[lit-ideas] Re: philosophical dreams

  • From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 19:42:20 -0600

RP:
I did dream once that I was reading a paper or replying to one—in any case, there was an audience and I was on a podium—and said something about Frege. A person in the audience challenged what I'd said in a fairly nasty way: I nodded to an elderly gentleman sitting near the front and said 'Perhaps Professor Frege can help us clear this up.'

Had you recently seen "Annie Hall" by any chance?

Refresher: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFo5Ky8YE8c&feature=related

Mike Geary
Dream Pattern Police
Memphis


----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Paul" <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 6:26 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: philosophical dreams


John asks

Does anyone here have philosophical dreams?

Not really. I've had many dreams in which I'm at the blackboard trying to write and the chalk makes no mark, only invisible scratches. It's usually urgent that I write whatever it is in order to explain what would otherwise be inexplicable (like the Okshevsky Law of Imponderability). In variations on this theme, I can't even find the chalk (or, as it sometimes turns out, a pen, pencil, or piece of paper). I suppose one could call these philosophical dreams for the dream setting is always a philosophy class or something related to one. An echt Freudian would see these as sexual frustration dreams or the chalky analogs of being struck dumb; but there's something about this interpretation that's too easy: it seems to skip over the important aspect of the dreams, viz., that I'm trying to communicate something and can't, and that this makes me extremely anxious (not longing for sex).

I did dream once that I was reading a paper or replying to one—in any case, there was an audience and I was on a podium—and said something about Frege. A person in the audience challenged what I'd said in a fairly nasty way: I nodded to an elderly gentleman sitting near the front and said 'Perhaps Professor Frege can help us clear this up.' As I recall, this caused quite a commotion. Again, though, such a dream can hardly be called philosophical.

Anyway, them old dreams are only in your head.

Robert Paul
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