Theories of Consciousness Should Not Be Afraid of Dreams

This paper reviews some reasons for us believing that dreams are phenomenally conscious experiences. I point out that if dreams would be such then one should be able to draw analogies between them and waking conscious experiences at the level of folk psychology, behavior, and neuroanatomy. Instead, we find disanalogies at all these levels, so while we may have no strong reason to accept that dreams are unconscious, we have good reason to think they are different from conscious experiences. A safer bet is to think that they form a distinct sui generis psychological category. Sleep science should wait for consciousness science and until then treat its subject matter as distinct.