The idea of social dreaming argues that dreams are relevant to the wider social sphere and have a collective resonance that goes beyond the personal narrative. In this fascinating collection, the principles of social dreaming are explored to uncover shared anxieties and prejudices, suggest likely responses, enhance cultural surveys, inform managerial policies and embody community affiliation. Including, for the first time, a coherent epistemology to support the theoretical principles of the field, the book reflects upon and extends the theory (...) and philosophy behind the method, as well as discussing new research in the area, and how social dreaming practice is conducted in a range of localities, situations and circumstances. The book will appeal to anyone interested in the idea that social dreaming can help us to delve deeper into the question of what it means to be human, from psychoanalysts to sociologists and beyond. (shrink)

A comprehensive proposal for a conceptual framework for describing conscious experience in dreams, integrating philosophy of mind, sleep and dream research, and interdisciplinary consciousness studies. Dreams, conceived as conscious experience or phenomenal states during sleep, offer an important contrast condition for theories of consciousness and the self. Yet, although there is a wealth of empirical research on sleep and dreaming, its potential contribution to consciousness research and philosophy of mind is largely overlooked. This might be due, in part, (...) to a lack of conceptual clarity and an underlying disagreement about the nature of the phenomenon of dreaming itself. In Dreaming, Jennifer Windt lays the groundwork for solving this problem. She develops a conceptual framework describing not only what it means to say that dreams are conscious experiences but also how to locate dreams relative to such concepts as perception, hallucination, and imagination, as well as thinking, knowledge, belief, deception, and self-consciousness. Arguing that a conceptual framework must be not only conceptually sound but also phenomenologically plausible and carefully informed by neuroscientific research, Windt integrates her review of philosophical work on dreaming, both historical and contemporary, with a survey of the most important empirical findings. This allows her to work toward a systematic and comprehensive new theoretical understanding of dreaming informed by a critical reading of contemporary research findings. Windt's account demonstrates that a philosophical analysis of the concept of dreaming can provide an important enrichment and extension to the conceptual repertoire of discussions of consciousness and the self and raises new questions for future research. (shrink)

A renowned philosopher of the mind, also known for his groundbreaking work on Buddhism and cognitive science, Evan Thompson combines the latest neuroscience research on sleep, dreaming, and meditation with Indian and Western philosophy of the mind, casting new light on the self and its relation to the brain. Thompson shows how the self is a changing process, not a static thing. When we are awake we identify with our body, but if we let our mind wander or daydream, we (...) project a mentally imagined self into the remembered past or anticipated future. As we fall asleep, the impression of being a bounded self distinct from the world dissolves, but the self reappears in the dream state. If we have a lucid dream, we no longer identify only with the self within the dream. Our sense of self now includes our dreaming self, the "I" as dreamer. Finally, as we meditate--either in the waking state or in a lucid dream--we can observe whatever images or thoughts arise and how we tend to identify with them as "me." We can also experience sheer awareness itself, distinct from the changing contents that make up our image of the self. Contemplative traditions say that we can learn to let go of the self, so that when we die we can witness its dissolution with equanimity. Thompson weaves together neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative to depict these transformations, adding uncommon depth to life's profound questions. Contemplative experience comes to illuminate scientific findings, and scientific evidence enriches the vast knowledge acquired by contemplatives. (shrink)

According to modern categorizations, the commentaries on the Holy Scriptures by Albert the Great are not philosophical works and therefore they have received minimal attention in the field of Albertine studies. Super Matthaeum, for example, is one of the least studied in existing research. As a result, the complexity of the relationships between biblical interpretation and the philosophical and theological disciplines are surprising to the researcher used to seeing in Albert a kind of two-headed Janus – either the natural philosopher (...) or the metaphysician, either the natural scientist or the theologian. Albert himself provided occasion for such a dichotomous view. He often held that theologica non conveniunt cum philosophicis in principiis. Nevertheless, some studies have already documented the clear presence of the “philosophical” Albert alongside Albert the “theologian” and “biblical interpreter.” The present contribution offers a particular case study by analyzing Albert’s exegesis of the words in somnis in his commentary on Matthew’s Gospel. This is a long passage in which the Dominican master makes extensive use of philosophical theories on divination through dreams, which he had already presented in De somno et vigilia. According to Albert’s exegesis, the visio prophetalis experienced by Joseph in Matthew’s Gospel is the same kind experienced by Socrates, the first prophet, and the natural philosopher described in De somno et vigilia. (shrink)

That conception is orthodox in today’s common sense and also historically. Presupposed by Plato, Augustine, and Descartes, it underlies familiar skeptical paradoxes. Similar orthodoxy is also found in our developing science of sleep and dreaming.[2] Despite such confluence.

div A sweeping reconstruction of human consciousness and its breakdown, from the Stone Age through modern technology/DIV.

A history of western philosophy from Descartes to the French Revolution.

Already a classic in its first year of publication, this landmark study of Western thought takes a fresh look at the writings of the great thinkers of classic philosophy and questions many pieces of conventional wisdom. The book invites comparison with Bertrand Russell's monumental History of Western Philosophy, "but Gottlieb's book is less idiosyncratic and based on more recent scholarship" (Colin McGinn, Los Angeles Times). A New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Best Book, and a Times Literary (...) Supplement Best Book of 2001. (from the publisher). (shrink)

The Dreaming Mind provides an insightful, interdisciplinary approach to the study of dreaming, exploring its nature and examining some of the implications of dream states for theories of consciousness, cognition and the self. Offering an integrative approach into our understanding of dreams and the mind, it is essential reading for students and researchers of consciousness, dreams, philosophy and cognitive sciences, as well as anyone who is curious about dreaming.

This article analyzes Śaṅkara’s use of dreaming in Advaita Vedānta. For Śaṅkara, dreaming functions philosophically as a direct phenomenal inquiry into mind and consciousness. Dreaming also functions as a syllogistic illustration. While dreaming, we experience unreal objects that do not exist apart from our minds. Dreaming thus illustrates the waking world’s nonrealism despite perceiving it as real, and that waking objects are consciousness alone. However, the dream illustration raises several questions: In what ways does illusory dream reality extend to waking (...) objects? And does Śaṅkara view the objective waking world as the individual’s cognitive construction similar to the dream, or as īśvara’s cosmological construction? This article argues that for Śaṅkara, the individual’s waking cognitive construction is primarily epistemological rather than an external ontological power akin to a creator deity; however, distinctions between individual and īśvara are ultimately indeterminable and lose meaning from the standpoint of nondual brahman. (shrink)

Why has humankind developed so differently from other animals? How and why did language, culture, religion, and the arts come into being? In this wide-ranging and ambitious essay, Christoph Türcke offers a new answer to these timeworn questions by scrutinizing the phenomenon of the dream, using it as a psychic fossil connecting us with our Stone Age ancestors. Provocatively, he argues that both civilization and mental processes are the results of a compulsion to repeat early traumas, one to which hallucination, (...) imagination, mind, spirit, and God all developed in response. Until the beginning of the modern era, repetition was synonymous with de-escalation and calming down. Then, automatic machinery gave rise to a new type of repetition, whose effects are permanent alarm and distraction. The new global forces of distraction, Türcke argues, are producing a specific kind of stress that breaks down the barriers between dreams and waking consciousness. Türcke’s essay ends with a sobering indictment of this psychic deregulation and the social and economic deregulations that have accompanied it. (shrink)

Evan’s book is in many ways an exercise in remapping. The first is suggested by the book’s title. Waking, Dreaming, Being challenges existing ways of mapping the conceptual relationship between conscious states across the sleep-wake cycle. The idea that waking and dreaming are not discrete states but can interpenetrate each other—that, to use Evan’s words, they “aren’t opposed but flow into and out of [one] an other” —is a central theme running through the book. If Evan is correct, then the (...) taxonomy of conscious states that underlies large parts of contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience has to be redrawn. As Evan tells us in the introduction, the book’s organizing principle... (shrink)

The paper explores the interrelations between Pindar, Heraclitus and the Hippocratic author with regard to ideas of the body, the soul and dreams. I shall consider Pindar’s fr.131b as an overlooked testimony of the poet’s interest in a non-Homeric conceptualization of the soul. I will suggest reading Heraclitus’ fragments B26 and B21 together and offer a new interpretation of the latter. Furthermore, I will compare Pindar’s fr. 131b with the HippocraticOn Regimen(4. 86, 87) and Pindar’s fr. 133 withOn Regimen(4. (...) 92) respectively, in order to highlight unnoticed similarities. (shrink)

In ‘Causes and Reasons of Desert Islands’, Gilles Deleuze presents a mythological and scientific vision in which new islands and new humanity emerge from the opposition between the land and sea in desert islands. However, what Deleuze cannot explain is how such new territory and people are produced and reproduced while rejecting old and conventional generational ways. To break this impasse, which is also present in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze and Guattari intend to retain the absolute movement of deterritorialisation, while (...) acknowledging that deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation always comingle. This theoretical project is found in the critique of Pierre Clastres on counter-state societies, and is taken up by Deleuze and Guattari in What is Philosophy? In this latter work, by creating concepts and constituting a new plane, Deleuze and Guattari offer some conditions of a third reterritorialisation that, after the second reterritorialisation in the democratic states, presents a new way of forging a political and revolutionary philosophy. In this essay, we criticise the opinions that consider Deleuze and Guattari's political philosophy as one version of radical democracy. Their political philosophy should be situated in the post-democratic era to come. (shrink)

Why does Hegel change “Dreaming Soul” to “Feeling Soul” in the 1830 edition of the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit? By tracing the content of the Dreaming Soul section, through Hegel’s 1794 manuscript on psychology, to sources such as C.P. Moritz’s Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde, the paper shows how the section embraces a late Enlightenment mission: combating supposedly supernatural expressions of spiritual enthrallment by explaining them as pathological conditions of the soul. Responding to perceived attacks on the 1827 edition of the Encyclopedia (...) by Schleiermacher, Hegel alters the section and its heading, thereby including the pastor’s religion of feeling in the pathology of Schwärmerei. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom and commonsense morality tend to take the integrity of persons for granted. But for people in systematically unjust societies, self-respect and human dignity may prove to be impossible dreams.Susan Babbitt explores the implications of this insight, arguing that in the face of systemic injustice, individual and social rationality may require the transformation rather than the realization of deep-seated aims, interests, and values. In particular, under such conditions, she argues, the cultivation and ongoing exercise of moral imagination is (...) necessary to discover and defend a more humane social vision. Impossible Dreams is one of those rare books that fruitfully combines discourses that were previously largely separate: feminist and antiracist political theory, analytic ethics and philosophy of mind, and a wide range of non-philosophical literature on the lives of oppressed peoples around the world. It is both an object lesson in reaching across academic barriers and a demonstration of how the best of feminist philosophy can be in conversation with the best of “mainstream” philosophy—as well as affect the lives of real people. (shrink)

This book explores Cavell’s writings along converging lines of thought rather than in isolated categories. The author claims that, after Cavell’s celebrated reading of King Lear turned into a nightmarish meditation on Vietnam, he found a more audible voice. Noting that Cavell’s keen ear for the expressive power of ordinary language makes him both a first-rate literary artist and a compelling philosopher of the everyday, he catches what holds Cavell’s manifold interests together. Here the poetry of ideas and presence of (...) mind that animate Cavell’s writing receive readings attuned to the spirit of their composition and its enlivening powers. (shrink)

The central idea of Waking, Dreaming, Being is that the self is a process, not a thing or an entity.1 The self isn’t something outside experience, hidden either in the brain or in some immaterial realm. It is an experiential process that is subject to constant change. We enact a self in the process of awareness, and this self comes and goes depending on how we are aware.When we’re awake and occupied with some manual task, we enact a bodily self (...) geared to our immediate environment. Yet this bodily self recedes from our experience if our task becomes an absorbing mental one. If our mind wanders, the mentally imagined self of the past or future overtakes the self of the present moment.As we start to fall asleep, the... (shrink)

What, if anything, do dreams tell us about ourselves? What is the relationship between types of sleep and types of dreams? Does dreaming serve any purpose? Or are dreams simply meaningless mental noise--"unmusical fingers wandering over the piano keys"? With expertise in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, Owen Flanagan is uniquely qualified to answer these questions. In this groundbreaking work, he provides both an accessible survey of the latest research on sleep and dreams and a compelling new (...) theory about the nature and function of dreaming. Flanagan argues that while sleep has a clear biological function and adaptive value, dreams are merely side effects, "free riders," irrelevant from an evolutionary point of view. But dreams are hardly unimportant. Flanagan argues that dreams are self-expressive, the result of our need to find or to create meaning, even when we're sleeping. Written with remarkable insight, Dreaming Souls offers a fascinating new way of apprehending one of the oldest mysteries of mental life. (shrink)

As a topic in the philosophy of psychology, dreaming is a fascinating, diverse, and severely underdeveloped area of study. The topic excites intense public interest in its own right, while also challenging our confidence that we know what the words “conscious” and “consciousness” mean. So dreaming should be at the forefront of our interdisciplinary investigations: theories of mind which fail to address the topic are incomplete. This chapter illustrates the tight links between conceptual and empirical issues by highlighting surprisingly deep (...) disagreements among leading dream scientists over what might seem basic aspects of their topic. (shrink)

A philosophical look at the movie Inception and its brilliant metaphysical puzzles Is the top still spinning? Was it all a dream? In the world of Christopher Nolan's four-time Academy Award-winning movie, people can share one another's dreams and alter their beliefs and thoughts. Inception is a metaphysical heist film that raises more questions than it answers: Can we know what is real? Can you be held morally responsible for what you do in dreams? What is the nature (...) of dreams, and what do they tell us about the boundaries of "self" and "other"? From Plato to Aristotle and from Descartes to Hume, Inception and Philosophy draws from important philosophical minds to shed new light on the movie's captivating themes, including the one that everyone talks about: did the top fall down (and does it even matter)? Explores the movie's key questions and themes, including how we can tell if we're dreaming or awake, how to make sense of a paradox, and whether or not inception is possible Gives new insights into the nature of free will, time, dreams, and the unconscious mind Discusses different interpretations of the film, and whether or not philosophy can help shed light on which is the "right one" Deepens your understanding of the movie's multi-layered plot and dream-infiltrating characters, including Dom Cobb, Arthur, Mal, Ariadne, Eames, Saito, and Yusuf An essential companion for every dedicated Inception fan, this book will enrich your experience of the Inception universe and its complex dreamscape. (shrink)

Philosopher Rene Descartes visualized a world unified by mathematics, in which all intellectual issues could be resolved rationally by local computation. This series of provocative essays takes a modern look at the seventeenth-century thinker’s dream, examining the physical and intellectual influences of mathematics on society, particularly in light of technological advances. They survey the conditions that elicit the application of mathematic principles; the effectiveness of these applications; and how applied mathematics constrain lives and transform perceptions of reality. Highly suitable for (...) browsing, the essays require different levels of mathematical knowledge that range from popular to professional. 1987 ed. (shrink)

Most ancient philosophers accept that dreams have prophetic powers enabling humans to relate somehow to a world beyond their own. The only philosophers known to make a clean and explicit break with that tradition are the Epicureans, beginning with Epicurus himself and reaching his last eminent follower, Diogenes of Oinoanda. They openly reject the idea that dreams mediate between the divine and the human realms, or between the world of the living and the world of the dead. They (...) demystify the phenomenon of dreaming by explaining sleeping and dreaming in terms of their materialistic physical theory. Importantly, they examine dreams and their content from different perspectives and explore their relevance to our lives. The general aim of this paper is to offer a synthetic account of the Epicurean view about dreaming and dreams, advance certain new hypotheses that seem worthy of consideration, and show how Epicurus and his followers integrate dream theory into their philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

Recently, Ernest Sosa (2007) has proposed two novel solutions to the problem of dream skepticism. In the present paper, I argue that Sosa’s first solution falls prey to what I will refer to as the conditionality problem, i.e., the problem of only establishing a conditional—in this case, if x, then I am awake, x being a placeholder for a condition incompatible with dreaming—in a context where it also needs to be established that we can know that the antecedent holds, and (...) as such can infer the consequent, i.e., I am awake. Sosa’s second solution, in terms of so-called reflective knowledge, is shown to land him in the dilemma of either facing yet another conditionality problem, or violating an internalist constraint that he explicitly grants the skeptic with respect to what kind of factors can be legitimately invoked in our account of how we may know the relevant antecedent. For these reasons, I conclude that Sosa has not solved the problem of dream skepticism. (shrink)

This article puts forth 2 competing notions of the American Dream, 1 radical and 1 conservative (both put forth by Thomas Jefferson), as the basis for 2 competing public philosophies of American democracy and education. This article traces out the ecology of inequality that has determined the context of these 2 competing public philosophies, especially in relation to the evolution of U.S. education. The ideology of the American Dream is still a potent philosophical means for constructing reformist discourses for American (...) politics and education. The rhetoric of the American Dream focuses on the unrealized promises found within the Declaration of Independence and it articulates the need of equality and freedom for all members of our society. This article traces the framework of these conflicting American Dreams from their inception and into our contemporary context. (shrink)

Thomas Jefferson had a profoundly advanced educational vision that went hand in hand with his political philosophy - each of which served the goal of human flourishing. His republicanism marked a break with the conservatism of traditional non-representative governments, characterized by birth and wealth and in neglect of the wants and needs of the people. Instead, Jefferson proposed social reforms which would allow people to express themselves freely, dictate their own course in life, and oversee their elected representatives. His educational (...) vision aimed to instantiate a progressive social climate only dreamed of by utopists such as Thomas More, James Harrington and Louis-Sébastian Mercier. This book offers a critical articulation of the philosophy behind Jefferson's thoughts on education. Divided into three parts, chapters include an analysis of his views on elementary and higher education, an investigation of education for both the moral-sense and rational faculty, and an examination of education as lifelong learning. Jefferson's educational rationale was economic, political and philosophical, and his systemic approach to education conveys a systemic, economic approach to living, with strong affinities to Stoicism. Thomas Jefferson's Philosophy of Education will be key reading for philosophers, historians and postgraduate students of education, the history of education and philosophy. (shrink)

"Might this be a dream?" In this book, distinguished philosopher J. J. Valberg approaches the familiar question about dream and reality by seeking to identify its subject matter: what is it that would be the dream if "this" were a dream? It turns out to be a subject matter that contains the whole of the world, space, and time but which, like consciousness for Sartre, is nothing "in itself." This subject matter, the "personal horizon," lies at the heart of the (...) main topics--the first person, the self, and the self in time--explored at length in the book. The personal horizon is, Valberg contends, the subject matter whose center each of us occupies, and which for each of us ceases with death. This ceasing to be presents itself solipsistically not just as the end of everything "for me" but as the end of everything absolutely. Yet since it is the same for everyone, this cannot be. Death thus confronts us with an impossible fact: something that cannot be but will be. The puzzle about death is one of several extraphilosophical puzzles about the self that Valberg discusses, puzzles that can trouble everyday consciousness without any contribution from philosophy. Nor can philosophy resolve the puzzles. Its task is to get to the bottom of them, and in this respect to understand ourselves--a task philosophy has always set itself. (shrink)

This paper appeals to the phenomenon of dreaming to provide a novel defense against arguments from evil. The thrust of the argument is as follows: when we wake up after a nightmare we are often filled entirely with relief, and do not consider ourselves to have actually suffered very much at all; and since it is epistemically possible that this whole life is simply a dream, it follows that it is epistemically possible that in reality there is very little suffering. (...) This epistemic possibility decisively undermines a key premise of both logical and evidential arguments from evil. (shrink)

A common objection to Sosa’s epistemology is that it countenances, in an objectionable way, unsafe knowledge. This objection, under closer inspection, turns out to be in far worse shape than Sosa’s critics have realised. Sosa and his defenders have offered two central response types to the idea that allowing unsafe knowledge is problematic: one response type adverts to the animal/reflective knowledge distinction that is characteristic of bi-level virtue epistemology. The other less-discussed response type appeals to the threat of dream scepticism, (...) and in particular, to the idea that many of our everyday perceptual beliefs are unsafe through the nearness of the dream possibility. The latter dreaming response to the safety objection to Sosa’s virtue epistemology has largely flown under the radar in contemporary discussions of safety and knowledge. We think that, suitably articulated in view of research in the philosophy and science of dreaming, it has much more going for it than has been appreciated. This paper further develops, beyond what Sosa does himself, the dreaming argument in response to those who think safety (as traditionally understood) is a condition on knowledge and who object to Sosa’s account on the grounds that it fails this condition. The payoffs of further developing this argument will be not only a better understanding of the importance of insights about dreaming against safety as a condition on knowledge, but also some reason to think a weaker safety condition, one that is relativised to SSS (i.e., skill/shape/situation) conditions for competence exercise, gets better results all things considered as an anti-luck codicil on knowledge. (shrink)

Our eyes, bodies, and perspectives are constantly shifting as we observe the world. Despite this, we are very good at distinguishing between self-caused visual changes and changes in the environment: the world appears mostly stable despite our visual field moving around. This, it seems, also occurs when we are dreaming. As we visually investigate the dream environment, we track moving objects with our dream eyes, examine objects, and shift focus. These movements, research suggests, are reflected in the rapid movements or (...) saccades of our sleeping eyes. Do we really see the dream world in the same way that we see the real world? If we do, how could dreaming, usually assumed to be mind-generated hallucinations, replicate such an experience? This problem would be deflated if dreams are not hallucinations at all, but rather imagination, illusion or simply unrealistic. I argue that imagination and illusion views do not satisfactorily explain away the problem of vision and action in sleep. The imagination model is not a complete description of dreaming that is consistent with empirical research, and it is unlikely that the visual dream world is an illusion. Given that the dreaming visual experience is most likely active, hallucinatory, and at times a realistic world simulation, there are important implications for our understanding of visual perception and its relationship to movement. Evidence suggests that our dream eyes investigate the dream world as our waking eyes investigate the waking world. If changes to the unconsciously generated dream environment are perceived as external and unintentional while dream body movements are perceived as self-generated and intentional, current theory of visual perception may have to be expanded to account for how the dreaming mind generates a stable world in which we track and visually explore mind-generated objects. (shrink)

This chapter presents a conversation between two women, one old, and the other a young robopsychologist. The talk is about looking for positronic brain pattern in a computer. Then, their conversation is joined by a robot, and veers towards robotic dreams. The robot sees a see a large panorama in its dream in which many other robots are working. Some of them are mining in the depths of the Earth, some laboring in heat and radiation, and some in factories (...) and some undersea. The robots are bowed down with toil and affliction, and all are weary of responsibility and care, although in reality they do not need any rest. (shrink)