What are our dreams and thoughts made of?

Question

Is it of the same energy systems that physical matter consists of, or are they just chemical reactions that the brain interprets as an illusion of consciousness?
(For those who wish to go deeper -- Do you think the ideas that come to us exist in an environment that may be explorable, now that we have experience of them existing. Post-life?)

oops, the first question wasn't geared for you to pick between them....Some options, include your own

oops, the first question wasn't geared for you to pick between them....Some options, include your own

lag..sorry for double post

Perfect warrior...no explanation doesn't cut it..there are plenty

Answer 1

Dreams are our subconscious mind made of thoughts from our experience, things we see, triggered by media effect, actual events, reflecting our inner self, fear and personality. Sometimes they are prophetic.

Answer 2

I did a Masters thesis in Philosophy on this. What you want to read up on is something called "The Mind-Body Problem". The current best thinking is that all mental phenomena consist of physical events, most notably patterns of neuron firings (so much for life after death...). The notion of a nonphysical "mind" (or "soul", or whatever) is considered dead in the water, buried in the late 1940s by Gilbert Ryle in his book "The Concept of Mind". More recently, Daniel Dennett has expanded on this quite a bit, bringing in newer findings resulting from modern brain scan technologies. His 1992 "Consciousness Explained" proposes what I consider the modern view, and his "The Mind's Eye" (written with Douglas Hofstadter) gives a very readable set of fun essays that form a very accessible introduction to the topic. I'd strongly suggest starting there.

Now of course none of this is very interesting to the mystically-minded, the folks for whom an answer is unsatisfying unless it includes nonphysical stuff. If the only answers you're interested in are those that still have nonphysical "minds" (ala Descartes), then you'll need to skip the philosophy and cognitive science sections and peruse the popular books over in "religion and mysticism". Can't help you there.

Answer 3

Basically they are both electochemical currents. Now, what makes them what they are is how the brain routes them. Through what information and memories.

Sometimes you can talk too much about your brain, and not spend enough time listening to it.

Answer 4

Energy - patterns of it produced by electricity.

Answer 5

There's no mystery, it's simply chemical processes.

Answer 6

Thats what I would like to know. But I belive the dreams we have are clues to what will happen, such as like codes. God gives us dreams, and there is no explanation to how we have them.

Answer 7

stuff