Is there any real difference between reality and a dream?

[Rayman9102]

Wrong.

Wrong.


Wrong.

Raymond, you (and the rest of us) have a physical disability. You are unable to imagine or to dream without using your visual cortex. You are highly dependent on this one sense; it dominates the rest.

Blind people do not have this disability. They are perfectly capable of imagining sounds, smells, tastes and touches without visual imagery. And they are perfectly capable of having dreams filled with sounds, smells, tastes and touches.

Sight is just one of the senses.

I understand where you are coming from but my point here is to visualize a dream.. I am sure they dream of sounds but sounds without pictures. Or is this another 'wrong' statement?

 

[DaveC426913]

I understand where you are coming from but my point here is to visualize a dream.

You point was actually:

Do you guys think a blind man can dream?

The answer is, in a word, yes.

 

[Rayman9102]

You point was actually:

The answer is, in a word, yes.

Well my fault for not being so specific i know what i was saying thinkg you guys will see where i am coming from. My appologies.

 

[DaveC426913]

Well my fault for not being so specific i know what i was saying thinkg you guys will see where i am coming from. My appologies.

Which is why it was particularly odd that you came back with the same thing even after Russ corrected you. My post was actually correcting you for the second time.

Maybe you missed Russ' post?

 

[Rayman9102]

Which is why it was particularly odd that you came back with the same thing even after Russ corrected you. My post was actually correcting you for the second time.

Maybe you missed Russ' post?

Lol no, it was just foolish of me that i got his words mixed up completely. I didnt read it through clearly and just read it the first time, until you said what you said i went back and reread them all and was like oooo.. lol "Auditory dreams" lol didnt even remember reading that!

 

[M Grandin]

If the dream is just a processing sleeping brain in real world, isn't it astonishing how it can execute/animate exactly and rapidly real world events/acts - in contrast to rather fuzzy
low precision thinking process as awake? Not to mention the precise vast memory required
to execute an abstract dream. In dream I may look at a book and every word on every page
in that book remains the same, if I return to that book in dream - while awake I can only remember a few words a short time.

Why don't you have access to that brain capacity at awaken state, i.e in "real" world?
It may indicate dream world is comparable to real world in some extent.

 

[Sorry!]

I thought the brain was me. Are you implying I am not my brain?

No you are not your brain.
What ever gave you that idea?

You are a byproduct of your brain of course. Just to show you what this means can you for me control your hypothalamus? Can you turn off your vision while keeping your eyes open? Can you slow down or speed up your heart rate?

These things are all controlled by various portions of your brain most autonomic neural processes are controlled by your hypothalamus which is part of your brain. The slowing down of the heart rate is possible through meditation some people claim but I'm not talking about slowing it down through some sort of relaxing method. I'm speaking about just sitting there normally in a conversation and tell your heart to slow down and it listens.

You are not your brain what you are is your conciousness. While you dream you are not concious. The moment you become conscious you are in what is now called a lucid dream, which is different.

 

[WaveJumper]

No you are not your brain.
What ever gave you that idea?

Biology/medicine textbooks.(though it's not a fact, it is assumed that it is so)

can you for me control your hypothalamus? Can you turn off your vision while keeping your eyes open? Can you slow down or speed up your heart rate?

Some people can. It has been officially documented. Though it is still not an answer what is the "you" and what it is that forces controls on the heartbeat.

You are not your brain what you are is your conciousness. While you dream you are not concious. The moment you become conscious you are in what is now called a lucid dream, which is different.

I am not sure i understand you, if you were to take a definite position on the brain/mind duality and say it outright the first time - would it be that consciousness is not(entirely) reducible to physical processes of the brain? I am not disagreeing with your statement and merely asking for clarification.
The problem with these statements is when people start to deeply believe they have found the answer to these hard to resolve ongoing debates on the brain/mind duality. I tend to favour your position much more than consciousness being reducible to physical processes but given the conflicting evidence, it's hard to be too certain.

 

[frankinstein]

Actually this notion is more perplexing when one considers the dream experiences of animals. Does a dog know the difference between a dream and reality? If not, is that why dogs love to sleep or if they can tell the difference does it explain why they rather not sleep in lieu of the choice to take a walk or play?

 

[Freeman Dyson]

This is not true. I don't know why you say this.

Your brain perceives reality through our senses. It does not perceive dreams through our senses, rather it manufactures dreams from within, partly pulled from memories, but much of it constructed by our mind on-the-fly.

Not at all. It has been proven that outside stimuli affect dreams. Like sleeping on your arm in a painful way might invoke a dream of a bear chewing on your arm. Heat applied to the body while dreaming invokes fire or something similar. Breathing obstruction can invoke suffocating or drowning dreams. etc.. etc... this was known well before Freud's time even. dreams are symptoms of real things and actually pretty damn smart. they have a logic to them.

 

[Freeman Dyson]

Here is a neuroscientist who was the first person to prove lucid dreaming weighing in on this:

Let’s suppose I’m having a lucid dream. The first thing I think is, "Oh this is a dream, here I am." Now the "I" here is who I think Stephen is. Now what’s happening in fact is that Stephen is asleep in bed somewhere, not in this world at all, and he’s having a dream that he’s in this room talking to you. With a little bit of lucidity I’d say, "this is a dream, and you’re all in my dream." A little more lucidity and I’d know you’re a dream figure and this is a dream-table, and this must be a dream-shirt and a dream-watch and what’s this? It’s got to be a dream-hand and well, so what’s this? It’s a dream-Stephen! So a moment ago I thought this is who I am and now I know that it’s just a mental model of who I am. So reasoning along those lines, I thought, I’d like to have a sense of what my deepest identity is, what’s my highest potential, which level is the realest in a sense? With that in mind at the beginning of a lucid dream, I was driving in my sports car down through the green, Spring countryside. I see an attractive hitchhiker at the side of the road, thought of picking her up but said, "No, I’ve already had that dream, I want this to be a representation of my highest potential. So the moment I had that thought and decided to forgo the immediate pleasure, the car started to fly into the air and the car disappeared and my body, also. There were symbols of traditional religions in the clouds, the Star of David and the cross and the steeple and near-eastern symbols. As I passed through that realm, higher beyond the clouds, I entered into a vast emptiness of space that was infinite and it was filled with potential and love. And the feeling I had was-- this is home! This is where I’m from and I’d forgotten that it was here. I was overwhelmed with joy about the fact that this source of being was immediately present, that it was always here, and I had not been seeing it because of what was in my way. So I started singing for joy with a voice that spanned three or four octaves and resonated with the cosmos with words like, "I Praise Thee, O Lord!" There wasn’t any I, there was no thee, no Lord, no duality somehow but sort of, ‘Praise Be’ was the feeling of it. My belief is that the experience I had of this void, that’s what you get if you take away the brain. When I thought about the meaning of that, I recognized that the deepest identity I had there was the source of being, the all and nothing that was here right now, that was what I was too, in addition to being Stephen. So the analogy that I use for understanding this is that we have these separate snowflake identities. Every snowflake is different in the same sense that each one of us is, in fact, distinct. So here is death, and here’s the snowflake and we’re falling into the infinite ocean. So what do we fear? We fear that we’re going to lose our identity, we’ll be melted, dissolved in that ocean and we’ll be gone; but what may happen is that the snowflake hits the ocean and feels an infinite expansion of identity and realizes, what I was in essence, was water! So we’re each one of these little frozen droplets and we feel only our individuality, but not our substance, but our essential substance is common to everything in that sense, so now God is the ocean. So we’re each a little droplet of that ocean, identifying only with the form of the droplet and not with the majesty and the unity.

 

[DaveC426913]

Not at all. It has been proven that outside stimuli affect dreams. Like sleeping on your arm in a painful way might invoke a dream of a bear chewing on your arm. Heat applied to the body while dreaming invokes fire or something similar. Breathing obstruction can invoke suffocating or drowning dreams. etc.. etc... this was known well before Freud's time even. dreams are symptoms of real things and actually pretty damn smart. they have a logic to them.

What I said does not exclude stimuli intruding on one's dreams via one's senses. What I said simply refutes Quincy's claim that "Your brain perceives dreams the same way it perceives reality, so there's no difference between reality and dreams to your brain..."

 

[Sorry!]

I am not sure i understand you, if you were to take a definite position on the brain/mind duality and say it outright the first time - would it be that consciousness is not(entirely) reducible to physical processes of the brain? I am not disagreeing with your statement and merely asking for clarification.
The problem with these statements is when people start to deeply believe they have found the answer to these hard to resolve ongoing debates on the brain/mind duality. I tend to favour your position much more than consciousness being reducible to physical processes but given the conflicting evidence, it's hard to be too certain.

My position is not dualist I don't think. For my position to be dualist I think I must believe that there is something 'more' to the 'ME' that I think about. I don't though I just think it's an abstract thought about self-conciousness... without my brain I do not exist. True, but that doesn't mean that I (the abstract thought of myself) controls every aspect of my brain or knows what is occurring every instant in my brain either.

It would be a flaw in your logic to think that because I exist because of my brain that I am my brain. Red exists because of my brain is it my brain too?

As well if you can link to me some references that show a person controlling their hypothalamus or any vital organs etc. without the use of any special thought processes then go ahead and show me. What I'm talking about here isn't just controlling your emotions/feelings in an attempt to inadvertantly control these parts of your body. I'm actually talking about physically(well mentally controlling how they physically act) controlling them. (it's not possible)

EDIT: I just noticed that you said medical/biology textbooks mention specifically that YOU are your BRAIN. Can you reference any specific text off the top of your head I'm interested in going to read it.

 

[WaveJumper]

My position is not dualist I don't think. For my position to be dualist I think I must believe that there is something 'more' to the 'ME' that I think about. I don't though I just think it's an abstract thought about self-conciousness... without my brain I do not exist. True, but that doesn't mean that I (the abstract thought of myself) controls every aspect of my brain or knows what is occurring every instant in my brain either.

It would be a flaw in your logic to think that because I exist because of my brain that I am my brain. Red exists because of my brain is it my brain too?

As well if you can link to me some references that show a person controlling their hypothalamus or any vital organs etc. without the use of any special thought processes then go ahead and show me. What I'm talking about here isn't just controlling your emotions/feelings in an attempt to inadvertantly control these parts of your body. I'm actually talking about physically(well mentally controlling how they physically act) controlling them. (it's not possible)

EDIT: I just noticed that you said medical/biology textbooks mention specifically that YOU are your BRAIN. Can you reference any specific text off the top of your head I'm interested in going to read it.

"The brain controls the other organ systems of the body. Brains exert control either by activating muscles, or by causing secretion of chemicals such as hormones."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain


As far as medicine and science is concerned, the mind does not exist and consciousness is a state of the brain.. This is hardly news to anyone.
If you are asserting that you are not your brain but the product of your brain, then i agree.

It appears that the resultant emergent phenomenon - "Mind" can in some cases control the brain.

Here are some interesting reputable reports, where mind appears to control the brain & body:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v295/n5846/abs/295234a0.html

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/04.18/09-tummo.html[/URL]

[MEDIA=youtube]madoDvtKEes[/MEDIA]


What controls the brain(or if it controls itself!?) is a huge topic. If you feel like it, you can open a new thread on it.

 

[Freeman Dyson]

I was just thinking about the iceman. I saw that episode.

This whole mind thing made this thread more interesting imo. Why stop at the brain? Why can't mind control more matter? Who says the entire universe isn't controlled by mind? Is there a mental/mind apparatus to the universe to complement the physical apparatus of the universe in the same fashion as our bodies?

Freeman Dyson has some interesting thoughts on mind:

"It appears to me that the tendency of mind to infiltrate and control matter is a law of nature. Individual minds die and individual planets may be destroyed. But, as Thomas Wright said, "The catastrophe of a world, such as ours, or even the total dissolution of a system of worlds, may possibly be no more to the great Author of Nature, than the most common accident of life with us."

The infiltration of mind into the universe will not be permanently halted by any catastrophe or by any barrier that I can imagine. If our species does not choose to lead the way, others will do so, or may have already done so. If our species is extinguished, others will be wiser or luckier. Mind is patient. Mind has waited for 3 billion years on this planet before composing its first string quartet. It may have to wait for another 3 billion years before it spreads all over the galaxy. I do not expect that it will have to wait so long. But if necessary, it will wait. The universe is like a fertile soil spread out all around us, ready for the seeds of mind to sprout and grow. Ultimately, late or soon, mind will come into its heritage.

What will mind choose to do when it informs and controls the universe? That is a question which we cannot hope to answer. When mind has expanded its physical reach and its biological organization by many powers of ten beyond the human scale, we can no more expect to understand its thoughts and dreams than a Monarch butterfly can understand ours."

 

[Sorry!]

"The brain controls the other organ systems of the body. Brains exert control either by activating muscles, or by causing secretion of chemicals such as hormones."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain


As far as medicine and science is concerned, the mind does not exist and consciousness is a state of the brain.. This is hardly news to anyone.
If you are asserting that you are not your brain but the product of your brain, then i agree.

It appears that the resultant emergent phenomenon - "Mind" can in some cases control the brain.

Here are some interesting reputable reports, where mind appears to control the brain & body:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v295/n5846/abs/295234a0.html

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/04.18/09-tummo.html[/URL]

[MEDIA=youtube]madoDvtKEes[/MEDIA]


What controls the brain(or if it controls itself!?) is a huge topic. If you feel like it, you can open a new thread on it.[/QUOTE]
You're still assuming that you are your brain lol. I'm saying we're just a by-product.

This being the case when we dream our brain CAN "know" what's happening even though we do not.

 

[WaveJumper]

You're still assuming that you are your brain lol. I'm saying we're just a by-product.

On this same page, I said the following:

If you are asserting that you are not your brain but the product of your brain, then i agree.

So are you at all reading my posts before replying?

This being the case when we dream our brain CAN "know" what's happening even though we do not.

"Know" is a strong word, you can never prove this assertion. You assert that when one is asleep, his consciousness is somehow functioning apart from one's brain.

 

[Sorry!]

On this same page, I said the following:
So are you at all reading my posts before replying? "Know" is a strong word, you can never prove this assertion. You assert that when one is asleep, his consciousness is somehow functioning apart from one's brain.

Yes I am reading everything you also provided a wikipedia reference which indicates to me that you are still assuming that you are your brain.

No I'm not asserting that when you are asleep your conciousness is not functioning apart from someone's brain. It's not functioning at all or very minimally. When you become conscious this is lucid dreaming.

Your brain is doing what we call dreams for a very specific biologically important reason. Many animals dream for this exact same reason.

 

[WaveJumper]

Yes I am reading everything you also provided a wikipedia reference which indicates to me that you are still assuming that you are your brain.

It's hard to be certain, and the certainty implied in your posts is unwarranted. Consciousness is a creation of the brain and the illusion of "you" is a creation of the brain as well. I do however see where you are coming from and acknowledged several times now, that i favoured the presence of consciousness as something supervenient on the brain. But technically, as far as we know, it's all a creation of the brain and we are still just brains producing the illusion of "you".

No I'm not asserting that when you are asleep your conciousness is not functioning apart from someone's brain. It's not functioning at all or very minimally. When you become conscious this is lucid dreaming.

Life is a pretty realistic dream then. This hypothesis will lead you to believe that even gods can't be sure if they are not dreaming.

Your brain is doing what we call dreams for a very specific biologically important reason. Many animals dream for this exact same reason.

What reason?

 

[ValenceE]

Hello to all,

Holocene, you wrote

It seems to me, that if every recollection of our lives is but the result of electrical processes in the brain, then there ought to be no real difference, nor no bias in terms of "importance", between so-called "reality" and a "dream".

Both reality and dream states exist and have a common source, the whole of our body/mind interaction, our consciousness.

The big difference, imo, would correspond to the level at which our consciousness is related and responds to the environment in which it lives in.

During reality, from the moment you awake, consciousness is aimed at living our day to day life, whatever it may consist of, in direct relation to the external environment. Consciousness and resultants from our mind’s decisional processes will put our bodies in motion, from a rest state, in order to make it happen, up until it’s time to go to sleep.

Once asleep, the aim of our consciousness has changed and relaxed the focus on sensory perceptions to a monitoring level that will, if need be, summon the body/mind interaction to a wake state. If no need, then the sleep state can establish itself up until it’s time to wake-up.

Now, dreaming, of course, is one of the different phases of sleep and is most entirely mind dependant (meaning to say that a dream could be influenced by some ‘no emergency’ feedback such as sounds, smells or contacts) an as such can have a more or less strong effect on the body’s functions depending on the mind state that the type of dream creates, all the way up to somnambulism.

But it is still not awakened reality, as the situations and reactions depicted in a dream are not coming from the focussed body/mind on external environment but are mostly mind driven in a closed loop environment within itself.

A dreamer having a lucid dream, where the created environmental stimuli are perceived in such a way that the reactions become ‘willed’, can still be brought out of it by a ‘real’ external agent.

Mind you, we can also experience a pullback from external to internal domain while in a daydream state, an interesting phenomenon that is part of the awakened conscious reality.

So, “reality” and “dream” experiences are both part of life but reality, because it is linked to awakened experiences as they relate to the external objective environment, is more important and becomes the chosen realm in which life as we know it evolves.


Regards,

VE

 

[frankinstein]

To settle the agrugement I believe brain anatomy is required with MRI or similar scans to see what parts of the brain are active during dream state. One thing for sure that motor and sensory neural systems are shut down, unless the person has a sleep disorder. So just from that indication would suggest that reality is different from dreams simply from the difference in the sensory inputs. Think about it, trying remembering how something felt like petting your dog, the memory of the event doesn't come close to how it actually felt.

So yes there is a difference between reality and dreams since dreams are generated from pure memories and no senory inputs. Of course there are those who have a condition where remembering something or just thinking about something can be extremely life like, I believe its called over visualization. These people can recall a painful event and actually feel the pain. So it would seem the ability to recall sensation to the degree of how something actually felt is an abnormality that nature, at least in most of us, insured we would not have the capacity to do...

Frank

 

[Entropee]

If, after peeing, I don't feel the urge to pee any longer, I'm awake.
If, after peeing, I perplexingly still feel the urge to pee, I'm dreaming.

I sh*ite you not.

Unfortunately my past experiances tend to show that peeing in a dream results in the fact that you just peed all over your sheets... I sheet you not.

 

[the_awesome]

Dunno if this has been mentioned:

But do blind people dream? Can they dream? As far as i know, you can only dream when you have experienced reality. What about a person who is blind and deaf?

 

[DaveC426913]

Dunno if this has been mentioned:

It has. Start at post 28.
https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2436935&postcount=28

But do blind people dream? Can they dream? As far as i know, you can only dream when you have experienced reality. What about a person who is blind and deaf?

What is this "reality" you speak of experiencing? Do you think your reality with your eyes is any more real than a deaf-blind's reality with touch and smell? You dream what you experience.

 

[Entropee]

Haha sorry Dave I didnt realize I quoted you from like a year ago.

 

[the_awesome]

You dream what you experience.

Exactly. So are dreams are merely experiences - things that have happened in the past, and things that you alter while beings unconscious. So what is reality then? Well...reality exists even without your conscious mind. You don't need to observe something in order for it to exist. But you need to experience something in order for it to have existed (a dream).

 

[Freeman Dyson]

Exactly. So are dreams are merely experiences - things that have happened in the past, and things that you alter while beings unconscious. So what is reality then? Well...reality exists even without your conscious mind. You don't need to observe something in order for it to exist. But you need to experience something in order for it to have existed (a dream).

We don't know for that sure. We probably won't know until we can actually project dreams on a screen. Right now, you just have to rely on what the dreamer tells you was in their dream. Which obviously isn't very scientific.

 

[Freeman Dyson]

On this same page, I said the following:



So are you at all reading my posts before replying?





"Know" is a strong word, you can never prove this assertion. You assert that when one is asleep, his consciousness is somehow functioning apart from one's brain.

You are conscious during dreams. Or else you wouldn't remember them. You could almost say that in dreams, you are conscious of the unconscious. There has to be some consciousness. Lucid dreams are totally conscious and can signal the outside world through preestablished patterns, like eye blinking. That's how the first neuroscientist proved lucid dreaming.

Your mind knows what is up when it is sleeping. Some part of it does anyway. It has some inkling of what is going on in reality. It can detect signal among the noise. You are more likely to wake up when your name is called than somebody else's for example.

"Stephen: Basically, people were thinking of the dream as a product of the unconscious mind, and of Freud’s idea that the dream is the royal road to the unconscious. From that they seemed to develop the mistaken idea that dreams are themselves unconscious somehow, but they’re not, they’re conscious experiences, otherwise you couldn’t report them. It’s true that the source of dreams is largely unconscious and we don’t know why things happen in the typical dream. In that sense much of the dream content is unconsciously determined but that doesn’t mean that the experience is unconscious"

I am very interested in the intuition and spur of genius that has been reported from dreams. Wolfgang Pauli was big on dreams and claimed they gave him fantastic insight into his science. Things he never considered in his waking life. Einstein was also big on intuition and was inspired by his dreams.

 

[DaveC426913]

You are conscious during dreams. Or else you wouldn't remember them.

Are you merely stating your personal opinion on this or you do have something to back it up?

Because, I believe the state of sleep - whether dreaming or otherwise - is generally considered not conscious.

 

[Sorry!]

@WaveJumper:
There are of course multiple theories on the function of dreams the most prevelant one now though is that the brain uses it as a way to make lifes events less traumatic and to make the brain function more efficiently in traumatic situations. This theory was put forward a Finnish scientist who I have forgotten the name of.

Another prevelant theory is that we dream about the previous days unfulfilled emotional arousals. So when we wake up the next day we wake up less stressed than the previous day.

 

[Freeman Dyson]

Are you merely stating your personal opinion on this or you do have something to back it up?

Because, I believe the state of sleep - whether dreaming or otherwise - is generally considered not conscious.

I quoted this guy:

Stephen LaBerge is a psychophysiologist and a leader in the scientific study of lucid dreaming.

His technique of signalling to a collaborator monitoring his EEG with agreed-upon eye movements during REM became the first published, scientifically-verified signal from a dreamer's mind to the outside world.

Stephen: Basically, people were thinking of the dream as a product of the unconscious mind, and of Freud’s idea that the dream is the royal road to the unconscious. From that they seemed to develop the mistaken idea that dreams are themselves unconscious somehow, but they’re not, they’re conscious experiences, otherwise you couldn’t report them. It’s true that the source of dreams is largely unconscious and we don’t know why things happen in the typical dream. In that sense much of the dream content is unconsciously determined but that doesn’t mean that the experience is unconscious.

http://www.futurehi.net/docs/Laberge_WakingDreamer.html

 

[DaveC426913]

I'm sure there's more to his claim than what you've quoted. I hope there is, because this:

I quoted this guy:
...they’re conscious experiences, otherwise you couldn’t report them.

is just silly logic.

 

[Freeman Dyson]

I'm sure there's more to his claim than what you've quoted. I hope there is, because this:

is just silly logic.

How so? What other unconscious experiences have you ever reported?

 

[DaveC426913]

How so? What other unconscious experiences have you ever reported?

Well, dreams.

You can't use circular logic to demonstrate that dreams are a conscious experience. The burden is on you to show that dreams are a conscious experience.

How does reporting chan ge anything? I am reporting the memory of the dream.

 

[Freeman Dyson]

There are different levels of conscious here. Conscious as in self aware. Or conscious as in being able to perceive. My cat is conscious in the sense that he can perceive. But he is not self aware. So I say all dreams are conscious because were are perceving things, and then remembering these perceptions.

Have you ever had a dream where you knew you were dreaming? Can you think in your dreams? Reason? The reasoning may be flawed but you can still do it. You try to problem solve in dreams.

Conscious#

1. Having an awareness of one's environment and one's own existence, sensations, and thoughts. See synonyms at aware.

A: Mentally perceptive or alert; awake: The patient remained fully conscious after the local anesthetic was administered.

2. Capable of thought, will, or perception: the development of conscious