Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://doi.org/10.25358/openscience-7919
Authors: Metzinger, Thomas
Title: Why are dreams interesting for philosophers? : The example of minimal phenomenal selfhood, plus an agenda for future research
Online publication date: 10-Oct-2022
Year of first publication: 2013
Language: english
Abstract: This metatheoretical paper develops a list of new research targets by exploring particularly promising interdisciplinary contact points between empirical dream research and philosophy of mind. The central example is the MPS-problem. It is constituted by the epistemic goal of conceptually isolating and empirically grounding the phenomenal property of “minimal phenomenal selfhood,” which refers to the simplest form of self-consciousness. In order to precisely describe MPS, one must focus on those conditions that are not only causally enabling, but strictly necessary to bring it into existence. This contribution argues that research on bodiless dreams, asomatic out-of-body experiences, and full-body illusions has the potential to make decisive future contributions. Further items on the proposed list of novel research targets include differentiating the concept of a “first-person perspective” on the subcognitive level; investigating relevant phenomenological and neurofunctional commonalities between mind-wandering and dreaming; comparing the functional depth of embodiment across dream and wake states; and demonstrating that the conceptual consequences of cognitive corruption and systematic rationality deficits in the dream state are much more serious for philosophical epistemology (and, perhaps, the methodology of dream research itself) than commonly assumed. The paper closes by specifying a list of potentially innovative research goals that could serve to establish a stronger connection between dream research and philosophy of mind.
DDC: 100 Philosophie
100 Philosophy
Institution: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Department: FB 05 Philosophie und Philologie
Place: Mainz
ROR: https://ror.org/023b0x485
DOI: http://doi.org/10.25358/openscience-7919
Version: Published version
Publication type: Zeitschriftenaufsatz
License: CC BY
Information on rights of use: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Journal: Frontiers in psychology
4
Pages or article number: Art. 746
Publisher: Frontiers Research Foundation
Publisher place: Lausanne
Issue date: 2013
ISSN: 1664-1078
Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00746
Publisher DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00746
Appears in collections:DFG-OA-Publizieren (2012 - 2017)

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