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This is a question that I had posed regarding the nature of mental images described by patients who suffer from Charles Bonnet Syndrome here:

What is the nature of the mental images that are perceived by patients who suffer from Charles Bonnet Syndrome?

When one has a dream it is typically of a place that they have been to, an abstraction of same or of one that does not necessarily 'exist' in the world as we know it. That is to say that though it is an experience that a subject is capable of generating a report about it is nonetheless absent from the world that this report is generated within.

Like the mental images experienced by someone who suffers from CBS as demonstrated in the post above: it seems that there is no locus or coordinate in this world for that experience to manifest. The brain facilitates the emergence of the phenomena but does not contain it. Or simply put: there are no movie theaters that are literally inside of the brain. Let alone a homunculus that is behind the operation of it all. Insofar as can be told anyway.

This proposition is illustrated quite often in the form of a cloud that manifests outside of a persons head with a simulation running within the confines of it. It would be hard to imagine that all that one could ever dream about, day and/or night, would take place within a bubble that stands some odd inches away from the brain. I personally think that this illustration is an approximation of an event that we just do not really understand or know how to fit within the body of knowledge as we have today and thus why it is often conventional to use because all else that we may contemplate, in part, would stem from it. Dreams have been referred to as "counterfactual" and/or "embodied" simulations from psychology to neuroscience.

Is that illustration an accurate representation of what is actually going on? Are dreams "places" like any other place that we are capable of visiting in the world?

Somnis
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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/126844/discussion-on-question-by-tri-sat-nava-where-is-it-that-i-go-when-i-dream). – Geoffrey Thomas Jun 25 '21 at 08:34

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The world of dreams is a world without a material reality corresponding to it. It's a world of pure soul or ghost. When you think about a chess board, there is a chessboard pattern to see in your brain too. Likewise, if you dream then there should be a dreamlike pattern visible in your brain. The images and sounds correspond to non-dreamlike images and sounds when awake. The dreamlike scenery is pure image an sound. There might be no material reality corresponding to it but that does't mean it's an empty reality. The dream always has a load that is non-material and depending on culture, this load can vary.
There is a material substrate necessary for the dream to occur. That is, if someone else is observing your brain when you dream he/she will see a huge pattern of neurons firing in concert. But this is not the physical realty to which the dream imagery corresponds. It is merely the material side of of the stuff around us. For the external observer of dreams there have 5 minutes passed while for the dreamer it seems as an hour has passed.

So where do we go when we dream? To the soul stuff of matter. We experience a world of soul which corresponds not to the outside of physical stuff but to the inside. Depending on Nature and culture the non-material load it carries can influence our behavior in the outside world (or not, which is usual the case in scientific culture, contrary for example the dreamtime of the Aboriginals).

Of course is it possible that the dreams correspond to the non dream, real world, but indirectly. The member of a tribe who dreams about his/her collage being destroyed by lightning will certainly go to his village. It might even be that the everybody leaves the village next day when he tells about the dream. So it can certainly have real world consequencrs (as cases). You can say that he/she really enters the village in the dream. But the material village will not be changed. Maybe its non material load has. Because of the non material load of the dream.

Deschele Schilder
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  • So it is "Matter + Soul-stuff = Dream". The former is made out of something. Do you mean that the latter is not made out of anything at all? Or just not made out of anything that we have come to know about yet? – Somnis Jun 22 '21 at 19:41
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    @TriSatNava (nice name) It's more dream=eperienced soul stuff (the stuff inside matter). It's carried along by matter. – Deschele Schilder Jun 22 '21 at 19:48
  • I see. So matter comes out of soul-stuff? Or the soul-stuff is coming out of matter? – Somnis Jun 22 '21 at 19:50
  • @TriSatNava I think they co-exist. Neither of them comes first. The soul stuff resides inside the matter stuff. – Deschele Schilder Jun 22 '21 at 19:54
  • Fair enough! So they are just two-sides of the same coin. They are both made out of whatever the coin is made out of. Or no? – Somnis Jun 22 '21 at 19:57
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    @TriSatNava Right on! And we can "see" both sides of it. The material side (to which science can be applied) as well as the soul side, the inside side so to speak, which can't be approached by a materialitic approach only. Though you can approach a dream by neuro science, as far as neuron processes are involved. But to see what a dream really looks like you have to dream yourself. – Deschele Schilder Jun 22 '21 at 20:07
  • Well put. Though it is perplexing because this would suggest that neither of these states are reducible to each other. There is a book called "The emergence of dreaming" - G. William Domhoff where they (some neuroscientists) suggest the same: dreams have no material reality. They use materialism to make several presumptions and assessments on how they can emerge and end with an assertion regarding how, despite this process, they are not made out of anything in particular; and so it is like they are suggesting that "nothing" is coming out of something. – Somnis Jun 22 '21 at 20:21
  • @TriSatNava I think that the difference is that they indeed approach the dream materialistically while they at the sma time say that they are made out of nothing. There has to be some non material stuff though. How can the perception of color be purely a purely materialistic process? – Deschele Schilder Jun 22 '21 at 20:32
  • Good question. I certainly would not know despite all of the debates on qualia. I have heard of what they call "tetrachromats" who have an extra cone in their eye and can see more colors as a result. It has a relation to brain and EM spectrum like all else. But it is problematic either way; to reify a type of color as an inherent property of matter or anything else. – Somnis Jun 22 '21 at 20:43