidity research, past and future. Nightlight, 5, 329–335. LaBerge, S. (2000). Lucid dreaming: Evidence and methodology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23(6), 962–964. LaBerge, S., & DeGracia, D. J. (2000). Varieties of lucid dreaming experience. In B. Wallace & R. G. Kunzendorf (Eds.), Individual differences in conscious experience, 20, 269. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Levitan, L. (1994). A fool’s guide to lucid dreaming. Nightlight, 6(2), 1–5. Mather, G. (2016). Foundations of sensation and perception. Psychology Press. Matthen, M. (2005). Seeing, doing, and knowing: A philosophical theory of sense perception. Clarendon Press. Menary, R. (2006). Attacking the bounds of cognition. Philosophical Psychology, 19(3), 329–344. Metzinger, T. (2003). Phenomenal transparency and cognitive self-reference. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2(4), 353–393. Michaelian, K. (2011). Generative memory. Philosophical Psychology, 24(3), 323–342. Morales, J. (2018). The strength of the mind: Essays on consciousness and introspection. Columbia University. Noë, A. (2004). Action in perception. MIT Press. Noë, A. (2006). Experience without the head. Perceptual Experience (pp. 411–433). Oxford University Press.

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Noë, A. (2007). Magic realism and the limits of intelligibility: What makes us conscious. Philosophical Perspectives, 21(1), 457–474. Noë, A. (2012). Varieties of presence. Harvard University Press. Pandey, P., Singh, T., & Kumar, S. (2023). Cognitive offloading: Systematic review of a decade. The International Journal of Indian Psychology, 11(2), 1545–1563. Putnam, H. (1975). The meaning of ‘meaning’. Philosophical Papers. Mind, Language and Reality Cambridge University Press, 215–271. Rosen, M. G. (in review). Retroactive consciousness of dreams: What do we remember when we wake up? Rosen, M. G. (2013). What I make up when I wake up: Anti-experience views and narrative fabrication of dreams. Frontiers in Psychology, 4. doi: 10.3389/ fpsyg.2013.00514 Rosen, M. G. (2018). Enactive or inactive? Cranially envatted dream experience and the extended conscious mind. Philosophical Explorations, 21(2), 295–318. Rosen, M. G. (2019). Dreaming of a stable world: Vision and action in sleep. Synthese, 198(17), 4107–4142. Rosen, M. G., & Barkasi, M. (2021). What makes a mental state feel like a memory: feelings of pastness and presence. Estudios de Filosofía (64), 95–122. Rowlands, M. (2009). Extended cognition and the mark of the cognitive. Philosophical Psychology, 22(1), 1–19. Rupert, R. D. (2004). Challenges to the hypothesis of extended cognition. The Journal of Philosophy, 101(8), 389–428. Soteriou, M. (2009). Mental agency, conscious thinking, and phenomenal character. In L. O’Brien & M. Soteriou (Eds.), Mental actions (pp. 231–253). Oxford University Press. Sterelny, K. (2010). Minds: Extended or scaffolded? Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9(4), 465–481. Sutton, J. (2010). Exograms and interdisciplinarity: History, the extended mind, and the civilizing process. In The extended mind (pp. 189–225). The MIT Press. Van Eeden, F. (1913). A study of dreams. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Ward, D., Silverman, D., & Villalobos, M. (2017). Introduction: The varieties of enactivism. Topoi, 36, 365–375. Windt, J. M. (2015). Dreaming: a conceptual framework for philosophy of mind and empirical research. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. 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, 1–49.

8 CONSCIOUSNESS IN DREAMS

8.1 Introduction

The variety of interesting cognitive and phenomenal features should make the dreaming mind of interest to philosophers of consciousness. Moreover, a complete understanding of consciousness requires an explanation of the broad range of experiences that humans undergo. Dreaming, a type of altered state of consciousness that occurs while we sleep, is particularly important for consciousness research due to what I take to be a two-way theoretical relationship between dream research and consciousness research. What dream researchers find out about the types of experiences that occur in dreams can have theoretical implications for what we should say about consciousness and the findings of consciousness researchers may have implications for what we should say about dreams. In Chapter 7, we saw some of the implications of dreaming on the extended mind theory in terms of extended cognition and consciousness. Here I focus on theories according to which the mind does not extend beyond the brain. Whatever conclusion is implied by each theory of consciousness needs to be consistent with current research into dreaming. For example, if a theory of consciousness implies that dreaming is unconscious, it should have an explanation for why we report dreams upon waking. Failing to provide an explanation for dreaming or dream reports, in my view, should be considered evidence against any theory of consciousness. In the consciousness literature, insufficient attention has been paid to dreaming, and often attempts to take dreams into account involve insufficient understanding of the breadth of dreaming. DOI: 10.4324/9781003367710-9

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I begin by looking into theories which imply that dreaming, or at least most dreaming, is unconscious. The idea that consciousness requires clout in the brain, that unconscious neural processes compete for time in the conscious “spotlight”, fits into this category. This is because according to this view, to become conscious, mental states need “recognition” which requires time and memory resources to become integrated with other mental processes (Dennett, 2001). Because of the dysfunctions of working memory, memory access, and other cognitive processes, according to this theory, many dreams should be considered either unconscious or that dream reports only involve retroactive consciousness. This view is consistent with Dennett’s (1976) cassette theory (see Chapter 3) although the view requires modification in order to be consistent with recent findings about dreams. Interestingly, this approach provides the most plausible modern anti-experience view, although not all dream reports, in this view, involve retroactive consciousness. I then discuss higher-order thought (HOT) theory, a view according to which conscious mental states require a HOT to be considered conscious. In my interpretation of HOT theory, a large proportion of ‘dreams’ may be unconscious, which would be consistent with the antiexperience views discussed in Chapter 3. The dreams that we report, however, are likely to be conscious. This is because in many dreams, our cognitive capacities are significantly decreased, which leads to a cessation of the HOTs necessary for consciousness. “Dreams“ that are both forgotten and highly cognitively impaired are good candidates for unconscious dreaming according to HOT theory. However, instead of supporting the anti-experience thesis, I argue that this provides evidence against HOT theory, which does not seem to allow for retroactive consciousness in the way previously described. Global workspace (GW) theory is then discussed as a view according to which dreams are conscious; however, we should not consider them equivalent to normal waking consciousness in adults. Instead, they are a form of semiconsciousness or minimal consciousness. I argue that although GW theory is consistent with the received view of dreams, it provides an unsatisfactory explanation of dreaming and is overly reductive. While dreams do not provide evidence against GW theory per se, theorists pay insufficient attention to the similarities and differences between dreaming and waking in order to provide a plausible account of dreaming within the GW framework. The final section focuses on the access and phenomenal consciousness distinction proposed by Ned Block. I argue that this distinction is consistent with the variety of conscious experiences that occurs in sleep despite the fact that Block himself rejects the kind of view proposed here.

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In my pluralistic approach, some dreams are fully conscious while others retain phenomenal consciousness (P) but lack access (A). For dreams that lack A, by waking up and making dream reports, we can gain access consciousness to experiences that were previously only P conscious. Dream research supports the possibility of P that lacks A and in fact, dreaming provides a better example of P without A than those suggested in the consciousness literature. My main goal in this chapter is to show that dreaming should be taken seriously by consciousness researchers because, given the broad variety of experiences that occur, counterintuitive implications arise for certain theories of consciousness and dreams need to be accounted for by any plausible theory of mind. Inability to provide a plausible account of dreaming, or any conscious state for that matter, weakens a theory of consciousness. Dreaming, however, is an experience shared by nearly all humans and takes up a large proportion of mental life so is an essential addition to consciousness debates. 8.2 Unconscious dreaming

Here I argue that certain views of consciousness imply that dreaming should be considered as unconscious. HOT theory and the spotlight of consciousness view or “clout” view both imply that at least some “dreams” are unconscious. The implication of unconscious dreaming is an intuitive case against such views, although the spotlight view affords a retroactive consciousness explanation of dream reports which makes it more plausible than the HOT account. If we are to accept HOT theory, we must allow the possibility that dreaming can be unconscious, a type of anti-experience thesis not many would accept. 8.2.1 Consciousness as clout

Dennett’s cassette view (see Chapter 3), an anti-experience thesis according to which consciousness does not occur in sleep, is consistent with his early “spotlight” view of consciousness, that mental states compete for “clout” or time in the conscious spotlight. This view is exemplified by the curare and amnestic thought experiment, in which these two drugs paralyse and wipe a patient’s memory to replace general anaesthetic (Dennett, 2001). If the amnestic regularly wipes the patient’s memory before pain can be acknowledged, Dennett argues, then this pain does not become a conscious experience. Similarly, according to Jaynes (1976), to be conscious in the normal waking sense, we should be able to perform “mental time travel” (Barkasi & Rosen, 2020), reminisce on the past and

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anticipate future events (Jaynes, 1976, p. 371). Tulving (1985) also notes an important relationship between different kinds of consciousness and memory. I argue that these views suggest that the inability to remember can also indicate unconsciousness. The following analysis of the relationship between dreams, consciousness as a type of clout, and memory will begin with an overview of the different kinds of memory. Memories can be about events a person has experienced, remembered facts, or learned skills (see also Chapter 6). Procedural memory relates to the latter type, how tasks are accomplished “with the acquisition, retention and utilization of perceptual, cognitive and motor skills” (Tulving, 1985, p. 3). After many hours of practice, we can play a song on an instrument without consciously controlling our actions since the information on how to do it is stored in procedural memory which can be accessed automatically. Tulving relates procedural memory with anoetic (unknowing) consciousness, which involves “perceptually registering, internally representing and behaviourally responding to aspects of the present environment, both external and internal” (p. 3). Remembering facts or the symbolic representation of knowledge is semantic memory, which is associated with noetic (knowing) consciousness. Noetic consciousness is awareness of objects and events and the relations between them. Our personal experiences become episodic memories and this is associated with autonoetic (self-knowing) consciousness. Autonoetic consciousness differs from noetic consciousness as events are remembered as part of one’s own personal past rather than perspective-neutral knowledge about the world. Due to a brain injury, “N. N.” has a severely impaired episodic memory but has retained his semantic and procedural memory. He can recall details about many facts that he remembers but not any experiences from his personal past. His memories all have an impersonal quality, and he can’t anticipate future events: he has lost the capacity for mental time travel. Due to severely impaired autonoetic consciousness as well as episodic memory, when he tries to remember what happened that morning or imagine what he is going to do in an hour, he experiences nothing but blankness. He seems to be living in a “permanent present.” In terms of the threefold classification of consciousness proposed here, we could say that N.N. possesses both anoetic and noetic consciousness but not autonoetic consciousness, and that his procedural and semantic memory systems are relatively unimpaired whereas his episodic memory is severely damaged. (Tulving, 1985, p. 4)

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Here “autonoetic” could be disambiguated into two types of selfconsciousness: consciousness of personal identity, and consciousness of the self in time. N. N. appears to have, or at least reports feeling personal identity yet lacks the ability to think of himself as existing in the past and future. Tulving considers this as evidence that “autonoetic consciousness is a necessary correlate of episodic memory” (Tulving, 1987, p. 5).1 However, his description of N. N. suggests that memory deficiencies can indicate unconsciousness. Drawing on this and Dennett’s view, one might argue that in certain circumstances, poor memory can lead to periods of sleep being unconscious that we would otherwise assume were period of dreaming – perhaps even if a dream is reported after waking. We can lose access to our episodic, procedural, and semantic memory, or memories of personal experiences, abilities, and facts when we dream. This could be seen as an impairment to dreaming consciousness, or alternatively, impaired consciousness might be the explanation for memory loss in dreams. In dreams, we may not remember who we are (see Chapter 7) or what we were doing before falling asleep due to poor autobiographical memory. However, we often lose access not only to our waking memories but also our memories of dreaming appear to be “wiped” upon waking (see Rosen, fn) – we immediately forget what was just dreamt. The memory wiping may be due to the shift in state between dreaming and waking (Crespin and Rosen, fn) but this can also happen within the dream. During the dream, we forget what just happened so that at the end of the dream, we do not remember how the dream began or what we were just doing in the dream. REM awakenings in which the dreamer is woken up to report the dream immediately dramatically improve memory retention (Weisz & Foulkes, 1970). If a report is not made immediately, memory loss can be rapid. Our dream selves can forget any facts about our waking lives, such as our addresses, even our names. It is common to dream of being in a house that you think is yours but it looks entirely different from your real home. This suggests a lack of access to both episodic and semantic memories, we forget facts about what the house looked like as well as memory of being there (see also Chapter 6) and sometimes experience false memories. Tulving argues that not only autonoetic consciousness but also noetic and anoetic consciousness are linked with memory since the case of N. N. “tells us that amnesia can be characterized as a derangement of consciousness and not just a derangement of memory for past events” (p. 5). Amnesic dreaming in relation to all three types of memory might indicate that such dreams involve derangements in autonoetic, anoetic, and noetic consciousness. If all three forms of consciousness are severely affected, then perhaps dreaming subjects may even be unconscious.

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Although Tulving’s view is that autonoetic consciousness is necessary for autobiographical memory, his examples suggest that the absence of autobiographical memory can indicate absent autonoetic consciousness. Perhaps our memory deficits are explained by deficient autonoetic, anoetic, and noetic consciousness. Poor memory, however, is only an indication of absent consciousness. A more direct argument comes from Dennett. Rather than an indirect indication of consciousness, memory, in this view, is necessary for consciousness. Dennett (2001) describes mental states as being in competition for clout or influence, using the metaphor of a “spotlight” that selects some states to be conscious while others remain unconscious. Neural or mental processes fight to have their time in the spotlight. “Clout” refers to integration with other cognitive processes. We need to recognise a mental state for it to be conscious. For this to occur, working memory needs to retain a mental state for a sufficient period of time. For Dennett, “consciousness is not a momentary condition, nor a purely dispositional state, but rather a matter of actual influence over time” (p. 221). In the curare example in which the memory of the pain is constantly “wiped”, the mental state cannot become conscious as it cannot be recognised. This view could be interpreted as a version of the global workspace view, discussed later. Mental states in dreams also require sufficient clout to become conscious but may lack the sufficient amount to do so. Evidence suggests that not only does memory wiping upon waking occur, but we also undergo regular forgetting of the events within the dream. If this memory-wiping occurs before the mental states reach the consciousness threshold, then the “dream” would be considered unconscious processing. This cannot be applicable to all dreams, since we have good reason to suspect that memory in dreams is not always poor, but it may apply to most of them. Most theorists would think of such states simply as dreamless sleep since unconscious mental states that occur in sleep are not “dreams”. However, a consequence of this view is that most of what we now consider to be dreaming is instead dreamless sleep, also a counter-intuitive outcome. An overwhelming majority of “dreams” are forgotten considering, when woken up directly, dream reports are made from nearly all REM stages and up to 40% of NREM sleep stages (Domhoff, 2003). This brings to mind a more plausible version of the cassette theory. Although we do not have cassettes that are replayed on waking, instead, the cyclic memory wiping means that most of REM sleep and even a significant proportion of NREM involves unconscious processing that we are made conscious of only if woken up during the right time. Occasionally we are conscious during sleep, especially in lucid dreams and other dreams that don’t suffer from regular memory wiping. Some of the dreams we report, however,

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involve only retroactive consciousness since the process of waking up prevents memory wiping. Waking allows for retention and thus recognition. Note that lucid dreams, very vivid dreams, and remembering dreams at all are quite rare considering that we have several REM sessions per night. This means that what researchers currently think of as several hours of conscious dreaming per night is in fact simply dreamless sleep. We can’t assume that every dream that is remembered upon waking was conscious during sleep since some of these reports may involve retroactive consciousness and some forgotten dreams may have indeed been conscious during sleep. For good reason, Dennett doesn’t think curare which only wipes memory before the paralysis wears off is a case of unconsciousness. It is only regular wiping of memory that prevents mental states from being recognised that are unconscious. In dreaming, if the shift in phase state (Koukkou & Lehmann, 1983; Lehmann & Koukkou, 2000) is what “wipes” the memory, this is the same as the “one wipe” curare patient. There is reason to think that regular memory wiping does indeed occur, partially due to the fact that dreamers can often only remember what happened right before waking and not the full dream (Crespin & Rosen, fnw); however, on a case-by-case basis, if a dream is not reported, it is impossible to know whether this is due to phase shift memory wiping or regular memory wiping. If a dream is reported, we do not know whether there is simply retroactive consciousness or if the dream was conscious during sleep since unconsciousness is not directly empirically testable. Other sceptical approaches to dreaming, however, have simpler and more directly testable implications, allowing them to be falsifiable. For HOT theory, it is not memory in particular that should make us reconsider the status of consciousness in dreams but rather whether HOT occurs. According to this theory, HOTs are necessary for consciousness. 8.2.2 HOT or not?

While a case can be made for some dreams being unconscious according to higher order thought (HOT) theory, little attention has been paid to dreams by HOT theorists. Cognitively deficient dreams may at times lack HOTs, in which case HOT theory should describe these dreams as unconscious. This is, however, a counterintuitive anti-experience outcome. While this does not disprove HOT theory, dream phenomena need to be taken seriously by any theory of consciousness that appears to class dreaming in an implausible way. According to HOT theory, a mental state is conscious only if it is accompanied by a thought about being in that state. According to Rosenthal (1993),

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we are conscious of our mental states by virtue of having accompanying thoughts about those states. When a mental state is conscious, we are transitively conscious that we are in that state. So the HOT that accompanies it will be a thought to the effect that one is in the target mental state. (p. 361) HOTs are not equivalent to metacognition (Brown et al., 2019), but they require awareness. Rosenthal describes the concept of HOTs as arising from a stalemate in the discussion about consciousness. Different disambiguations of “consciousness” are used in different contexts and disagreements arise because theorists are talking about different phenomena. State consciousness, the property of having awareness of being in that state, is the most philosophically interesting in Rosenthal’s view. Sometimes we use “consciousness”, however, to refer to transitive consciousness, which describes the consciousness of a stimulus, or creature consciousness, which is just being awake and responsive. Despite the many things we use “consciousness” to refer to, we should not confuse those with the philosophically interesting form, state consciousness. Clearly, not all mental states are conscious. Many beliefs, memories, and other mental processes remain under the threshold of consciousness, and “when a mental state is not conscious, we are not in any way conscious of being in that state” (Rosenthal, 1993, p. 357). For example, at any given time, we only become conscious of a small fraction of the large web of unconscious beliefs we hold, however, actions can be affected by an unconscious belief without the need for the belief to be brought into consciousness. My belief that I have poor memory might cause me to put extra care into writing things down even if I’m not currently thinking about my poor memory. If I did not have such a belief, I might rely on remembering events more often. We can thus have mental states that are at times not state conscious but still play a causal role in behaviour. For Rosenthal, sensations can also lack state consciousness. I can be distracted from the sound of roadworks across the street and for a time, not be conscious of the sound. Rather than mental states simply disappearing and then reappearing, it is more likely that mental processing continues but comes in and out of consciousness. State consciousness, for Rosenthal, is best accommodated by HOT theory. A mental state is conscious when it is accompanied by a HOT about that state and this thought contains propositional content about being in that state. If we are conscious of being in pain, the pain stimulus is accompanied by a thought about being in pain, such as “this is pain”. Mental states are not conscious in and of themselves, so there must be either a higher-order sense or higher-order thought about a state for it to

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be conscious. Some higher-order theories do focus instead on the idea of higher-order senses (Carruthers, 2017; Carruthers & Gennaro, 2020); however, in Rosenthal’s view, since intentional states are independent of sensory qualities, what makes a state conscious must be a HOT instead of a sense of the state. Dreams, as argued throughout this book, display a wide range of cognitive and phenomenal features. Cognition can be severely diminished in some dreams while others may have cognition similar to waking. However, we often lack the ability to rationally monitor our dream thoughts and actions, and even lack a sense of self, agency, and control in dreams. Metacognitive thoughts are often lacking, as well as other HOTs. While, as previously mentioned, HOTs are not the same as metacognition, in the following section I argue that because of our cognitive deficiencies, some dream experiences may not involve HOTs, and thus, according to HOT theorists, should be seen as unconscious. HOT theory, therefore, implies an anti-experience thesis of certain dreams. If HOTs are necessary for consciousness and if dreams are so cognitively impaired that they lack HOTS, then these dreams are unconscious. Many dreams show a highly reduced capacity for HOTs, and some dreams may even lack HOTs altogether. Sebastián (2014) argues that activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is necessary for the generation of HOTs when we are awake. Deactivation of the DLPFC occurs during REM sleep, so it is possible that HOTs do not occur during such DLPFC cessations. According to Rosenthal, “qualitative properties do occur without HOTs, but HOTs are needed for there to be something it’s like for one to be in such states” (Rosenthal, 2000, p. 236). It is unlikely that the neural correlates of HOTs should change between waking and sleeping. It is highly implausible that HOTs could occur without DLPFC activation in any state, so if HOT theorists wanted to support this view, they would need strong evidence that the neural correlates of HOTs change when we are asleep. There is currently no such evidence, so the remaining option is that some dreams are unconscious. The HOT theorist, according to Sebastian, has two options for describing dream cognition. Either during dreaming, the DLPFC is not essential for HOTs, or dreams are unconscious. Since both positions are implausible, we should reject HOT theory. There is some contention, however, about whether we can infer a lack of HOTs from claims about DLPFC deactivation (Weisberg, 2013). More nuance is required. If dreams don’t involve HOTs, then they are unconscious according to HOT theory. We need not rely on claims about DLPFC activation, however. Dreams which are highly cognitively deficient are the most convincing examples of HOTless dreams. In some dreams, we appear to

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lack reflective awareness, metacognition, attentional capacity, and rational capacity (see Chapter 2). In such dreams, the dreamer is often unable to reflect upon their own cognitive state, and, although explicit metacognition involves conscious awareness about cognitive states rather than perceptual states (see Chapter 2), it is likely that HOTs such as “I see a blue object” or “I am in pain” may not occur if we are a sufficiently cognitively incapacitated. If HOTs are indeed absent in dreams, then a HOT theorist, in Sebastian’s view, would have to concede that such dreams are unconscious mental states. Perhaps the altered activation of the sleeping brain causes unconsciousness despite high levels of activation in the visual and motor cortex. Despite being unconscious in this view, dreams still affect our behaviour, not only by causing us to make reports but there is also emotional carry-over when we wake up (D‘Agostino et al., 2013) and potential skills improvement (Schädlich et al., 2017). However, in this view, these effects should be considered like the effects of unconscious beliefs. In Sebastian’s interpretation, dream reports would have to refer to unconscious experiences that occur during sleep, thus we require an explanation as to why we make these reports. For Sebastian, this is also a reason to reject HOT theory. Sebastian and I agree that Malcolm (1959) and Dennett’s (1976) views are implausible given modern dream research. From this, Sebastian further concludes that HOT theory is also implausible because it does not offer a reasonable account of dreaming. While I agree that dreams do seem to pose problems for HOT theory, I find Sebastian’s description of dreams overly reductive and his account of the dreaming brain somewhat oversimplified. In my view, HOT theory does not imply that all dreams are unconscious as Sebastian argues. The lowered activation of the DLPFC is not consistent across dreams. Neural activation can alter broadly during dreams, and while the DLPFC can be, at times, much less active than normal waking, it can be more or less active in different sleep stages and vary across dreams (see Chapters 1 and 2), or even vary during a single dream (Kubota et al., 2011). The role of the DLPFC in dreaming is a contested issue although now it is quite well established that some dreams display a deactivated DLPFC, whereas others do not. As Domhoff (2011) notes, although early PET studies found lowered DLPFC activation in both REM and NREM sleep, in a later study (Maquet et al., 2005), neuroimaging suggested that “some areas within the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex are more active in REM than NREM” (p. 5) and lucid dreams display particularly active frontal brain areas. Further, it is not clear that we can ever say parts of the brain are entirely “deactivated” as neuroimaging shows an average difference in activation, and there is always blood flow and some electrical activity in all parts of the brain

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(see Chapter 1). Therefore, the claim that “neural correlate of the reporting access to our visual conscious experiences depends on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex which is deactivated during dreams” (Sebastián, 2014) requires more nuance. Rather, we should say that the lowered activation in the DLPFC during some dreams might lead to an inability to generate HOTs. Setting brain activation aside, analysis of dream reports strongly suggests that HOTs do occur in many dreams. While our cognition appears severely diminished in some dream reports, other reports suggest that dream cognition can be similar to waking. Kahan and Laberge (1994) found that many dreams display waking levels of cognition and metacognition, in which case, it is entirely plausible that HOTs occur. Sebastian makes a good point that HOT theorists have failed to take dreaming into account and this poses challenges for their theory. However, it is not plausible to say that HOTs never occur in dreams, thus not all dreaming is problematic for HOT theory. Some dreams appear cognitively equivalent to waking, involving not only HOTs but a variety of forms of metacognition, self-reflection, and sense of agency. HOT theorists do have a challenge, however. They need to explain those dreams in which cognition is severely impaired, the DLPFC has reduced activation and HOTs appear to be absent. Dreamers still seem to report dreams from these periods of sleep. These dreams are quite a challenge, and one that HOT theorists need to take seriously. Although further work needs to be done, in the following I outline how HOT theorists might take on this challenge. Despite the reports we make of apparently HOTless dreams, a few options are open for HOT theorists to explain this puzzle. One option is for HOT theorists to bite the bullet and concede that some dreams are unconscious. This requires an explanation of why we can report unconscious processing after waking. As I argued in Chapter 3, we should reject both Malcolm and Dennett’s anti-experience theses. However, above I outlined a way in which retroactive consciousness could occur in relation to the spotlight of consciousness view. HOT theorists could potentially come up with a similar explanation, although the spotlight view seems better suited to the retroactive consciousness account due to the aforementioned memory requirements of consciousness in that view. Another option left to the HOT theorist is to claim that, while certain stages of REM are unconscious due to the DLPFC “deactivation” and lack of HOTs, dreams do not occur in these stages. However, once again, during lab awakenings, dreams are consistently reported from these “unconscious” REM stages and often also from NREM stages, which we can call “HOTless” stages of sleep. HOT theorists need an explanation for these reports.

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What explains HOTless sleep reports? Evidence suggests that dreams which involve higher levels of metacognition and wake-like cognitive features are easier to remember and report with greater accuracy (see Chapter 3). So, stages with fewer HOTs should be less easy to report, but what about the HOTless reports? It is unclear how, under HOT theory, an unconscious state could be reported at all. HOT theorists must develop a view according to which we can become conscious of an unconscious state after a period of time has passed. Reporting dreams that occurred earlier in the night is far less common than remembering and reporting a dream that occurred just before waking, which suggests that something about waking right after a HOTless sleep stage might be the key to awareness of these stages, similar to the discussion of the spotlight theory above. However, it is not obvious that waking from an unconscious dream and reporting it immediately is itself possible in this view. To apply HOT theory to the retroactive view, some processing that occurs in sleep lacks the necessary HOTs to be conscious. Upon waking, the DLPFC is reactivated, allowing us to have HOTs about some kind of residue of the mental processing that previously occurred. Note, however, that we should not say that conscious dreaming never occurs, but due to these retroactive HOTs, we may be unable to distinguish between reports that are of conscious dreaming and those that are of unconscious processing during sleep since both are potentially reportable upon waking. With future technology, we might be able to distinguish between the two via neuroimaging. Further work is required to determine whether HOT theory can plausibly take into account this kind of explanation for dream reports. For Sebastian, if we want to save ourselves from the counter-intuitive outcome of reporting unconscious states, we should reject HOT theory. In my view, however, this would be a hasty move, but until HOT theorists can either explain retroactive consciousness or adopt an alternative explanation of HOTless reports, HOT theory is unsatisfactory. It is more plausible to concede that some dreams involve impoverished consciousness, rather than retrospective consciousness. Perhaps HOT theorists could also make this move, but due to the lack of attention to dreams, this has yet to be argued. HOT theory does not satisfactorily take into account all forms of human experience, in particular, cognitively impoverished dreams. A view that is consistent with the received view, however, is the global workspace (GW) theory. While this is a preferable to unconscious dreams, GW theorists’ account of dream lacks some nuance. GW theorists, just like HOT theorists, have paid insufficient attention to explaining how dreams

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fit into their theory and therefore do not have a satisfactory account of consciousness. 8.3 Dreams as early consciousness

Global workspace (GW) theory, in my interpretation, implies that when we report dreams, we are simply reporting a type of conscious experience that occurred in sleep; however, this might not be the type of normal conscious experience we have when awake. GW theory describes consciousness as a feature of mental states that occurs when that state is globally accessible to other mental processes via a global workspace in the brain. GW theorists do not think HOTs are required for a process to be conscious. Consciousness is necessary for processing novel or unusual experience, and is required for creativity (Baars, 2002). While dream reports suggest that dreams can be novel or unusual experiences, which is consistent with Baars’ conjecture that dreams are conscious, Baars describes dreams as being akin to an early form of consciousness, which suggests that dreams are not fully conscious. It is not clear, however, how these different types of consciousness correspond with GW theory. Although dreams do not provide a counterargument to GW theory, Baars’ description of dreaming requires further nuance and itself does not fit well with GW theory. 8.3.1 The conscious global workspace

Consciousness as a GW (see Baars, 2002; Baars et al., 1998; Dehaene & Changeux, 2004; Dehaene & Naccache, 2001, for early descriptions) is the view that the brain allows for certain neural processes to be widely accessed by other neural processes. This global accessibility is what allows a process to become conscious. Baars explains global workspace theory suggests a fleeting memory capacity in which only one consistent content can be dominant at any given moment. Dominant information is widely distributed in the brain. This makes sense in a nervous system viewed as a massive distributed set of specialized networks. In such a system, coordination, control, and problem solving could take place by way of a central information exchange, allowing some regions – such as sensory cortex – to distribute information to the whole. (Baars, 2002, p. 47) Consciousness occurs when the contents of a mental state are distributed to a wide range of systems in the brain. In other words, consciousness is global distribution and “this global availability of information through

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the GW is what we subjectively experience as the conscious state” (Dehaene & Naccache, 2001, p. 1). Similar to Dennett’s view, Baars uses the analogy of a spotlight in a theatre that highlights some brain processes whilst others remain in the dark recesses of unconsciousness. This spotlight is controlled by the frontal executive cortex and other areas such as the brain stem, emotional centres in the amygdala or pain systems and so forth, depending on the sensory input (Baars, 2003). Consciousness may also require that information be sent to “self-systems” that ensure that conscious information is consistent with personal identity. This includes features that we find important about ourselves such as life goals and beliefs. A large majority of our mental states including semantic, motor, and perceptual processes occur unconsciously (Dehaene & Naccache, 2001). According to the GW theory, attention to stimuli is what distinguishes non-conscious from conscious processes. Attention makes some stimuli conscious at the expense of others, as only the states that we attend to get projected into the workspace. Our capacity for unconscious processing, after all, far exceeds our capacity for conscious processing. Only a small percentage of what we process ever comes to our attention. Rosenthal, as previously explained, describes this as transitive consciousness or consciousness of an item. In contrast, patients with hemineglect (Driver & Mattingley, 1998) despite having nothing wrong with their vision per se, cannot attend to the left side of their visual field. This causes them to behave as if they are not conscious of what occurs in this area of vision. A similar outcome happens when we are unable to pay attention to an area in the visual field. This “inattentional blindness” (Mack & Rock, 1998) occurs when ordinary subjects don’t attend to a stimulus because they are distracted by another item (see Chapter 5). One interpretation is that we do not become conscious of these unattended items. Further to this, consciousness may be necessary for maintaining mental representations over time. In Sperling’s experiment (1960, discussed in section 8.4.1), normal subjects report seeing 12 letters on a three-by-four array but can only report three of the actual letters. GW theory suggests that the subject retains consciousness of only a few of the items and is not conscious of the others. Our conscious attention can only maintain the information of about three of the letters, not all 12. Subjects who report being conscious of all 12 items are simply mistaken. Most information from the environment and maintenance of appropriate behaviours is processed below the level of consciousness. However, the purpose of consciousness is to process novel data and allow creativity. Unconscious processing can do more than we might expect, but it is limited in several ways. Creativity, learning, self-knowledge, and problem-solving

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all require a level of awareness, without which behaviour and reactions are stereotyped and limited. For GW theory, conscious processes are those which are distributed across a wide range of neural centres. Global accessibility allows for comprehending novel information as well as “planning a novel strategy, evaluating it, controlling its execution, and correcting possible errors” (Dehaene & Naccache, 2001, p. 11). Unconscious processes lack such global resources and work as “modules” (p. 12) which have specified functions that cannot process novelty. Only conscious processes can utilise multiple subsystems to process novel information. Consciousness also allows creative and novel problemsolving that would not be possible to do unconsciously. “Absence seizures” come to mind. During this kind of seizure, individuals can carry out stereotyped activities, some of which seem quite complex, while unconscious. It must be acknowledged, however, that a person having such a seizure cannot appropriately respond to novel circumstances or make decisions. For GW theory, unconscious processes are modular and conscious processes are global. A consequence of this is that consciousness is not a clearly demarcated process in the brain, but rather can subsume a variety of global functions (Dehaene & Naccache, 2001). Thus, there is no consciousness centre that is associated with, for example, the frontal lobes. Rather, “many brain areas contain workspace neurons with the appropriate long-distance and widespread connectivity, and at any given time only a fraction of these neurons constitute the mobilized workspace” (Dehaene & Naccache, 2001, p. 14). Conscious processes have a style of organisation rather than a specific brain area, which is one reason why finding the neural correlates of consciousness has been so difficult. The global workspace can fluctuate throughout the brain and determining which specific processes are conscious using, say, neuroimaging, is not currently possible. 8.3.2 A dreamscape and a global workspace

Since consciousness doesn’t require HOTs according to GWT, this overcomes the counterintuitive view that cognitively incapacitated dreams should be seen as unconscious. However, attention is key to consciousness. Attention and access in dreams are highly variable, so an internally generated stimulus that occurs during sleep but is not accessed by the global workspace would not be conscious. Nonetheless, it seems that there are more ways in which dreams can be conscious despite features such as deficient cognition and a deactivated DLPFC. Since “global workspace theory suggests a fleeting memory capacity that enables access between

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brain functions that are otherwise separate” (Baars, 2003), whether a dream stimulus is conscious depends on whether it is accessible to the necessary workspace of disparate brain functions, whatever these are. While it has not been determined exactly which functions are necessary or sufficient for consciousness, perhaps research into dreaming could help solve this puzzle. For example, if we can report dreaming after sessions of DLPFC deactivation, this might suggest that this brain area is not necessary for consciousness. If there is a brain area X that, when deactivated, always results in a lack of reports, we might hypothesise that this area is necessary (but not sufficient) for dream consciousness. Of course, a particular area might be necessary for dream production but not consciousness in general, so we can’t make assumptions about the neural correlates of consciousness (see Chapter 1 for a discussion about lesions that cause dream cessation). Since the GW isn’t defined by specific brain activation, deactivation of the DLPFC does not necessarily mean dreaming is unconscious. However, wide-scale deactivation of brain areas may weaken the GW since there is no longer a sufficient level of global accessibility. Perhaps hyperactivation in some areas can overcome the weakening of the global workspace in others, for example, the heightened activation in the motor and visual cortexes (see Chapter 1). The failure of binding in some dreams (Revonsuo, 1999; Revonsuo & Tarkko, 2002) may, for example, be explained by failure in neural connectivity and this demonstrates the kind of consciousness that can occur when the GW is weakened. However, the dreaming brain may simply generate an alternative type of GW from the normal waking one. For Baars, “conscious perception involves more than sensory analysis; it enables access to widespread brain sources, whereas unconscious input processing is limited to sensory regions” (Baars, 2002, p. 47). If dreams are conscious, then, dreamed content must be accessible to widespread brain sources although we do not know whether some particular areas are necessary. An important point here is that GW theory does not entail that the DLPFC or other specific areas that are often deactivated during dreams are necessary for such access. Further empirical research, however, might show that some of these areas are indeed necessary for a normally functioning GW. Normal waking human consciousness involves the purposeful use of endogenous sensory experience, such as inner speech and voluntary visual imagery (Baars, 2003). This may require prefrontal self-systems which are lacking in many dreams due to deactivation of the DLPFC and other prefrontal areas. However, it is possible that a different type of consciousness, or “altered states” of consciousness occur in dreams (Rosen, 2022). In Baars’ view, dreams, unlike waking, resemble an

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early form of consciousness that may have occurred in our early ancestors. Since dreaming consciousness involves spontaneous imagery rather than the complex type of imagery we have while awake, this may have developed in animals long before purposeful consciousness developed in humans. Prefrontal cortex is key to voluntary goals in humans, and speech is of course the basis of the phonological loop involved in mental rehearsal. In contrast, spontaneous imagery may have appeared much earlier [than purposeful use of visual imagery] – such as the visual image of a lion evoked by the sound of a lion’s roar. Such spontaneous imagery may be common among mammalian prey animals, while predators may have spontaneous visual images of prey that can be smelled but not seen. Certainly the dream state, characterized by rich conscious visual imagery, evolved with early mammals. (Baars, 2003) Rich2 but involuntary sensory consciousness may not require distribution to the frontal “higher level” thought areas of the brain, so dreams may involve this kind of primitive conscious without activation of the DLPFC. Interestingly, Baars’ analysis of dreaming is not clearly consistent with all aspects of GW theory. For example, according to Baars “conscious perception involves more than sensory analysis; it enables access to widespread brain sources, whereas unconscious input processing is limited to sensory regions” (Baars, 2002, p. 47). It is not clear how “spontaneous imagery” or “early consciousness” fits into the GW picture of consciousness and the mind. If being limited to sensory analysis means being inaccessible to the global workspace, it seems that dreams should be unconscious. Perhaps this should be thought of as a simplified or minimal workspace – a different type of workspace than we commonly have while awake – but more clarification is needed. The fact that we report dreams as complex experiences does, as aforementioned, most easily fit with the idea that they are conscious. The possibility that dreams involve early or primitive consciousness needs to be analysed in more detail if dreaming is to be adequately taken into account by GW theory. Global workspace theorists (Baars, 2002, 2003; Baars et al., 1998; Dehaene & Changeux, 2004; Dehaene & Naccache, 2001) may reject dreaming as a complex, rich, and varied conscious experience. However, more research is required to assess what GW theory should say about dreams given the variety of experiences that occur when we dream. Even if some dreams are best described as “primitive consciousness”, this is not the case for many cognitively superior dreams such as lucid dreams.

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Cognitive systems vary greatly throughout the night. Certain dreams display reduced HOTs and rational capacities, while others attain high levels of these cognitive processes. Similarly, as previously discussed, activation in the brain is highly variety and we do not always have a deactivated DLPFC while asleep. Thus, dream consciousness as “primitive” or even unconscious is too simple. Baars’ description of dreams as involving “spontaneous” imagery or akin to “early” consciousness that developed in animals clearly does not describe all dreaming. Further, it is not clear how primitive consciousness is consistent with the requirement that conscious experience is accessible to the global workspace. This distinction between modern human consciousness and early consciousness would suggest there are different types of consciousness, some of which are less accessible and others which are more accessible to the global workspace. This theory of dreaming is, for these reasons, not entirely convincing. An alternative description of dreaming that allows for different types of consciousness to occur while we sleep is the access and phenomenal consciousness distinction made by Block. I argue that, according to this view, we should describe some dreams as phenomenally conscious but lacking access consciousness. This view contrasts with HOT theory in that it posits that even cognitively impoverished dreams can be conscious; however, unlike GW theory, dreams, like waking, can at times be a different type of consciousness that lacks access. 8.4 Impoverished consciousness

In my interpretation of Block’s disambiguation between access and phenomenal consciousness, dreaming can at times be said to lack access while retaining phenomenal consciousness. Despite the fact that Block himself rejects this view, a move which is based on an inadequate understanding of dream phenomena, dreaming can be plausibly taken into account with this distinction. Dreams in fact provide a better example of P-consciousness without A-consciousness than the Sperling experiment, an example of this phenomenon used by Block. 8.4.1 Access vs. phenomenal consciousness

Block (1995, 2007), like Rosenthal, also thinks that researchers have conflated different distinctions of consciousness. Often, when we talk of consciousness, we fail to distinguish between two types, namely phenomenal consciousness (P-consciousness) and access consciousness (Aconsciousness). This ambiguity often leads to confusion. P-consciousness,

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put simply, is just experience. To be in a P-conscious state means that there is something that it is like to be in that state (Block, 1995). There is some debate over whether certain mental states, such as beliefs and desires, are themselves P-conscious, however. For example, is there anything that it is like to believe a proposition is true? Perhaps beliefs evoke emotions and other associated phenomenal states, such as imagining the proposition being true; however, it is contentious whether the belief itself has an experiential quality. Block argues that we are instead only A-conscious of such mental states, but this issue I will leave aside for the present purposes. In contrast with P-consciousness, A-consciousness occurs when the contents of a perceptual state are incorporated into the “executive system”. An A-conscious state is poised for, or capable of, being used for reasoning, thinking, reporting, and controlling behaviour. Block describes A-consciousness as being “(1) inferentially promiscuous (Stich, 1978), i.e., poised to be used as a premise in reasoning, and (2) poised for [rational] control of action and (3) poised for rational control of speech” (Block, 1995, p. 239). Notedly, 3 is indicative rather than an essential feature, since animals and some humans are incapable of speech despite being capable of A-consciousness. Nonetheless, (3) is essential for the empirical study of A-consciousness, since theorists rely on reports to research cognition. As a general description of the neural activation of these states, Block speculates that P-consciousness occurs in the “back of the head”, which includes the parietal lobe, associated with movement, orientation, recognition, and perception of stimuli as well as the occipital lobe, associated with visual processing. In contrast, A-consciousness is likely associated with the frontal lobes. The strongest neuronal coalitions win over weaker ones and only information from these strong coalitions gets sent through to the frontal lobes. Then, the information can be used for reasoning, planning, problem-solving, emotional response and speech. The processing from the front can result in feedback loops to the back of the brain, known as top-down processing. This in turn modulates our Pconscious states. A pain signal in the back of the head that is strong enough will be projected to the frontal lobes for processing to enable rational action and inference-making. Rational assessment may prevent automatic, irrational responses, such as jumping away from the stimulus when jumping would cause worse injury. This new information feeds back to the back of the head, which may affect the quality of the experience, perhaps suppressing the intensity of the pain. For Block, the losing coalitions are not necessarily unconscious – rather, they are only phenomenally conscious. That’s not to say that all neural processing is conscious. Rather, certain coalitions are only slightly weaker than the

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winning coalitions that get projected to the front, so it is plausible that they are only slightly weaker regarding phenomenal quality. Evidence to support the double disassociation between A- and Pconsciousness comes from experiments which suggest that at times, we can have A-consciousness without P-consciousness, and vice versa. Many have experienced the following. The refrigerator has been emitting a low hum for an hour and then switches off. You become aware of this change, but a minute earlier you were not paying attention to the sound and didn’t notice it. For Block, this may be a case of phenomenal consciousness without access; however, in such cases, it can be unclear whether you did have phenomenal consciousness, especially if you cannot remember. You may instead only be conscious of the change. A more clear-cut example is a drill being used constantly for 20 minutes, after which you may become desensitised to the sound and stop noticing it. When it stops you are nonetheless relieved. Perhaps you even remember that the drill had been going for 20 minutes. This is more likely to be a case of phenomenal consciousness that lacks access since you report that you heared the drill throughout, but it did not have any effect on your rational capacities or behavioural control for a period of time. Perhaps more convincingly, some experimental data also supports this distinction. Sperling’s (1960) experiment involved briefly showing subjects three rows of four letters. Subjects generally report seeing all the letters, however, when asked which specific letters were shown and where, participants can usually only name three or four letters randomly across the array -- less than half. The experiment then shows another array of letters, similar to the first, but this time, an arrow or a tone is used to point to a row of letters 1.5 seconds after removing the stimulus. In the version of the experiment that used a tone, a high-pitched tone indicated the top row, medium for the middle and low for the bottom row. Participants could generally name every letter of the indicated row but none of the others. Block argues that this is an example of P-consciousness of all 12 letters, but A-consciousness of only four. This is because the indicator was only shown after the stimulus was removed, so the information must have been stored in the minds of the participants for a period of time. By signalling to a specific row of letters, the stimuli of those letters which are stored in the back of the head form the dominant coalitions, winning over the stimuli from the other letters. The P-consciousness of 12 letters allowed for the participants to later become A-conscious of around three letters, and which letters get projected is modulated by the signal. Because of “phenomenological overflow”, we have a greater capacity for P-consciousness than for Aconsciousness (Block, 2007, p. 489). We have phenomenal capacity for

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8–12 objects, whereas our access capacity is limited to three or four. The presence of phenomenal consciousness is supported by the delay between the stimulus and indicator since we become access conscious of whichever line is signalled, so we must have some kind of experience of that information. This could not occur if we lost P-consciousness of any of the letters. Block’s interpretation of the Sperling experiment is contentious. Chalmers (1997) argues that only three letter representations are accessed, but it is nevertheless plausible that each of the nine was available, until the process of access destroyed their availability. This works because the modified notion of A-consciousness is dispositional – not access, but accessibility is required. And it is plausible that all nine letter-representations are Aconscious in the modified sense. So even in this case, P-consciousness and modified A-consciousness occur together. (p. 149) This alternative interpretation is that P-consciousness and Aconsciousness are not separable, but instead, all items are potentially accessible for 1.5 seconds. Accessing particular letters renders the rest of the letters inaccessible. Alternatively, perhaps only generic information is available for twelve letters, whereas specific information is available for only four (Phillips, 2011, p. 402). Generic information includes that all items are letters, a certain size, colour, and orientation. Specific information includes which specific letters there are and where they are positioned. We might alternatively just have limited or weak access to what those letters are. This claim is made less plausible by the apparent “winner takes all” aspect of reports about conscious experience (Hohwy, 2007, p. 13). When asked to rate the strength of a stimulus, people tend to report “strong”, or make no report at all. There are very few cases where the stimulus is reported as being weak conscious experience. Whether or not this experiment provides a good example of P without A, I argue that dreaming makes a better case. 8.4.2 Phenomenal dreams

Cognitively impaired dreams provide stronger evidence of P-consciousness without A-consciousness than the Sperling experiment. It should be clear by now that this does not apply to all dreams since some dreams are cognitively equivalent to waking, lucid dreams being a good example, and these clearly involve A-consciousness. However, here I focus on dreams

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which lack metacognition, agency, rationality, and other relevant cognitive features of A-consciousness. Block’s assessment of dreams as weakly A-conscious is incorrect and does not take into account the relevant cognitively impoverished dream experiences that I highlight. Block should concede that some dreams are indeed examples of P-consciousness without A-consciousness. One possibility is that we may become Aconscious of the content of cognitively impaired dreams if we wake up at the appropriate time during REM sleep. This is analogous to the delayed A-consciousness demonstrated in the Sperling (1960) experiments. This is also more plausible than anti-experience views and retroactive consciousness views since it has a plausible scientific explanation for dream reports. Block disagrees with my account. Dreams, in his view, are less intense and detailed than waking consciousness, thus they are not P-consciousness without A- consciousness. Block (1995) states that On my account, dreams are a form of consciousness, though they are of less intensity than full blown waking alertness. Consciousness3 is an on/ off switch: You are either conscious or not. Though once conscious, the system functions like a rheostat, and there can be an indefinite range of different degrees of consciousness, ranging from the drowsiness just before one falls asleep to the full blown complete alertness of the obsessive. (p. 262) Although Block rejects dreams as P-consciousness without Aconsciousness, his assessment of dreams as a less-alert form of consciousness is only an accurate description of some dreams. Rather, in my view, some dreams do make a good example of P-consciousness that lacks Aconsciousness. This does not apply to all dreaming, but it is consistent with Revonsuo’s (1995) view. Dreaming seems to be a pure case of P-consciousness without Aconsciousness: it has all the phenomenological properties without having any of the normal functional relationships to perceptual input or external behavior. However, if the motor output blockade is removed during dreaming, the person or animal will act out the dreamed behavior in accordance with the dream events (Hobson, 1988, p. 150). The observed behavior is in such a case driven by current conscious experience, but it would hardly count as “rational control of action” from an outsider’s point of view – people who have REM sleep without atonia often injure themselves badly during attempted dream enactment (Schenck et al., 1986). Thus, there is

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complex control of action that is the expression of an underlying mental reality but that would probably not be considered A-conscious. (p. 266) Revonsuo’s view is accurate for some dream experiences according to my pluralist approach. Further, it is not the input and output blockades that make dreaming a good example, but rather, the cognitive features of some dreams. In my view, while cognitively deficient dreams may lack access during the dream, being woken up at an appropriate time during REM or other sleep stages can allow the waking brain to gain access consciousness of the dream. The distinction between A- and P-consciousness forms the basis of an intuitively appealing theory of cognitively impoverished dream consciousness. I also argue that dreams provide an example of P-consciousness without A-consciousness that is more convincing than the Sperling experiment example. We do not remember most of our dreams unless we are woken up during them. We forget a large majority since many periods of dreaming occur in a night but very rarely can dreamers recall and report more than one. The dream or the most recent part of the dream that occurs just before waking is usually all that is remembered (as discussed in Chapters 1 and 2). This suggests that waking up during REM sleep often is essential for dream recall. Here I argue that retroactive A-consciousness of dreams that are only P-conscious is more plausible than the previous explanations. Block himself rejects dreaming as a case of P without A. He argues “in dreaming, one’s representations are poised to control behavior, but behavioral systems are paralyzed, so there is no behavior. Dream contents are A; so they do not provide a case of P without A” (Block, 1995, p. 166). This, however, incorrectly assumes that all dreams are indeed poised for rational control of behaviour. Dream decisions and behaviours are often irrational (see Chapter 2). We can have a highly reduced cognitive capacity which Block does not consider. In dreams, we attempt to fly and fight monsters, something a fully rational waking mind would realise is bizarre – monsters don’t exist and humans can’t fly. In other dreams, the dreamer lacks volition entirely. They passively go along with the dream narrative without making conscious decisions or choosing actions (Rosen, 2021). While we can have agency and make rational choices in some dreams, in others we appear passive and incapable of decision-making. The three criteria for access consciousness, inferential promiscuity, rational control of one’s actions and reportability can all be severely reduced if not absent entirely when we dream. Dreaming often seems like it lacks the requirements for A-consciousness.

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We often lack the ability to use information to make inferences in dreams, meaning we lack inferential promiscuity. We may be unable to notice bizarre features of the dream itself and make rational inferences about such features. We may be entirely incapable of thinking rationally or perhaps our rationality is severely impaired. We may accept bizarre occurrences as normal or make up irrational explanations for their occurrence. Hobson (2002), for example, reports the following dream in which he is watching an acquaintance of his (Roger) try to land a helicopter: … suddenly, very suddenly, the helicopter became a tractor, a farm tractor with big wheels which, on hitting the ground, flew apart, one large wheel rolling wildly downhill while the rest of the tractor veered to the left with Roger now running behind. (pp. 130–131) Hobson, while dreaming, does not notice the strangeness of a helicopter morphing into a tractor, and he does not question whether he might be dreaming or even if he is seeing everything accurately. Rather, he watches the events unfold passively without making any interferences, performing any actions, or coming to the correct conclusion about what is actually the case – that he is dreaming. His experiences, it seems, are not inferentially promiscuous. Rational control of thoughts and actions is commonly lacking in dreams (Rosen, 2015, 2021). Lack of control might be linked to the other reduced rational cognitive faculties, agency, and memory access as well as the lack of activation in the DLPFC. Dreamers’ inability to make rational decisions leads to irrational behaviour as well as behaving out of character.4 Deficient memory, both in terms of accessing stored waking memories and accessing memories of the current dream means that the dreamer is unable to use past experiences to guide their actions. Immediately forgetting what has just happened in the dream due to a reduced capacity for memory retention makes it impossible to behave appropriately, and these memory deficits can also lead to the dreamer failing to notice bizarre occurrences in the dream environment. The dreamer’s actions and decisions can thus be irrational and unrelated to their situation. This common inability to question the changing and unstable landscape of the dream is a type of metacognitive failure discussed in detail in Chapter 2. If a fully functioning waking mind found itself in a bizarre dream scenario, the waking mind most likely would come to the conclusion that something was wrong with the experience. The pre-lucid stage is an example of this, however, most of the time the dreamer accepts the dream environment as if nothing is unusual.

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Whether the dreamer is poised for rational control of speech and thus able to report the dream may be contingent on being woken up during the dream. This, interestingly, is analogous to the Sperling experiment. These highly cognitively impaired dreams often only become access conscious upon waking, which is just like Block’s interpretation of our knowledge of the array of letters after the stimulus is removed. In my view, dreams provide a more convincing example of P-consciousness without Aconsciousness than the Sperling experiment, however. When the array of letters is removed during the Sperling experiment, according to Block, the subject becomes A-conscious of only the indicated line of letters and never becomes A-conscious of the other letters. According to this analysis, frontal areas of the brain are necessary for access consciousness and the stimulus from the back of the head takes time to feed forward to the front. The signal that indicates a line is what causes that line to be prioritised into A-consciousness. In contrast, the sleeping brain often lacks activation in these frontal areas, such as the DLPFC, which is consistent with the idea that some dreams are not A-conscious. Areas in the back of the brain, such as the emotional centres, the visual cortex, and motor areas can be highly activated, suggesting that Pconsciousness is occurring. If the dreaming brain lacks the appropriate feedback loops between the front and back of the head and all processing remains in the back, dreams may lack access consciousness while retaining sufficient activation for P-consciousness to occur. This brings up the problem of reporting dreams, however, since P-consciousness without A is not reportable. The explanation lies in the process of waking. As a subject wakes from a dream, the frontal cortex becomes active, and the strong activation from the back can be fed forward to the front. Then, in the right circumstances, the dream stimuli may become part of a feedback loop in the waking brain. Failure for this process to be recorded in memory may lead to the sense of having dreamt without being able to recall any details, known as a “white dream”. This is just like our belief that we saw all the letters in the Sperling array. More often than not, dreamers fail to recall or recount dreams. Being woken up during a dream may allow the waking brain to gain access and capture sufficient memory traces of the otherwise cognitively impaired, frontally-deactivated sleeping brain. Perhaps this is when the dream becomes poised for rational control of action. The waking mind can use dream memories to make inferences and rationally control behaviour. We can then report the dream and realise how bizarre it had been. After waking, I can easily infer that I had just been dreaming and write down a dream report. Dreams, in my view, are a more plausible case of Pconsciousness without A-consciousness than the Sperling experiment.

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Firstly, it is unclear what is accessed and what is not in the Sperling experiment. One possibility is that all stimuli are temporarily accessible until most are forgotten 1.5 seconds later. Alternatively, perhaps we have access to the number of letters but not any of the details about the letters. There are important neurological differences between dreaming and the Sperling experiment. There is evidence that the deactivated frontal lobes during some dreaming could prevent the kinds of feedback loops that Block describes. However, we don’t have neural evidence about what is going on in the brain during the Sperling experiment. If the unreported letters in the Sperling experiment are P-conscious without A-conscious, then they do not form dominant coalitions to feed forward to the front of the brain. However, there is no evidence for this. Many dreams display both lowered levels of cognitive capacity and lack of activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and other frontal cortices, which supports the view that we lack A-consciousness in such dreams. Cognitively deficient dreams thus provide a clearer case of mental activity that lacks Block’s three criteria for access consciousness. In the Sperling experiment, the DLPFC is active, and it cannot be ascertained which stimuli form sufficiently strong coalitions to be projected. However, there are several counterarguments to dreaming as P without A, one being that Block himself does not accept it. I argue, however, that this view is a plausible description of dream consciousness that takes into account the variety of cognitive features that occur during sleep. One might argue that many dreams seem to involve both A- and Pconsciousness. Bizarreness and irrationality are not present in all dreams, and this is a key feature of the pluralistic approach. “Mundane dreams” involve normal activities such as walking down the street or making a cup of coffee at the office. My dream belief that the coffee is in the break room can lead to a rational behavioural response within the dream. We can also make normal rational inferences in dreams. I may infer that I have received a message when my phone beeps, a perfectly rational inference. If dreams were never rational, we might expect less mundane dream reports and even the bizarre reports would be quite different. It is hard to imagine every inference being irrational. Laws of nature are often followed in dream worlds, as suggested by the continuity hypothesis (Schredl & Hofmann, 2003) – gravity works, trees grow up from the ground and people and animals walk around as normal. We can remember some dreams without the need for waking up during the dream episode, although this is less common. Some individuals may remember multiple dream experiences in the morning, further suggesting that awakening and using our waking cognitive resources in an attempt to remember and report the dream is not strictly necessary. Further, extremely realistic false

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awakenings seem quite accurate reflections of waking life (see Chapters 4 and 5). However, this does not discount the possibility that some dreams are P-conscious without A-consciousness. In line with the pluralistic view, Ponly dreams are not the only kind of dreams that occur. Highly irrational, bizarre dreams as well as the many dreams that are forgotten before waking provide the best examples of P-consciousness without A-consciousness. Although lab awakenings suggest that many dreams reflect normal waking life and are not fantastical and bizarre (see Chapter 2), mundane dreams could also involve a lack of A-consciousness. If I respond to my phone ringing by picking it up, it is not obvious that such a “normal” response to common stimuli requires rational reflection and behaviour. Perhaps I can respond to normal stimuli in an automatic way; picking up the phone is second nature, so I do it as a reflex without rational consideration. While inability to notice bizarreness may suggest a lack of access, we may also be unreactive and unaware during normal, wakelike dream events. It is, for example, possible to carry out such activities while having an absence seizure, as aforementioned, despite possibly being unconscious. Even if some mundane dreams have A-consciousness or if A and P dreams are the norm, at least a subset of dreams are good examples of phenomenal without access consciousness. One major counterargument to this interpretation comes from Block himself. His denial of the possibility of P-consciousness without Aconsciousness in dreams relies on the likelihood of there being continued feedback loops from the back to the front of the head. However, contrary to this, the frontal and pre-frontal cortices often show reduced activation in REM and other stages of sleep, which leads to a lack of metacognition, lowered capacity for logical inference making and reduced ability to distinguish the unusual from the usual. The level of deactivation may dictate whether or not we can have A-consciousness in a particular dream. At times, especially in lucid dreams, the frontal areas are normally activated (see Chapter 1), and such dreams likely have both A and P. At other times, there is highly reduced activation, suggesting a disruption to the feedback loops required for A-consciousness. I thus think Block’s rejection of dreaming without A-consciousness is unfounded. I have argued that dream consciousness can be anywhere on a spectrum from highly cognitively disrupted to wake-like. This suggests that dreaming might at times involve waking-level access and other times absence of access consciousness. Some dreams have both A- and P-consciousness, but others are impoverished in the sense of being P-conscious without Aconsciousness. This is a plausible description of dreams that allows dreaming and normal waking consciousness to at times be highly distinct, in line with the discontinuity hypothesis, and other times very similar, as

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described by the continuity hypothesis. Dreams are consistent with Block’s overall theory, even though Block himself rejects this view. 8.5 Conclusion

Any theories of consciousness that claim to account for the human experience need to, firstly, have a plausible explanation for dreaming and secondly, be consistent with the current findings in dream research. I have noted that the spotlight theory of consciousness described by Dennett is consistent with Dennett’s anti-experience theory of dreaming. By looking into the possibility of retroactive consciousness, a more plausible account than the cassette theory arises. However, many theorists will find unconscious dreaming implausible due to the detailed reports we make on waking. Similarly, HOT theory also implies an anti-experience thesis of cognitively impaired dreams, yet, unlike Dennett’s view, does not come with a reasonable account of dream reports. For this reason, HOT theorists need to either demonstrate how retrospective consciousness can occur or offer an alternative explanation for HOTless dreams. GW theory appears to fare better than HOT theory, since dreams may be conscious, which is consistent with the received view of dreams, but their poor cognitive capacities might lead us to conclude that they are primitive forms of consciousness. Baars’ description of dreaming as involving spontaneous imagery seems to be a fair description of some but not all dreams. Further, it is not clear whether, according to this analysis, different types of consciousness should be then distinguished according to the GW view and whether “early” consciousness can also occur while we are awake. Finally, Block’s distinction between access and phenomenal consciousness allows for the possibility that cognitively impaired dreams are conscious but not like full-blown waking consciousness. Such dreams may lack access consciousness while retaining phenomenal consciousness, a view that Block himself rejects. However, the variety of interesting cognitive and neural changes allow that some, but not all dreams lack access. In my view, cognitively impaired dreams provide a promising example of phenomenal consciousness that lacks access consciousness. Dreaming is a highly varied type of mental activity that occurs in sleep and has interesting implications for theories of consciousness. For a theory of consciousness to be taken seriously, it must have a plausible explanation for all experiences that humans report having. Dreaming is particularly important as the variety of experiences and neural activation that occur while dreaming occur while we are mostly shut off from the external environment. These features can make dreaming problematic for several reasons. More work needs to be done to fit dreaming into theories of consciousness.

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Notes 1 Studies of global anterograde amnesia by Vargha-Khadem and Gadian (1997) provide evidence against this. Amnesia causes a severe reduction in episodic memories of everyday life but not semantic memories. Surprisingly, three patients with amnesia “attended mainstream schools and attained levels of speech and language competence, literacy, and factual knowledge that are within the low average to average range” ( Vargha-Khadem & Gadian 1997, p. 376). It is unclear from this to what extent their conscious experience is diminished and to what extent autonoetic consciousness is a necessary correlate for episodic memory. 2 I interpret “rich” in Baars’ usage to mean vivid, intense, or highly detailed. Elsewhere I refer to this as “mental strength”, as described by Morales (2018). 3 It is unclear whether Block is referring to A- or P- consciousness here. 4 One might even consider the protagonist of some dreams to be a different person than the waking self all together, see Chapter 6.

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CONCLUSION

Dreaming should be of great relevance to those interested in understanding the human mind. The fact that we can have such a broad array of experiences while shut off from the environment is a puzzle for several areas of study, including consciousness, cognition, and the self. A crossdisciplinary approach to the study of dreaming requires evaluation of empirical research and theory. Empirical data is important for a full understanding of the dream state, but it needs to be assessed critically. Historically, theorists have come to implausible conclusions either about dreaming or about the relationship between dreaming and other areas of study due to not taking empirical research seriously. There is disagreement about the nature of dreams, not just the cognitive or phenomenal features but what dreaming is in itself. The varied findings of researchers suggest that dreaming is a multifarious state, and can change based on sleep stage, brain activation and even the sleeping environment. Some of the features analysed in this book are common, such as metacognitive failure and bizarreness, and others are rare, such as vicarious dreams and lucidity. Nonetheless, both common and rare features are important to take into account as they have distinct implications for our theory of dreams and the mind. Here, I have attempted to show that reductive theories of dreaming are implausible as they do not include all the varieties of dreams. In terms of content and cognition, some dreams contain a bizarre elements and irrational cognition, whereas others can be accurate representations of waking life and display normal, wake-like cognition. While it is implausible to hold an anti-experience view of dreams, there is some reason to be sceptical of the reports we make when we wake up. Dream reports are prone

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to confabulation, especially for those dreams that are severely cognitively impaired. While we cannot assume that dream reports accurately indicate the content of dreams, there are ways of improving report accuracy. Both imagination and hallucination models of dreaming are overly reductive. Nonetheless, these views reveal important features of dreaming. Some dreams are best described as hallucination and others as imagination. Dreams can also shift between imaginative and hallucinatory while many contain both imaginative and hallucinatory elements. Dreaming, however, does have some limits. They are experiences that occur during sleep, and although our cognitive abilities can equal waking, there is little evidence to suggest they can exceed our waking cognitive capacities – we aren’t geniuses in sleep. Further, although thoughts that contain no imaginative or hallucinatory elements occur while we sleep, these are best not classed as dreams. Dream phenomena have a wide range of applications to debates in modern research into the mind, self, cognition, and consciousness. Dreams deserve greater attention in consciousness research, and it is an oversight in several theories that dreaming has not been sufficiently taken into account. One example is “dreaming vicariously”, in which the protagonist of the dream is not the same person as the dreamer. These types of dreams pose an interesting problem for psychological continuity views of the self because it is conceivable that one brain can contain multiple selves. Dreaming also has important implications for the extended mind debate. While it is feasible that dreaming cognition could be extended into the external environment using futuristic technology, it seems that even the very clever modern techniques of two-way communication do not allow for cognitive extension. However, since dreaming usually involves only internal and isolated cognition, this provides a counterargument to the theory of extended consciousness. Finally, insufficient attention has been paid to dreaming in several theories of consciousness. I argued that distinction between access and phenomenal consciousness affords a plausible account of the variety of conscious experiences in dreams, whereas higher order thought theory and global workspace theory currently offer no plausible account of dreaming. Since dreaming is a pervasive conscious experience that occurs for most people multiple times every night, it is important that any theory of consciousness provides a plausible account of dreaming that is consistent with the current empirical and theoretical findings. I conclude that dreams are an important area of research for interdisciplinary philosophy that has unfortunately received insufficient attention. More work needs to be done to take dreaming into account given the broad range of experiences we can have while mostly isolated within our own dream worlds.

INDEX

“in the dream” operator 127, 136, 137, 212 abilities 209 abilities: forgetting 210, 212; learning 214 absence seizures 267, 279 acceptance 138 access and phenomenal consciousness theory 253 access and phenomenal consciousness theory 270 access capacity 273 access consciousness 270–272, 277–279 accessibility 237, 246 accurate world simulation 43 acetylcholine 46 activation, input, modulation (AIM) 28 active externalism 223 actual subject 200–203 agency 138, 140 agency over thoughts 144 Alice in Wonderland syndrome 181 altered cognition 52, 169, 203 alters 205, 207 Alzheimer’s 227, 229 amnesia 132, 135, 136, 206, 211 amputation 169, 182 amygdala 266 anti-experience: strong 84; thesis 83, 253, 259, 274; weak 84

anticipation 199, 208 aphantasia 130, 143, 163 aplasic phantom limb 183 Aristotle 7 arousal threshold 140 Aserinsky, Eugene 10 asserting: making assertions 127; that I am dreaming 86 associativity 215 attention 61, 240, 241 auditory verbal hallucination 146, 147 Augustine, St 128 automatic response 279 Barb Sanders dream series 48–52 Bartlett, Frederic 104 Behaviour 88 behavioural motivation 141 being no one 201 belief: v contradictory 126; latent 125; states 125, 126, 136, 139, 148; tacit 126 Berger, Hans 19 bias 23, 47 binding: in dreams 104; failure 134, 268 bizarreness: density 45, 58; in dreams 15–16, 43–61; scale 44, 48, 51 black and white dreams 129 blind dreaming 26, 163, 186

Index 287

blind review 51–52 blindness 143 Block, Ned 5, 270 body: awareness 180; dysmorphia 181; hallucination 162; image 4, 178–181; ownership 168; representation 195; schema 4, 178–185 Boltzmann brain 215 Brain lesions 14, 26, 133, 163 brain stem 266 carry-over state between waking and sleeping 109 cassette theory 84, 95, 253 cassettes 97 cats, research on 29 causal connectedness 205, 208, 129, 140, 148 causal history 234 causal power 128, 148 cessation of dreaming 26 Chalmers, David 221 chaotic neuronal activity 102 children; development 49, 50; dreams 16, 18, 49, 50, 130, 142, 175, 247; neural function in dreams 22 Clark, Andy 169–172, 221 cognition: causal necessity 225; constitution 225; enhanced 114; reduced capacity 244 cognitive: coupling 224; deficiency view 66, 75; deficit 85; dysfunction 8, 26, 170; impairment 163, 184, 212, 213; offloading 173, 223, 221, 227; scaffolding 173, 174 cognitive indicators, accessibility 226; reliability 226; transparency 226, 227 Colace, Claudio 50 colour perception 168 competence 209–214 complementarity principle 225, 227 concentration 240 concerns 49 confabulation 72–74, 98–115, 240–241 consciousness: altered states 90, 109, 253, 268; anoetic 256; autonoetic 256, 258; clout 100, 255, 258; early form 265, 269;

impoverished 264; noetic 256; retroactive 100, 253, 259, 236, 274; spotlight 100, 255, 258, 266; spotlight 5, 266 context dependence 45, 51, 56, 211 continuity 47, 239 continuity: of personality 208; theory 9, 44, 55, 102, 163, 240, 241, 278 control 31, 241 correlating: neural activity with dream reports 25, 47, 93; REMs with dream reports 89; sleep behaviour with dream reports 91 creativity 16, 266 creature consciousness 260 curare 100, 255, 258, 259 Dali, Salvadore 214 day man 197 daydreaming 124, 130, 137, 143 daydreaming styles, anxious 57; conflictual 57; positive 57 deep sleep, stage 3 11 default network 22 deficient: cognition 267; memory 276 deflationary tactics 67 delayed factual reminiscence (DFR) 18, 19 delayed reporting 115 delirium 134, 161, 162 delta waves 91 delusion: beliefs 138; Capgras 132, 134; dreaming as 26, 132, 133, 194; grandiose 134; misidentification syndrome 133; monothematic 133, 134; onefactor theory 134; polythematic 134; two-factor theory 134–135 Dement, William 13 Dennett, Daniel 2–5, 83–85, 95, 98, 255–258 Descartes 1 detailed perception 237 differences between men and women 23 disconnection 208 discontinuity: in dreams 47; theory 9, 44, 46, 50, 163, 279 disembodied dreaming 163, 165, 178, 195 disjunctivism 237, 242 disruptions to the self 205

288

Index

dissociative identity disorder 5, 205, 207 dissociativity 111–113, 206 distinct identities 197 distorted sensations 164 Domhoff, William 53, 59 Dopamine 46 dopamine function 161 dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: activation 278; deactivation 267; DLPFC 3, 24–27, 32, 33, 47, 67, 108, 261–263 dream: body 176, 177, 183; characters 172, 173; incubation 32; reports 110 dreamless sleep 91, 258 drug-induced hallucination 150 drug use 29 dynamic entanglement plus unique temporal signature 234, 249 embarrassment 105 embeddedness 234, 240 embodiment 234, 236 emotion 27, 61, 68, 71, 137, 141 emotional carry-over 262 empathy 198 enactivism 234 epistemology 83 ergonomic significance 241 evolutionary: adaptation 13; function 214 extended: cognition 5, 221; consciousness 5, 173, 221, 234, 222; mind theory 3, 5; mind theory (first wave vs second wave) 225; substrate theory 234 Existenz (film) 169, 170 experiential blindness 235 external stimuli 23 eye movement signalling 105 fabrication 103 false: awakening 75, 136, 148, 152, 170, 184, 241–244; impression 88, 89; memories 74, 97, 105, 137, 207, 231 fantasy 54, 203 fatal familial insomnia 11 feedback loops 271, 277, 279 feelings of knowing 3, 63, 66, 73, 74 fiction 68 field perspective 107

first person: perspective 167, 193–201; pronoun 193–202 Flanagan, Owen 2, 55 foetus dreams 248 forgetting 107, 165, 184, 203, 205, 256 Foulkes, David 16, 18, 49, 103, 104 fractured selves 206 Fregoli syndrome 132–134 Freud 1 frontal executive cortex 266 frontal lobes 271 full lucidity 30 full-blown consciousness 169, 234–239, 243, 247 full-body illusion 168 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) 20–23, 94 future self 200 gamma waves 91 global cerebral metabolism 11 global distribution 265 global workspace 266 global workspace theory 3, 5, 253, 258, 264, 267 Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale 112 Hall-Van De Castle content analysis system 48 Hallucination 123–125, 146–164 hallucination model 2, 4, 8, 126 hemineglect 266 higher order sense theory 260, 261 higher order thought theory 3, 5, 253, 259 higher order thoughts 261–264 Hobson, Alan 17, 53 home-based studies 15–18, 49, 51 hybrid cognition 232, 233 hybrid mind thesis 232 hybrid selves 215 hyperphantasia 145 hypnagogic hallucination 11, 102, 143–148, 152, 165, 174, 185 hypnopompic hallucination 102, 174 hypnosis 68, 92, 105, 112, 146 hypnotic suggestion 111–113 hypothesis of embedded cognition 224 hypothesis of extended cognition 224 Ichikawa, Jonathan 2, 124–129, 137, 200 Identity: metaphysical 199; selfconscious framing 202

Index 289

illusion 73, 125, 148, 160, 164, 175, 176, 185, 243 imagery 128 imagination 54, 56, 113, 123–129, 159, 169, 197 imagination inflation 85, 110, 111 imagination inflation 110 imagination inflation 111 imagination model 2, 4, 9, 67, 68, 130, 55 imagination-like dreams 239 imagining 19 immersive spatiotemporal hallucination 163, 164 immersiveness 143, 149, 164 improved memory 114 in-head chauvinism 224 inattentional blindness 266 Inception (film) 170, 173 Incoherence 44, 103, 110 Incomprehensibility 109, 205 incongruence 43 indeterminate: colour 142; representation 129 indistinguishability between dreams and waking 242 inefficaciousness 141 infants’ neuroimaging in dreams 22 inference making 88 inference to the best explanation 128 inferences from neural images to psychological function 23 inferential promiscuity 271, 276 infiltration of stimulus (incorporation) 23, 91, 96, 141, 164, 179, 184, 228, 230 Ingram, Paul 112 inner speech 70, 147 input blockade 164, 179, 180, 184, 194, 221–223, 231, 240 input source, external 29 integration 225–232 integration indicators 233 interrogative suggestibility 112 irrational beliefs 138 irrationality 2, 27, 73, 132 judgement 86, 88 judgements of learning (JOL) 3, 62, 71, 74 Kleitman, Nathanial 13 knowing how vs knowing that 209

lab awakenings 49, 279 lab-based studies 15–18, 51 Laboratory fatigue 18 life trajectory 210, 215 Locke, John 197 logical dependence 83 logical inference making capacity 279 lucid: awareness 184; control 70, 168; dream studies 92, 105; dreams lucid dreams 9–14, 97–99, 131–139, 163–170 lucidity: as competence 214; gaining 31, 75, 204 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) 11, 20, 23 make-believe 202 Malcolm, Norman 2, 4, 83–98 Matrix, The 169, 172, 173 memories: access 203; autobiographical 206, 208, 258; bias 49; continuity 205, 207; deficit 85, 194, 203; episodic 208, 211, 256; extroversive 210; improved 114; internal vs external 224; introversive 210; loss 106, 240; phenomenology 229; procedural 206, 209, 256; recollective 209; reconstruction of 105, 107; retention 208; retrieval 227; semantic 206, 209, 211; traces 107; wipe 105, 258 mental: rehearsal 142; rotation 173; strength 145; time travel 208, 255, 256; weakness 246 meta-level processing 62 metacognition metacognition, absence 279; accuracy 61–65, 75; control 61; dream 260–263; experiences 62; explicit 63, 64; feelings 62; frequency 61–65; implicit 63, 64; increased 264, 264; knowledge 62; monitoring 61; skills 62 Metzinger, Thomas 2, 148, 166, 170 mind-independent stimuli 175 mindwandering 54–57, 124, 146, 203 minimal consciousness 237, 253 misrepresentation 168 moral culpability 128, 140

290

Index

morphing 43, 178, 247 motor cortex 28, 91 Muller-Lyer illusion 125 Multimodality 27, 149, 162, 169, 180, 245 multiple realisability 24 mundane dreams 2, 43, 53, 109, 163, 278 Nagel, Thomas 109 naïve realism 167 narrative: complexity 50; confabulation 84, 101; consistency 241; schema 72 narrow substrate thesis 234 necessary and sufficient conditions 268 neural: activation 22, 27, 47, 239; changes 207, 222; deactivation 133, 262; enhancements 227–229; hyperactivation 27–29, 133; inhibition 22; modulation 27, 29, 239; modules 267; sensorimotor activation 108 neurochemistry 46, 47 neuroimaging technology: electrocardiogram (ECG) 20; electroencephalogram (EEG) 11, 19–20, 31, 67; electromyogram (EMG) 20, 31; electrooculogram (EOG) 10, 19–20, 31, 230 neuroimaging: relevance to psychology 24; scepticism about 24; spatial resolution 20, 21, 22; temporal resolution 20, 21 neurological disorders 227 neuromodulation, aminergic 29; choninergic 29 neuropsychology 91 night man 197 Noë, Alva 5, 221, 222, 236, 245 non-human body representation 178 non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM) 9–14 non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM) awakenings 108 Non-reflexivity 198 Noradrenalin 29 Norepinephrine 46 notional subject 200–204 NREM dreams 174

object-level processing 62, 74 observer perspective 107 occipital lobe 271 ontology 83 opportunity 212–214 optical illusion 68 orthodox view 126 Otto and Inga thought experiment 224–230 out-of-body experience 177, 243 output blockade 99, 161, 222, 228, 231 pain 164 paradox of fiction 68 paradoxical sleep 12, 27, 90 parietal lobe 271 parity principle 225 Parkinson’s disease 182 passive observer 195, 275 perception, veridical 160 perceptual model 2, 4, 9 peripherial vision 142 persistent vegetative states 94–95 personal identity 109, 206, 266 personal identity, body-based views 215 personality 207 phantom body 177, 183 phantom limb syndrome 169, 177, 180–184, 243 phase shift between dreaming and waking 257, 259 phenomenal: capacity 272; consciousness 270–279 phenomenal distinguishability 238; location 165; self-model 167, 175, 243; vividness 145 phenomenological: core 163; overflow 272 physiological behaviour, eye movements 12 plausibility conditions 108 pluralism 2, 123, 128 positron emission tomography (PET) 11, 22, 23, 67 post-hypnotic suggestion 92 post-synaptic inhibition of motor neurons 99 postlucidity 148 potentiality 209 powers 209

Index 291

practise 214 pre-lucidity 31, 58, 69, 138, 171, 276 predicting dream content from neuroimaging 22, 25, 93 prediction error 243 prediction error correction 242 predictive processing 168 prefrontal cortex 240 presence 145, 160, 166, 235, 246 problem-solving 214 propositional thought 57 proprioception 183 proprioceptive awareness 186 protagonist 193–197, 215 psychoactive drugs 146 psychological: continuity 194, 205, 215; disruption 209; distinctness 194; identity 205 psychology of perspectives 199, 205 psychophysical invariants 24 psychosis 26 pure consciousness 169, 173 qualified assertions 86 quasi: assertion 138; belief 148; emotions 141; perception 145 rapid eye movement sleep, discovery of 2, 7, 10 rational: capacity 24, 30; control of movement 240; control of thought 29, 276; control of speech 271–276; inference 276; reflection 279 rationalisation 17, 74, 101–104 rationality 75 realism 149, 159 realistic dreams 240, 243 reality check 32, 68, 70, 125, 139 reasoning 271 received view 83, 84 recontextualization 211 reduplicative paramnesia for places 133 reflection 62–66, 71–73, 262 reflexivity, genuine 194–203; non genuine 194 rehearsal and memory 105 relaxed thinking 54 REM sleep awakenings 9, 19 REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD)

14, 91, 99, 114–115, 185–186, 231 remembered self 200 report fabrication 101 reportability 164 reporting schema 64, 103 reverse intermetaporphosis 133 Revonsuo, Antti 2, 91, 166, 170, 275 rubber hand illusion 168 Ryle, Gilbert 209 scale of cognition 232 scanning hypothesis 13, 33, 89, 91 scepticism 1, 84, 94 Schechtman, Marya 210 schematic knowledge 112 Schwitzgebel, Eric 2, 129 science fiction 169 self: awareness 32; consciousness 208; in a dream 141, 202; philosophy of 2; reflection 263; reflectiveawareness 26; report questionnaires 62; representation 163, 195; systems in the brain 266 selflessness 165 semi-consciousness 253 sense of: agency 6, 144, 171, 185, 212, 261, 263; control 261; self 261 sensory: deprivation 143; infiltration 12, 13 serotonin 29, 46 serotonin reception 161 sign language 31–32 signal verified lucid dreaming 14, 25, 30, 70, 91–98, 138–139 simulation 168 simulation theory 163 skilful access 238 skill improvement 262 skills 72 sleep behaviours 91 sleep deprivation 29, 146 sleep monitoring technologies: Dormio 17; Dreamlight 176; Nightcap 17; smartwatches 17 sleep: percept 149; stages 9; talking 14, 86, 92; walking 14, 86 sleep-wake transition 165 sleep/wake cycle 171 smell 247

292

Index

snapshot view of vision 234–235 snow blindness 235 Snyder, Frederick 48 Somatopariphrenia 181 Sosa, Ernest 2, 124 sound asleep 86–90 sounds 140–141 source monitoring 19 spatio-temporal presence 165 spectrum between imagination and hallucination 123, 131, 145 Sperling’s experiment 266–279 Spindles 11 spontaneous imagery 269 stable perception 237 standard model 150 state consciousness 260 States, Bert 56 Stress 29 subject to the will 130, 131, 144 subjective: experience 201; virtual reality 169 subliminal processing 97 supernatural 104 supernumerary phantom limb 183 surreal dreams 245 survival 199, 205, 208 suspense dreams 96 tacit awareness 204 taste 247 temporal: shifts 27, 43; signature 238 Terminator, the (film) 229 testimony 88 that reminds me syndrome 56–60, 68 think-aloud protocols 62, 72 thinking 137 Thompson, Evan 2 thoughts during sleep 165 threat simulation theory 214 three-dimensional virtual global world model 166 tip-of-the-tongue phenomena 63 top-down processing 271 transference imagination 198–203, 260 transparency 19, 31, 166, 167, 169 trauma 141, 205, 207 truth 209

two-way communication between dreamer and experimenter 14, 31, 228, 230 unconscious dreaming 253, 255 unconscious narrative processing 97 unconscious processing 94, 144, 173, 263, 267 unconsciousness 5 uncontrolled thoughts 70 underdetermination 165, 185 underrepresentation 129 uniformity illusion 168, 235 unresponsiveness 86 unverifiability 90 vagueness 241 Valberg, Jerry 195, 197 van Eeden, Frederik 177, 178 Velleman, David 4, 197–202, 216 Verification 86 verificationism 87 vestibular illusion 185 vestibular sensation 147, 183 vicarious: dreams 4, 5, 193–202; protagonist 142 video polysomnography 14–15 Violence in dreams 14 Virtual: reality 2, 4, 125, 137, 149, 170–179, 243; world 159 visual cortex 27, 28, 91 visualisation 142 vividness 149, 159, 244 voice hearing 144 volition 240 volitional control 30, 138, 144 waking: dreams 164; self 194 war of the ghosts 104 what is it like to be a bat 109 white dreams 105, 277 Windt, Jennifer 2, 164–165 winner takes all 273 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 87 working memory 62 world model 167, 242 Zhuang Zhou 1, 7