On 08 Apr 2014, at 18:58, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Monday, April 7, 2014 11:03:35 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
On 8 April 2014 09:41, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote:
On Monday, April 7, 2014 4:38:42 PM UTC-4, Alberto G.Corona wrote:
2014-04-07 22:25 GMT+02:00 Craig Weinberg <[email protected]>:
On Sunday, April 6, 2014 2:45:35 AM UTC-4, Alberto G.Corona wrote:
Probably you saw people visiting houses in your neighbourhood, but
that did not reached consciousnees you were busy thinking about other
things. (I will not insert here these funny videos of people failing
to recognize a bear in the middle of a scene).
These kinds of dismissals are not scientific. When you have a
genuinely precognitive experience, you would really have to bend
over backward to mistake it for anything else.
If you say so...
But according with a theory of evolutionary psychology, dreams are in
order to be prepared for possible threats specially the most dangerous
ones. The material of the dreams is taken from past events, and the
subconscious takes into account not only the things that were you
conscious of, but everithing.
You could just as easily say that dreams are in order to confuse us
so that we will be unprepared for possible threats to weed out the
more easily confused members of the species. Just-so stories are fun
to make up, but we shouldn't take them seriously.
You could as easily say it as well that plants are aliens. and Craig
is the father of Dark Vader. Yes . You can say so. But it is not
something based on the theory of evolution, that is, natural
selection and evolutionary biology.
What I'm saying though is that the theory of evolution can be used
to advance or deny any position on dreams that we care to take. It's
all reverse engineered story telling.
There is an element of this in all evolutionary explanations, but
only until we are in a position to gather enough evidence to make a
call for or against some idea. Evolution has been observed in
action, to a limited extent, and the links between genes and various
behaviours, structures etc is becoming clearer, so we have a better
idea as time goes on what mechanisms have evolved and why.
For example I recently read something about zebra's stripes being
"for" protecting them from insects (I think it was) rather than
making them harder for carnivores to spot. This was because someone
had done some experiments to distinguish between several theories of
what advantage the stripes gave.
Sure, but mechanisms which have an effect on the world of the body
need not have an impact on something that doesn't (like dreams).
Since the work by Jouvet, LaBerge, Dement, Hobson and others, we have
strong evidences that the brain activity, corresponding to some action
in a (REM) dream, match the brain activity when that action is
performed when awake. That is the reason why a cat "performs" the
dream activity when Jouvet disabled the brain natural inhibition of
the muscles during the dream. Dreaming is a wakening state, with
hallucination, and paralysis of the muscles (so that we stay in bed!).
Bruno
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