would it be absurd to state that a dream has a physical weight?

Answer 1

could be a theory to consider but do you have anything to back it up? Or at least anything to build on?

Answer 2

As its created as a mental state first, you wouldn't consider it has a physical weight no. But, as it has some correlation to electricity and a lot to do with thought, you will find that you can do an experiment on it just fooling around with thoughts (since dreams come into that bracket) you can take a period where you are totally stressed out, upset, sad or in a loss and weigh yourself - you'll find that you will put, even if minute, some weight by being in that state of mind, from those thoughts.

Now if you handled all of those upsets, felt full of energy and happy with things in life again - no mental anguish, then weighed yourself again, you'll find that weight has lifted not only mentally but physically. There is a correlation - so if you were willing to take that experiment to bed with you and got weighed by some body with the equipment then you would probably find out whether or not it does affect physical weight during sleep.

Answer 3

Only matter has mass and therefore weight. Dreams are a form of thought - thinking is a quality of human brains and thoughts the quality of specific brains just as redness is a quality of my socks. Thoughts are analagous to data on a computer. The microchips have weight but the data is stored a pattern of logic gates and thus has no mass/weight.

Your statement is not absurd as some philosophers have considered thought to be a substance in its own right separate from matter but would be deemed wrong by modern science.

Answer 4

No.
Dreams are abstract things but are portrayed in physical weight. Dreams can't just appear. They need to have some physical matter to make them up like genetic material or a type of protein or anything for that matter. Our personality is constantly compared to a dream, and it is a proven fact that that our personality has some physical material. Nothing in the universe can be just nothing. It wouldn't be able to fertilize in the human mind then. It's really hard to explain and I suggest you talk to a philosopher or a scientist.

Answer 5

Faceless makes some good points. In that dreams can lead to an altered state of mind and physiology for the person who has them I would say that it is possible to answer yes. Also in the sense that dreams can lead to actions or a choice not to take action and that these decisions lead to consequences - in a legal, moral and theoretical sense the answer could be said to be yes.

But,

In the sense that you can not put them on a weighing machine and quantify them the answer, at this point in time anyway, is clearly no.

Answer 6

Weight is a phenomenon that occurs only in places where there's gravity and mass (of course without mass there is no gravity)...

So a dream would have to have mass for it to have weight...

If a dream has mass it would take up space...

But "where" is a dream...?
Where are our waking thoughts? Where is Love, Hope, Despair, Joy, Pain?

If i could believe that these things had mass, then i would agree that dreams might have physical weight...

Answer 7

Everything has a physical weight. The neurons inside your brain which bring out this visual part of the dream have mass. Therefore it would the statement, "Dreams have mass." would be a true one.

Answer 8

Well I believe that psychic energy has a presence - so in short I'd say in time to come, that answer will be proven correct even if your question is refutable. Think of dreams as a water colour painting, certain areas of the brain are in active mode, constantly trying to make sense of its experiences; some information which couldn't be attended to or was repressed for other reasons may make its way into the psyche. I tend to think of the psyche as a pressurised can, wihout letting it settle first it'll remain at tipping point.. your head won't just EXPLODE!!! But just as others below have said, dreams are just an impression even if they did have any weight it would be minute.

Answer 9

Are the electrical impulses in the brain of a dream the same as the dream? No, just what the observer outside the dreamer observes through their instruments, the electrical, or physical observable aspect of the events as seen from outside. This is a totally different picture than the one that the dreamer experiences. If electrical impulses can be said to be measurable in terms of weight, then dreams carry or have weight, irrespective of the content of the dream in terms of the experience of the dreamer.

So you could have skipped the dream and asked straight out if electrical impulses have weight, unless it can be proved that there are different type of brain waves in terms of their physical characteristics, different electrical impulses. All physical properties are merely observed phenomena with specific characteristics that we can label or tie with our categories of understanding; abstracted concepts signifying aspects of observed phenomena that display the same attributes as those that we give to the abstracted properties of concepts or ideas.

Outside of the mental reality objective reality stands, yet only experienced mentally and only said to be understood if translated into thoughts, or conceptual categories of understanding. We are thus limited in our understanding of objective reality through the potential of the subjective mental reality to create ideas which can relate to the observed phenomena, with only aspects of the observed phenomena captured through ideas, as abstract concepts are static.

That is why certain phenomena required various descriptions form the world of language thought in order to describe as thoroughly as possible the aspects of an observed object or event, with creative minds the most fertile in capturing more closely what we feel or sense what we are actually observing. If we observe something but lack the creative language capabilities to describe it, be it through words or mathematics, we as yet cannot be said to understand it. Yet we may still sense we do, we just lack the language or use of this language to translate the observation into a language.

This is were poetry and visual art or other art forms come in, where through the means available to this form of art, what is felt is projected or captured through metaphor, allegory, symbolism, visual abstraction, movement or what not.

So dreams can probably be better expressed and thus communicated and understood through the language of art than through the language of science, although scientific thinking can be as creative.

Answer 10

I guess it would depend on what kind of dream, and what the dream is. If it's a dream while you're alseep, no. If it is a dream that you have to build a bridge, then yes.

Answer 11

Maybe a determined weight