The Ethics of Dreams

As I sit to write this, it is currently 23:42 on a Saturday night (I actually have to Google ‘time’ to find this out, as I’ve removed the time from the corner of my laptop screen to give myself a task-, rather than time-, focus, but that’s a story for another day).

Ok, now that you’re done pitying me for what the first sentence of this post implies about my life (take another moment if you need…), I can get on with what I’m trying to say.

As I say, it’s now almost midnight (23:46 now!) and I’ll be going to bed very soon. I will (hopefully) sleep and I will certainly dream if I do. (A lot of people claim never to dream, but there is actually solid evidence that all humans dream (several times) every night. Check out Matt Walker’s excellent Why We Sleep for all the fascinating dream and sleep science — I won’t go into it here). We dream every night, some of us (including me) just rarely remember the contents of our dreams when we wake.

This fact, as we’ll see, is much more (morally) significant than it seems at first glance.

When it comes to dreams, as we all know, there are good dreams and bad dreams (and, of course, there are Nightmares). But what, exactly do good and bad mean, in this context?

Well, one first guess may be that good and bad are simply value judgments we ascribe to the events of our dreams, if we were to experience them in our waking lives. When something happens in a dream that we would enjoy in ‘real life’, we call it a ‘good dream’, and when something happens in a dream that we would dislike in ‘real life’, we call it a ‘bad dream’.

On this view, the goodness or badness of a dream isn’t something intrinsic to the dream, nor can it be good or bad for any of the ‘people’ (characters?) in the dream. As such, this goodness or badness doesn’t matter really in any way, and certainly not morally (apart from inasmuch as it is good or bad for us upon waking). This is the view that (I assume) most people hold, if tacitly.

But there is another possibility.

A second plausible view of good and bad within dreams would be that these are (morally) significant terms, referring to (morally) significant things happening to real moral patients.

I claim that this view is plausible because it seems to follow somewhat naturally from the things we say about our dreams when we wake from them. Upon waking from a nightmare in a cold sweat, we often say something like ‘man, that was awful’. I believe that, when we say this, we don’t just mean that the experience of waking from the bad dream was awful, but that the dream itself was awful (for us).

Thus, it seems reasonable to say that, when I’m in the midst of a bad dream, I am (or someone kind’ve like me is) actually suffering (and that, when I’m having a good dream, I (or someone…) am actually experiencing pleasure.

Ok, so there’s the idea. What’s the upshot?

While it may seem somewhat intuitive that a bad dream actually involves suffering, I claim that, if correct, it actually implies something very (morally) serious.

Why? Well, I don’t know about you, but for me, most of the stuff that happens to me in bad dreams (let alone a Nightmare) is, like, way worse than anything that happens to me in ‘real life’. I mean, bad bad dreams are essentially non-stop fear and terror, which could subjectively last a very long time each night (I’m sure you share the feeling that a lot of dream-time can fit into a relatively short period of sleep-time). If this stuff happens to us (or moral patients that resemble us), then it matters. Probably a lot.

I’m not claiming to be certain that this view of good and bad in dreams is the correct one. However, if we place even a quite-small probability on its being true (and I think we should probably place quite a large probability on this), then it seems like something we should take really seriously. Humanity has, over millenia, eradicated countless forms of waking suffering, yet we may still be at the peril of dream-suffering every night. And also animals dream…

I hope you are starting to see why this might just be really really important.

A quick aside.

One might object, ‘sure, of course bad dreams are bad, and maybe I do actually suffer in them, but, like, I don’t really care. I can pretty easily just forget about this and go on living my life without worrying about dreams, and I forget all my dreams pretty quickly anyway, and they’re only dreams! So, who cares?’

I’m actually quite unsure about the force of this objection. I mean, maybe it would be better if we did just ignore this issue (and maybe I shouldn’t have written this…) and go on with our normal lives (and focus on ending ‘real-world’ suffering!)? If we want to satisfy people’s preferences, and people honestly don’t care about bad dreams, then maybe it’s just fine?

But, like, maybe not.

Maybe preferences don’t matter, and good and bad experiences are the ultimate source of value. So dreams (probably) matter. Or maybe they both matter. So dreams (probably) matter. Or maybe people are just kinda wrong about their preferences and, upon idealised reflection, they actually do care (a lot) about their dreaming experiences (this actually ties in with a super interesting area of research — that of experienced well-being vs. remembered well-being. I’d highly recommend part V of Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow on this topic (also just the whole book)). So dreams (probably) matter.

(Another quick aside within a quick aside. Interestingly — to my mind — it seems kinda fine for each of us to subject ourselves to dream-suffering (inasmuch as you think it’s morally permissible to cause yourself to suffer), if it us that takes part in the dream. If it is some other moral patient who merely resembles us, this suddenly seems impermissible).

I mean, all of this is uncertain. But, given moral uncertainty, as long as we believe in these ideas at least a little bit (let alone a lot), they seem really important to think about.

So, what should we do? What can we do?

Honestly, I’m not sure at this point. As a start, I think may as well do things like: not suggest horror films to friends we know scare easily, not scare people in other ways before bed, and do more research into how to prevent bad dreams.

The last point is, I think, the crucial one. If this is a significant issue, then more research is needed. Moreover, if we’re not sure how important it is, then more research into this question seems even crucial-er.

On that note, I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on this!