What are Dreams Made of?

[Iacchus]

It sounds very close to the "activation-synthesis" model of dreaming, which basically says that your brainstem is sending random signals, your cortex does what the cortex does best--it interprets them as best it can. The result is a dream. In its strictest form, the A-S model does not require, as your explanation does, that you have experienced something before. When you add what you have (which makes sense to do--after all, we should expect past experience to have strengthened some associations), it explains a great deal of dream material--both common and bizarre--without any real necessity of "meaning" in any deep sense.

Or, this could just be that our brains are hard-wired up to "maintain" the effects of consciousness, perhaps like a hollodeck program on Star Trek, although we still have to ask where the "signal" comes from.

 

[Mercutio]

Or, this could just be that our brains are hard-wired up to "maintain" the effects of consciousness, perhaps like a hollodeck program on Star Trek, although we still have to ask where the "signal" comes from.

well...your comment presupposes an undefined (or multiply-defined, which is perhaps worse) entity called "consciousness"; we cannot begin to entertain this idea without first adequately defining that. Also, you presuppose a "signal" of some sort, whether metaphorical or physical, which once again is undefined (and which, in this case, seems counter to what is known about the function of the brain).

So, when you say "this could just be...", you are piling supposition on top of supposition. The whole point of the activation-synthesis hypothesis (and it is quite controversial, I admit--whether because it fails to explain, or because it explains so well that it renders "meaning" in dreams moot, I don't know) is that one need not search for meaning in dreams. Certainly, one may. We have done it for centuries. We have also searched for a fountain of youth.

Do dreams have meaning? I am personally fascinated by dreams, and honestly hope they have meaning (aside from any meaning we project onto them, like new-agers do with crystals). But do they have to have meaning? No. So perhaps we ought not ask "what is the meaning of dreams?" before we have ascertained the answer to "do dreams have meaning?".

 

[Iacchus]

well...your comment presupposes an undefined (or multiply-defined, which is perhaps worse) entity called "consciousness"; we cannot begin to entertain this idea without first adequately defining that. Also, you presuppose a "signal" of some sort, whether metaphorical or physical, which once again is undefined (and which, in this case, seems counter to what is known about the function of the brain).

To our brains it might seem like a signal, to the signal itself (consciousness) it may be entirely different. Especially when considering how much information can be "encoded" over radio waves.

Or, possibly the brain is both transmitter -- everything "vibrates" by the way -- and receiver, in which case maybe the information is also being picked up elsewhere?

So, when you say "this could just be...", you are piling supposition on top of supposition. The whole point of the activation-synthesis hypothesis (and it is quite controversial, I admit--whether because it fails to explain, or because it explains so well that it renders "meaning" in dreams moot, I don't know) is that one need not search for meaning in dreams. Certainly, one may. We have done it for centuries. We have also searched for a fountain of youth.

And yet if I were to say I have first hand experience, would you accept it then? Well, that seems to be what I'm up against anyway.

Do dreams have meaning? I am personally fascinated by dreams, and honestly hope they have meaning (aside from any meaning we project onto them, like new-agers do with crystals). But do they have to have meaning? No. So perhaps we ought not ask "what is the meaning of dreams?" before we have ascertained the answer to "do dreams have meaning?".

Yes, dreams can and do have meaning, especially if we understood there was spirutal content involved. And once again we're getting back to the collective unconscious..

 

[Filippo Lippi]

I have very lucid dreams when I am having a migraine attack. Imigran tablets usually put an end to it; for ages I thought they were redressing a chemical imbalance in my brain, but it appears that they are actually blocking a transmission of some sort. Perhaps I should go back to wearing that colander wrapped in tinfoil on my head when I go to bed....

 

[Iacchus]

Couldn't they possibly be mental constructs?

When you dream, your brain simply goes through this process of taking elements from that which has experienced, and mixing-matching them to create new things...characters or locations. If your mind's characters are strongly written, they can indeed seem real or alive as anybody. But your brain will not "invent" some sort of attribute or feature; it must've experienced it first. For instance, have you ever seen a dinoflagellate through the microscope in science class? If not, don't count on ever seeing one while peering through a microscope in your dreams.

This is typical of how the brain works, but that isn't to say it's not possible to experience anything other than what's been programmed into the brain. All this illustrates is that birds of a feather flock together or, that like minds think alike, not that other minds don't exist or, that other realms of experience don't exist on either side of this thing we call consciousness.