Why am I never drunk in my dreams?
When I’ve had too much to drink and wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I can still feel the effect of the alcohol as I swagger over to the toilet, yet in the dream I had just before I woke up, I was totally sober.
Same thing: when I wake up the next morning my head is pounding and I’m feeling nauseous, yet in the dream I was in just before waking up (which I can still clearly remember at that moment), I felt completely ok. There was no nausea and no headache.
How can this be?
Simple, you would probably say. When we’re asleep our minds are detached from our bodies, so we don’t feel the physical condition our bodies are in.
Well, that is not what science would say. The prevalent worldview of mainstream science is still a strictly materialist one. And in that view only “matter” is real. All that is really “out there” is matter, tiny particles (molecules, atoms, electrons, etc.) moving about, colliding with each other and setting off all kinds of reactions and processes (chemical, electrical, and so on). And one of those processes is the thinking we do with our brains. Thinking is a material process, the result of the workings of our physical brains.
According to science, anything beyond material entities and processes is an illusion. So there is no real mind “out there” that can in any way become “detached” from our bodies. The “mind” we experience is merely a by-product of our brain’s functioning; the effect of the atoms and molecules of our material brain moving about, colliding, and setting off all kinds of reactions. Mind = Brain.
Like they say: “Love is but a chemical reaction”. In a quote from wikiHow:
“The fact of the matter is that love involves nonverbal reactions–synaptic (chemical) connections within our brains–despite how unromantic that sounds. “
Note the wording “the fact of the matter”. “Matter” equals “Fact”. The rest is not “real”. (If you want to learn more about the materialist view, an illustrious proponent is Daniel C. Dennett.)
So my thoughts are caused by my physical brain, they are the product of the workings of physical brain-particles. At first sight I could agree with that when I’m awake: if I drink alcohol, my ability to think seriously deteriorates. And the more I drink, the worse it gets. So there is indeed a direct correlation between the physical state of my intoxicated brain and the processes of my thinking.
But then why does that not work just the same when I fall asleep? Why am I not brawling in my dreams? Why do I feel perfectly lucid and clear right up until the moment when I wake up and the effect of the alcohol sends me swaggering and giggling on my way to the toilet? And in the morning, why do I feel completely fresh and energetic while I’m dreaming, and the moment I wake up my head is pounding and stuffed with cotton making it hard to think clearly?
Either my brain is miraculously altered from one moment to the next, or there is something missing from the materialist explanation of thinking and dreaming…
But that is not the only problem I have with the materialist view. There is a much more simple one. If my “mind” is the product of my brain, then “I” am also nothing but my brain. My thinking, and the wandering of my attention from one thought to the next, is just the result of physical reactions within my brain.
And if I “am” my brain, that means I cannot “control” my brain. The brain is supposed to be “prior” to the mind, it is its “cause”, and it’s hard to control or steer a “cause” after the fact. The product of the cause can hardly have any effect on it’s own cause.
Of course, science would explain this as a self-regulating physical process. One physical state of the brain leads to (or “causes”) the next, so one thought follows the next in a logical order. There is no need for an external controller, the control is built in to the physical process itself. In fact, “control” would probably be the wrong term, it would be more like an “ordering” of physical processes.
But then, if I’m not really in control, how do I decide that it’s high time to get some work done, and call it quits on this blog post…?
Tags: materialism, mind vs brain
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