Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: There are two leading theories about the ontology of dreams. One holds that dreams involve hallucinations and beliefs. The other holds that dreaming involves sensory and propositional imagining. I highlight two features of dreams which are more easily explained by the imagination theory. One is that certain things seem to be true in our dreams, even though they are not represented sensorily; this is easily explained if dreams involve propositional imagining. The other is that dream narratives can be temporally segmented, involving events which take place across long spans of time; this makes sense if dreams involve sensory imagining, for we often sensorily imagine narratives during wakefulness in the same way. The two considerations are unified by the fact that both highlight forms of content determination characteristic of imagining.
Source: Philosophical Studies
Author: Daniel Gregory
Institution: University of Salzburg
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,090
OpenAlex ID: W4404185947