More on Dreams

As an homage to the nature of dreams this post is poorly structure, lacking in coherence and possibly accuracy.

Fun or no?

It would be great if dreams are fun. Are they fun?

Oxford Handbook sleep review talking about a study (which seems like it's been successfully replicated): 'The main observation is that dreams tend to be negative on many dimensions. The most common emotion is apprehension; aggressions are more frequent than friendly interactions, and misfortunes outnumber good fortunes. This is also observed in laboratory collected dreams during REM sleep ' The ratio of positive to negative emotions per dream is 1:4. Bummer.

In colour or no?

Paper by Eric Schwitzgebel 'In the 1950s, dream researchers commonly thought that dreams were predominantly a black and white phenomenon, although both earlier and later treatments of dreaming assume or assert that dreams have color. The first half of the twentieth century saw the rise of black and white film media, and it is likely that the emergence of the view that dreams are black and white was connected to this change in film technology.' Erm what? So first people were like 'yeh, colours everywhere', then black and white tv and stuff came along and they're like 'nah mate, can't see any colours' and then we get colour tv and people are like 'yeh, colours everywhere'? What is going on?

Changes in methodology?

• Seems like no. The 'no colour' take seemed pretty widespread in the 50's, and pretty uncommon now. Schwitzgebel used the same study design where people reported not dreaming in colour way back when, and found that (different) people report dreaming in colour.

Our dreams actually changed from being coloured to not and back again?

• Seems like no on the basis of probably not.

Widespread occurence of people not knowing what their dreams are like?

• Seems most likely?

• I'm inclined to agree with Schwitzgebel that either a) people do typically dream in colour and people in the 50's got it wrong or b) dreams are neither in colour nor black and white (eg. if I imagine a square, the imagined square doesn't seem to have any determinate colour properties)

So what?

• Seems like if people can be wrong about whether their dreams are in colour or not, it also seems like people can be wrong on questions like 'Was that dream good or bad?' 'By how much?'.

Morally significant or no?

Does it matter if I can't remember my dreams?

• Seems to me, yes, the experiences can still be valuable or not.

• There are lots of experiences that we can't remember but that still seem morally significant

• Getting amnesia doesn't seem like it changes the value or disvalue of my pre-amnesia experiences (at least the value of the experiences at the time)

Can I satisfy my dream desires?

• Maybe you think that hedonism is a poor theory of wellbeing, and something like desire-satisfaction is better

• Seems like we still have desires in our dreams. I desire to fly over there -> fly over there -> desire satisfied -> wellbeing +++.

• Maybe it doesn't count if the dreams are satisfied in the dream, but need to be satisfied in reality. In which case maybe keep a dream journal, remember all the dream desires then see if you can satisfy them in real life.

• I think I'm probably missing the point here

Is my dream self the same person as myself?

• Dunno m9

Tractable or no?

From the Oxford review paper (my underlining)

The most efficient presleep technique of influencing dream content is suggestion, be it in the form of hypnotic or non-hypnotic suggestion or presleep incubation (Barrett, 1993; Walker & Johnson, 1974). For example, De Koninck and Brunette (1991) successfully trained subjects with presleep suggestion to incorporate phobic objects or a pleasant counterpart (snakes, squirrels) into their dreams. More importantly, they were able, also with presleep suggestion, to induce more positive emotions in dreams and improve dream pleasantness. Others have developed techniques of incubation to induce subjects to dream of particular topics or induce problem-solving dreams (Barrett, 1993; Saredi et al., 1997). There is already empirical evidence that cognitive behavior therapy that uses dream imagery rehearsal for the treatment of nightmares is effective (Krakow, Kellner, Pathak, & Lamber, 1995), and its practice has been integrated into behavioral sleep medicine. [...]

Frightening or strange images or unusual activities in dreams such as flying can facilitate the onset of lucidity. Research on characteristics of lucid dreams collected in the laboratory reveal that they have salient and vivid contents closely related to reality with more emotions and more pleasantness than typical REM dreams (Laberge, 1988). Intuition pumps or no?

• Waking up during surgery, is it a bad experience or no? What if I don't remember it afterwards?

• Chickens, do they experience things? What if I dream that I am a chicken, can that be a good or bad experience?

• Taking LSD, can that be a good or bad experience?

• Babies? Do they experience things? Do they remember things?

• Coma?

Conclusion or no?