dreaming an impossible dream

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Dreaming an Impossible DreamAuthor(s): D. S. MannisonSource: Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Jun., 1975), pp. 663-675Published by: Canadian Journal of PhilosophyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40230541 .

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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY Volume IV, Number 4, June 1975

Dreaming an Impossible Dream *

D. S. MANNISON, University of Queensland

I

Norman Malcolm wrote:

That something is implausible or impossible does not go to show that I did not dream it In a dream / can do the impossible in every sense of the word.1

Malcolm nowhere suggests why this remark should be regarded as true.

Indeed, many philosophers would regard it is palpably false. After all, it is not at all obvious that one can hope for, intend to do, or believe what is in every sense of the word, impossible. I think, however, that Malcolm's observation is correct; and this paper is devoted to showing why it is correct. In the concluding section I present an account of dreaming that shows why it is that impossible dreams are

possible. "What can a person dream?" This is an odd query; and what it might mean

to put this question (if, indeed, it is a sensible question) is not at all transparent. It is not like asking what a person might dream, when this is understood as a

request for what someone is likely to dream, or what one may reasonably expect someone to dream, say, on the evening of a day in which one had visited a dentist. It would be equally puzzling to ask what a person can do; particularly if the questioner made it clear that one was not asking to be instructed in the

physiological and anatomical liabilities and limits of a biological species. People cannot cross oceans in a single prodigious leap; i.e. nobody can do that now, but,

* I am grateful to the editors of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, and

particularly to Professor John King-Farlow, for several helpful and constructive criticisms of earlier drafts of this paper.

1. Norman Malcolm, Dreaming (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959) p. 57.

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perhaps, someday someone (or all of us) will be appropriately physically endowed to do just that.

One can, of course, dream of other places and other time; i.e. of places one has never been, of places which do not now exist or never have existed, of times which never were ("I dreamt of an era long ago when Peruvians ruled over Greece."), of persons one has never met, or of persons who have never existed ("I dreamt I dined with the present King of France."). To report such dreams is not to reveal to the world my ignorance of it. To report that last night I dreamt that I dined with the present King of France is not to assert, imply or presuppose that / believe now or did believe at any time that there is a present King of France.

When one reports "I dreamt that....'1, are there any rules governing (or restrictions upon) what can be filled-in, such that "I dreamt that...." is a possible dream report? When we sketch the contours of the permissible elements constituting the domain of accusatives for a given verb, we are therein, contributing to an elucidation of the "sense" of the verb in question. (This is the flame that welds "intension" to "extension" in the case of verbs.) This is why "One cannot remember the future.", "One cannot foretell the past.", "One cannot be ashamed of what one believes was right.", "One cannot see what isn't there.", "One cannot be reminded of what one has never heard of.", "One cannot hope for what one doesn't want.", "One cannot expect what one believes cannot occur." are neither empirical generalizations nor remarks on human limitations. (An omnipotent God is likewise bound.) In the sense that essence is distilled from grammar, in exploring the accusatives of these verbs we are, thereby, mapping our understanding of memory, prediction, shame, seeing, being reminded, hope, and expectation.

The compilation, however, of a catalogue of accusatives, however large, will be of only limited value for delineating the sense of one verb from another. The intersections will be just too enormous. E.g. I can hope that there will be world

peace, believe that there will be world peace, expect there to be world peace, imagine that there will be world peace, yearn for world peace, desire or want world peace, be afraid that there will be world peace, envy or despise a world at peace, and dream about a peaceful world. What is needed, in addition to determining what sort of things fall outside the "accusative range" of a verb, is an examination of the pattern of relevant queries and responses for elements of the accusative range. E.g. if someone said that he was afraid that there will be world peace, he might be reasonably asked what adverse consequence he believes that world peace would have; while if someone said that he believed that there will be world peace, it would be reasonable to ask his reasons (grounds, basis, evidence, authority) for such a belief.

Suppose someone says that he believes that there will be world peace. If one is not concerned with why he so believes, one might still be interested in how he conceives a world that is at peace. He might reasonably be asked to describe

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what such a world might be like. The same would be true if he had said that he was thinking of, hoping for, wishing that there would be, imagining, or fearful of, a world at peace. If, however, he was unable to produce some (perhaps quite general) characterization of a peaceful world, we should be, I suggest, unwilling to agree that he held the belief he alleged to have.

The point here is that although nobody has been acquainted with a world at peace (or a world in which Peruviansruled Greece), it makes sense to have cognitive and affective attitudes about such possible worlds. The employment of 'possible* in the preceding sentence is quite deliberate (and calculated). The notion here of a "possible world" just is the notion of a describable world.

The thesis defended here is neither as radical or counterintuitive as it may appear at first blush. It is not suggested here that one can think, believe, assert, or entertain what is without sense. What is claimed, however, is that the accusative of 'to dream* does not contain propositions which have been thought, believed, asserted, or "entertained" in any manner. Consequently, dream narratives are not stories about events that occurred while one was asleep. This matter is to be discussed in Section III.

II

As the verb 'to imagine' probably has one of the most (if not the most) unrestricted accusative ranges of all the cognitive and affective verbs, it will serve as an excellent control case for comparison with 'to dream*. I shall show, in contrast to 'to imagine' that there is no need for an accusative of 'to dream' to make sense. A series of cases will be examined in which the difference between the two verbs become progressively disparate.

(1) Jones says that he has imagined The Great Wall of China, although he has neither seen the Wall nor pictures of it. We might ask him to say just what it is that he has imagined; i.e. request that he describe the content of the accusative of 'imagine'. This is somewhat like asking, "What sort of thing do you take the Great Wall of China to be?'* Jones might reply that he imagines it to be made of red brick, topped with gleaming iron spikes. Of course, this is not what The Great Wall is, really, like; but it makes no difference. I.e. Jones can still imagine it that way. Another bit of imagining that Jones might report is his having imagined dancing lightly across the spikes atop The Great Wall. Once again, included in his characterization of the content of his imagining will be some description of the Wall.

It will be important later that we note here that when we inquire after the content of Jones's imaginings it will not be appropriate to ask Jones how he knew it was The Great Wall of China that he was imagining; no more appropriate than to ask him how he knew that it was his dancing along the top of the wall that he had imagined, rather, than, say, galloping across the spikes. (If someone

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says that he believes that snow is white. I should say, likewise, that there is no

point to asking him how he knows that his belief is about snow and its color, and not, say, about raindrops and their shapes. When someone says, "Snow is

white", it is without sense to ask him how he knows that by employing 'snow* he means to be talking about snow.)

(la) Jones reports that last night he dreamt about The Great Wall of China, although acknowledging that he has neither seen the Wall nor any pictures of it. If we ask him what he dreamt it looked like, he might say either: (i) that he has now "forgotten" what he dreamt it looked like, or (ii) that his dream did not include his dreaming that the Wall looked any particular way. (Some philosophers, e.g. Malcolm, might wish to argue that these are equivalent responses. Whatever the truth is on this point will not affect my argument.) Jones might report that he dreamt that there was a war raging on the China side of the Wall. Having such a dream does not necessitate dreaming that one saw the

Wall, or dreaming that the Wall looked any particular way. The point here is that The Great Wall of China* can be employed in a report of a dream without a

description of the Wall being a necessary component of the dream report. It was

noted, earlier, that one is not conceptually entitled to ask how someone knew that he had imagined this rather than that. Similarly, one is not entitled to ask another how he knew that it was The Great Wall of China of which he dreamt, and not the sewers of Paris. Dream reports are not low-level epistemic claims.

(2) Jones says that he has imagined watching nothingness negating itself

rapidly , confessing that although he does remember hearing such a phrase at some time, he has no idea what might possibly be meant by this. In this case, unlike the first, Jones is unable to present, even generally or vaguely, the content of the accusative of 'to imagine'. One might pursue this with Jones by asking when he imagined what he claims to have imagined, and Jones responds that it was about 1.15 on the previous day; remembering the time because it was

immediately prior to going to lunch. Suppose we ask him if he can remember what he had been imagining or otherwise doing just before and after he imagined nothingness negating itself rapidly, and Jones says that just before that he had been imagining what it would be like to be skiing down a well-packed slope in Sun Valley (p), and that right after he imagined how his wife would look in the new dress she bought (q).

Jones has now alleged, in effect, that his imagining was not temporally contiguous with his imagining qt but that his imagining r occurred between them. It would be reasonable to ask him how he divided (or now divides) his

day-dreaming of yesterday into distinct temporal segments. This is not to ask him how he knew that it wasp that he imagined before q and not the other way round; but rather how he determined (or now determines) that he was imagining anything at all between his imagining thatp and his imagining that 9. Imagining, hoping for, being angry at, and wondering about something are "occurrences" in our lives, and consequently, can be spoken of as coming before or after other

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occurrences. With respect to distinct members of the accusative range ot a single verb, the sole criterion of identity and individuation is the specification of a content for the accusative. If then, Jones is not able to individuate, by a description of the content of his putative imagining that nothingness was negating itself rapidly, he has no rational justification for asserting that it was three distinct things he had imagined yesterday, rather than, say, two things with a time gap between them.

(2a) Jones says that last night he dreamt that he was watching nothingness negating itself rapidly, and confesses that although he has heard such a phrase, he neither now nor ever has had the slightest idea of what someone could mean by it. The temporal aspect of 'to imagine', however, is not present when dreams are talked about. It is consistent with one's reporting having dreamt that that one (during the evening in which one has the dream that o) dreamt nothing at all before or after having dreamt that o. Unlike imagining, a consideration of what one dreamt does not involve determining that one dreamt. Consequently, the ability to further characterize the content of a dream that has been reported is not a necessary condition for establishing that one had had a dream.

The point above, however, is not to be confused with a different point which I have no desire to defend, namely, the view that sincerely asserting "I dreamt last night that p" is sufficient for the truth of "Last night I dreamt that p". It is possible that last night while I was sound asleep someone (perhaps after injecting a drug into me) woke me, rousted me from my bed, and took me on a Donleavian tour of the city, and finally, brought me back to my bed. Upon awakening, perhaps being puzzled by why I had slept so much later than usual, I sincerely assert that last night I had an unusual and exciting dream. In such a case, that I had or had not dreamt has nothing at all to do with a specification of the content of the putative dream; and it is concerning this that the grammar of

'imagine' and 'dream' diverge. 2

2. Malcolm, p. 84: Malcolm, however, appears to be saying that such a case as the one presented here is unimaginable; or, at best, "metaphysical". He writes: "if one knew that someone was telling a dream in all naturalness and sincerity, one would have to be in a philosophical humour to propound a doubt as to whether a dream had really occurred during his sleep or whether he was mistaken in thinking so". Malcolm's language is obscure: Does he mean that if someone knew that another was telling a dream, then he could not rationally, question whether the speaker had really dreamt? This., of course, would not be a remark about dreaming, but about the sense of 'know1; i.e. if a knows thatp, a cannot raise a doubt about p. Malcolm, I suggest, does not mean this, but rather, means something like: If one knew that someone was sincerely telling what he believed to be a dream, then one cannot question whether he had dreamt. This however, as the story above shows, is clearly false.

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(3) Jones says that he has been imagining that he found a basketful of round squares. He acknowledges that it is logically impossible for anything to be both round and square. He explains that what he had imagined was that while

strolling through the streets of Babylon he came across a large wicker basket with a lid on it; he stopped, lifted the lid, and looked in; finding, much to his amazement that it was packed solid with shiny baubles each of which were both round and square. In spelling-out for us just what he had imagined, Jones has told a story in which each part (e.g. the streets of Babylon, the wicker basket, the lifting of the lid) could be spelled-out in greater detail. Each part, that is, with the exception of the reference to "round squares". It was perhaps, only because 'round square* occurred in the initial report of what he had imagined that we have requested a spelling-out from him.

The point here is that when one claims to have imagined something, one

thereby, is committed to telling a story in which each element can, in principle, be spelled-out. If this seems a bit too quick (and perhaps it is), compare it with what might not be a contentious case: Consider Billy, an average and normal

two-year-old. Why would we be reluctant to say (or adamant in not saying) that

Billy could imagine himself trying to figure out whether statements of

contingent identity were strict identity statements; or imagining himself

explaining to someone why it was plausible to argue that Ayer's deployment of the Argument from Illusion involved a modal fallacy; or imagining what it would be like to re-write Word and Object in the style of the later Wittgenstein? The

suggestion here is that Billy would be unable to spell-out the relevant component parts of the accusative of 'imagine* in these cases. In short, Billy cannot imagine what, strictly speaking, he cannot understand.

Even if the domain of "what makes sense" must be relativised to each

individual, the domain for all individuals will not include what is either

semantically senseless or contradictory. If nobody can spell-out (i.e. understand what it would be like to find a round square or observe the nothingness negating itself rapidly), then nobody can imagine it either. Although I think Ramsey was

right in saying that if you can't say it you can't whistle it either, I am contending here that you can, however, dream it.

(3a) Jones wakes up and says that he has dreamt that he found a basketful of round squares. He acknowledges, however, that it is logically impossible for there to be anything which is both round and square. In the preceding discussions of cases (1) and (2) it has been noted that Jones need not be able to respond to queries concerning how he knew that it was a round square of which he dreamt and not some quite different thing; and, as well, to questions concerning how he distinguished the cognitive and affective attitudes he had before and after the purported dream from the dream in question. What needs to be established now is that unlike the imaginer, the dream reporter is not required to spell-out the relevant components of his dream.

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Before continuing, however, it is important to note that the tact that dream avowals are not absolutely incorrigible does not affect the present argument. It was an essential feature of the case involving the corrigible dream avowal that the avower had not been sound asleep during the entire period between initially falling asleep and waking up with the false belief that he had had a dream. In this

case, and as well, in cases (1) and (2), Jones has been sound asleep during the entire relevant period.

When someone says that he has imagined, or that he is going to undertake to

imagine, what it would be like to do or be something, he can always be asked, at

least, to try to embellish his initial account; i.e. to spell-out in greater detail what he has imagined. That one can undertake, try, or attempt to imagine something, and cannot try to dream about something (which is not the same as trying to

bring it about that one has a dream of a certain sort), is one fact that

distinguishes the grammar of 'to imagine* and 'to dream*. There are, of course limits reasonably recognized on just how far one can spell-out what one

imagines. The limit of one's imagination /5 the limit of one's ability to spell-out. A dream report, however, is a report of just that dream and of nothing else.

Jones could note that in the past he had had a similar, but more elaborate

dream, and discuss just those respects in which the earlier dream had had more detail. But then Jones would be talking about two dreams, and in no way spelling-out the dream in question. He can employ the dream report as a basis for imagining something or other; but then, he is no longer talking about a dream.

One cannot imagine being an elephant simpliciter. I.e. If one imagines being an elephant, then one imagines what one looks like as an elephant, or what it

might feel like to be an elephant, or what one does in an elephantine manner, or some such relevant parameter of what it is to be an elephant. If Jones reports, however, that he dreamt that he was an elephant, it is not necessary that there be any other elephantine component of his dream. "I dreamt that although I was doing the things I normally did, and felt the way I normally felt, I was actually an elephant." is far from an unintellegible dream report. Jones need not have dreamt either that people responded to him in any unusual ways, or that he dreamt that he saw what he looked like. This last point is important: To dream that one is an elephant does not involve dreaming that one saw one's body in the shape of an elephant. Having a dream in which one is a participant is no less common than having a dream in which one is a spectator. Indeed, one could dream that one was an elephant watching oneself as an elephant behaving like a human in an elephant's body. Such a dream does not require a second-order dream observation.

Apart from the already noted irrelevant exception, I have tried to show here that what one sincerely reports as one's dream is what one has dreamt. If Jones wakes up from a sound sleep and reports that he dreamt he found a basketful of round squares, or that he watched nothingness negating itself rapidly, then that

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is just what he did dream. He is not required to give point to his dream report by spelling-out the relevant parts. If in not being so required, he is not required to

satisfy a demand that the sentences used in reporting the dream make sense, then it is quite possible to dream what is senseless, self-contrdictory, or outside one's "conceptual scheme."

Ill

Suppose, that the arguments above are accepted as establishing either only that dream reports need not make sense or at least that they need not. It might, then, be reasonable to wonder why this is so; i.e. to wonder why dreams are not

bounded by considerations of sense and intelligibility. I think that the explana- tion for this lies buried in the traditional view that dreams are not subject to the

will. What I take the traditional view to be suggesting is that while in the case of

all other verbs, saying that a i/'d is to say that was being proffered or entertained in a certain way. To say thattf dreamt does not suggest that had been proffered or entertained, since proffering or entertaining are things people do intentionally.

To provide a rationale for the suggestions above, it is necessary to briefly consider two well-known, reductionist accounts. Although disagreeing on just what it is that "a dream" or "the having of a dream" is properly reduced to, they are both reductionist, as they assume that "a dream" is, as it were, a façon de parler for an expression that picks out a particular of a less esoteric sort.

The first view, which I shall call the D(ispositional)-view is one implicitly suggested by Norman Malcolm in Dreaming) namely, that to dream is to awaken with a disposition to tell a story of a certain sort. If this is so, "the dream" is the content of the story one is disposed to tell, and consequently, since one has an occurrent disposition only when one is awake, Malcolm would seem to be

suggesting, counter-intuitively, that the dream is temporally coincidental with some period in which one is awake. Malcolm, of course, does not wish to be committed to the view that one dreams only when one is awake; but he does seem to be saddled with something like this. This is particularly unfortunate, as he does say that one must be sound asleep in order for one to dream in the fullest sense of 'to dream*. 3

3. Malcolm, p. 84: Malcolm dismisses the question as to "whether dreams take

place in logical independence of working impressions" by calling it a "purely metaphysical question that does not arise in the ordinary commerce of life and

language.11 If Malcolm really believes that such questions are idle, why is he at

pains to argue, throughout Chapter 13, that the scientific investigations of rapid eye movements and muscular action currents must fail to produce criteria for the existence (or occurrence) of dreams?

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Malcolm has, I believe, been led to the D-view through an incorrect

deployment of his correct observations that dream avowals are self-intimating and relatively incorrigible. This is to say that one's avowal (or disposition to

avow) that he had a dream of a certain sort is normally a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence and the individuation of that dream. But to identify "the dream" (or "the having of a dream'1) with the truth conditions for a dream of a certain sort having existed is to confuse the verification of the fact that F with the fact that F. It would retain only what I take to be correct in Malcolm's view to say that, "If one dreams, then one has a disposition to tell a story of a certain sort during some relatively brief period after awakening", is a conceptual truth. (To bend a remark of Wittgenstein's in the Blue Book: That this is what we call "To tell someone one's dream" is part of the grammar of 'to dream'.)

Before and since Malcolm's book philosophers have advanced what I shall call the C(ausal)-view of dreaming. According to this view, what a dream (or "The having of a dream") /5 is an inner (mental or physical) occurrence while sound asleep which is causally apt for the production of a disposition to tell a certain story usually shortly after awakening. The C-view differs from the

D-view, and from my own view, in at least these two ways: (i) According to the

C-view, "The dream" (or "the having of a dream") is identified with an inner

occurrence having a certain causal propensity; and (ii) The remark, "If one

dreams, then one awakes with a disposition to tell a story of a certain sort." is

not a conceptual truth, but rather, a contingently true causal generalization. The C-view has, I believe, at least two obvious advantages over the D-view:

(i) It does not lead to the counter-intuitive suggestion that dreams occur while one is awake; and (ii) It dispels an air of mystery around why sometimes one

does, and sometimes one does not awaken with a disposition to tell a story of a

certain sort. The D-view, however, has an advantage over the C-view in that it

explains why (while the C-view is, counterintuitively, led to reject that) dream

avowals are (relatively) incorrigible and self intimating. What seems to me undeniable is that the disposition after awakening to tell a

story of a certain sort has its cause located is something occurring while one was

sound asleep. Apartfrom a hyper-Quinean predilection for desolate landscapes, I see no reason why the causal antecedents of such dispositions should be identified with either a dream or the having of a dream.

The C-view suffers yet another serious liability. When one dreams, one

"dreams that ....", "dream about ....", or "dreams of ....". A person's dream may at times be interesting, prophetic, erotic, senseless, or horrifying. When a person tells us that he dreamt such-and-such, or when we (or he) say(s) that the dream

("it") was interesting, we are speaking of the dream and not of the report of the

dream. When someone reports that he dreamt about the present King of France, he is not giving a report about the present King of France; and when we say that a dream is horrifying, we are not saying that the person's report was horrifying. Prudes are no less prudish for the having of erotic dreams. Being interesting or

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horrifying, or being of or about something, however, are not easily understood as "properties'1 of the causal antecedents (whatever these turn out to be) of dream reports.

It may be objected here that I have too quickly dismissed the C-view by

ignoring its most persuasive version; namely, the view that identifies the relevant inner occurrence during sleep with either the thoughts or experiences of the

sleeper. There is nothing in this view that prevents such inner causes from being horrible, interesting, or erotic, as these are properties appropriately predicable of

thoughts and experiences. This is quite a serious objection, and an adequate response to it would

constitute at least another paper. I will, however, briefly mention two types of

considerations which such an objection must deal with: (i) If a dream is the

thoughts or experiences of a sleeping person, then dream reports are memory

reports describing these past events. If so, then there is no conceptual reason for

treating the putative dreamer's report of his dream as relatively incorrigible. To

deny a conceptual basis to the relative incorrigibility of dream reports is to

assume the truth of the C-view. Consequently, the rejection of my view in favour of this version of the C-view will, in part, depend upon accepting or rejecting relative incorrigibility as a conceptual feature of our concept of "dreaming". In

Section II I have attempted to present a case for accepting it as such, (ii)

Although one may be rightly unconvinced by Malcolm's "verificationist"

arguments against this version of the C-view, I believe there are good quasi-Malcolmain non-verificationist reasons for rejecting it. By identifying the dream with the thoughts or experiences of the sleeper, this view collapses the

distinction between "I have never thought (believed/wondered/wished) that ...." and "I dreamt I thought (believed/wondered/wished) that ...'. That a person dreams of being frightened or of thinking that is not sufficient for it to be the case that he was during that night frightened or thinking that p.

A way of looking at dreaming which preserves the insights of both the D- and C- views might be provided by examining some remarks of Judith Jarvis Thomson, in 'The Time of Killing" (Journal of Philosophy, March 11, 1971). Consider the act of killing Kennedy] an act, presumed to have been performed by Sirhan Sirhan. The killing of Kennedy cannot be identified with Sirhan's

firing of the gun, or else, per absurdum, we would be committed to saying that Sirhan killed Kennedy long before Kennedy died. (An analog of the C-view). On the other hand, we cannot identify Sirhan's killing of Kennedy with Kennedy's death, since at the time Kennedy died, Sirhan could have been in a cell bound with chains, or Sirhan himself might have died before Kennedy; in which case we would be committed to saying either that Sirhan killed Kennedy while he

(Sirhan) was locked in a cell, or that Sirhan killed Kennedy after he (Sirhan) had died. (An analog of the D-view.)

If Kennedy died as a result of being deliberately shot by Sirhan, it can

hardly be denied that Sirhan killed Kennedy, (cp. If Jones awoke with a

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disposition to tell a certain story as a result of an inner occurrence while sound

asleep, it can hardly be denied that Jones had a dream.) Thomson concludes that these anomalies are avoided if we understand "the time of the killing" or "the

killing of Kennedy" to include reference to both Sirhan's shooting of Kennedy and the death of Kennedy. On this view, "the killing of Kennedy" is real

enough, but not identified with either the shooting or the death.

"Having a dream" (or "dreaming") is an occurrence or event in a person's life; an event which cannot be reasonably identified either with awakening with a disposition to tell a certain story, or with the causal antecedent of such a

disposition. Just as Sirhan's shooting of Kennedy and Kennedy's death are both constituents of the event called "the killing of Kennedy", the disposition upon

awakening to tell a certain story and its causal antecedent are constituent parts of the event called "dreaming" (or "having a dream").

There is no need to be philosophically misled by the familiar practice of

referring to the time of an event by mentioning the time at which it was

initiated. It is convenient for a court of law to prosecute Sirhan for the killing of

Kennedy on a particular day: and most convenient to select, not the day of

Kennedy's death, but the day on which Sirhan's active physical involvement with Kennedy's death (i.e. the day on which he shot Kennedy) was subsequently to become a constituent of the "killing of Kennedy". To speak here of an event

being "initiated" is not to speak of an event's starting. It is no more true that a

person starts to dream at the time of the inner (mental or physical) occurrence, and finishes having a dream when he awakens with a disposition to tell a story of

a certain sort, than it is that Sirhan started to kill Kennedy when he shot him, and finished killing him when Kennedy died. 4

This model for dreaming does preserve the strengths of both the C-view and

the D-view, while avoiding their respective weaknesses. Just as Kennedy's death

is a conceptually necessary constituent of "Sirhan's killing of Kennedy", the

(relative) incorrigibility and self-intimation of dream avowals are conceptually

necessary constituents of "having a dream"; and just as Sirhan's shooting of

Kennedy is a conceptually necessary constituent of "Sirhan's killing of

Kennedy", the inner (mental or physical) occurrences are conceptually necessary to avoid an air of mystery surrounding the notion of "having a dream". 5

Up to now I have spoken of the inner occurrence as being "mental or

physical". There is, however, no reason to suppose that the relevant inner

occurrence while asleep is not a sequence of uncontrolled neural firings. I will, at

4. Since writing this paper I have come across a somewhat similar idea in Jonathan Bennett's "Shooting, Killing and Dying", Canadian Journal of Philosophy March

1973. Here Bennett introduces a distinction between immediate and delayed characteristics, (p.31 7)

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any rate, proceed on the assumption that while sound asleep one's central nervous system is both "active" and "self initiating". My argument here, however, is not affected if it should "turn out" that the relevant inner occurrence is a disturbance within a Cartesian soul-substance. I.e. The suggestion here is, as it were, "topic neutral", although I find it more convenient, and

plausible, to speak in terms of activity occuring in the central nervous system. It is obvious, however, from the account of "having a dream" suggested above, that I am not advancing a neural identity view of dreaming. My model for

"dreaming" (or "having a dream") is this: A person's dreaming or having a dream consists in his being disposed to tell a story of a certain sort some

relatively short time after awakening; such a disposition having been caused by neural activity occurring while he was sound asleep.

This section was initiated by the question: Why are dreams not bounded by considerations of sense and intelligibility? How does the above model provide a

response to this question? The "story" one is disposed to tell upon awakening is neither a report of anything that occurred while one was asleep, nor is it being proferred for our consideration as a piece of highly imaginative fiction. It is, i.e. not a description of anything that did happen, nor of anything that one has

imagined as a possible happening. If the central nervous system is active and self-initiating while one is asleep,

then there is no a priori restriction on what new or unusual pathways our neural

firings will travel. If it is such activity that causes one to awaken with a

disposition to tell a certain story, then there are no a priori limits to the stories one might be disposed to tell. Since while asleep one has not been "entertaining propositions" in any way, whatever conceptual or logical rules govern propositions have no application. The fact, if it is a fact, that most or all of our dreams are not of what is senseless or logically impossible is explained by the quite plausible hypothesis that it is easier, and hence, more likely, for neural

firings to follow already established pathways than to establish new ones.

5. It may be objected that this view is open to a criticism of Malcolm by Hilary Putnam ("Dreaming and 'Depth Grammar* ," in Analytical Philosophy, 1st series, (ed.) R.J. Butler, pp. 225-228), in which Putnam notes that Malcolm's account runs counter to the "assumption underlying ordinary talk about dreams: namely, that dreams take place during the night" What I have attempted to do here is to perspicuously display the logic of "having a dream" as a complex event of the sort that cannot be identified with a particular element of the event. By implication, Malcolm denies that "having a dream" is an event in part characterised by an inner occurrence while one is asleep. If Thomson's analysis of "the time of a

killing" preserves the sense of such expressions as "the day that Sirhan killed

Kennedy", then my analysis of "having a dream" should, likewise, preserve the sense of "the night I dreamt of golden mountains".

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It should be noted, in conclusion, that the argument here is not dependent upon the brief excursion into armchair neurophysiology. In Section II, I

attempted to show that dreams can be senseless or logically impossible because, as it were, that's the way some dreams may be. If someone were to accept the account given in Section II and still wonder why dreams might have this peculiar and, perhaps, unexpected feature, Section III has been an attempt to sketch a

theory of dreaming that accounts for this feature.

October 1974

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dreaming an impossible dream

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