Reporting dream experience: Why (not) to be skeptical about dream reports.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience November 7, 2013 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00708 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Dreaming Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Skepticism Subjective experience Dream reports First-person reports Scientific dream research |
| Key points | Argues that philosophical skepticism about dream reporting fails, and proposes that dream reports gathered under ideal reporting conditions and according to the principle of temporal proximity are trustworthy (or transparent) with respect to conscious experience during sleep. This transparency assumption is claimed to be a methodologically necessary default and theoretically justified as the best explanation of dream reporting. |
Abstract
Are dreams subjective experiences during sleep? Is it like something to dream, or is it only like something to remember dreams after awakening? Specifically, can dream reports be trusted to reveal what it is like to dream, and should they count as evidence for saying that dreams are conscious experiences at all? The goal of this article is to investigate the relationship between dreaming, dream reporting and subjective experience during sleep. I discuss different variants of philosophical skepticism about dream reporting and argue that they all fail. Consequently, skeptical doubts about the trustworthiness of dream reports are misguided, and for systematic reasons. I suggest an alternative, anti-skeptical account of the trustworthiness of dream reports. On this view, dream reports, when gathered under ideal reporting conditions and according to the principle of temporal proximity, are trustworthy (or transparent) with respect to conscious experience during sleep. The transparency assumption has the status of a methodologically necessary default assumption and is theoretically justified because it provides the best explanation of dream reporting. At the same time, it inherits important insights from the discussed variants of skepticism about dream reporting, suggesting that the careful consideration of these skeptical arguments ultimately leads to a positive account of why and under which conditions dream reports can and should be trusted. In this way, moderate distrust can be fruitfully combined with anti-skepticism about dream reporting. Several perspectives for future dream research and for the comparative study of dreaming and waking experience are suggested.
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 52
- The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy. Frontiers in Psychology 2013
- Metaphor and hyperassociativity: the imagination mechanisms behind emotion assimilation in sleep and dreaming Frontiers in Psychology August 18, 2015
- Why are dreams interesting for philosophers? The example of minimal phenomenal selfhood, plus an agenda for future research1 Frontiers in Psychology 2013
- How You Measure Is What You Get: Differences in Self- and External Ratings of Emotional Experiences in Home Dreams The American Journal of Psychology August 21, 2017
- Exploring the neural correlates of dream phenomenology and altered states of consciousness during sleep Neuroscience of Consciousness 2017
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Cites 29
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- Altered States of Consciousness Archives of General Psychiatry September 1, 1966
- Guiding the study of brain dynamics by using first-person data: Synchrony patterns correlate with ongoing conscious states during a simple visual task Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences January 22, 2002
- Lucid Dreaming: a State of Consciousness with Features of Both Waking and Non-Lucid Dreaming Sleep September 1, 2009
- Dreaming as mind wandering: evidence from functional neuroimaging and first-person content reports. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2013
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