Dreams...
In the twenty-fourth book of Homer’s Odyssey the souls of the suitors all go down to Hades. Hermes leads them, gibbering like bats, past various underworld landmarks, the white rock of Leukas, and on their way they pass the δημον ονειρων, which Homer leaves undescribed and unexplained. Δῆμον means “people, population or country.” Όνείρων means “dream.” A demographic of dreams.
Homer, whose epics present disparate attitudes toward dreams, maintained that “true” dreams come through what the Greeks referred to as the gate of horn, and “false” dreams through the gate of ivory, and the Odyssey makes it plain that not all dreams are truthful. In Homer’s epics, the dream is always of a personified divine being that is independent of time and space and appears to the dreamer at the head of his bed, eventually disappearing. The primary function of dreams in the Homeric epics, particularly in the Odyssey, is to promote the development of the plot.
What exactly does it mean to say that dreams are conscious experiences during sleep?
Do dreams involve real beliefs?
And what is the relationship between dreaming and self-consciousness?
Dreams and dreaming have been topics of philosophical inquiry since antiquity. Historically, the topic of dreaming has mostly been discussed in the context of external world skepticism. As famously suggested by Descartes, dreams pose a threat towards knowledge because it seems impossible to rule out, at any given moment, that one is now dreaming. Since the 20th century, philosophical interest in dreaming has increasingly shifted towards questions related to philosophy of mind.
Dreams bring up a bunch of deeply philosophical questions that remain largely unresolved, from the nature of consciousness to personal identity and selfhood. Can you really dream you are someone else?