There are two leading theories about the ontology of dreams. One holds that dreams involve hallucinations and beliefs. The other holds that dreaming involves sensory and propositional imagining. I highlight two features of dreams which are more easily explained by the imagination theory. One is that certain things seem to be true in our dreams, even though they are not represented sensorily; this is easily explained if dreams involve propositional imagining. The other is that dream narratives can be temporally segmented, involving events which take place across long spans of time; this makes sense if dreams involve sensory imagining, for we often sensorily imagine narratives during wakefulness in the same way. The two considerations are unified by the fact that both highlight forms of content determination characteristic of imagining.

关于梦的本体论有两种主要的理论。一种认为梦涉及幻觉和信念。另一种观点认为，梦境涉及感官和命题想象。我强调了梦的两个特征，它们更容易用想象理论来解释。一个是某些事情在我们的梦中似乎是真实的，即使它们没有在感官上表现出来;如果梦涉及命题想象，这很容易解释。另一个是梦境叙述可以被时间分割，涉及发生在很长一段时间内的事件;如果梦涉及感官想象，这是有道理的，因为我们经常以同样的方式在清醒时以感官想象叙述。这两个考虑因素是一致的，因为两者都突出了想象所特有的内容确定形式。