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The dreams of animals

#1
C C Offline
https://aeon.co/essays/what-do-the-dream...heir-lives

EXCERPTS: . . . Unfortunately, the interest in the dreams of animals displayed by thinkers such as Darwin and Guardia began to wane at the turn of the 20th century. The historian of science Iwan Rhys Morus explains that, during this period, the life sciences felt an extraordinary pressure to emulate the methods of the physical sciences and model themselves after their image. In this new climate, it became virtually impossible for the mental feats of animals, which do not lend themselves easily to physical or mechanical explanations, to hold the same sway over the scientific imagination as before.

This pressure remains with us to this day. Even as scientific attitudes have shifted, it is not hard to find prominent scientists who adamantly believe that science should stay far away from any ‘speculative’ debates about the mental states of other animals, especially their dreams. In their view, these debates are roads to nowhere. As long as we lack direct access to the lived experience of other species, we should follow Ludwig Wittgenstein’s advice: ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’

Yet, new developments in dream and animal sleep research are beginning to push back against this position by suggesting that other animals really do dream; that, upon falling asleep, they also renounce the real world in order to give themselves over to a phantasmatic, unearthly universe of their own creation. These developments deserve our unbroken attention since they raise fundamental questions about who animals are, how their minds operate, and the extent to which they ‘participate in the original artistry of … experience’, as the psychologist Willow Pearson would say.

[...] The philosophical ramifications of animal dreaming are massive, but they are likely to vary depending on our background beliefs about dreaming more generally. For instance, some philosophers believe that dreams are imaginings; others believe that they are beliefs; and still others believe that they are a subspecies of hallucinations. There is no right or wrong answer here, but there are different implications to each position.

If dreams are imaginings, does this mean that animals can generate sensory images that do not correspond to their physical surroundings? Can animals ‘presentify’ what is absent?

By contrast, if dreams are beliefs, does this mean that animals can form beliefs about the world, even when they have been disconnected from it by the neurophysiology of sleep? And, if so, what would this mean for the philosophical view that all beliefs have a propositional structure and thus require the possession of human-style syntax? Could the dreams of other animals refute a widespread philosophical theory of how our own minds work?

And if dreams are hallucinations, then what? Can animals tell the difference between perception and hallucination? And what impact might this have on the theory that it is impossible even for humans to discriminate, from the inside, between a hallucination and a veridical perception?

These positions by no means exhaust the philosophical literature on dreams. Other theories about the nature and function of dreaming that could have unforeseen implications for our understanding of animal consciousness include: (1) the theory that dreams are impossible without a rich emotional life; (2) the theory that dreams entail top-down mental causation; (3) the theory that dreams can help us solve real-world problems; (4) the theory that dreams aid in the healing of trauma; (5) the theory that dreams forge our narrative sense of self; (6) the theory that dreams are acts of metacognition; (7) the theory that dreams are forms of wish-fulfilment; and (8) the theory that dreams are elaborations of the unconscious.

I am not saying we need to embrace any one of these positions (although I have my favourites). But I am saying that, paradoxically, they all yield the same result: they unearth hitherto unknown layers of social, cognitive and emotional complexity in other minded life forms; they reveal colours, harmonies and beauties in the psychic lives of other dreamers, of which perhaps we had little inkling until now.

As exciting as it may be, a journey into the dreamworlds of animals requires caution. First and foremost, we must respect the diversity of nature and not assume that all creatures who dream dream like we do. In all likelihood, different animals construct their dreamworlds in the same way they construct their waking realities – ie, in line with the sensory, perceptual, affective and cognitive capacities characteristic of their species, as well as the peculiarities of their own developmental trajectories and life histories.,, (MORE - missing details)
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#2
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:By contrast, if dreams are beliefs, does this mean that animals can form beliefs about the world, even when they have been disconnected from it by the neurophysiology of sleep? And, if so, what would this mean for the philosophical view that all beliefs have a propositional structure and thus require the possession of human-style syntax? Could the dreams of other animals refute a widespread philosophical theory of how our own minds work?

That's an interesting dilemma. Do animals have beliefs? And what does that mean for the linguistic nature of human beliefs? I think animals have a proto-syntactical structure to their minds such that they understand their experience in syntactical terms .Animals have apparently shown many higher functions of cognition such as guilt, jealousy, longing, anticipation, humor, surprise, and logic. It isn't a far stretch that they entertain such structures as belief. A dog goes to the door everyday at 5:30 to welcome his master home. One could say he's acting on a belief, against all evidence to the contrary, that his master will come home. A belief that evidently comes with its own self-reinforcing reward feedback. Are we any less primitively driven by our own "pet" beliefs? Are we not just as pleasurably rewarded by our beliefs as the proverbial Pavlovian canine?
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