Dream and reality 

The significance of future studies is often advertised by the slogan: future is important, since we shall spend there the rest of our lives. In the same vein, sleep research can be easily motivated by pointing out that we spend in sleep one third of our lives.

The 11th European Congress on Sleep Research ! which starts its work today (July 6, 1992) in Helsinki ! will certainly give a convincing proof of the theoretical and practical significance of studies in such phenomenon as the sleep-wake cycle, pharmacology and sleep regulation, sleep disorders, snoring, sleep apnea syndrome, daytime sleepiness, and narcolepsy. Following the scientific tradition, these studies are based upon objective empirical measurement of such physiological and behavioral factors as body temperature, blood pressure, EEG, eye movements, etc.

A philosopher cannot even try to compete with these physiological and medical investigations. Of course I could claim that I do have a long personal experience and expertise in sleeping: so far I have slept roughly fifteen years of my life. But that alone is blatantly insufficient to open up any philosophically interesting perspective on sleeping.

The Nature of Dreams

Let us start with some historical remarks concerning the nature of dreams.

For our prehistorical ancestors, who had waken to self-consciousness and to awareness of

their mortality, dreams were a puzzling and frightening phenomenon. Magical and religious explanations were given to the strange visions that fall upon a sleeping man in the darkness of night: Perhaps our soul is able to depart from our body and travel to another reality, where the living and the dead meet each other? Perhaps dreams are messages sent to us by gods and demons who rule our destiny? Such magical and occultist beliefs explain the social power of medicine men and shamans, who are able ! by using drugs or self-suggestion techniques ! to reach a dream-like trance in the daytime. The fatalist belief in dreams as omens or portents of future events gave also a special social status to those who claimed to be able to interpret the content of dreams (priests, oracles).3 In the ancient world, ”dream books” became as popular as another method of divination, astrology.

What are Dreams?

Let us next proceed to discuss the ontological issues about the definition and existence of dreams. The Received View of modern psychology follows the Aristotelean account: dreams are sequences of experiences produced by imagination during sleep. Thus, to define dreams we need two distinctions, between sleeping and waking, and between imagination and perception

The borderlines are not always very sharp here: there are transitory states from sleeping to waking or vice versa; a real auditory stimulus (e.g., the ringing of an alarm clock) may enter a dream in a disguise.

Sometimes the context makes it clear that talk about ”dreams” really means daydreams or hopes for the future: Bing Crosby singing ”I am dreaming about White Christmas”; Martin Luther King reciting ”I have a dream”.

It is well-known how difficult it is to test by questioning, whether someone is awake or asleep. Any response to the question 'Are you sleeping?' counts as an indicator of waking, but no reply does not distinguish between genuine and pretended sleep.

Living in a Dream?

If there is a physiological distinction between sleeping and waking, it is a third-person criterion, not applicable by me as a test of my own state. But without such a first-person test, it might be the case, as far I am able to know, that my present experience is only a dream, not perception of the external world.

Conclusion: Why Dreams?

To conclude my lecture, we may still wonder why so many men of modern culture are so much preoccupied with dreams ! especially with artificially constructed daydreams. Why is not our faculty and activity of ”nightdreaming” in sleep enough? And what's wrong with our ordinary reality, as we wish to construct artificial copies of it?

I think the answer has to be sought from two different directions.

First, it is obvious that both nocturnal and daytime products of our imaginative faculty satisfy a vital human need, and are indispensable for the health of our mental life. Where such escapism is consumed in moderation, it gives us strength and insight in our ”normal” lives.

Secondly, the motive for constructing virtual realities may be partly aesthetic (interactive media art is indeed an avant garde movement), but primarily it springs up from the most basic ambition of human technology: to master or dominate nature. But here ”nature” is a peculiar combination of external reality and our own internal ”nature”. Thus, the ultimate desire is to control reality and our dreams at the same time.

But again an overdose is unhealthy: man's fervent passion to dominate nature has lead to an ecological crisis ! and may result also in an egological catastrophy. So I am inclined ! with the Finnish philosopher Georg Henrik von Wright ! to take a moderately pessimistic outlook on technological utopias. Science should teach us to understand nature and to live in harmony with it. Therefore, perhaps we should let dreams be dreams, and not strive to make all of our dreams real.

10 words:

1. Snoring 
2. Behavioral 
3. Awareness 
4. Belief 
5. Omen 
6. Thus 
7. Waking 
8. Daydream 
9. Sought
10. Overdose