Do we have a dreamworld?

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Chu Ming Hon of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China   Abstract: The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to suggest that phenomenological studies of worldliness are crucial for dream research; second, to indicate that dream research can in return enrich our understanding of world-consciousness. Dreaming is a rare theme in the classics of phenomenology. It is not easy to determine the nature of dreaming in the light of other kinds of experience. As Jean Héring has neatly summarized, phenomenologists are divided by two opinions: dreaming is either perception or representation. However, as this paper aims to show, subsuming dreaming under either category is equally perplexing, for it will then become either a special case of perception, or a special case of representation. A solution is thereby proposed, according to which oneiric phenomenon should be studied in the light of its presumptive worldliness. Dreaming is special so long as it opens a field of experiences encompassing our being-there, to the extent that dream appears as if a reality. A phenomenology of dreaming therefore focuses on the borderline between dream and reality, in order to ascertain how far they can be confused. Such a study is preceded by controversies over the worldliness of dreams. For example, while Edmund Husserl and Theodor Conrad affirm that dreaming implies immersion in a dreamworld, for Jan Patočka and Jean-Paul Sartre dreams essentially involve the privation of worldly structure. Provided that worldliness is a minimal condition of the position of reality, determining whether dreams are worldly (welthaft) or worldless (weltlos) is decisive for determining how far dreams resemble reality. Phenomenological debates on the nature of dreaming will also prove crucial to dream research in general. Despite advanced methods of observation, pioneering dream researchers are still fundamentally divided regarding the experiential characters of dream. And a significant portion of their disagreement lies in the presumptive worldliness of dreams.   Biography: I am a doctor candidate in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. My research focuses on the motivations of phenomenological reduction, and extends to altered states of consciousness. In 2020, I have published a book on dreaming, titled Formen der Versunkenheit.     Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/