Qiantong Wu

This paper proposes a response to the Cassette Theory based on an enactivist interpretation of dreaming experiences. The Cassette Theory proposes the possibility that the content of dream reports is based on an unconscious composition during dreaming states instead of being genuinely experienced by the subject, which puts the empirical examination of the theory in a dilemma. In order to respond to the Cassette Theory without consulting empirical evidence and encountering the dilemma, this paper adopts the enactivist interpretation of dreaming experiences. According to the enactivist interpretation, the conceptualization of dreams is based on genuine experiences under special physical conditions during dreaming states. If we adopt the enactivist framework to explain dreaming experiences and dream reports, the proposal in the Cassette Theory will automatically become implausible.

In this paper, I will analyze the concept of the echo chamber and the ways to escape from it. I will first introduce the concept of the echo chamber. Then, I will analyze the escape plan (i.e. the social epistemic reboot) proposed by Nguyen. The major argument in this paper is that a successful escape from the echo chamber is more of a collective epistemic conduct than an individual epistemic conduct, in which case the social environment plays a more significant role in the escape than individual epistemic capacity. To support this argument, I will analyze a real-life example of escape to demonstrate the power of social influence and adopt a model of an idealized epistemic community to demonstrate the limitation of epistemic virtue.

Enactivism interprets conscious experiences as interaction between the subject’s body and the physical environment (i.e., the body-environment interaction). During dreaming states, however, the body-environment interaction is largely limited. In this case, the phenomenal similarity between dreaming and waking experiences poses a significant challenge to enactivism. This paper proposes an enactivist account of dreaming experiences as a response to this challenge. In particular, this enactivist account explains the phenomenal similarity between dreaming and waking perceptual experiences as an illusion resulting from the disrupted subjective perspective embedded in dreaming experiences due to the limited body-environment interaction. The phenomenal consequence of this disrupted subjective perspective makes dreaming subjects experience the self-generated mental imagery during dreaming states as more realistic and perceptual than the self-generated mental imagery during waking states. In this case, the dreaming experiences are distinguished from waking perceptual experiences in terms of the phenomenal content and distinguished from waking experiences of mental imagery in terms of the phenomenal conceptualization process. The enactivist account of dreaming experiences I propose in this paper manages to explain the illusory phenomenal similarity between dreaming and waking perceptual experiences with the level of body-environment interaction, which makes it more advantageous than previous attempts to make enactivism congruous with dreaming experiences.

This paper discusses the enactivist attempt to entail the hypothesis of extended conscious mind (ECM). The enactists suggest that conscious experience is a relational interaction between the subject and the external environment; this personal-level description of conscious experience naturally entails an extended sub-personal characterization of the material basis of conscious experience (i.e. the ECM). However, in this paper, I am going to argue that the enactivist description at the personal level is still open to an internalist challenge at the sub-personal level. In response to this challenge, I suggest combining enactivism with the concept of predictive processing, delineating a sub-personal characterization of conscious experience that corresponds to the enactivist interpretation at the personal level.