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You don't know if he's dreaming really. He could just be twitching and shuffling in his sleep, without dreaming.
by dooamq 2y ago
You don't know if he's dreaming really. He could just be twitching and shuffling in his sleep, without dreaming.
- cnity 2y agoThey also growl and do stifled sleep barks, and sometimes they are clearly running.
- lukan 2y agoYou don't even know, if the dog exists. Might all be a dream or simulation after all. But going for the most likely explanation, surely dogs can dream. They are also mammals, have quite similar brains and act similar in sleeping from the outside, so why shouldn't it be dreaming?
- dooamq 2y agoWe only know that humans dream because we tell each other about our dreams. There's no evidence that any other species dreams, as they don't tell us about it and we don't have access to their qualia.
- stvltvs 2y agoThere's plenty of evidence, just not conclusive evidence perhaps. Birds and mammals both have REM sleep, the stage where we experience most dreams. This feels like slothful induction because we have almost as much evidence for animals dreaming as we do for other people dreaming, just lacking verbal reports.
- dooamq 2y agoThey may act like humans do when we dream, and their brain activity while they sleep looks similar to ours when we dream. But neither of these facts allows us to conclude that they're actually dreaming. The verbal reports are key to our shared understanding that most humans experience dreams when sleeping. We do not have this for dogs or any other species.
- stvltvs 2y agoWhen it comes down to it, we can't say for sure that dream reports aren't the unconscious actions of philosophical zombies either. If we're willing to accept dream reports on the assumption that other people have conscious experiences, then it's not unreasonable to allow closely related animals the same. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie