Distinguishing between dreams and "real world"

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Cosmin Visan

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Nov 14, 2019, 4:50:45 AM11/14/19
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What would be a sure phenomenon that can help us distinguish between dreams and "real world" ? Because no matter how illogical a dream world might be, this doesn't make us realize that we are in a dream. So the randomness of a dream world is not a phenomenon that can help us distinguish between dreams and "real world". What I'm thinking that can help us make the discrimination is the phenomenon of sense disappearance. If we keep a sense on only 1 stimulus, eventually we will stop perceiving the stimulus. For example, if we hold our hand on the leg of a girl, at first it is pleasant, but after a time we will stop feeling anything. We will have to pet the leg of the girl in order to feel it again. Would such a phenomenon happen in dreams ? If not, then this would be a distinguishing hallmark between dreams and "real world". Do you have other ideas ?

Bruno Marchal

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Nov 14, 2019, 7:55:12 AM11/14/19
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On 14 Nov 2019, at 10:50, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

What would be a sure phenomenon that can help us distinguish between dreams and "real world" ? Because no matter how illogical a dream world might be, this doesn't make us realize that we are in a dream.


Not always indeed. Likewise, we can become aware that we are dreaming in some totally non bizarre dream.

It is not easy to find what makes us aware that we are dreaming in some dreams, but with training, we can learn to trig that phenomenon for some special bizarreries (like meeting someone who is dead, for example, but that is not automatic). A good selected paper on Lucid Dreams is the book edited by LaBerge and Co.(*).

(*)
Gackenbach Jayne & LaBerge Stephen (eds), Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain, perspective on Lucid Dreaming, Plenum, Press, New-York 1988.



So the randomness of a dream world is not a phenomenon that can help us distinguish between dreams and "real world”.

It can, but not necessarily.


What I'm thinking that can help us make the discrimination is the phenomenon of sense disappearance. If we keep a sense on only 1 stimulus, eventually we will stop perceiving the stimulus. For example, if we hold our hand on the leg of a girl, at first it is pleasant, but after a time we will stop feeling anything. We will have to pet the leg of the girl in order to feel it again. Would such a phenomenon happen in dreams ? If not, then this would be a distinguishing hallmark between dreams and "real world". Do you have other ideas ?


With the assumption of Digital Mechanism, we can prove that

1) There is no way we can know if we are in a simulation/dream by direct introspection.
2) There is no way at all which can test if we are awake.
3) But if we have means to do physical experiences, we can test if we are in a simulation/dream, and this by comparing the physics below our substitution level and the physics inferred by observation. To be sure, in this case we can still believe that we are NOT in a dream/simulation by just abandoning Mechanism.

To sum up: with Mechanism, we can never be sure that we are awake, but there are circumstances in which we can be sure that we are dreaming. 

I you can read French, there is a whole chapter on dream and Mechanism in the volume 3 (le cereveau, le rêve et la réalité) in my long text “Conscience et Mécanisme” here:

Bruno





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Lawrence Crowell

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Nov 14, 2019, 1:17:21 PM11/14/19
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On Thursday, November 14, 2019 at 3:50:45 AM UTC-6, Cosmin Visan wrote:
What would be a sure phenomenon that can help us distinguish between dreams and "real world" ? Because no matter how illogical a dream world might be, this doesn't make us realize that we are in a dream. So the randomness of a dream world is not a phenomenon that can help us distinguish between dreams and "real world". What I'm thinking that can help us make the discrimination is the phenomenon of sense disappearance. If we keep a sense on only 1 stimulus, eventually we will stop perceiving the stimulus. For example, if we hold our hand on the leg of a girl, at first it is pleasant, but after a time we will stop feeling anything. We will have to pet the leg of the girl in order to feel it again. Would such a phenomenon happen in dreams ? If not, then this would be a distinguishing hallmark between dreams and "real world". Do you have other ideas ?

Generally people who are not able to distinguish between a real conscious state and a dream state need psychiatric therapy. There are people who do have this problem and as a rule they become labelled as having schizophrenia. Such people hear voices and see "other beings" the rest of people do not see. Often schizophrenics self-medicate to escape this affliction and become alcoholics and drug addicts.

LC

Philip Thrift

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Nov 14, 2019, 1:49:28 PM11/14/19
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From the perspective of experiential realism (ER)


the experience that occurs in a dream could be the same as an experience that occurs when awake.

Say the experience is DaCoT = drinking a cup of tea (the feel of the cup, the warmth and taste of the tea).

A tea drinker knows a DaCoT experience when awake. They could have a DaCoT experience in a dream.

(This presumes experiences are real in the sense of ER.)

@philipthrift

On Thursday, November 14, 2019 at 3:50:45 AM UTC-6, Cosmin Visan wrote:

Cosmin Visan

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Nov 14, 2019, 5:42:52 PM11/14/19
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When did you have sex last time ? Go get laid to relax and then come back here. Internet retards!

Cosmin Visan

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Nov 14, 2019, 5:44:32 PM11/14/19
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But maybe there is a kind of experience that cannot be simulated in a dream, for reasons having to do for example with consciousnesses interactions.

Philip Thrift

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Nov 14, 2019, 6:41:53 PM11/14/19
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The episode (I'm picking up and drinking a cup of tea) in a dream may be simulated, but the experience itself I have is not simulated. At least for an experience realist, it seems to me.

@philipthrift

Stathis Papaioannou

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Nov 14, 2019, 6:52:57 PM11/14/19
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On Thu, 14 Nov 2019 at 20:50, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
What would be a sure phenomenon that can help us distinguish between dreams and "real world" ? Because no matter how illogical a dream world might be, this doesn't make us realize that we are in a dream. So the randomness of a dream world is not a phenomenon that can help us distinguish between dreams and "real world". What I'm thinking that can help us make the discrimination is the phenomenon of sense disappearance. If we keep a sense on only 1 stimulus, eventually we will stop perceiving the stimulus. For example, if we hold our hand on the leg of a girl, at first it is pleasant, but after a time we will stop feeling anything. We will have to pet the leg of the girl in order to feel it again. Would such a phenomenon happen in dreams ? If not, then this would be a distinguishing hallmark between dreams and "real world". Do you have other ideas ?

What you call the phenomenon of sense disappearance is a contingent fact about our brain. We could imagine a dream in which it happens or a reality in which it doesn't happen. 

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Stathis Papaioannou

Philip Thrift

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Nov 14, 2019, 6:59:45 PM11/14/19
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Actually the sex dream is a good example of experiential realism.

One can certainly have the bodily results [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturnal_emission ] of a "real" awake episode, but the experience (Galen Strawson sense) you have while dreaming  is real.

@philipthrift

Cosmin Visan

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Nov 15, 2019, 2:43:19 AM11/15/19
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That's the question: is it contingent to facts about our brain ? Or is it something more fundamental about how consciousness works ?
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Eva

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Nov 15, 2019, 11:18:47 AM11/15/19
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@Lawrence Crowell

Schisophrenic voices etc. are illusory, sure, but they are not dreams.

John Clark

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Nov 15, 2019, 2:34:32 PM11/15/19
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On Thu, Nov 14, 2019 at 4:50 AM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> What would be a sure phenomenon that can help us distinguish between dreams and "real world" ?

There is no sure fire method but there are useful rules of thumb, dreams tend to be far far simpler than the real world.
 
> Because no matter how illogical a dream world might be, this doesn't make us realize that we are in a dream.

And that is another asymmetry, we tend to be far far stupider in the dream world than than we are in the real world. When awake in the real world we can see the obvious logical contradictions in the dream world but when sleeping we don't recognize the many absurdities in that world and are too stupid to even remember what the real world is like at all.

John K Clark  

Eva

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Nov 16, 2019, 5:35:31 AM11/16/19
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If you want to know if you are sleeping right now, look at your hands :)
In dreams, they always have strange shapes.

Lawrence Crowell

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Nov 16, 2019, 3:01:27 PM11/16/19
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On Friday, November 15, 2019 at 10:18:47 AM UTC-6, Eva wrote:
@Lawrence Crowell

Schisophrenic voices etc. are illusory, sure, but they are not dreams.


In one sense yes, but schizophrenia is where the mind generates all sorts of phantasms, and dreams are similar. Some of these people are caught in between a woken state and a nightmare. 

LC

Bruno Marchal

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Nov 19, 2019, 10:38:03 AM11/19/19
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On 14 Nov 2019, at 19:49, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:



From the perspective of experiential realism (ER)


the experience that occurs in a dream could be the same as an experience that occurs when awake.

Yes indeed. That is confirmed experimentally. The lucid dreaming state allows the dreamer to communicate with “outside” in a laboratory, by moving his eyes, or the time of the fingers. The dream-REM-paralysis does not act on the ocular muscle. That has been used to test different type of activity, like counting, singing, imagining colours, etc. and the activity in the brain is exactly the same as in the waken state. When we order a muscle, that order is given during the dream, and is just not executed thanks to this paralysis. That is how Jouvet discovered the REM state of sleep (in which the long vivid nocturnal dream occurs) with cats who were treated to bypass the paralysis. Even hungry they hunt for imaginary mouse and fail to see a plate full of cat food. 




Say the experience is DaCoT = drinking a cup of tea (the feel of the cup, the warmth and taste of the tea).

A tea drinker knows a DaCoT experience when awake. They could have a DaCoT experience in a dream.

(This presumes experiences are real in the sense of ER.)

In some dream we can know that we dream (lucid dream), but in all awaken state we cannot know for sure that we are awake. Of course we can know it in the sense of Theaetetus (that is: we can believe that we are awake, and be awake).

Bruno 






@philipthrift

On Thursday, November 14, 2019 at 3:50:45 AM UTC-6, Cosmin Visan wrote:
What would be a sure phenomenon that can help us distinguish between dreams and "real world" ? Because no matter how illogical a dream world might be, this doesn't make us realize that we are in a dream. So the randomness of a dream world is not a phenomenon that can help us distinguish between dreams and "real world". What I'm thinking that can help us make the discrimination is the phenomenon of sense disappearance. If we keep a sense on only 1 stimulus, eventually we will stop perceiving the stimulus. For example, if we hold our hand on the leg of a girl, at first it is pleasant, but after a time we will stop feeling anything. We will have to pet the leg of the girl in order to feel it again. Would such a phenomenon happen in dreams ? If not, then this would be a distinguishing hallmark between dreams and "real world". Do you have other ideas ?

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Bruno Marchal

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Nov 19, 2019, 10:39:09 AM11/19/19
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On 14 Nov 2019, at 23:44, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

But maybe there is a kind of experience that cannot be simulated in a dream, for reasons having to do for example with consciousnesses interactions.

Of course, this would require the Mechanist hypothesis to be false.

Bruno




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Bruno Marchal

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Nov 19, 2019, 10:47:35 AM11/19/19
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> On 16 Nov 2019, at 11:35, Eva <evalor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If you want to know if you are sleeping right now, look at your hands :)
> In dreams, they always have strange shapes.


Unfortunately strangeness is not enough. To test if I a dream, I often test if I am able to fly. Once I made a dream, which I suspected to be a dream, so I decided to fly (going to my school). I did fly indeed, but with some difficulties, so that I concluded that I was not dreaming, because I was not flying very well. Then I woke up, notice the illogical conclusion, and asked myself how we could be so wrong. I felt completely awake, and after noting all those reflexion, I woke up again. False awakening are frequent when doing lucid dreaming, and it leads very often to “contra-lucid dream”, in which we get convinced to be awake (and notice it consciously) just to be refuted a second after. Experimentally, I don’t know any state of consciousness not capable of being lived in a dream.

Bruno



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