On objective reality of dreams

(post to JCS-online @ 2011-07-22)

 

I make a statement:

Dreams always accurately reflect objective information about (physical) reality.

This statement is fundamentally true and should be basis of research about dreams and mental states. It's true also when using paradigm of physicalism - and for now, we should always consider single statements based on physicalism, proving those with any part of it and then ignoring incoherence with other parts - because any such incoherence shows incoherence in physicalism itself.

The basis for this assertion is simple:

• The reality we see around us, is thought as reflection of objective world. The knowledge we get from mental image of our sense data is objective, because we accurately map it to objective reality - but even if maps were inaccurate, sense data would still be data about world around us.
• "Sense data" in dreams, in the same way, objectively reflects minimally our brain chemistry, which is enough to say that given that our map would be correct, we could use dreams to get very real, objective data about our world.
• This brain chemistry or rather mental state is in interaction with world around us - sense data, memories, but also with surroundings on particle level. For example, magnetic fields have some effect upon our dreams.

To gain that, we should work on study of dream realities and very precise understanding of the laws - what can happen in dreams, what energies it takes, what happens in dreams without using any energy. The positive aspect is that anyone studying that does not have to have any particular position in questions we are arguing about here. Also, to form a coherent picture - interactions between dreams and reality should be understood.

Dreams, probably, have an underlying "energetic" world and associations. Why we see dreamscape as being similar to everyday reality and why some think that it's just a random collection of memories is the case that usually our mind uses partial information from senses to build the larger reality - if we see one side of a crystal ball, we actually see also another as our mind will try to fill the gaps. In dreams, there are occasional cases, where we can see the process - sense data from outside world will be used and gaps are filled quite randomly, for example people talking in kitchen could appear as crowd of people in dream. So, our dream symbolism is reflected in how we fill the gaps and reflects the fact that we take everyday reality somewhat more seriously than dream reality - we spend much effort to fill the gaps in the way expected by everyday reality and then we use it in dreams, it's like association method. It's actually very interesting case about how we always make up our vision of world - would it be darker room with some flashing lights, we would similarly make up some random images based on associations.

Here, the zen meditations of not making so much illusion up would actually make us see the reality behind the dreams. It's like that we only need the correct symbols - having set of symbols on Tarot cards, we could choose quite correct ones, but without having such framework we would not get anything out from the same kind of intuition. We can make up precise images if our mind is flexible to let it be led by intuition or if it contains all symbols needed by that intuition. We see so badly in our dreams.

But the dreamworld, is it "less real" just because it's subjective? Just because it's subject's mind? No, because if we have objective information about subject's mind, we have some objective information - what happens in my brain, is totally subjective, but it's not less objective than what happens in an ocean, even if that ocean is billions of times more massive. And things happening in some brain can very much interact with outside world, moving mountains - this is rather important data. And the lack of physical world view right now is to create a topological image of this world.

We know that how we cognitively see things in our brain, how they happen, is very different from how we see those things in physical projection, with physical devices, as material structure of brain. Therefore, physical data together with physical theories does not contain that information in any kind of accessible form, which is not dependent upon if the hypothesis that they actually are the same is true or false. Therefore, we would need a space model, where mental imagery is connected with actual world - this can be more precise, involving interactions between brain states and imagery and some specific areas of brain, but it can also be more general, involving interactions between human being as a whole and, for example, their body or a world. But to get how this kind of space looks like - we can't compare location and size of physical reality and this mental dimension and this is actual, physicialism-compatible, fact. We also have much more relevant data if we consider the both in one space. For example, we could not say, when someone plans to come to meeting by studying their physical appearance, but we can by studying the internals of their brain - through physical medium, probably, but clearly this information is not accessibly there until we take some mentally-justified action. After that we have some new information about probable events in physical reality, also. So, if we would like to have more complete image of some situation, we would consider those mental images of brain a real part of physical-mental reality, creating a more complex map with more dimensions. And, this way of gathering data is verifiable and experimental - what I described is also a real test that we can actually get some real information, using our mental imagery in physical sense, because we were able to formulate the question and use the reply to say something about the physical world.

Also, the "size" of things is actually not a physical reality - physical information about the brain is not necessarily smaller than physical information about the room, in any sense, which would make it also inferior, and in another, as much physically valid, coordinate system it could also be larger. So the statement that dreams are more illusion that sense data is simply unjustified.