From: miket@hermes.tcs.com (Michael Turner nmscore Assoc.)
Subject: Re: An alternative theroy about dreaming
Organization: Teknekron Communications Inc.
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 22:01:59 GMT

In article <philip.721029378@labtam> philip@labtam.labtam.oz.au (Philip Stephens) writes:
>Michael Turner writes:
>
>>[Hobson] is only suggesting that the *source* of dreams has no intrinsic
>>meaning, not that the dreams themselves are meaningless. 
>
>  If this is the case, at which level does the meaning appear, and where does
>that meaning come from?

When you look at a Rorschach blot, and it looks like something, and then it
actually seems to *change* to look more like that thing, and you derive
some meaning from that, at which level does the meaning appear, and at
where does that meaning come from?  From the random splatter of ink?
Obviously not.  But does the randomness of the stimulus mean that there
is no meaning to be derived from it?

I don't know where meaning happens in the brain.  Hobson doesn't either.
That has nothing to do with whether his dream theory is true, though. 

Hobson is suggesting little more than that dreams emerge because you have
a mind with a perceptual apparatus that is being exposed to something like
an internally-generated Rorschach blot.  The difference is that this blot
is multi-colored, three-dimensional, has a sound track, is evolving
in time, etc, and that you are, at least at the outset, largely unaware
of anything else except this sensorial blot.

Nowhere does he suggest that dreams are "meaningless" -- quite the contrary,
in fact: without some pre-existing sense of meaning, your mind wouldn't go
look for it the bewildering storm of random, internally-generated stimuli
that occurs during certain sleep-states.  What you make of it after that
point is very much up to you.  Personally, I've had some very powerful,
meaningful and stimulating dreams.  I don't see a contradiction between 
Hobson's theory and this personal experience.

I also see no contradiction between Hobson's hypothesis and the idea that,
once stimulated by a randomized sensorium, the mind can start shielding
itself from those sources from which no meaning seems forthcoming (which
might be all of them) and proceed to dream on in purely imaginal terms. 
Obviously people can have very pure, uncluttered, highly controlled and
detailed lucid dreams.  I've had a scattered few of these myself.  But
that wouldn't refute Hobson's theory of the *origin* of dreams.

Hobson sees his theory as, among other things, a refutation of Freud's
theories of dreaming, and as supporting evidence for Jung's.  He likes
his own dreams, and by his own account, finds some of them personally
meaningful.  This is not the profile of reductionist, to my mind.

>  ....show me proof that the brain collects random stimulus and fills in the
>  gaps to generate a meaningful dream sequence, and I'll tip my hat to you...
-- [ A gross oversimplification, by the way, of Hobson's theory. ] --

I can't prove it to you.  I also can't prove something else that I believe:
that we're the products of evolution by natural selection.  I can only point
to persuasive arguments by people who have spent their professional lives
collecting physical evidence and thinking about it.  In this case, the
persuasive argument is in a book called _The Dreaming Brain_, by Allan Hobson.
I wouldn't put his theory on a level with Darwin's theory of evolution,
in terms of coherence and supporting evidence.  It is just the clearest
and most persuasive theory of the origin of dreams that *I* have ever seen.

If I have not put this theory forth with the clarity it deserves, the fault
is mine.  (Though I have to say, Hobson isn't the clearest writer in the
world, either.)  I suggest reading the book and judging for yourself.
---
Michael Turner
miket@tcs.com
Newsgroups: alt.dreams