Dreams, agency, and judgement

Abstract

Sosa (Proc Addresses Am Philos Assoc 79(2): 7-18, 2005) argues that we should reject the orthodox conception of dreaming-the view that dream states and waking states are "intrinsically alike, though different in their causes and effects" (2005: p. 7). The alternative he proposes is that "to dream is to imagine" (2005: p. 7). According to this imagination model of dreaming, our dreamt conscious beliefs, experiences, affirmations, decisions and intentions are not "real" insofar as they are all merely imagined beliefs, experiences, affirmations, decisions and intentions. This paper assesses the epistemic implications of Sosa's imagination model of dreaming. Section 1 outlines and assesses the reasons Sosa gives for thinking that his imagination model of dreaming introduces a new dimension to debates about dream scepticism. Sosa argues that his imagination model of dreaming invites a more radical version of dream scepticism, and also makes available a novel and more powerful response to dream scepticism. Objections are raised to both of those claims. This leads to a challenge to Sosa's imagination model of dreaming. This is the concern that Sosa's imagination model of dreaming lacks the resources to accommodate the intuition that there is something illusory or misleading about one's situation when one is dreaming, and as a result his account of dreams fails to accommodate the common intuition that there is a sceptical problem about dreaming but not about dreamless sleep. Section 2 of the paper elaborates a version of the imagination model of dreaming that can overcome that challenge. This version of the imagination model of dreaming goes beyond what Sosa explicitly commits to when he outlines his view of dreams, however, it exploits ideas that are integral to a key theme in Sosa's recent writings on virtue reliabilismnamely his proposal that epistemic agency should be accorded a central place in that

Aphantasia, imagination and dreaming

“…1 Variations on this claim can be found, for example, in Sartre (1940), Walton (1990), O'Shaughnessy (2002) McGinn (2004, Sosa (2005Sosa ( , 2007Sosa ( , 2009, Ichikawa (2009Ichikawa ( , 2016, Thompson and Batchelor (2014), Soteriou (2013Soteriou ( , 2017, Crowther (2018). The assumptions that dreams (a) are phenomenally conscious experiences that occur during sleep and (b) that these are reported accurately upon waking have not gone unquestioned- Malcolm (1956), Dennett (1976), Rosen (2013)-however they are now widely accepted, and I do not press them here.…”

“…Thus far, the imagination model has been discussed primarily within the context of (ii) imaginings, and its epistemological consequences in relation to Cartesian dream skepticism. 8 However, recent discussion has concerned the potential of the imagination model of dreaming as an available contrast case to illuminate and motivate an analysis of the metaphysical constitution and epistemic function of wakeful consciousness, as a crucial, relatively neglected topic in the philosophy of mind (O'Shaughnessy 2002(O'Shaughnessy , 2008Soteriou 2017;Crowther 2018). This, along with the potential of the imagination model to serve as a guide to empirical research in the science of dreaming (providing the much-needed conceptual clarification of the target phenomenon of this research) offers a strong mandate for discussion into the viability of the imagination model that Ichikawa presents and the success of the arguments offered in support of it.…”

“…Here, the initial proposal is that taking an imaginative, as opposed to doxastic, attitude towards the content of our dreams provides the proponent of the imagination model with a compelling response to dream skepticism. For a more extensive discussion of the prospects for dream skepticism in this context however see Soteriou (2017) and Ichikawa (2008). analysed in his influential book 'Children's Dreaming and the Development of Consciousness' (1999)-Foulkes and his team analysed dream report data collected over 5 years from children aged 3-15 in conjunction with performing a variety of cognitive and personality tests.…”

“…26 Motivated by the need to provide a philosophical analysis of the state of wakeful consciousness, as an explanatorily preeminent condition relative to non-wake states, the alternative account of dreaming receiving attention in recent literature starts from an analysis of the wakeful condition as necessitating a kind of practical self-knowledge which results from the exercise of autonomous mental agency (O'Shaughnessy 2000(O'Shaughnessy , 2002. 27 According to this analysis, the constitutive difference between wakeful and non-wakeful conditions (in this case, dreaming) is given in terms of the (in)capacity to exercise agency over our mental lives-that is, a capacity or ability to perform mental actions-which, it is claimed, is responsible for enabling the distinctive and immediate sort of self-knowledge (knowledge of 'what we are up to') characteristic of wakeful consciousness (Soteriou 2017, Crowther 2018. 28 In O'Shaughnessy's words (2002;426, see also Soteriou 2017) the suggestion here is that ''Consciousness [wakeful consciousness] necessitates an overall mental activeness, for the reason that the conscious [i.e.…”

“…The aphantasia studies notably suggest a strong neurophysiological dissociation between voluntary and involuntary forms of mental imagery, with only the capacity for the former being lost by the majority of aphantasic subjects. I argue that the strongest response available to the imagination theorist is to take up the recent calls for adoption of a variation of the imagination model according to which non-lucid dreams essentially involve involuntary, passive or inactive forms of imagination (O'Shaughnessy 2002;Soteriou 2017;Crowther 2018). I conclude in Sect.…”