Notes Towards a Philosophy of Sleep

[Philosophy Now]

Raymond Tallis takes us from A to Zzzzz.

http://philosophynow.org/issues/91/Note ... y_of_Sleep

[Thundril]

Another splendid, and splendidly thought-provoking, piece by Ray Tallis.
I wonder what this fact of sleep tells us about free will? Try staying awake. Why can't you?

[jysting]

Raymond Tallis’ “Notes towards a philosophy of sleep” [Philosophy Now Issue 91] speculates on the philosophical precepts underlying the enforced yet normal condition of human sleep. As sleep is requisite for all mammals, there is a strong likelihood that the recurrently mandated state of inattentiveness and unawareness confers a physiological benefit in terms of improved life function, longevity, even survival fitness. Perhaps sleep is best understood for its bio-adaptive utility in attaining rest, restoration and recuperation. Tallis’ anthropocentric scrutiny disregards sleep as a cross-species phenomenon among other living beings not capable of higher rationalisation of its philosophical conundrums, if such an entity proves to even exist. Perhaps sleep’s primordial universality in all living beings militates against a higher philosophical role for it. One wonders if cats and dogs dream too.

The meaning and significance of sleep remains elusive; the assessment of its personal relevance requires a person be woken up from the studied condition enough to have a reliable conversation. And what of death, that permanent condition akin to sleep from which there is no return?

[spike]

Issue 91 in which this article on the philosophy of sleep appears is about human enhancement. So it is not surprising that it also includes such an article because sleep is an enhancer. It is meant to enhance are waking hours.

Some of us also take enhancers - drugs, to enhance sleep.

[copernico]

Tallis wonders why sleep has received so little attention from philosophers. Then he should also be wondering why other basic physiological functions such as urine production, oxygen exchange or T-cell maturation have also been neglected by the Aristotle intellectual offspring.

[marjoram_blues]

These nightly adventures, spun out of a consciousness permitted to free-wheel by disconnexion from a perceived world, are of compelling interest when we are in the grip of them as lead actor or as the helpless centre of events. Yet by an irony, nothing is more sleep-inducing than the egocentric tales of someone else’s solipsistic dreams. We long to hear that magic phrase “And then I woke up.”

I could go on, but I won’t, lest I cause your copy of Philosophy Now to fall from your lifeless hands as you slip from the philosophy of sleep to the thing itself…

© Prof. Raymond Tallis 2012

Raymond Tallis is a physician, philosopher, poet, broadcaster and novelist. His latest book In Defence of Wonder is just out from Acumen.

Yeah, don't we all want to burst into someone else's dream recollections with one of our own. Do we ever listen, or are we all just daydream believers? Is philosophy about wakening up and wiping sleep from our eyes...or do we slumber on...believing as we have always done...with no earth-shattering revelations. Monkeys.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU615FaODCg