Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/prog...ms/6685462

EXCERPT: [...] dreams bring up a bunch of deeply philosophical questions that remain largely unresolved, from the nature of consciousness to personal identity and selfhood.

[...] Melanie Rosen, a lecturer in philosophy at Macquarie University, recalls her experience of what science describes as a ‘vicarious dream’—a dream dreamt through the perspective of a character within the dream.

[...] ‘Vicarious dreams bring up some issues in terms of sense of self and sense of personal identity,’ says Rosen. ‘Who is that person? [...] If you say, “I’m dreaming that I’m someone else,” you’re kind of making the assumption that it’s actually you in that dream.’

[...] ‘Sometimes I can dream of myself being a completely different person, I can dream of myself being a man, or an animal or a younger version of myself. So there might be interesting questions about the narrative self, about person identity,’ says [... Jennifer Windt, philosophy lecturer at Monash University...].

Melanie Rosen has attempted to investigate some of these questions in her research.

‘My question is not “who are you when you’re dreaming”, but “who is the protagonist of your dream?”’

[...] ‘If you are talking about identity in the sense of memory continuity over time—what makes me me—in dreams you might have no access to your waking self.

‘So usually when I’m dreaming, I don’t know much about myself [as an awake person] and sometimes nothing at all,’ says Rosen.

According to the philosophy lecturer, this seems to work in both directions.

‘Studies show that most dreams are forgotten, so if you’ve had one of these vicarious dreams, then you’ve probably forgotten it. If that’s the case, then that dream is entirely shut off from your waking self.’

In essence, Rosen contends that our dream state—and our dream protagonist—is not able to access the memory of our conscious or awake self.

[...] ‘In dreaming, I completely drop out of the picture altogether. It doesn’t seem like I’m there dreaming of being someone. It’s just a dream protagonist who is someone else.

‘Do we have a case for separate entities, separate identities that exist, while my brain is doing interesting dream activity?

‘It’s very hard to define them, one way or another.’

Quote:In essence, Rosen contends that our dream state—and our dream protagonist—is not able to access the memory of our conscious or awake self.

Many of my dreams are of my younger self working in the Navy/oil field again but lacking crucial knowledge or memories to perform some task. The places are nothing like the Navy though. There are huge warehouses I'm working on equipment in or underground corridor mazes I'm trying to get through along with many others. Many times also I'm in a lethargic half blind state while others around me try to get me to do things. Just last night I realized that while I was in the Navy, I also didn't have to be there anymore. There was a vague memory of having been discharged, but not clear enough to change the dream. Some dreams seem so unlike me that I swear I'm someone else. Erotic adventures with young women, angry attacks on my parents not cooking some food. I used to take dreams as messages from the unconscious. In a way they are, as I am unemployed and probably miss the structured comfort of a Navy occupation. But dreams are also about soulbuilding and healing the traumas of past life. My performance anxiety in the military and the oil field was a major source of stress for me, scarring me a more ways that I'm aware. I want the busyness of past military life, along with the comradery, but do I REALLY wanna relive that stress and gnawing fear of being incompetent?

I don't agree with any of the philosophical statements about dreams.

To be honest I think any dream is literally manufactured by some future tech and puked into unwilling peoples brains to lap it up like it's some kind of natural occurrence. The worst bit about it is having that done undermines any forms of scientific investigation since it undermines the nature of empirical evidence, There's no point rationalising the hidden subconscious meaning of what occurs when someone else is manufacturing it.

I say this not because of some warped theory, but because unfortunately I've been putting up with the misdeeds of others for years that have been doing such things. (What gave the game away was one of the dreams they in-putted was a unknown artisan short Film-Noire with eastern European credits.)

I seem to be in the philosophical nonexistent state when I'm in sleep deep enough to dream.  It's been a long time since I've been able to have a lucid dream but I'm really glad about that since I don't like lucid dreams anymore.