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Features of Dreaming Souls Sleep Dreams and the Evolution of the Conscious Mind PDF
Dreaming Souls Sleep Dreams and the Evolution of the Conscious Mind PDF-What, if anything, do dreams tell us about ourselves? What is the relationship between types of sleep and types of dreams? Does dreaming serve any purpose? Or are dreams simply meaningless mental noise–“unmusical fingers wandering over the piano keys”?
With expertise in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, Owen Flanagan is uniquely qualified to answer these questions. In this groundbreaking work, he provides both an accessible survey of the latest research on sleep and dreams and a compelling new theory about the nature and function of
dreaming. Flanagan argues that while sleep has a clear biological function and adaptive value, dreams are merely side effects, “free riders,” irrelevant from an evolutionary point of view. But dreams are hardly unimportant. Flanagan argues that dreams are self-expressive, the result of our need to
find or to create meaning, even when we’re sleeping. Written with remarkable insight, Dreaming Souls offers a fascinating new way of apprehending one of the oldest mysteries of mental life.
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Description of Dreaming Souls Sleep Dreams and the Evolution of the Conscious Mind PDF
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The Authors
Owen Flanagan is James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. He is the author of Consciousness Reconsidered and The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World, both published by the MIT Press, and other books.
Dimensions and Characteristics of Dreaming Souls Sleep Dreams and the Evolution of the Conscious Mind PDF
- Publisher : Oxford University Press; 1st edition (November 18, 1999)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 224 pages
- International Standard Book Number-10 : 0195126874
- International Standard Book Number-13 : 978-0195126877
- Lexile measure : 1360L
- Item Weight : 1.08 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.3 x 1 x 9.3 inches
- Book Name : Dreaming Souls Sleep Dreams and the Evolution of the Conscious Mind PDF
Top reviews
Stephen “For millennia, the dream has been cloaked in mystery. The elusive memory, the intense events, the apparent ability to foretell the future have all been characteristics of dreams. Fortunes gained, kingdoms and religions established or overthrown, even an important chemistry discovery, the benzene ring, is attributed to a dream. The mystery of dreams was thought to have been exposed by Freud, who declared them expressions of repressed emotions. Owen Flanagan has swept away many of the myths surrounding dreams. His aim is to examine dreaming in an evolutionary perspective. Since human consciousness is the product of natural selection, then dreams, as form of deep consciousness, must have an evolutionary role. Flanagan simply dismisses this assumption as false, arguing that dreams are too random an event be an evolutionary adaptive role. Dreams are a mental “accident” of little value.
In building his case, Flanagan opens with a startling proviso. He resurrects Stephen Gould’s outmoded analogy applying architectural terms to biological processes. Gould’s famous [and fatuous] use of the spandrel – a triangular form resting on the curve of an arch, derives from a 1976 article. Flanagan uses the analogy to declare dreams as “spandrels” but follows two contradictory themes in expressing it. In one, the spandrel is an necessary part of the arch – true if the arch supports anything like an aqueduct or roadway. In the other, the spandrel is not an essential part of an arch – true if you simply build an arch that has no other role. This issue wouldn’t be terribly important except that it’s the essence of Flanagan’s argument and why he makes it.
Flanagan is at some pains to show there’s no apparent evolutionary role for dreams. Sleep, of course, is another matter. Flanagan shows how many “rest” functions occur during sleep, with reduced impact on both brain and body allowing restoration. These are clearly “adaptive” traits to help the body survive. What role does dreaming play, then? Flanagan uses Gould’s arguments and tactics to rule out dreaming as an adaptation because he can perceive no reason for dreams’ occurrence. Flanagan adopts another Gould phrase, “exaptation,” a trait that emerges in the past in one role which changes over time to assume another. No “exaptive” role can be discerned for dreams either, according to Flanagan. With “exaptations,” you never know what they are until they’ve proven their worth as adaptations. By Flanagan’s reasoning, everything is a Gouldian “spandrel” until you can properly assess its adaptive worth – some time in the next million years or so. Like Gould in his original essay, Flanagan provides no evidence for his claim since there is no means to discern any.
Flanagan’s style is impressive in most respects. His descriptions are clear and his thesis forcefully presented. Prose skills, however, don’t replace evidence. He provides a perplexing disclaimer on why only his own dreams are offered as data. He stresses that he sought dream evidence from family and friends, but that all denied him permission. With the wealth of published dream examples in the literature, this singular approach borders on the astonishing. Although examples of particular dreams have but little bearing on his thesis, it remains puzzling why he fails to use them to bolster, or challenge for refutation, his own case. A provocative book in many ways, it will be a challenge to scholars in human cognitive studies. Recommended chiefly for the professional, it yet provides an entertaining, if not informative read.”
leslie “”Dreaming Souls” clearly lays out an anti-Freudian way of viewing dream content. Flanagan’s focus on dreams as “free-riders” that coincidentally join us each night when we sleep is a fascinating way to interpret the latest in sleep science.
He offers his Laws of Dream Science to help explain the bizarre nature of our dreams without giving them undeserved (in his opinion) importance to our everyday lives. His IUD scale measures the incongruity, uncertainty, and discontinuity found in most dreams. The descriptions of our physiological processes during sleep are presented in easy-to-understand language, with diagrams and an occasional photograph to help discuss these complex ideas.
A Duke University professor, Flanagan adroitly explains difficult concepts in simple terms that even a C-student freshman could understand (which may or may not be a good thing for you). Despite this small complaint about style, the substance of this book is so overwhelmingly important that anyone the least bit interested in sleeping, dreaming, Freud, or consciousness should read it.
Leslie Halpern, author of Dreams on Film: The Cinematic Struggle Between Art and Science and Reel Romance: The Lovers’ Guide to the 100 Best Date Movies .”
H. lynch “Flanagan delivers a theory of dreams that could largely supplant the psychodynamic dream theories of Freud, Jung and others of this ilk. Freud, as is well known, thought dreams release socially unacceptable desires that got repressed in our waking lines. Dreams are a royal road to the dynamic, meaningful unconscious. Is an intimidating theory that makes it prudent either to forget dreams or keep them to oneself, or save to disclose in the confidentiality of therapy. Jung’s theories were not so narrowly based, but nonetheless he touts dream material as personally laden messages cast up from the deep coils of our personal and collective unconscious minds.
Flanagan has a much friendlier, sensible view based on modern findings about how our brains actually work, as well as an extensive survey of actual dream content, information not available in the early 20th Century when Freud and Jung cranked out their dream theories. Flanagan’s book is well worth the effort to understand. I will attempt a few highlights so as to whet your appetite to learn more directly from his book.
One key concept is that our brains evolved within social groups of our early ancestors. We need to make sense of things while awake, especially what’s what in our own social group. We are tuned to take gossip and make the best story we can of it. We’re storytellers one and all, making up a story and calling it what actually happened. We hear and see whatever fits in with the stories we have constructed over time.
The brain never turns off. Flanagan credits as dreams any mentation we have while not awake. Let me attempt report to you Flanagan’s idea of dreaming in the rapid eye movement part of sleep. If you observe a sleeping person whose eyeballs are moving back and forth under their lids, and then wake the person suddenly, usually the person will report mentation that has a storyline. Flanagan points out that the rapid eye movements are controlled by neurons in the pontine brainstem (rather than a result of a dreamer looking at images of the dream), so rapid eye movements are indicative of PGO waves originating in the pons (P) from neurons that move the eyes. These neurons also signal the lateral geniculate (G) body in the thalamus and the occipital cortex (O), which is the main visual processing area of the brain. The PGO waves are also involved in the neurochemical stockpiling of neurotransmitters secreted by neurons. The puzzle of sleep is far from being completely solved, but most likely restoring the stockpiles is a major function. Prolonged lack of sleep does lead to fuzzy brain functioning. The PGO waves stimulate neurons all over the brain to get on with producing neurotransmitters, and all sorts of mentation bubbles up. However, Flanagan reasons: “but there is no reason…to think that the content of the mentation of the PGO waves is causally related to these processes. The mentation that occurs is mostly noise-at least as measured against what one is trying to learn and remember.” (page 118) Flanagan cites research that shows people don’t typically dream about what is recently learned, although the so-called “today’s residue” does occasionally appear in dreams. The content of dreams and the content of memories we’d like to consolidate do not make a good match.
Now, the part of the cortex we use to make up stories during the day is not completely shutdown in sleep. Once the mental contents stirred up by the PGO waves interact with this part of the brain, a cohesive story may result. Flanagan feels most of the time the story is very weak. After all, we have four or five rapid eye movement episodes a night, making up to 35 a week. Once in a while we get a dilly, but Flanagan feels mostly we get noise. Not that this noise is to be disregarded. After all, he points out, the noise of a heart can reveal much about the quality of the heart’s functioning. However, it would be ludicrous to believe that noise of the heart evolved so cardiologist could make a living. So Flanagan concludes that dreams did not evolve as releasers of repressed wishes, even though dreams can be used to help ferret out all sorts of things that may be characteristic of the person. As he says, “According to the neurophilosophical view I recommend, most dreams do not express wishes. Most dreams do not conceal their content. Most dreams do not involve sex or aggression, neither on the surface nor deep down inside, neither manifestly nor latently. Most dreams do not have deep meanings — not sexual or aggressive deep meanings, nor even deep spiritual meaning. Dreams sometimes don’t mean much of anything, and they certainly don’t, as a matter of policy, mean any one kind of thing. It is predictable from the fact that dreams originate in chaotic activity in the brainstem that most are bungled, as Nietzsche puts it, or that things fall apart because the center cannot hold, as Yeats puts it, and sometimes a thematic center can not even be found or, if found, cannot be maintained in the internal chaos in which dreams are hatched.” (page 192) This is not to say dreams are not worth paying attention to. After all, the stories put together from the fragments triggered by PGO waves are put together by your very own “story maker.” And remember, your story maker is not fully functioning in sleep. Nonetheless, it is operating, perhaps less critically and more creatively than in your waking state. Your dreams are bound to have your characteristic slant which you may not be aware of unless you study your own dreams. Dreams may be noise, biologically speaking, but just as heart noises are worth attending to, so are dreams. Just don’t go ape, oops, don’t go Freud!”
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