In article <939346576.853611 at server.australia.net.au>, Jo!hn
<johnhkm at netsprintXXXX.net.au> writes
>>kris oddson <oddson at odyssee.net> wrote in message
>news:37fd09b2.1040625 at news.globetrotter.net...>> Sleep is purely and simply a series of repair and test sequences
>> throughout the night. No magic,no reinforcement of learning. The REM
>> sequences are
>> hallucinations while the brain is in a certifiably insane chemical
>> state.
>>Then psychosis must be a great way to solve problems. Go read the French
>mathematician Hadamard, or think of Loewi, Kekule, and accounts by
>innumerable people who have solved seemingly intractable problems through
>dreams.
>This thread nicely illustrates the dangers of making extreme assertions.
If one claims, as kris did initially, that dreams are *never* worth
attending to, then it only requires *one* counter-example to undermine
the claim. John cites several excellent examples of dreams that were
"significant" in some respect. The argument is already over.
If a more moderate initial assertion was made e.g. "dreams sometimes
have significance but much of the time they don't", then it would make
far more sense, and the discussion of the underlying biology would
become more relevant as a way of illuminating some of the phenomena that
occur in dreaming sleep, rather than as a spurious "explanation" for any
dream experience.
>Given that it is very difficult to know what certifiably insane chemical
>state would be I find the assertion puzzling. I don't think we know enough
>at this point to make these claims.
>>>Like J. Allan Hobson states on page 77 of his book THE CHEMISTRY
>> OF CONSCIOUS STATES:" dreaming is not like a psychosis, it is a
>> psychosis.It's just a healthy one,"Why anyone pays any attention at
>> all to the insane psychotic stateREM sleep, and which Nature programs
>> us to forget is beyond me. It seems there are still people who have
>> read Freud and can't shake some of his absurdities.
>>>I agree with the Freud bit, people go looking too hard for meaning in
>dreams, better it comes up and hits you in the fact first thing in the
>morning. I don't think by equating the dream state with psychosis we are
>doing ourselves any epistemological favours.
>>>--
>John
>Remove XXXX in reply address
>>
--
Nick Medford
