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Sleep
Before understanding Aristotle’s take on dreams, first his idea of sleep must be examined. Aristotle gives an account of his explanation of sleep in On Sleep and Wakefulness. Sleep takes place as a result of overuse of the senses or of digestion, so it is vital to the body, including the senses, so it can be revitalized. While a person is asleep, the critical activities, which include thinking, sensing, recalling and remembering, do not function as they do during wakefulness. Since a person cannot sense during sleep they can also not have a desire, which is the result of a sensation. However, the senses are able to work during sleep, albeit differently than when a person is awake because during sleep a person can still have sensory experiences. Also, all of the senses are not inactive during sleep, only the ones that are weary.

Theory of Dreams
Dreams do not involve actually sensing a stimulus because, as discussed, the senses do not work as they normally do during sleep. In dreams, sensation is still involved, but in an altered manner than when awake. Aristotle explains the phenomenon that occurs when a person stares at a moving stimulus such as the waves in a body of water. When they look away from that stimulus, the next thing they look at appears to be moving in a wave like motion. When a person perceives a stimulus and the stimulus is no longer the focus of their attention, it leaves an impression. When the body is awake and the senses are functioning properly, a person constantly encounters new stimuli to sense and so the impressions left from previously perceived stimuli become irrelevant. However, during sleep the impressions stimuli made throughout the day become noticed because there are not new sensory experiences to distract from these impressions that were made. So, dreams result from these lasting impressions. Since impressions are all that are left and not the exact stimuli, dreams will not resemble the actual experience that occurred when awake.

During sleep, a person is in an altered state of mind. Aristotle compares a sleeping person to a person who is overtaken by strong feelings toward a stimulus. For example, a person who has a strong infatuation with someone may begin to think they see that person everywhere because they are so overtaken by their feelings. When a person is asleep, their senses are not acting as they do when they are awake and this results in them thinking like a person who is influenced by strong feelings. Since a person sleeping is in this suggestible state, they become easily deceived by what appears in their dreams.

When asleep, a person is unable to make judgments as they do when they are awake Due to the senses not functioning normally during sleep, they are unable to help a person judge what is happening in their dream. This in turn leads the person to believe the dream is real. Dreams may be absurd in nature but the senses are not able to discern whether they are real or not. So, the dreamer is left to accept the dream because they lack the choice to judge it.

One component of Aristotle’s theory of dreams introduces ideas that are contradictory to previously held beliefs. He claimed that dreams are not foretelling and that they are not sent by a divine being. Aristotle reasoned that instances in which dreams do resemble future events are happenstances not divinations. These ideas were contradictory to what had been believed about dreams, but at the time in which he introduced these ideas more thinkers were beginning to give naturalistic as opposed to supernatural explanations to phenomena.

Aristotle also includes in his theory of dreams what constitutes a dream and what does not. He claimed that a dream is first established by the fact that the person is asleep when they experience it. If a person had an image appear for a moment after waking up or if they see something in the dark it is not considered a dream because they were awake when it occurred. Secondly, any sensory experience that actually occurs while a person is asleep and is perceived by the person while asleep does not qualify as part of a dream. For example, if, while a person is sleeping, a door shuts and in their dream they hear a door is shut, Aristotle argues that this sensory experience is not part of the dream. The actual sensory experience is perceived by the senses, the fact that it occurred while the person was asleep does not make it part of the dream. Lastly, the images of dreams must be a result of lasting impressions of sensory experiences had when awake.