Reporting dream experience: Why (not) to be skeptical about dream reports

Windt, Jennifer M.

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2013.00708

Cited by 71 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 90 publications

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“…Generally speaking, autonomy is the capacity for rational self-control, whereas the term M-autonomy refers to the specific ability to control one's own mental functions, like attention, episodic memory, planning, concept formation, rational deliberation, or decision making, etc. Here, my first claim is that the recurring loss of M-autonomy is one major characteristic of our cognitive phenomenology 1 (Bayne and Montague, 2011), and that both research on dreaming and mind wandering have developed important research tools to investigate this hitherto neglected aspect further (like external probing, or systematic questions after sleep lab awakenings; see also Smallwood, 2013; Windt, 2013). …”

Section: Introduction: the Relevance Of Mind Wandering Research For Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy

Metzinger

2013

Front. Psychol.

106

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This metatheoretical paper investigates mind wandering from the perspective of philosophy of mind. It has two central claims. The first is that, on a conceptual level, mind wandering can be fruitfully described as a specific form of mental autonomy loss. The second is that, given empirical constraints, most of what we call “conscious thought” is better analyzed as a subpersonal process that more often than not lacks crucial properties traditionally taken to be the hallmark of personal-level cognition - such as mental agency, explicit, consciously experienced goal-directedness, or availability for veto control. I claim that for roughly two thirds of our conscious life-time we do not possess mental autonomy (M-autonomy) in this sense. Empirical data from research on mind wandering and nocturnal dreaming clearly show that phenomenally represented cognitive processing is mostly an automatic, non-agentive process and that personal-level cognition is an exception rather than the rule. This raises an interesting new version of the mind-body problem: How is subpersonal cognition causally related to personal-level thought? More fine-grained phenomenological descriptions for what we called “conscious thought” in the past are needed, as well as a functional decomposition of umbrella terms like “mind wandering” into different target phenomena and a better understanding of the frequent dynamic transitions between spontaneous, task-unrelated thought and meta-awareness. In an attempt to lay some very first conceptual foundations for the now burgeoning field of research on mind wandering, the third section proposes two new criteria for individuating single episodes of mind-wandering, namely, the “self-representational blink” (SRB) and a sudden shift in the phenomenological “unit of identification” (UI). I close by specifying a list of potentially innovative research goals that could serve to establish a stronger connection between mind wandering research and philosophy of mind.

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Section: Introduction: the Relevance Of Mind Wandering Research For Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy

Metzinger

2013

Front. Psychol.

106

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“…A central methodological concern shared by philosophers and empirical psychologists alike is the status of first-person reports, for example as gathered from sleep laboratories (cf. Windt, 2013): How reliable are they, and are there really “first-person data” in a literal sense that could be taken at face value, directly entering the process of scientific theory formation? During the last three decades, research on the problem of conscious experience has emerged as a field of systematic, rigorous research in its own right (Metzinger, 1995, 2000; Seth, 2007).…”

Section: The Relevance Of Dream Research For Philosophy Of Mind—and Vmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In principle, subjects in sleep laboratories could suffer from massive memory losses or distortions, or confabulate about their own phenomenology without knowing (Rosen, 2013). In practice, however, when taking into account all our background knowledge, prior probabilities and considerations of simplicity, we are justified in a simple inference to the best explanation stating that dream reports, at least when gathered under certain ideal reporting conditions, will be veridical (Windt, 2013). …”

Section: Philosophy and Dream Research: Promising Contact Pointsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why are dreams interesting for philosophers? The example of minimal phenomenal selfhood, plus an agenda for future research1

Metzinger

2013

Front. Psychol.

104

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This metatheoretical paper develops a list of new research targets by exploring particularly promising interdisciplinary contact points between empirical dream research and philosophy of mind. The central example is the MPS-problem. It is constituted by the epistemic goal of conceptually isolating and empirically grounding the phenomenal property of “minimal phenomenal selfhood,” which refers to the simplest form of self-consciousness. In order to precisely describe MPS, one must focus on those conditions that are not only causally enabling, but strictly necessary to bring it into existence. This contribution argues that research on bodiless dreams, asomatic out-of-body experiences, and full-body illusions has the potential to make decisive future contributions. Further items on the proposed list of novel research targets include differentiating the concept of a “first-person perspective” on the subcognitive level; investigating relevant phenomenological and neurofunctional commonalities between mind-wandering and dreaming; comparing the functional depth of embodiment across dream and wake states; and demonstrating that the conceptual consequences of cognitive corruption and systematic rationality deficits in the dream state are much more serious for philosophical epistemology (and, perhaps, the methodology of dream research itself) than commonly assumed. The paper closes by specifying a list of potentially innovative research goals that could serve to establish a stronger connection between dream research and philosophy of mind.

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“…Awakening was provoked by calling the subject's name over an intercom, and the dream report was elicited using the nondirective Foulkes' instructions (Foulkes, 1962). This 'spontaneous' report, as resulting from free recall of previous dream experience, can be considered representative of what the subject would have recalled if he/she had been woken up in the same sleep stage at home (Schredl et al, 2003;Windt, 2013).…”

Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time‐of‐night variations in the story‐like organization of dream experience developed during rapid eye movement sleep

Cipolli

Guazzelli

Bellucci

et al. 2014

Journal of Sleep Research

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Summary This study aimed to investigate the cycles (2nd/4th) and duration‐related (5/10 min) variations in the story‐like organization of dream experience elaborated during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Dream reports were analysed using story grammar rules. Reports were provided by those subjects (14 of 22) capable of reporting a dream after each of the four awakenings provoked in 2 consecutive nights during REM sleep of the 2nd and 4th cycles, after periods of either 5 or 10 min, counterbalanced across the nights. Two researchers who were blind as to the sleep condition scored the dream reports independently. The values of the indicators of report length (measured as value of total word count) and of story‐like organization of dream reports were matched taking time‐of‐night (2nd and 4th cycles) and REM duration (5 versus 10 min) as factors. Two‐way analyses of variance showed that report length increased significantly in 4th‐cycle REM sleep and nearly significantly for longer REM duration, whereas the number of dream‐stories per report did not vary. The indices of sequential (number of statements describing the event structure developed in the story) and hierarchical (number of episodes per story) organization increased significantly only in dream‐stories reported after 10 min of 4th‐cycle REM sleep. These findings indicate that the characteristics of structural organization of dream‐stories vary along with time of night, and suggest that the elaboration of a long and complex dream‐story requires a fairly long time and the availability of a great amount of cognitive resources to maintain its continuity and coherence.

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Reporting dream experience: Why (not) to be skeptical about dream reports

Cited by 71 publications

References 90 publications

The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy

The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy

Why are dreams interesting for philosophers? The example of minimal phenomenal selfhood, plus an agenda for future research1

Time‐of‐night variations in the story‐like organization of dream experience developed during rapid eye movement sleep

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