Thread: Great thinkers, dear dreamers, how can we be sure lucidity is real?

Originally Posted by kartune

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What do you make of this?
I myself have been skeptical of whether my dreams are lucid or not.

Your question seems to be strangely muddled.
The title asks if lucidity is "real", and yet you finish asking if your dreams are lucid or not.
Of course dreams, lucid or otherwise, are not real in the sense that they are virtual, just as an apple in waking life is real, but an apple in a dream is not a real object.
As to whether the experience of a lucid dream is real or imagined, my experience of lucid dreams is very definitely real, and completely unlike a normal dream. The only way I could describe the experience is that it is so like real life that it is almost the opposite of a normal dream.
As to your dreams, if you had a lucid dream like I have just described, you would know the difference between that and an ordinary dream.

I don't find it to hard to understand lucid dreams as the conscious mind becoming aware enough of the unconscious real world simulation that we use to make sense of our world. If you think about the real visual stimulus that the eyes see, it requires this real world model to fill in the gaps and create the continuous scene we perceive. In dreams, that simulation system is active without the real world direction of the visual cortex, so it can run free. In lucid dreams we become aware of that simulation that is running in the dream and so it feels like real life because it essentially is the same internalised model that is used to make our perception of real life.

I think that all that really matters is how you experience lucid dreams.
If you feel that you are aware of the dreamstate and can decide to try out things that you have always wanted to experience, and if it has a powerful effect on how you feel when you wake up, then that's all that really matters.