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Dreams seem to have cognitive content; i.e. there are facts as to what things are, in dreams. One might say, "I dreamed I was in my house...." And there seems to be a fact there; it was my house. The next line, however, usually begins with a 'but': but it was a castle; but there was a lake; but it wasn't really my house.
In the phenomenology of reporting dreams, it's the former statement that represents how one was thinking in the dream. The 'but' clause is added on by our waking selves. It's an attempt to translate between the facts in the dreaming world and the facts in the waking world. The identities of things in the dream world are hard to pinpoint because everything in dreams is fluid; one person becomes another person, one place becomes another place with little fanfare or sense of surprise. Maybe the better thing to say would be that there are no facts about people, places, and things in dreams. It's an empirical question whether these facts about, say, what house one is in in a dream seem like facts to our dreaming selves in the same way that real facts seem to our waking selves.
My point is just to note this. Even more interesting (but harder to recall) to me are cases of reasoning in dreams. It definitely goes on, often in a surprisingly normal fashion. It's odd that valid, sound, and appropriate reasoning can take place when basic facts about the identities of people, places and things are in flux.
In the phenomenology of reporting dreams, it's the former statement that represents how one was thinking in the dream. The 'but' clause is added on by our waking selves. It's an attempt to translate between the facts in the dreaming world and the facts in the waking world. The identities of things in the dream world are hard to pinpoint because everything in dreams is fluid; one person becomes another person, one place becomes another place with little fanfare or sense of surprise. Maybe the better thing to say would be that there are no facts about people, places, and things in dreams. It's an empirical question whether these facts about, say, what house one is in in a dream seem like facts to our dreaming selves in the same way that real facts seem to our waking selves.
My point is just to note this. Even more interesting (but harder to recall) to me are cases of reasoning in dreams. It definitely goes on, often in a surprisingly normal fashion. It's odd that valid, sound, and appropriate reasoning can take place when basic facts about the identities of people, places and things are in flux.
