7 May 2001

dreaming of 'refusive algorithms', experience and science as mental


15.57 Awoke from a dream in which I'd just received a message that artists could propose exhibitions without getting involved in 'refusive algorithms'.

How did my 'mind' (or whatever generates dreams) produce such a phrase? I feel sure that I'd never consciously write or speak it - though I like the idea of freeing artists from form filling and from bureaucratic letters of rejection (if that is what 'refusive algorithms' means).

But I would not use the word 'algorithms' to mean that as to me it means rational not bureaucratic procedures.

Though I've read Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams quite carefully, and some other books on the subject, I don't think that dreaming is understood... I'm reminded of hearing today that Alfred Russell Wallace (co-author of the theory of evolution) could not conceive that 'mind' developed by natural selection. And also that Wallace believied in spiritualism.

I'm also remininded of C H Wisbey's idealist metaphysics in which (as I understand it) experience is taken to be mental and science to be mental also.