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)

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

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)

Recourse to auxiliary disciplines has greatly contributed to the ways in which biblical scholars seek to elucidate various dimensions of meaning in textual constructions of dreams and dreaming in the Old Testament. The original contribution this article hopes to make to the ongoing research on associated oneirocritic topoi is to propose the so-called philosophy of dreaming as a potential dialogue partner to supplement already available perspectives within the multidisciplinary discussion. At present, there is no descriptive philosophical approach exclusively (...) devoted to the identification and clarification of the folk-philosophical assumptions implicit in oneirocritic materials as conditions of their possibility. By way of comparative-philosophical commentary, the article features a brief introduction to the related research within Old Testament studies, an overview of the history and problems of the auxiliary subject, and an illustration of how the new approach might look when applied to texts involving ‘oneirophany’ (Gn 15:1–21, 20:3–6, 28:11–17 and 1 Ki 3:5–15). The study concludes with a few remarks on the limits of the proposal and suggestions for more extensive and in-depth future research in related and alternative areas. (shrink)

SummaryThe essay exposes, recognizes the astonishing originality, and showcases the shortcomings of Christoph Türcke’s Philosophy of Dreams, which offers a theory of the origin of religion inspired by both psychoanalysis and critical theory. Among the objections raised are the speculative nature of the enterprise, which is not sufficiently based on empirical data, the lack of knowledge concerning the transition from apes to humans, the impossibility for hallucinations to be the basic doxastic act, the exaggerated focus on dread, which (...) is only one form of the numinous experience, and on the repetition compulsion, which could hardly prove as creative as the author assumes particularly concerning the origin of sacrifice, and the confusion of genesis and validity. (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)

I offer a novel reading in this dissertation of René Descartes’s (1596–1650) skepticism in his work Meditations on First Philosophy (1641–1642). I specifically aim to answer the following problem: How is Descartes’s skepticism to be read in accordance with the rest of his philosophy? This problem can be divided into two more general questions in Descartes scholarship: How is skepticism utilized in the Meditations, and what are its intentions and relation to the preceding philosophical tradition? -/- I approach (...) the topic from both a historical and a text-based analysis, combining textual and contextual research. I examine Descartes’s skepticism against two main traditions in the historical analysis: philosophical skepticism and Aristotelian Scholasticism. I argue that skepticism in the Meditations is intended to oppose and upheave both Scholasticism and skepticism. The intended results of the work are not merely epistemological but also metaphysical and even ethical. Furthermore, these ambitions cannot be neatly distinguished but merge into each other. -/- The third historical context against which the skeptical meditations are examined is the literary genre of meditative exercises, particularly from the 1500–1600’s, which, while religiously and spiritually oriented, likewise provided the practitioner with an enlightened understanding of self-knowledge and their cognitive place in the world on the way to closer spiritual proximity to God. I argue by this reading that the skepticism of the Meditations is an attentive, meditational cognitive exercise that is not merely instrumental and methodological but is to have a genuine and serious (psychologically real) effect on our thinking. The skeptical meditation is not simply a theoretical thought experiment but is to be seriously practiced as a transformative process of reorienting one’s cognitive framework to discover truth, certainty, and a way to a happy, tranquil, and virtuous life. -/- I offer a close reading in the textual analysis of the first three meditations of the Meditations. I argue that the meditative skepticism employed in the work does not reject the previous beliefs but suspends judgment on them, withdrawing assent until further evidence can be found. I introduce a new term into Descartes scholarship in this analysis, based on the terminology of ancient skepticism: Cartesian epochē (gr. epochē, suspension, withdrawal). Instead of rejecting previous beliefs or assenting to the probably false, the skeptical procedure of the Meditations is argued to emulate in important ways the suspension of judgment on equally balanced reasons in ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism. Novel interpretations are presented along the way of the will’s freedom, of the First Meditation’s skeptical scenarios, of the cogito, and of the vindication of metaphysical certainty, as well as a clarification of the Cartesian Circle problem. -/- Reinterpreting the relation of Descartes’s skepticism to the preceding historical and literary traditions leads to a new look at the skeptical method itself. Presenting a new interpretation of skepticism in the Meditations leads at the same time to a new look at its relation to the historical context. The two research questions are, then, intrinsically tied together. -/- My focus in the study is on the Meditations, but I also reference and discuss Descartes’s other philosophical works, as well as his correspondence, when necessary. (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)

Freud's account of dreams has a cogent interpretive basis.

In his discussions of dreaming in the Parva Naturalia, Aristotle neither claims nor denies that dreams serve a natural purpose. Modern scholarship generally interprets dreaming as useless and teleologically irrelevant for him. I argue that Aristotle's teleology permits certain types of dream to have a natural role in end-directed processes. Dreams are left-overs from waking experience, but they may, like certain bodily residues, be used by nature, which does ‘nothing in vain’ and makes use of available resources, for (...) the benefit of the beings in which they occur. Contrary to prevalent opinions, Aristotle does not assimilate dreams to sensory illusions and does not hold that they have no interaction with our reasoning capacity. Dreams constitute a special class of the products of phantasia, but this does not prevent them from functioning like other (waking) phantasmata. In Aristotle's view, dreams regularly generate 'natural signs' of diseases and cause waking actions. I show that this preparatory power of dreams, often dismissed or attributed to divine intervention in antiquity, is captured within Aristotle’s natural philosophy, and provides evidence that (some) dreams are (or should be) regarded by him as having a teleological significance. (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)

The problem of dream skepticism – i.e., the problem of what can justify one’s belief that they are not dreaming – is one of the most famous problems in philosophy. I propose a way of responding to the problem which is available if one subscribes to the theory that the sensory experiences that we have in dreams consist of images (as opposed to false percepts). The response exploits a particular feature of imagination, viz., that it is not possible (...) to simultaneously have two separate imagistic experiences in the same modality. (shrink)

Continues Augé's critical exploration of contemporary modernity with an examination of the role of dreams, myth and fiction in the age of satellite TV and the Internet.

Michael T. Michael evaluates Freud s theory of dreams in light of major criticisms and scientific research. Approaching the issue from the vantage of the history and philosophy of science, he argues that the theory is a live hypothesis fully deserving of continued scientific exploration.".

Shihäb al-Din al-Suhrawardi was born around 1154, probably in northwestern Iran. Spurred by a dream in which Aristotle appeared to him, he rejected the Avicennan Peripatetic philosophy of his youth and undertook the task of reviving the philosophical tradition of the "Ancients." Suhruwardi's philosophy grants an epistemological role to immediate and atemporal intuition. It is explicitly anti-Peripatetic and is identified with the pre-Aristotelian sages, particularly Plato. The subject of his _hikmat al-Ishraq_—now available for the first time in English—is (...) the "science of lights," a science that Suhrawardi first learned through mystical exercises reinforced later by logical proofs and confirmed by what he saw as the parallel experiences of the Ancients. It was completed on 15 September 1186; and at sunset that evening, in the western sky, the sun, the moon, and the five visible planets came together in a magnificent conjunction in the constellation of Libra. The stars soon turned against Suhrawardi, however, who was reluctantly put to death by the son of Saladin, the sultan of Egypt, in 1191. (shrink)

As a Madhyamaka philosopher, Taktsang Lotsawa Sherab Rinchen 1 is perhaps most widely known for his claim to have identified eighteen major contradictions in the thought of Tsongkhapa Losang Drakpa, a polemic discussion that appears in the Madhyamaka chapter of his encyclopedic Freedom from Extremes through Comprehensive Knowledge of Philosophy.2 In this article we will not pursue this critique, both renowned and infamous, but instead focus on Taktsang Lotsawa's own pragmatic hermeneutics of emptiness in context. Taktsang Lotsawa argues that (...) *Svātantrika 3 Mādhyamikas, in their drive to furnish the two... (shrink)

Find out all about dreams and you will know all about insanity. ?Hughlings Jackson.

1. The scientific study of sleep has recently been stimulated by comparisons between people and advanced computers, whose normal activities need to be suspended periodically for reprogramming. I quote from a popular account by Dr Christopher Evans, which appeared in the Sunday Times during 1969: Sleep is of course the state in which the brain-computer is ‘off-line’, during which time the vast mass of existing programmes are sorted, outdated ones revised in the light of recent experiences and useless ones or (...) the remnants of modified ones cleared and eliminated. These processes take place for a substantial part of the night, but because the brain is ‘off-line’ and consciousness suppressed, we are mostly not aware of them. However, if for some reason our sleep is disturbed or when we wake in the morning, as the conscious mind ‘comes to’ it catches the programme operations at work, and for a moment has no way of knowing whether the events are internal or external in origin. It sets to work therefore to try to make sense of the programme or fragments thereof that are being run through, and the result is what we call a dream— though we should presumably call it an interrupted dream. (shrink)

Philosophy of Film: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge) provides a critical overview of the literature on eleven different issues in the philosophy of film, from "What is Film?" to "Can Film Do Philosophy?" It aims to provide an objective overview of the principal arguments on each side of the issues. The set of issues includes all of the most important topics as well as some that are less well represented in the discipline, such as whether the power of (...) cinema derives from its similarity to dreams. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary article takes a philosophical approach to The Interpretation of Dreams, connecting Freud to one of the few philosophers with whom he sometimes identified - Immanuel Kant. It aims to show that Freud's theory of dreams has more in common with Bion's later thoughts on dreaming than is usually recognized. Distinguishing, via a discussion of Kant, between the conflicting 'epistemological' and 'anthropological' aspects of The Interpretation of Dreams, it shows that one specific contradiction in the book (...) - concerning the relation between dream-work and waking thought - can be understood in terms of the tension between these conflicting aspects. Freud reaches the explicit conclusion that the dream-work and waking thought differ from each other absolutely; but the implicit conclusion of The Interpretation of Dreams is quite the opposite. This article argues that the explicit conclusion is the result of the epistemological aspects of the book; the implicit conclusion, which brings Freud much closer to Bion, the result of the anthropological approach. Bringing philosophy and psychoanalysis together this paper thus argues for an interpretation of The Interpretation of Dreams that is in some ways at odds with the standard view of the book, while also suggesting that aspects of Kant's 'anthropological' works might legitimately be seen as a precursor of psychoanalysis. (shrink)

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

This article addresses two debates. First, there is the issue of how the left can invigorate contemporary western democracies in the face of the growing apathy, disillusionment and violent antagonisms that emerge in the context of neo-liberal reforms, inequality, fundamentalism and terror. In positing the value of Jacques Rancière’s work to speak to this issue, it will also take up a position within a second debate over the precise implications of Rancière’s work for democratic politics today. The article will argue (...) that it is worth revisiting Rancière’s work despite various conflicting interpretations. It will show that contra the claims of his critics, his conception of politics need be neither opposed to direct action, nor ineffective or too narrowly conceived. Instead, ‘politics’ understood as the moment that ruptures our social order provides us with a vibrant, ever-adaptable strategy of resistance and renewal that could be used to inspire and revitalize a new left. (shrink)

Late ancient and early medieval narratives often depict dreaming as a vertical and hierarchical process of influence that has its starting point in a higher entity and ends with the human being. This model of explanation seems to take a more horizontal approach with the advent of a new natural philosophy and medical works from Arabic milieu that put the psychosomatic processes of the human being into perspective. The general purpose of this paper is to assess to which extent (...) Albert the Great’s consideration of dreams can be taken as an example of this turning point. Specifically, it tries to show how his dream theory is articulated in De homine. The main hypothesis is that the Dominican friar advocated a materialistic account of dreams, in which the process of dream formation is explain as a flux of bodiness caused by a change in the thermal behavior of the body. (shrink)

In the waking state, in the absence of meta-awareness, mind wandering with specific contents can lead to negative mood. Such negative mood can be incorporated into dreaming according to the continuity hypothesis of dreaming. In this paper we argue that in the presence of what we call ‘sustained phenomenal meta-awareness’, negative mood would not follow mind wandering in waking. Sustained phenomenal meta-awareness has a non-sensory, non-affective phenomenal character. It is essentially intransitive, prereflectively self-aware, non-propositional, non-conceptual and devoid of subject-object structure. (...) In other words, this unique kind of meta-awareness is non-representational. Evidence is then provided that such sustained phenomenal meta-awareness can be incorporated into the subsequent dream state as non-dual lucid dreaming in which, again, no negative mood would arise. Based on the latter observation, we have coined the term ‘mindful mind wandering’ and defined it as mind wandering in the presence of sustained phenomenal meta-awareness. We argue that not only does mindful mind wandering not lead to negative mood in waking, but also its incorporation into dreaming, as non-dual lucid dreaming, result in a state that is free of negative affection. (shrink)

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)

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)

Many contemporaries criticized him for smashing the Age of Reason. Goethe, however, remarked that reading a page of Immanuel Kant was like entering a bright and well-lighted room: The great eighteenth-century philosopher illuminated everything he ever pondered. The twelve essays in this volume reveal Kant's towering importance as an ethical and social thinker as well as his enduring influence on the shape of philosophy. Included are excerpts from Dreams of a Visionary, Prolegomena to Every Future Metaphysics, Metaphysical Foundations (...) of Morals, Critique of Judgement , and Eternal Peace . As Professor Friedrich writes in his introduction to this volume: "The problem of freedom, the freedom of the human personality to unfold and fulfill its higher destiny, is the central issue of all of Kant's philosophizing.". (shrink)

Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi was born around 1154, probably in northwestern Iran. Spurred by a dream in which Aristotle appeared to him, he rejected the Avicennan Peripatetic philosophy of his youth and undertook the task of reviving the philosophical tradition of the "Ancients." Suhruwardi's philosophy grants an epistemological role to immediate and atemporal intuition. It is explicitly anti-Peripatetic and is identified with the pre-Aristotelian sages, particularly Plato. The subject of his hikmat al-Ishraq --now available for the first time in (...) English--is the "science of lights," a science that Suhrawardi first learned through mystical exercises reinforced later by logical proofs and confirmed by what he saw as the parallel experiences of the Ancients. It was completed on 15 September 1186 and at sunset that evening, in the western sky, the sun, the moon, and the five visible planets came together in a magnificent conjunction in the constellation of Libra. The stars soon turned against Suhrawardi, however, who was reluctantly put to death by the son of Saladin, the sultan of Egypt, in 1191. (shrink)