What do you Think ??
Imagine there is a person, whose any all of the 5 senses (the sense of feel, the sense of sight, the sense of smell, the sense to hear, the sense to taste) don’t function. This person has somehow been kept alive for 18 years. And now, today, he is 18 years old. Now the question is :
From his birth to today, would this person have had a dream, any kind of dream? If yes.. then why and if no.. then why ? and may be what kind of dreams (if yes) !!
Please reply and share your thoughts !!
–Update — 06th Feb 2008–
Just to add on, suppose there was a perfectly normal child, but then he went into comma. What do you think would he dream then ?? Do people in comma dream ??
And also the question was not thought by me. I was asked the same question in a seminar !! 
Hi
I don’t even want to imagine such a situation, but if such a hypothetical situation prevails then, then I think, that person will not have any dream, because he can not feel any thing. Without feel/sensation your mind can not work, because feeling/sensation are the basic input for brain activity.
But it is very interesting topic to discuss.
Subhash Jha
hi kid
No, he doesn’t hav any type of dream. its like u hav a computer but dont hav any input device (keyboard, mouse, touchscreen,power/restart button etc). this computer will not start n work. u cant do any thing wid this PC. its just like a box.
Similarly a child learn things (receives input values) thorugh these senses.
Hope u hav seen Black (sanjay leela Bansali’s film) , that gal doesn’t hav sense of hear, but she learned through sense of feel.
COnclusion is that person u r talking abt will doesnt receive any input, doesnt learn anything, doesnt diffrentiate b/t smells, taste, types of feeling, cant see. Also in ur question 18 years has been past and in this long period brain gets dumb/rusted.
one more thing is that, only thing happened with him naturally is that- when his nutrition level in his body goes down he feel hungary / a type of stomach ach (which we also feel when we are hungary). then (may be - i hope so) automatically his brain moves his body in search of food/meal but as he does have any sense of taste he just eat any thing which he find.
You mean a state machine without any inputs ports, eh?
But do you know that your computer comes pre-programmed with some basic softwares. Even before your CPU begins taking inputs and processing them, it is loaded with a BIOS and a small OS in the factory itself. In this person’s case, the BIOS has no I/O, but the rudimentary OS is still working and it might have booted up correctly after the first and only “power on reset”. It doesnt develop but might still be functioning after 18 yrs, generating some vague information, that you or me might not perceive as dreams, or it might have died 18 years back after generating an error message like “no keyboard found”!
It’s indeed a good question and requires lot of thinking. Apart from answering the question I am trying to add some extra stuff which I could imagine, so be patient.
Ok assume this person can dream/imagine then what he can dream? Definitly he can’t dream/imagine as we do because he has never seen or felt anything. He doesn’t know what is a human being or what is this world?
We knew about 3 dimensions from long time but when we came to know about 4 th dimension then it was difficult to digest for everybody but somehow it was accepted. In same way this person can dream or imagine which we can’t. He may see things or objects which we can’t imagine.
We use only small percentage of our brain but who knows this person with above disabilities may use rest of this unexplored part of brain (why I am saying like this is again inferred from the fact that persons with specific disabilities start developing other senses more effectively than a normal man for e.g. a blind person is more sensitive toward sense of feel and hearing than a normal man) or he may be not knowing that he exists at all!!!. Because according to me “Exists” is a relative term. We say we exist in this world but for this person there is no “world” because he doesn’t know about it and he can’t feel. He won’t know when he is alive, he won’t know when he is dead (if we cut his head also he won’t feel any pain so he won’t know when he died!!!)
So logically or scientifically he can’t imagine or dream (because by no means he can feel his existence so he doesn’t exists for himself, much in the same way when we sleep without any dreams* we don’t know about our existence!!!! for that period of time everything is shutdown for us. if somebody kill us in this state we won’t be knowing about this (provided we don’t wake up when somebody kills us in this state ..
) ).
But spiritually rather I should say unscientifically he could imagine or dream which we can never!!!!!
Don’t beat me up after reading this _______ (fill whatever you like here) type of answer…
And last but not the least:- Usually these types of ideas come to you when u r in toilet and this one is no exception
* Conditions apply **
** Some people may not agree with this statement without dream. So for those persons without dream means when you don’t remember that you had dream last night.
haha.. well , its a well thought answer !!
And I am sure you thought of the answer in the toilet
Actually I did not think of the question myself !! I will update this on the blog itself !!
Thanx for the comment though and keep posting !!