Saturday, January 22, 2005

Interdisciplinary Dreaming Conference

I've just recevied word that my paper on dreams and imagination and Cartesian skepticism has been accepted for presentation at the 22nd Annual Conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, this June in Berkeley. I often wish I had more contact with academics outside philosophy in areas that relate to philosophical areas I'm working in; I guess this is my chance. I know the literature on the philosophy of dreaming pretty well, and I'm presenting a good paper that I'm comfortable with. But I know very little about dreaming from a psychologist's point of view -- the prospect of presenting my material at this conference is exciting and frightening and intimidating and fun. Now, to see if I can get the department or the grad school to fund my summer trip to California... UPDATE: a version of the paper in question is here. I expect I'll change things around a little bit, to design it for an audience of mostly non-philosophers.

3 comments:

  1. Can we read your paper?
    -E.G.

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  2. Absolutely! I'm updating the post by including a link.

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  3. Neat!

    I just read the first couple sentences, and it reminded me of a conversation I had once with a guy who claimed he had what he called "lucid dreams." These were supposed to be dreams in which he was aware he was dreaming and could control the "dream environment." (Basically, the same kind of thing described in that movie "Waking Life.") I said he should consider the possibility that he was only *dreaming* that he had lucid dreams, i.e. he was only dreaming that he was aware he was dreaming. Etc.

    E.G.

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