Daydreaming as spontaneous immersive imagination: A phenomenological analysis
E. O. Lawson, Evan Thompson
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences April 4, 2024 DOI: 10.33735/phimisci.2024.9913 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Qualitative Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Keywords | Phenomenology philosophy Imagination Aesthetics Cognitive psychology Cognitive science Epistemology |
| Citations | 9 |
| Key points | Argues that daydreaming is a distinct experience of spontaneous, immersive imagination in the waking state, not reducible to mind-wandering or night dreaming. |
Abstract
Research on the specific features of daydreaming compared with mind-wandering and night dreaming is a neglected topic in the philosophy of mind and the cognitive neuroscience of spontaneous thought. The extant research either conflates daydreaming with mind-wandering (whether understood as task-unrelated thought, unguided attention, or disunified thought), characterizes daydreaming as opposed to mind-wandering (Dorsch, 2015), or takes daydreaming to encompass any and all “imagined events” (Newby-Clark & Thavendran, 2018). These dueling definitions obstruct future research on spontaneous thought, and are insufficiently precise to guide empirical studies. They also fail to illuminate the phenomenal core of daydreaming, namely, its dreamlike qualities. Although daydreaming is related to both mind-wandering and narrative imagination, it is not reducible to either. We argue that daydreams are experiences of spontaneous, immersive imagination in the waking state. The main task of our investigation is to distinguish daydreaming, conceptually and phenomenologically, from mind-wandering, on the one hand, and night dreaming, on the other. Although daydream experiences can vary widely, we distinguish prototypical experiences of daydreaming from adjacent imaginative activity, including fleeting imagery and “focused daydreaming,” or crafted visualization. We consider our phenomenological analysis as preparatory work for conceptually distinguishing different spontaneous and imaginative states so that they can be investigated accordingly with questionnaires and qualitative methods. We argue that precision about the phenomenal character of daydreaming can guide neurophenomenological investigations, help delimit studies on individual variance in daydreaming features, and identify differences among daydreaming, mind-wandering, and night dreaming conceptually and phenomenologically, and possibly eventually in terms of neural correlates.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dreaming: a conceptual framework for philosophy of mind and empirical research | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Metaphor and hyperassociativity: the imagination mechanisms behind emotion assimilation in sleep and dreaming | 2015 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Varieties of Lucid Dreaming Experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Experimental Research on Dreaming: State of the Art and Neuropsychoanalytic Perspectives | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Neurobiology of Consciousness: Lucid Dreaming Wakes Up | 2009 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cited by 3
- Forgetting ourselves in flow: an active inference account of flow states and how we experience ourselves within them Frontiers in Psychology June 3, 2024
- Self-caught reports of dreaming and mind wandering in a naturalistic environment: an online questionnaire study Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences June 11, 2025
- Are Dreams Narrative Experiences? How Assumptions About Fictional Narratives Shape Debates on Dream Experiences Topoi December 3, 2025