Are Dreams Deceptive Experiences? Deception, Delusion, and Insight
Dreaming July 20, 2015 DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/9780262028677.003.0010 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that most dreams do not count as deceptive experiences in any interesting sense, though some real-world cases of dream deception exist, making it an actual phenomenon. The author contends that retrospective dream deception extending into wakefulness can harm the dreamer and may relate to pathological sleep and dreaming disorders, and that concurrent deception involving cognitive corruption is especially worrisome because the phenomenology of rational thought and insight in dreams is unreliable. |
Abstract
The chapter confronts the epistemological problem of dream deception with evidence of scientific dream research with the aim of investigating the empirical plausibility of different scenarios of dream deception. I argue that a majority of dreams do not fulfill the conditions for counting as deceptive experiences in any interesting sense. At the same time, a number of real-world candidates for deceptive dreams exist, suggesting that dream deception is not just a theoretical possibility but an actual phenomenon. In retrospective cases of dream deception, in which dream deception extends into wakefulness, this can have detrimental consequences for the subject and may even be related to pathological disorders of sleep and dreaming. From a theoretical perspective, instances of concurrent dream deception involving cognitive corruption are particularly worrisome, because they suggest that in dreams, the phenomenology of rational thought and genuine insight is profoundly unreliable. I also discuss the analogy between dreams and delusional wake states and present a nosological analysis of lucid dreaming and insight in psychiatric and neurological disorders.