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I could do that in my sleep: skilled performance in dreams

  • Minds in Skilled Performance
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Abstract

The experience of skilled action occurs in dreams if we take dream reports at face value. However, what these reports indicate requires nuanced analysis. It is uncertain what it means to perform any action in a dream whatsoever. If skilled actions do occur in dreams, this has important implications for both theory of action and theory of dreaming. Here, it is argued that since some dreams generate a convincing, hallucinated world where we have virtual bodies that interact with virtual objects, there is a sense in which we can perform virtual actions. Further, we can also perform skilfully, although not all apparent skilful performance is as it seems. Since the dream world is generated by the dreamer’s own mind, it can be difficult to determine whether the dream world simply allows goals to be achieved without the abilities that would be required in a similar waking scenario. Because of this, individual dream reports alone are insufficient to determine what skills are demonstrated in a particular dream. However, taken with evidence from REM sleep behaviour disorder, incompetent dreams, lucid dreams and motor-skill practise, it is likely that skilled virtual dream performance at times involves both opportunity for virtual behaviour and the display of competence. Evidence from cognitive science suggests that dreamers can also lose competence through forgetting and other cognitive incapacities but, more surprisingly, it is possible to gain abilities in a robust sense, consistent with the idea that some dreams, at least, are virtual realities rather than imagination.

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Notes

  1. These claims are independent of each other, i.e. one could perform poorly in dreams due to having lost one’s expert skills-related knowledge or alternatively, maintain knowledge but lack a place to carry out actions. However, to say one has performed an action skilfully, both conditions must hold.

  2. For a description of the pluralistic model of dreaming, see Rosen (2018b).

  3. Some dreams might simply involve a sense of presence or minimal phenomenal selfhood (Metzinger 2013), which wouldn’t require these cognitive abilities.

  4. For a concrete example, imagine an English-only speaker offers a Chinese-only speaker a coffee. The Chinese speaker replies, out of politeness, ‘xie xie’ (thank you), which, to the English speaker, sounds like ‘sure, sure’. The English speaker gets the false impression that the Chinese speaker understood and responded in English.

  5. It may appear that skilled performance in dreams supports an anti-intellectualist stance of knowing how since, in many dreams, we lack access to propositional knowledge or memory but can still perform expertly, suggesting only procedural memories are required for some skilled performance. However, this argument will not be convincing to an intellectualist who has already rejected other evidence from cognitive science and neuroscience. The dream argument is similar to the argument that animals have procedural knowledge but not propositional knowledge (Glick 2011). So, although dreams are consistent with an anti-intellectualist stance, they don’t provide strong, novel evidence for anti-intellectualism.

  6. Dream Text: Last Night's Dream—last_nights_dream), 60 words, kb_dj_2013:kb [2013–09-19] sleepanddreamdatabase.org.

  7. According to Dienes and Perner (2002), regarding the implicit/explicit distinction “any environmental feature or state of affairs that is not explicitly represented but forms part of the representational content is represented implicitly” (p 6). Implicit metacognitive monitoring occurs below the level of awareness.

  8. Certain types of expertise may require more attention than others. For example, improvisation when playing an instrument may require greater attention than rehearsing a learned piece (Harris et al. 2017). Similarly, strategy sports may require greater attention than routinised sports. This may play a role in what we would expect from dream performance and the relevant cognitive mechanisms. Routinised skilled performance would be more likely to be maintained than expert improvisation despite the dreamer lacking attentive faculties.

  9. Hall/VdC Norms: Male: #0172 Sleepanddreamsdatabase.org.

  10. Dream Text: Last Night's Dream—last_nights_dream), 94 words, hvdc_f4 [Answer Date Unknown]. Sleepanddreamdatapase.org.

  11. One might allow that competence can be gained instantaneously and not via repetition and practice by, say, direct neural implant of ability memories. This is part of the plot of the sci-fi film The Matrix and its sequels. However, if an implanted ability, such as Kung Fu skill, was demonstrated once and then immediately lost or forgotten, we might reject the conclusion that competence was gained.

  12. Although significantly less so than physical performance, according to Gentili and colleagues (2006).

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  1. Philosophy Department, Lady Eaton College, Suite S118.1, Trent University, 1600 West Bank Drive, Peterborough, ON, K9L 0G2, Canada

    Melanie G. Rosen

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Rosen, M.G. I could do that in my sleep: skilled performance in dreams. Synthese 199, 6495–6522 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03079-7

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