ArticleFrontiers in psychology2013
Why are dreams interesting for philosophers? The example of minimal phenomenal selfhood, plus an agenda for future research.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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28 citing papers in PubMed.
- A causal role for the right angular gyrus in self-location mediated perspective taking.Scientific reports · 2020Trial
- Observer Dreams: Criteria and Frequency.Journal of sleep research · 2026Article
- From self-organizing systems to subjective temporal extension.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Self, Me, or I? Unravelling the Triumvirate of Selfhood in Pathological Consciousness.Brain sciences · 2025Review
- The modular mind and psychiatry: toward clinical integration with a focus on self-disorders.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Memory, Sleep, Dreams, and Consciousness: A Perspective Based on the Memory Theory of Consciousness.Nature and science of sleep · 2025Article
- The Human Affectome.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Review
- Forgetting ourselves in flow: an active inference account of flow states and how we experience ourselves within them.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Behavioral and neurophysiological indices of the racial bias modulation after virtual embodiment in other-race body.iScience · 2023Article
- Patients with Disorders of Consciousness: Are They Nonconscious, Unconscious, or Subconscious? Expanding the Discussion.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- Article
- LIVE-streaming 3D images: A neuroscience approach to full-body illusions.Behavior research methods · 2022Article
- Self, Me and I in the repertoire of spontaneously occurring altered states of Selfhood: eight neurophenomenological case study reports.Cognitive neurodynamics · 2022Article
- Nothingness Is All There Is: An Exploration of Objectless Awareness During Sleep.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- The brain-body disconnect: A somatic sensory basis for trauma-related disorders.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Review
- On the Hierarchical Organization of Oscillatory Assemblies: Layered Superimposition and a Global Bioelectric Framework.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2019Article
- 'Seeing the Dark': Grounding Phenomenal Transparency and Opacity in Precision Estimation for Active Inference.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
- Visual Perspectives in Episodic Memory and the Sense of Self.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
- Psychedelics, Meditation, and Self-Consciousness.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
- Commentary: The Concept of a Bewusstseinskultur.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
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Abstract
This metatheoretical paper develops a list of new research targets by exploring particularly promising interdisciplinary contact points between empirical dream research and philosophy of mind. The central example is the MPS-problem. It is constituted by the epistemic goal of conceptually isolating and empirically grounding the phenomenal property of "minimal phenomenal selfhood," which refers to the simplest form of self-consciousness. In order to precisely describe MPS, one must focus on those conditions that are not only causally enabling, but strictly necessary to bring it into existence. This contribution argues that research on bodiless dreams, asomatic out-of-body experiences, and full-body illusions has the potential to make decisive future contributions. Further items on the proposed list of novel research targets include differentiating the concept of a "first-person perspective" on the subcognitive level; investigating relevant phenomenological and neurofunctional commonalities between mind-wandering and dreaming; comparing the functional depth of embodiment across dream and wake states; and demonstrating that the conceptual consequences of cognitive corruption and systematic rationality deficits in the dream state are much more serious for philosophical epistemology (and, perhaps, the methodology of dream research itself) than commonly assumed. The paper closes by specifying a list of potentially innovative research goals that could serve to establish a stronger connection between dream research and philosophy of mind.
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