H. P. Grice: Malcolm on Descartes on dreaming

Malcolm argues in his “Dreaming and Skepticism” and Dreaming that the notion of a dream qua conscious experience that occurs at a definite time and has definite duration during sleep, is “unintelligible” (1959, 52). This contradicts the views of philosophers and psychologists like Descartes, Kant, Moore, Freud, and Russell, who, he holds, assume that human beings have conscious thoughts and experiences during sleep (1959, 1-4). Descartes claimed that he had been deceived during sleep (1959, 101).

Malcolm’s first point is that ordinary language contrasts consciousness and sleep. The claim that one is conscious while one is sleepwalking is “stretching the use of the term” (1959, 27, 84). Malcolm rejects the alleged counterexamples based on sleepwalking or sleep-talking. For example, dreaming that one is climbing stairs while one is actually doing so is not a counterexample because in such cases the individual is not sound asleep after all (Springett, § 3.b.1). “If a person is in any state of consciousness it logically follows that he is not sound asleep” (1956, 21). Our concept of dreaming is based on our descriptions of dreams after we have awakened in “telling a dream” (1959, 55ff, 76, 87ff). Thus, to have dreamt that one has a thought during sleep is not to have a thought any more than to have dreamt that one has climbed a mountain is to have climbed a mountain (1959, 51-53, 57). Since one cannot have experiences during sleep, one cannot have mistaken experiences during sleep (1956), thereby undermining the sort of philosophical scepticism based on the idea that our experiences might be wrong because we might be dreaming.

Malcolm’s second point is that reports of conscious states during sleep are unverifiable (1959, 83ff; Springett, 3.b.i). If Ginet claims that he and Shoemaker saw a bigfoot in charge of the reserve desk at Olin library, one can verify that this took place by talking to Shoemaker and gathering forensic evidence from the library. However, there is no way to verify Ginet’s claim that he dreamed that he and Shoemaker saw a bigfoot working at Olin library (1959, 38-40). Ginet’s only basis for his claim that he dreamt this is that he says so after he wakes up. How does one distinguish the case where Ginet dreamed that he saw a bigfoot working at Olin Library and the case in which he dreamed that he saw a person in a bigfoot suit working at the library but, after awakening, misremembered that person in a bigfoot suit as a bigfoot proper? If Ginet should admit that he had earlier misreported his dream and that he had actually dreamed he saw a person in a bigfoot suit at Olin library, there is no more independent verification for this new claim than there was for the original one. Thus, there is, for Malcolm, no sense to the idea of misremembering one’s dreams (Windt, 2015, 18ff). Malcolm here applies one of Wittgenstein’s ideas from his “private language argument: “One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can’t talk about ‘right’” (Philosophical Investigations, § 258).

For similar reasons, Malcolm challenges the idea that one can assign definite durations or times of occurrence to dreams (1959, 70-82). If Ginet claims that he ran the mile in 3.4 minutes, one could verify this in the usual ways. If, however, Ginet says he dreamt that he ran the mile in 3.4 minutes, how is one to measure the duration of his dreamt run? If he says he was wearing a stopwatch in the dream and clocked his run at 3.4 minutes, how can one know that the dreamt stopwatch is not running at half speed (so that he really dreamt that he ran the mile in 6.8 minutes)? One might say that dream reports do not carry such implications, but Malcolm would say that just admits the point. The ordinary criteria we use for determining temporal duration do not apply to dreamt events. The general problem in both these cases (dreaming one saw a bigfoot working at Olin library and dreaming that one ran the mile in 3.4 minutes) is that there is no way to verify the truth of these dreamt events—no direct way to access that dreamt inner experience, that mysterious glow of consciousness inside the mind of the person lying comatose on the couch, in order to determine the facts of the matter. This is because, for Malcolm, there are no facts of the matter apart from the dreamer’s reports of the dream upon awakening. Referring to psychological studies of his time, Malcolm claims that the empirical evidence does not enable one to decide between the view that dream experiences occur during sleep and the view that they are generated upon the moment of waking up (1956, 29). Dennett agrees with Malcolm that nothing supports the received view that dreams involve conscious experiences while one is asleep but holds that such issues might be settled empirically (Springett, § 3.d).

Malcolm also argues against the attempt to provide a physiological mark of the duration of a dream, for example, the view that the dream lasted as long as the rapid eye movements (REM). Malcolm replies that “there can only be as much precision in that common concept of dreaming as is provided by the common criterion of dreaming” (1959, 75). These scientific researchers are misled by the assumption that the provision for the duration of dreams “is already there, only somewhat obscured and in need of being made more precise” (1959, 79). However, Malcolm claims, it is not already there (in the ordinary concept of dreaming). These scientific views are making “radical conceptual changes” in the concept of dreaming, not further explaining our ordinary concept of dreaming (1959, 81). Malcolm admits, however, that it might be natural to adopt such scientific views about REM sleep as a convention (1979, 76-77). Malcolm points out, however, that if REM sleep is adopted as a criterion for the occurrence of a dream, then “people would have to be informed upon waking up that they had dreamed or not” (1970, 80).

Malcolm does not mean to deny that people have dreams in favour of the view that they only have waking dream-behaviour (Pears, 1961, 145). “Of course it is no misuse of language to speak of ‘remembering a dream’” (1959, 57-58). His point is that since our shared concept of dreaming is so closely tied to our concept of waking reports of dreams, one cannot form a coherent concept of this alleged inner (private) something that occurs with a definite duration during sleep. Malcolm rejects a certain philosophical conception of dreaming, not the ordinary concept of dreaming, which, he holds, is neither a hidden private something nor mere outward behaviour.

Malcolm’s account of dreaming has come in for considerable criticism. Chihara and Fodor (1965) argue that Malcolm’s claim that occurrences in dreams cannot be verified by others does not require the strict criteria that Malcolm proposes but can be justified by “appeal to the simplicity, plausibility, and predictive adequacy of an explanatory system as a whole.” Dunlop (1974) argues that Malcolm’s account of the sentence “I am awake” is inconsistent. Windt (2015) offers a comprehensive program in considerable detail for an empirical scientific investigation of dreaming of the sort that Malcolm rejects. Canfield (1961), Siegler (1967), and Schröder (1997) propose various counterexamples and counter arguments against Malcolm’s account of dreaming.