Does what we dream feel present? Two varieties of presence and implications for measuring presence in VR
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Does what we dream feel present? Two varieties of presence and implications for measuring presence in VR Michael Barkasi1 Received: 6 May 2020 / Accepted: 29 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract What’s presented in our normal waking perceptual visual experiences feels present to us, while what we “see” in pictures and imagine does not. What about dreams? Does what we “see” in a dream feel present? Jennifer Windt has argued for an affirmative answer, for all dreams. But the dreams which flow from the brain’s registration of myoclonic twitches (body-driven dreams) present a challenge to this answer. During these dreams (so I argue) motion-guiding vision is shut off, and, as Mohan Matthen has argued, motion-guiding vision seems to be a key mechanism underlying the feeling of presence. I propose that the feeling of presence in fact involves two components: the feeling of immersion, and the feeling of availability for action. I suggest that only the feeling of availability for action derives from motion-guiding vision, and, hence, hypothesize that body-driven dreams lack this component to the feeling of presence (while still having the feeling of immersion). Finally, the distinction between these two varieties of presence has implications for measures of presence in virtual environments, as these measures can diverge over which of the two varieties they track. Keywords Presence · Dreams · Myoclonic twitches · Motion-guiding vision · Embodied experience · Virtual environments
1 Introduction As I look around the room, I find myself visually presented with objects arrayed in space and instancing properties (Dickie 2010; O’Callaghan 2016; Matthen 2019). To my right appears the peach-yellow sheet rock panel of one wall, while straight in front of me appears a faux midcentury sofa wrapped in orange-tinted beige pleather. These items phenomenally seem to me to be out in the actual environment in which
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Michael Barkasi [email protected] Department of Philosophy, York University, S448 Ross Building, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada
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I’m situated. As Mohan Matthen puts it (2010, p. 108), what’s presented in my visual experience is accompanied by a feeling of presence.1 Matthen (2005, pp. 304–319) says that (i) experience of what we visually imagine, and (ii) experience of what’s depicted in pictures, isn’t accompanied by this feeling of presence. Similar claims are made by others as well (e.g., Dokic and Martin 2017, p. 299). For example, if I look to my right and imagine a second sofa, I may be able to conjure up a vivid visual experience of a sofa, but this imagined sofa will not phenomenally seem to me to actually be there. Similarly, if I look at a photo or realistic drawing of my sofa, I visually experience a depicted sofa, but I do not visually experience it as present in front of me. Is what we visually experience in dreams accompanied by this feeling of presence? Some think so (e.g., Revonsuo 1995; Nanay 2016). Here I will focus on Jennifer Windt, who has argued
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