Where Is My Mind?

 How can we be so sure that while reading this blog post, you are in your waking life? Could it be possible that in your dream state you happen to come to a computer and log on to view your philosophy and film blog? As I am sure you all are aware, Descartes begins a similar series of doubts (well, he does not know of computers or blogs, but he is still curious to know whether or not he is in fact in a dream), and shows that this doubt is a serious question for all of philosophy to answer.

            In the 1984 film Dreamscape, starring Dennis Quaid as the psychic Alex Gardner and Max von Sydow as the Doctor Paul Novotny and Christopher Plummer as Bob Blair, a government agent with ulterior motives. In the film, Doctor Paul Novotny contacts Alex Gardner in order to help participate in a new scientific study about dreams and the ways of accessing them. Alex is of course reluctant to join for he has routinely tried to hide his psychic abilities in order to avoid raising suspicion for himself. Eventually Alex gives in to Doctor Novotny and joins the experiment. Due to his psychic abilities, Alex is able to “enter” the dream of another human being, provided that the human being has entered REM mode and Alex has conditioned his body to match his heart’s BPM with the victim.

            Because of this distortion of reality, the film Dreamscape brings about an interesting perspective on the material nature of the body, and the possible materiality of the human mind. This in turn is a response to Descartes’ notions of the dualistic nature of mind and body, answering to Descartes musings that yes, the mind is of material substance, and yes, this substance can be exploited and explored provided there is someone who contains telekinetic and psychic powers of the mind. This is an interesting inference, not only for the sake of the film Dreamscape, but so much so that in any case there is a person who proclaims to be a psychic, or can bend spoons with their minds must deny that there is an immaterial mind. If this were not the case, how on earth can an immaterial mind “read” another immaterial mind? Is it by going through the ethereal space? Or is it because the minds are alike the psychic can “find” another mind?

            While the film does not try to answer these questions, it cannot help but raise even more questions, specifically with each scene in which Alex “enters” another person’s dream. Through each sequence, there is a distorted tunnel that is shown through different substances, colors, as well as environments. For the neurotic husband, his dream is an erotic red that billows and bellows the sounds of a female, while a terrified boy being eaten away by his nightmares has a tunnel that is in shades, has a violent soundscape full of clanging and lightning, and every other person Alex enters also has a unique and different tunnel. This film shows that each person has a unique substance, a different tunnel that can help him or her be recognized. Is this not another way of understanding Locke’s Of Identity and Diversity?  For a “thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection” can in fact be recognized as such by Alex or any other Psychic. For each mind Alex enters, he is in fact entering another person’s consciousness and reflection. Alex can understand the minds around him, and can in fact perceive another person’s identity. If it is possible for Alex to enter another person’s mind, that person must also exist, for without existence, Alex would have nothing to enter into. The mind as itself tries to lock itself away from the outside world, but Alex, and any other psychic in our world, can perceive the inner workings of the mind.

            A final musing over the film Dreamscape is the notion that if a person is killed in a dream by a psychic (I am assuming that the figments of a person’s mind cannot kill that particular person, but only a psychic who infiltrates the mind and contains a unique substance to itself can possibly kill the mind), that person is in fact killed in real life. If this is the case, then this would mean that the mind’s own physicality takes such precedence over the body, that it is one of the few characteristics of a person that is a necessity. Without the mind, a person is a corpse.

            Through all of the film, a cheesy story line and amusing action sequences take place, but the questions and implications the film raise make it worth a viewing.

That (sub)conscious thinking thing...

     Dreamscape (1984) opens with the figure of a woman in terror, running frantically (and futilely) from a fiery green-screen-simulated atomic blast.  The scene ends with an abrupt cut to a man in bed, drenched in sweat, jolted awake and upright by what he has just seen, instilling within us as the viewing audience the familiar "it was all a dream" assurance.  Though dreamscape and reality are visually easily distinguishable through the use of similar, and similarly-campy, special effects like the opening scene, as the film progresses, the metaphorical division between waking-life and dream, conscience and subconscious, becomes increasingly volatile.  The film, with all its overwhelming pre-CGI goofiness and casual sexism, resonates with the concerns of the Cartesian dualists and explorations of the self in terms of mind and body and the perceived reality of both.
     **Spoiler Alert** If you watch this trailer, you'll have seen almost the whole film but for those of you who don't want to take the two minutes, eleven seconds to ruin the journey, and Dreamscape is a journey, Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid) plays a psychic who uses his abilities to live a playboy-esque lifestyle while on the run from those who want to experiment with and potentially exploit his telekinetic faculties.  When Alex is dragged back into the life he escaped from to assist Dr. Novoty (Max Von Sydow) and love-interest Dr. Jane DeVries (Kate Capshaw) with a new "project," one that involves joining a fellow dreamer through psychic projection in order to alter their subconscious trauma that manifests through reoccurring nightmares, he tests the limits of his own psyche and psychic abilities as well as the relationship between his active, dreaming mind and his dormant, inactive body.  
     Descartes determines, after doubting anything that can be determined through the senses, that is anything physical or of the body, "I am, I exist, that is certain. But how often? Just when I think; for it might possibly be the case if I ceased entirely to think, that I should likewise cease altogether to exist" (134).  Therefore the faculties of the imagination, the mind, become crucial in figuring our sense of self,  the reality we experience as a true and accurate perception.  Dreamscape definitely privileges the mind over the body as most of the plot depends heavily on what occurs in the dream, and even the sex-scene between Alex and Jane occurs through psychic dream connection, discounting the body's physical role all-together, which brings us to Locke.  Locke considers the self as "that conscious thinking thing. . . which is sensible, or conscious of Pleasure and Pain, capable of Happiness or Misery" (198), agreeing with Descartes  that what gives the self meaning is the ability to produce thought.  However, Locke's dualism appears less divisive.  If what constitutes the self is its ability to think and understand sentiment, suggesting that pain and pleasure are not felt per se but experienced by the mind, then what keeps the thinking conscious attached to its body? To illustrate this, he supplies the inventive (and relatable) example of how a drunk, who is not considered himself, that is, not considered of the same conscious as his sober self, still receives punishment in the morning for the previous night's actions because he is not two persons, but one and the same.  However, for our purposes and certainly for the film's, a similar example might prove more relevant in highlighting Locke's mind/body inquiry: "If the same Socrates waking and sleeping do not partake of the same consciousness, Socrates waking and sleeping is not the same Person, [a nonsensical claim]. And to punish Socrates waking, for what sleeping Socrates thought, and waking Socrates was never conscious of, would be no more Right, than to punish one Twin for what is Brother-Twin did" (199).  Obviously, a dream is a dream or in the case of the film, a nightmare is a nightmare, and the actions and thoughts within make sense depending on the logic applicable to the dreamscape.  But where the film complicates this is with our protagonist Alex, though he may be asleep, has the power to not only project himself into another's dream, but assume an active role in that dreamer's mind.  When he is able to move around and assess the situation, the dreamer is bound to the dream logic, still afraid of the monster knocking at the door or the love of his life having an affair with all his friends.  This established logic shifts without explanation by the end of the film but hey, we're talking 1980s sci-fi camp and not big budget consistency.  Anyway, not only is Alex just as much of an agent in sleep as in waking, but the film plays with the urban myth of death in a dream meaning death in "real life," suggesting that the mind and its activities are inextricably connected our bodies and their existence.  As the ending of the film suggests, a joking double-take-wait-are-we-awake moment in a train, this connectedness does give reason to doubt what we perceive.
     A few final thoughts.  This connection, as suggested by the film comes with a severity.  As suggested by Hume, "sleep, a very small effect on the body, is attended with a temporary extinction, at least a great confusion of the soul" (231).  Sleep and dreaming is confusing because we leave the world we normally perceive behind temporarily, adopting a new logic for what feels like a new consciousness.  Alex is able to transcend this confusion through his psychic abilities, but that does not mean he wanders freely through the dreamscape.  His mind, his soul, is at just as much risk as his body.

If you like semi-claymation snake men, rescuing the president of the United States, perms, explosions, and/or saxophones, this is the film for you!