dream-wake

another component of this might have something to do with the difference between being asleep and being awake. Now (p. 136) they're talking about how the brain is active during sleep in similar patterns to when awake (during REM sleep anyway) but that it functions without outside inputs, just with inputs from itself. one thing that could be a problem in terms of objectivity would be if something like consistency with observations was a criterion, then you'd have to make sure somehow that the observations were coming from outside and not from yourself. but perhaps there is some other way of telling whether you're alsleep or not. I always think back to Hinton's Sleep-Wake algorithm, and how it worked by doing backpropagation from outside-inouts durint the Wake phase, and then did backpropagation from its own projections during the Sleep phase. And there are reasons why people have to sleep and dream to maintain their sanity. Whatever these reasons are, there must be some process that we undergo during dreaming, that may or may not have something to do with Hinton's algorithm, and so it might be possible to tell the difference between brains that have slept too little, brains that have slept enough, and brains that have not slept enough. So maybe whatever this criterion would be for distinguishing them could also be some kind of criterion of objectivity. too little dreaming would likely mean not being internally consistent. too much dreaming would likely mean not being connected with reality. just a thought.