Baxter and the Spiritual Origin of Dreams

This paper presents and examines Andrew Baxter's theory of the origin of dreams. In an essay of over 200 pages, he explores various conceptions and accounts of dreaming, develops a distinctive and elaborate theory of their occurrence, and arrives at the striking conclusion that all dreams are produced by external spirits or immaterial (ghost-like) agents. Remarkably, this extraordinary contribution has received no attention from historians of philosophy. In addition to clarifying the structure and force of Baxter's argument for the 'spiritual origin' of dreams, I aim to make his puzzling conclusion more digestible by showing how he eliminates alternative hypotheses on the basis of principles and assumptions that were relatively widely accepted in his time. Along the way, I also reconstruct his commitment to certain methodological and causal principles, as well as his unwavering adherence to the authority of self-consciousness and mental transparency.