But the question here isn't about whether animals have a subconscious; it's about what this implies regarding dream meanings and dream interpretations. I have an eerie feeling that a lot of the speculation here is anthropocentric. As animals, we nevertheless are quite unique in our richness of language (as far as I'm aware); we can be perplexed by our dreams, pull each other aside, talk about them, ponder about them, and so on. We can visit a specialist to analyze the dream and try to find it's meaning. But sleep and dreams are far more ancient than our lingual mastery; so if the dreams do have a purpose, either something's special about us lingual types dreaming, or the bat's dreams also have them.As far as I am aware animals dream which does also suggest that animals have a subconscious. — Jack Cummins
I definitely have experiences on the borderline of sleep in which I feel unable to move, and I think it is called sleep paralysis. Often, I have seen very strange entities in such sleep states. I do have positive experiences too. A couple of months ago I was awake, but felt intense heat in my spine, and drifted into a state of being partially asleep and for some time, I saw flashes of white light. It felt like some kind of 'kundalini' awakening, and it felt positive really. — Jack Cummins
Another countering hypothesis is that dreams don't really "mean" anything at all; that the entire act of interpreting a dream's meaning is akin to pondering why the gods sent that thunderstorm our way. — InPitzotl
I thought that the idea of the astral body probably goes back to Plato. — Jack Cummins
All the woo (e.g. "subtle bodies" "astral projections" "clairvoyance") jibber-jabbered already on this thread is just folks making shit up ex post facto generalized and myth-ified aka "New Agery". — 180 Proof
in states of meditation, and I felt so much more relaxed after the sessions — Jack Cummins
All the woo (e.g. "subtle bodies" "astral projections" "clairvoyance") jibber-jabbered already on this thread is just folks making shit up ex post facto generalized and myth-ified aka "New Agery". — 180 Proof
I don't know what you all believe in and I don't really care.
As long as we're making shit up, go hog-wild, you know. — Bill Hicks (1961 - 1994) American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, and musician
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. — Hamlet
Or the subconscious may have its own logic as Jack says. You can always try telling it to look into it and see what it comes up with. — Apollodorus
You mean by encouraging lucid dreaming? — Down The Rabbit Hole
I think not. Our brains are adapted for making trial & error correlations (i.e. shallow information domains from which to derive heuristics for parochial tasks, crafts & arts) to facilitate survival; subsequently, however, in human cultural development, inferring causal relations (i.e. deep information domains that generate algorithms for theoretical explanations) is exapted for mathematizing (predictive) models, (control) systems & machines.It's my personal opinion that we humans are mainly interested incausality- our brains seem to be wired that way as evidenced by how humanity, taken as a whole, has interacted both within, among ourselves, and without, with the world. From ancient religionsto modern science, it's been all about causality, causality, causality, and more causality. — TheMadFool
Our brains are adapted for making trial & error correlations — 180 Proof
Natural selection shows, Fool, that our mammalian brains are, in fact, fundamentally survival engines and not "truth" (causation) engines. — 180 Proof
To assume otherwise would be like thinking it's possible to be a philosopher without giving a damn about truth - philosophizing is about caring about truth just like survival is. — TheMadFool
Nonsense. Propositions are truth-bearers, so explain to me how any species without discursive language produces, assents to or communicates truths. C'mon, Fool. :sweat: Besides, species which survive are naturally selected for their adaptive traits – they "become survival engines" by not dying off.What's interesting though is to become successful survival engines, living organisms must be truth engines. — TheMadFool
Propositions are truth-bearers, so explain to me how any species without discursive language produces, assents to or communicates truths — 180 Proof
they "become survival engines" by not dying off. — 180 Proof
I do wonder if part of the purpose of dreams is to enable us to gain experience without having to wait until experiences manifest — Jack Cummins
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