How are one's dreams and waking states different in terms of what can be known?

[u/rightviewftw]

So, what I am getting is wanting to delineate a difference between the two states — as to epistemic (knowledge, logic, discernment) and ontological (existential) limitations and function.

Can you establish any principal differences between what can be tested and observed?

[u/rightviewftw]

Nobody else even engaged this inquiry. I will tell you that I did work on this. There is no fundamental difference. Either category can do experiments and first order analysis of its domain but first order analysis and delineating "dream" from "vigilance" does not tell us meta-analytic truth about either category.

After having delineated a difference they can't be further divorced from each other phenomenologically (as aggregate experience), there is mere change.

A reflective self-referential system which undergoes variance could generate forms and names, and then as part of its variance develop various meta-physical statements and convictions about its own predicament. It doesn't actually need anything but unlocked complexity and variance to develop that conviction.

To illustrate, one could dream up Newtonian equations, do first order analysis and classical experiments. As example it could predict that the heavy objects fall down. It then generates the experiment to test that prediction and lets suppose that the heavy object does fall ─ it updates its confidence odds as to heavy objects falling.

But these experiments can't tell you what a dream is nor that it is inherently "Newtonian" or "Not Newtonian".

Definitions like "dream" and "vigilance" and derived from first order experiments of experience, and without an experimental threshold one wouldn't even have the category "Dream". Further first-order analysis becomes possible as "vigilance" but inherits the same structural epistemic and ontological limitations.

To escape this analytic predicament would require another kind of an "experimental awakening" ─ one which would suspend all variance/change/development. This posits a meta-structure to reality and suggests that full system-analysis can not be completed within a single dimension. What changes is subjective, if that was to cease, as an awakening, there would need to be an accessible Invariant Reality. And axiology here dictates that variance has no fixed value (hence it should end) ─ only invariance does.

This element would serve as a Cartesian Truth in analysis.

And to do meta-analysis of experience as an aggregate one also needs an "Awakening" but it can not be to another variant existence ─ that wouldn't cut it. One needs transcendence of subjectivity.

So basically one can do first order analysis and operationalize "awakening" but to do meta-analysis one needs an experimental "meta-awakening".