Mind

If you have a dream and you do not remember it, and there is no one to reassure you that you actually had one (like if you get drunk and black out, but there are actual people to tell you that you did things), did you really have a dream?

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This reminds me of that non-philosophers model of a philosophical question: If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody there to hear it, does it make a noise? I've never been entirely sure just what question this was asking, but maybe it is about the nature of sound. According to some philosophers, sound is just an experience. In that case the tree would have made no noise, since there was no experience. Others would identify the sound with the vibrations in the air caused by the tree hitting the ground. In that case, the tree makes a noise whether or not there is someone to hear it (though not if there is no air around it).

Anyway, back to your dream. A dream is a course of experience, and its existence doesn't depend on whether you remember it later. So you really can have a dream you don't remember, though if you don't remember it then you presumably won't know that you had it. It is the same with an experience you have while you are awake. If you heard a car backfire yesterday then you really had that experience, even if you later forget all about it.

In this connection see also Question 31.

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