I can dream can't I?

When you dream at night, can't anything happen next?  Yes, of course, it can, dreams are stories we tell ourselves when we sleep. Dreams are collections of clips, images, feelings, and memories that involuntarily occur during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of rest. We typically have many dreams per night and our dreams last longer as sleep draws to a close.

Scientists think that everyone dreams, but there is a small group that reports that they never remember experiencing dreams. I suspect they are wrong.  Dreams typically involve elements from our conscious lives. We dream of people or familiar locations but these often take on an illusory feel. Dreams are often interesting and can allow us to act out certain situations that would never be possible when we are awake. Dreams aren’t always positive—negative dreams referred to as "nightmares," can create feelings of terror, anxiety, or despair, and can lead to psychological distress or sleep problems like insomnia.

Why humans dream remains one of behavioural science's great unanswered questions. Researchers have offered many theories including memory consolidation or emotional regulation. For some their dream world seems real. These people may believe that they are the creator or the genius behind every bell, whistle, and sparrow they see in their dreams?

The ability of our dreams to appear real has led many thinkers—philosopher René Descartes (1641) being the most prominent Western example—to wonder whether the world we experience while awake might itself be a dream. If the dream world feels just as real as the waking one (at least while we are in it), how can we know for sure that we’re not currently living in a dream—a dream from which we may one day wake up?

One way that philosophers have tried to dispel such worries is by appealing to differences between the dream world and the waking one. For instance, our waking world has a coherence that the dream world often lacks. You may recall that in the feature film Inception, the characters learn to recognize that they’re dreaming by asking themselves how they came to be in a certain situation, then realizing that they can’t remember because the dream just dropped them there.

But does the integrity of our waking world guarantee that it’s real?

The logic of our waking world does give us evidence that our waking world is not merely an invention of our creativity. Correctly, it gives us proof that when we are conscious, something is causing our experience that is autonomous of the event itself. For instance, the comparative continuity of objects and environments we encounter in waking life appears to be explained by the fact there is something real and enduring that our experiences are reflecting.

However, the permanence of these objects and environments we encounter when we are awake is no guarantee that this world is as real. A high degree of permanence is also found in the worlds of video games, in which the “environments” and “objects” one interacts with are merely the creations of computer code. Physics teaches us that the objects we experience as being solid are actually made up almost entirely of empty space. And the results of quantum mechanical experiments indicate that, under certain conditions, the building blocks of matter do not behave as discrete particles at all, but rather as waves of probability. 

Nevertheless, people continue mining their nighttime reveries for clues to their inner lives, for creative insight, and even for premonitions. Are you limited by what you dreamt the night before? There is a probability that you are not limited.