Oneiric experiences

Oneiric experiences. Emmett, K. Philosophical Studies, 34(4):445–450, 1978.

[first paragraph] We sometimes awake with an impression of having experienced imagery, thoughts and feelings while asleep; we call these experienced episodes dreams. The issue I want to examine here is the extent to which we are justified in supposing that such episodes are consciously experienced during sleep and remembered afterward. It has been widely argued that we have, at best, only circumstantial evidence for these suppositions. One source of evidence is the fact that it strongly seems to us that when we remember a dream we are recalling a series of experiences that occurred prior to waking. In some cases it is virtually impossible to doubt that they were being experienced just prior to waking. Most dreams require some effort to recall, however, and with these our belief that what we are trying to recall is some- thing we experienced may be based on the similarity between the process of reconstructing the dream from suddenly-remembered fragments and that of recalling any other largely forgotten event. Although such considerations may be psychologically persuasive, many have argued that they do not constitute conclusive evidence for the correctness of our beliefs, for it is logically possible that dreams do not occur prior to waking, and hence are not remembered at all. What we call remembering a dream may be the result of a misplaced mnemonic quality that attaches to our confused waking thoughts and fantasies, making it seem as though we remembered something that, in fact, has never occurred.

@article{Emmett1978,
abstract = {[first paragraph] We sometimes awake with an impression of having experienced imagery, thoughts and feelings while asleep; we call these experienced episodes dreams. The issue I want to examine here is the extent to which we are justified in supposing that such episodes are consciously experienced during sleep and remembered afterward. It has been widely argued that we have, at best, only circumstantial evidence for these suppositions. One source of evidence is the fact that it strongly seems to us that when we remember a dream we are recalling a series of experiences that occurred prior to waking. In some cases it is virtually impossible to doubt that they were being experienced just prior to waking. Most dreams require some effort to recall, however, and with these our belief that what we are trying to recall is some- thing we experienced may be based on the similarity between the process of reconstructing the dream from suddenly-remembered fragments and that of recalling any other largely forgotten event. Although such considerations may be psychologically persuasive, many have argued that they do not constitute conclusive evidence for the correctness of our beliefs, for it is logically possible that dreams do not occur prior to waking, and hence are not remembered at all. What we call remembering a dream may be the result of a misplaced mnemonic quality that attaches to our confused waking thoughts and fantasies, making it seem as though we remembered something that, in fact, has never occurred.},
author = {Emmett, Kathleen},
doi = {10.1007/BF00364709},
file = {:Users/michaelk/Library/Application Support/Mendeley Desktop/Downloaded/Emmett - 1978 - Oneiric experiences.pdf:pdf},
issn = {0031-8116},
journal = {Philosophical Studies},
number = {4},
pages = {445--450},
title = {{Oneiric experiences}},
url = {http://link.springer.com/10.1007/BF00364709},
volume = {34},
year = {1978}
}

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