faculty work in progress lectures

Dear All, Please find enclosed Katalin Farkas` abstract for the next faculty work in progress lecture (Tuesday, 5. February, from 4.30 PM in room 412) Best Kriszta ******************************************************************************** Katalin Farkas Can one be immoral in a dream? Dreams in philosophy are usually considered in the theory of knowledge. The classic sceptical Dream Argument goes something like this: since dreams are subjectively indistinguishable from wakeful experiences, the qualitative character of experience doesn’t guarantee that I am not dreaming now, and therefore I cannot exclude the possibility that I am not dreaming now. But then I cannot t know anything based on my present experiences. I shall refer to the conception of dreams embodied in this argument as the "usual conception of dreams”. The key feature of the usual conception is that dreams are subjectively the same as wakeful experiences. I think the usual conception is wrong, and considering the moral significance of dreams helps to bring this point out. The question of the moral status of dreams is raised for example in the following passage in St. Augustine’s Confessions: "Obviously thou commandest that I should be continent from “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” Thou commandest me to abstain from fornication, and as for marriage itself, thou hast counseled something better than what thou dost allow. And since thou gavest it, it was done--even before I became a minister of thy sacrament. But there still exist in my memory--of which I have spoken so much--the images of such things as my habits had fixed there. These things rush into my thoughts with no power when I am awake; but in sleep they rush in not only so as to give pleasure, but even to obtain consent and what very closely resembles the deed itself. Indeed, the illusion of the image prevails to such an extent, in both my soul and my flesh, that the illusion persuades me when sleeping to what the reality cannot do when I am awake. Am I not myself at such a time, O Lord my God? And is there so much of a difference between myself awake and myself in the moment when I pass from waking to sleeping, or return from sleeping to waking? Where, then, is the power of reason which resists such suggestions when I am awake--for even if the things themselves be forced upon it I remain unmoved? Does reason cease when the eyes close? Is it put to sleep with the bodily senses? But in that case how does it come to pass that even in slumber we often resist, and with our conscious purposes in mind, continue most chastely in them, and yield no assent to such allurements? Yet there is at least this much difference: that when it happens otherwise in dreams, when we wake up, we return to peace of conscience. And it is by this difference between sleeping and waking that we discover that it was not we who did it, while we still feel sorry that in some way it was done in us." (Book 10, ch. 30): As Augustine notes, one of the most troubling aspect of dreams from a moral point of view is that we seem to consent to all sorts of things in dream that we would never do in waking life. So much so that Augustine even considers - though immediately discards - the possibility that he isn’t really himself when dreaming. Of course there is an important difference between wakeful acts and apparent dream acts: that the latter don’t really happen. It seems that this leads Augustine to conclude that one shouldn’t feel guilty - though one may not help feeling sorry - about things done in a dream. However, some commentators argued that Augustine is in fact committed to some assumptions which entail that one can be immoral in a dream. One of these assumption is the “usual conception of dreams”. It is also instructive to compare the moral status of acts apparently committed in dreams with the moral status of acts apparently committed in a hypothetical situation of perfect simulation (like the Matrix). It is common to both cases that the act doesn’t actually happen; yet I claim that the moral status of the two situations are different. I argue that the usual conception of dreams is mistaken, and dreams are in fact states of diminished responsibility (like being drugged or drunk), which are subjectively very different from waking experiences. Since dreams are such states, I don’t think that one can be immoral in a dream.