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“In a dream, there is no presence of atoms; only images.”
So what I thought during a walk days ago, but this passive thought intrigued me. It prompted philosophical questions from within, does the dream world exist in the same way as the waking world, or do dreams inhabit a qualitatively different domain? Are dreams independent mental experiences detached from the physical realm, as suggested by dualism, or could they be products of underlying physical processes represented by atoms, as materialism proposes? More specifically modern materialism would ask, are dreams just the products of brain activity arising from neural connections and signals generating intricate patterns that give us these vivid experiences we perceive during slumber?
To get to the point of my passive thought, I view dreams as a whole different domain because they are not physical, so by my equating the presence of atoms with reality, I am implying that the physical, material world is the primary and the most real aspect of existence. In this context, dreams are considered less real or even illusory because they lack the tangible presence of atoms that I associate with the waking world.
If my mind is inundated by a dream within the 8 hours of sleep, then my body slumbers in bed for 8 hours. So within that time my mind is experiencing a whole different realm of experience in contradistinction to my body lying there on the mattress. So when we wake up, our conscious awareness returns to the consistent reality or flow of experience that is continuous with our identity, our actual, real identity not the ones we may assume in dreams. Dreams often involve scenarios and situations that are fantastical, surreal, or even nightmarish. In these dream experiences, we may find ourselves in bizarre or dangerous situations, but they generally have no physical consequences. Upon waking, we find ourselves safe and sound in the same bed as we were before falling asleep.
But even though we may see dreams as just an illusory series of images—even the disjointed ones—the absence of atoms does not diminish the richness of the experience. Instead, it is a testament to the boundless potential of the human mind, a reminder that within us lies a universe of imagination waiting to be explored every time we rest our heads.
