Does dreaming support soul theories?

Source background

Sleep paralysis. Henry Fuseli, 18th century.

Fudo Myo-O with chain to paralyse. 

In "The art that shows what goes on deep in the human brain," the BBC's Paul Kerley (2016), presents several art works from a current exhibition exploring the nature of our consciousness. The first three images, for example, make the connection between conscious states and souls, an idea that, Kerley points out, was supported by the French philosopher Rene Descartes. Prior to the image of a dissected brain by Descartes, there is an image from Japan, showing the similarity of believes about dreaming across cultures, since the Japanese image is that of a Japanese Buddhist deity believed to cause sleep paralysis, the topic of the first image by Henri Fuseli, according to Emily Sargent, who Kerley tells us is working with the exhibition.

Descartes' drawing of brain.
The pineal gland is at centre.

 

_______________________________________ 

My Yes/No question is:
Does dreaming support soul theories?

My answer is:
No, it does not. Unfortunately, Descartes, whose ideas fit well with the Christianity of his time, was wrong: there are no souls, and the existence of dreams and other seeming strange phenomena does not support claims that such things as souls, heavens, hells, or after lives exist. But I would agree that our dreams do make such beliefs understandable. That is, they help us to understand why people, why entire cultures, come to hold such beliefs. They just don't give any reason to think that those beliefs once common in many societies are true.

Descartes' position is strange. He was one of the truly great philosophers of the last 2,500 years in the West, so even though we can see his reasons for believing in souls, he was also aware of the serious problems that his theory of soul-stuff and body stuff created: if souls are not matter and cannot interact with it, being totally different, then it is impossible they have any effect on the material world, which is why Descartes needed something like the pineal gland in the brain as a point where soul-stuff could interact with material-stuff. I wonder how seriously he believed it himself. I don't think anyone, at least no scientist, believes any such thing today.

I was rather pleased last week when Feem chose to copy and paste the URL for this article for our reference citation practice. I like the images, but with its talk of dreaming and sleep, it also fits very well with our readings in chapter 5 of Hartmann. In case you haven't already, clicking on an image opens a full size version.

___________

Reference

Kerley, P. (2016, February 29). The art that shows what goes on deep in the human brain. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35585875