Dream Consciousness (Part 2)

While acknowledging that this still does not resolve the 'hard problem' (of consciousness), in that it fails to specify exactly how and why the activated waking and REM sleeping brain becomes conscious, Hobson suggests that one answer is that the 'hard problem' is ill-posed in that it makes a dualistic distinction between brain and mind. An alternative theory is that brain and mind are two physical aspects of a unified system, the brain-mind.

According to Hobson, dream interpretation has, until recently, relied on theories of symbolic transformations of mental content and the formal approach described here does not disprove previous schemata. It does, however, supply a more neutral cognitive alternative or constitute a new solution to an age-old problem. In Hobson's view, the content of dream consciousness is the integration of recent experience with prior information. That prior information consists of sensorimotor, emotional, and motivational components — many of which can be specified and measured. In keeping with the view that the offline brain is activated in REM sleep, dreaming may be seen as the brain's effort to reformulate its model of the world so as to be a more effective predictor of its future experience.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/xdLAwuIAqgs



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