Talking in your sleep
Or is it all a dream?
Being a busy boy, Norman has to sleep while he’s doing other things such as commuting or sitting in front of the TV. The problem is that people insist on bothering him while he’s trying to slumber.
He has now trained himself to say, “I’m asleep” whenever anyone asks him a question when he is sleeping. But is he really asleep?
I don’t know. I’m not aware of people being able to answer questions while they’re asleep, but it may be possible. If that’s Norman’s only answer, then it might be regarded as being little more than a Pavlovian response to an utterance. The book doesn’t say whether he only says, “I’m asleep” when asked a question or whether any old statement will elicit such an answer. I might be able to play something which had a similar sort of pitch and rhythm to speech and find that Norman was equally happy to answer that.
But if someone told me that they were asleep, I’d assume that they were awake, but trying to get to sleep and implying that they don’t want to be disturbed.
The discussion in the book is about the role of sleep in philosophy because in sleep the soul is freed, which is all well and good, but if you don’t believe in the existence of the soul as a non-corporeal entity which can exist separately from the body, then the soul, the animus, the ψυχή, the mind is still trapped inside that tiny cavern called the head. In truth, sleep would seem to release the control mechanisms of the conscious mind, about the only insight into which we get from dreams which, I think, are recollections of things that we have done, but often presented in a peculiar way that doesn’t necessarily make any sense. I may recognise a person or thing in my dream even although the figure in it is not the entity I’m actually dreaming of. Whether the substitution is significant, I don’t know, but I’m not inclined to think that it is or is, indeed, indicative of any latent expressions of myself.
Sometimes, my dreams, when I recall them, are irrational and I can see no obvious link between the dream and reality. Perhaps there is one, but my mind isn’t making it easy for me. My dreams, when I do recall them, are often rather surreal. Perhaps that’s everyone’s dreams, although a recent article I saw suggested that weird dreams may indicate a wonky mind. I may yet end up a dribbling old loon. [We’re waiting for the dribbling to start. –ed.]
He has now trained himself to say, “I’m asleep” whenever anyone asks him a question when he is sleeping. But is he really asleep?
I don’t know. I’m not aware of people being able to answer questions while they’re asleep, but it may be possible. If that’s Norman’s only answer, then it might be regarded as being little more than a Pavlovian response to an utterance. The book doesn’t say whether he only says, “I’m asleep” when asked a question or whether any old statement will elicit such an answer. I might be able to play something which had a similar sort of pitch and rhythm to speech and find that Norman was equally happy to answer that.
But if someone told me that they were asleep, I’d assume that they were awake, but trying to get to sleep and implying that they don’t want to be disturbed.
The discussion in the book is about the role of sleep in philosophy because in sleep the soul is freed, which is all well and good, but if you don’t believe in the existence of the soul as a non-corporeal entity which can exist separately from the body, then the soul, the animus, the ψυχή, the mind is still trapped inside that tiny cavern called the head. In truth, sleep would seem to release the control mechanisms of the conscious mind, about the only insight into which we get from dreams which, I think, are recollections of things that we have done, but often presented in a peculiar way that doesn’t necessarily make any sense. I may recognise a person or thing in my dream even although the figure in it is not the entity I’m actually dreaming of. Whether the substitution is significant, I don’t know, but I’m not inclined to think that it is or is, indeed, indicative of any latent expressions of myself.
Sometimes, my dreams, when I recall them, are irrational and I can see no obvious link between the dream and reality. Perhaps there is one, but my mind isn’t making it easy for me. My dreams, when I do recall them, are often rather surreal. Perhaps that’s everyone’s dreams, although a recent article I saw suggested that weird dreams may indicate a wonky mind. I may yet end up a dribbling old loon. [We’re waiting for the dribbling to start. –ed.]
Well, it’s time I had a shower and since tomorrow hasn’t arrived, I can tell you that that’s when we’re going to be moving on to personality and whether we still underlyingly remain the same person we were when our outwards selves have changed.
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