Dreaming and Memory: Philosophical Issues
Description
This edited volume is the first systematic philosophical investigation of the complex and multifarious relationships between dreaming and memory. Featuring fifteen contributions by leading researchers, it explores a range of issues that arise when dreaming and memory are considered together. What does one remember when one remembers what one dreamt, and what is it for a memory of a dream to be accurate? What are the phenomenological, cognitive, and epistemic similarities and dissimilarities between dreaming and remembering? How does the self figure in dreams and memories? The book will serve as an indispensable resource both for philosophers interested in dreaming or memory and for their philosophically-minded colleagues in empirical disciplines and will provide an invaluable starting point for advanced students in need of a snapshot of the state of the art in philosophical research on dreaming and memory.
Chapters [2], [10] and [16] are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com
Reviews / Votes
"This edited collection is sure to be a major contribution to the philosophy of memory and dreams. The breadth of topics covered in the book, as well as the depth of the accounts proposed in each chapter, will be of significant impact for both philosophers and cognitive scientists working on these topics. . In general, I am confident to recommend this book to anyone interested in memory, dreaming, and the fascinating issues surrounding them." (Matheus Diesel Werberich, Memory Studies, May 5, 2026)
"Dreaming and Memory: Philosophical Issues offers a rich and layered account of the connections between two phenomena, often studied in isolation in niche fields. ... For philosophers of mind and memory, the volume expands the conceptual and methodological toolbox of investigation available. For phenomenologists in particular, this volume is an opportunity to rethink the shifting borders between imagination, memory, and dreaming; and to contribute to the intriguing, ongoing debate in the philosophy of memory." (Francesca Righetti, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, October 13, 2025)
"Dreaming and Memory is full of high-quality, cutting-edge, and empirically informed philosophy by leading experts. ... this volume will undoubtedly come to be regarded as having made a seminal and lasting contribution." (Robert Cowan, International Journal of Dream Research, March 4, 2025)
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Persons
Daniel Gregory is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Salzburg. He has previously held positions at the University of Barcelona, the University of Bayreuth, the University of Tübingen, and the University of Fribourg. He completed his PhD at the Australian National University. His primary research interests are in the philosophy of mind, especially inner speech and dreaming, and he has published several articles on these topics.
Kourken Michaelian is professor of philosophy at the Université Grenoble Alpes, where he directs the Centre for Philosophy of Memory; he is a senior member of the Institut universitaire de France. He is the author of Mental Time Travel: Episodic Memory and Our Knowledge of the Personal Past (MIT 2016) and coeditor of a special issue of the Review of Philosophy and Psychology on Distributed Cognition and Memory Research, Seeing the Future: Theoretical Perspectives on Future-Oriented Mental Time Travel (OUP 2016), the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Memory (2017), New Directions in the Philosophy of Memory (Routledge 2018), a special issue of the Review of Philosophy and Psychology on Memory as Mental Time Travel (2020), and Current Controversies in Philosophy of Memory (Routledge forthcoming).
Content
1 Dreaming and Memory: Editors' Introduction (Daniel Gregory and Kourken Michaelian).- Part I Remembering Dreams: 2 Dreams, Remembering, and Remembering Dreams: An Intentionalist, Direct Realist, Acquaintance Account (Rebecca Copenhaver).- 3 Retroactive Consciousness of Dreams: What Do We Remember When We Wake Up? (Melanie Rosen).- 4 Dream Memories, Metacognition, and the Nature of Dream Experiences (André Sant'Anna).- 5 Studying Dream Experience Through Dream Reports: Points of Contact Between Dream Research and First-Person Methods in Consciousness Science (Ema Demsar and Jennifer Windt).- 6 Remembering Dreams: Parasitic Reference by Minimal Traces in Memories From Non-veridical Experiences (Markus Werning and Kristina Liefke).- 7 True, Authentic, Faithful: Accuracy in Memory for Dreams (Kourken Michaelian).- 8 Attitudinal Pluralism in Dream Experiences and Dream Memories (Christopher Jude McCarroll, I-Jan Wang, and Ying-Tung Lin).- Part II Remembering Within Dreams: 9 Dreams of Particulars: Dreams, Memory, and Distinguishing Objectual Knowledge (Steven James).- 10 Is It Possible to Have Episodic Memories During Non-Lucid Dreams? (Daniel Gregory).- Part III Remembering and Dreaming Compared: 11 Dreaming, Imagining, and Remembering (Sven Bernecker).- 12 Perspectives in Imagination, Memory, and Dreams (Matthew Soteriou).- 13 When Is Now? How Temporally Shifting Dreams Illuminate the Feeling of Pastness (Michael Barkasi).- 14 Maurice Halbwachs on Dreams and Memory (John Sutton).- 15 Folk Beliefs About Phenomenological Differences and Similarities Between Kinds of Mental States (Vilius Dranseika).- 16 Perception in Dreams: A Guide for Dream Engineers, a Reflection on the Role of Memory in Sensory States, and a New Counterexample to Hume's Account of the Imagination (Fiona Macpherson).