On Ernest Sosa's "On Dreaming"

Bruce Wilshire, Rutgers University

A STRANGE ATTRACTION DREW ME to Ernest Sosa's presidential address to the eastern division of the American Philosophical Association on an afternoon just after Christmas 2004. "On Dreaming" was announced as his topic. I wondered if his impeccable reputation as an analytic philosopher, built up over at least four decades, would allow any new light to be thrown on the weird complexities of ourselvesÜwe, the animal that uses symbols in all sorts of ways, times, and conditions. We, the animal that can be so caught up in modes of awareness, and modes of symbolization, that our own health is strained and eroded, or that we kill others or allow ourselves to be killed because of the symbolizing. Don't whole cultures perceive the world through a kind of corporate dream, one that is embodied in their hallowed icons and sacred symbols?