Jennifer M. Windt

This special issue unites original theoretical and empirical research on two topics that are gaining traction in cognitive neuroscience and psychology, but so far have small philosophical footprints: dreaming and waking mind wandering. While the fields of dream and mind wandering research are largely separate, phenomenological and neurophysiological similarities between waking mind wandering and sleep-related experiences suggest that these phenomena are intimately connected. Together, they raise important questions about the nature and functions of spontaneous mental phenomena and their relation to wakefulness and sleep, as well as for theories of attention, action, and consciousness.

The concept of narrative is widespread in the philosophical literature on dreams. Although several works have examined the putative narrative character of dreams by drawing on narratology, literary theory, and semiotics, there has been virtually no investigation of how preconceptions about the resemblance between fictional narratives and retrospective dream reports have shaped the philosophical debate on dreams and dreaming. This paper aims to address this gap. We argue that there is a pervasive tendency to metonymically assimilate fictional narratives first with dream reports and then with dreams themselves. As a result, features and devices typically associated with literary fiction are frequently used as a speculative explanatory framework to understand dreams and the processes underlying their formation, encoding, and retrieval. To illuminate this tendency, we focus on two central categories in the philosophy of dreaming: authorship and composition. By examining relevant cases in which these categories are employed to support divergent ontological and epistemological claims, we argue that similar accounts rest on a shared—yet frequently unacknowledged—assumption: that dreams exhibit a narrative structure and that dreaming is, at its core, a process of narrative construction. Through our conceptual analysis, we aim to lay the groundwork for further exploration of the emergence of narrative thinking in spontaneous thought, encompassing both wakefulness and sleep.

In this chapter, we focus on the problem of dream reports at the intersection of dream research, the philosophy of dreaming, and first-person methods in consciousness science. We advance three proposals: (1) that the variability of methods and measures used in dream research influences research results; (2) that best-practice guidelines for the report-based study of experience in sleep (as well as in waking) can nonetheless be identified; and (3) that certain areas of dream research could benefit from more explicitly focusing on phenomenal (vs content or formal) features of dreaming. Drawing from the shared conceptual and methodological ground of dream research and consciousness science, we suggest that investigating the phenomenal features of dreaming could profit from the application of elements of first-person methods in consciousness research. We consider two specific interview methods: descriptive research sampling and micro-phenomenological interviews, discuss their applicability in dream research, and outline promising directions for future research.

Spontaneous thoughts and experiences, such as dreaming and mind wandering, form a significant part of our conscious mental lives. Yet, the precise phenomenological and content-related similarities and differences between dreaming and waking mind wandering remain insufficiently understood. In this study, we address this gap by comparing 340 dreaming and mind wandering questionnaire responses that depending on the answers of participants ranged from 13 to 27 dimensions. While previous research primarily used laboratory settings and probe-caught methods, we used a self-caught design to capture spontaneous experiences in daily life. Data were explored with mixed-effect binary logistic regression models, which resulted in identifying dimensions that significantly predicted either dreaming or mind wandering and can therefore be considered as differences between both states. In addition, the relative frequency distributions of all dimensions were used to illustrate similarities between dreaming and mind wandering. Finally, we compared a subgroup of dreaming and mind wandering containing visual imagery. Visual and immersive imagery and scene-organization are central features of dream phenomenology and at the centre of leading dream theories. To further investigate the immersive quality of dreaming and mind wandering, we considered features related to self-experience such as Feeling of Presence and Self-perspective. Overall results showed a complex picture of differences and similarities between dreaming and mind wandering that can inform future research and help identify along which dimension dreaming might be considered as intensified compared to mind wandering.

In this commentary, I confront Ganeri’s theory of self with two case studies from cognitive neuroscience and interdisciplinary consciousness research: mind wandering and full-body illusions. Together, these case studies suggest new questions and constraints for Ganeri's theory of self. Recent research on spontaneous thought and mind wandering raises questions about the transition from unconscious monitoring to the phenomenology of ownership and the first-person stance. Full-body illusions are relevant for the attenuation problem of how we distinguish between self and others. Discussing these examples can help refine key transitions in Ganeri’s theory of self and ensure its empirical plausibility. This discussion also identifies points of contact between Ganeri's self and cognitive neuroscience, raising new questions for future research, both philosophical and empirical.