This Essay Could be in a Different Reality Than You: An Analysis on Descartes’ Dream Theory The idea that reality, is in fact a dream (or simply not what we perceive it to be) is seen time and time again in our culture. Alice in Wonderland, The Matrix, and even Buffy the Vampire Slayer are all examples of how much influence this idea that we are living in a dream-like, revers-reality environment has affected us, as a culture. However, one of the original perpetrators of this science-fiction-esque theory was René Descartes. In his first meditation, René Descartes establishes his argument that we are never truly able to tell if we are conscious or dreaming; therefore it is a possibly that our perception of consciousness is actually a dream …show more content…
Sure, there are some dreams that certainly seem as real as everyday life—I can vividly remember one dream in particular from my childhood in which I truly thought I was conscious and in a real bathroom (needless to say, this dream did not end particularly well)—but there are some obvious exceptions as well as some reasonable refutations to this claim. For example, lucid dreaming. Some say that Descartes, himself, experienced the phenomenon of lucid dreaming, even describing himself as “a prisoner enjoying an imaginary freedom during his sleep, but when he later begins to suspect that he is dreaming, fears being awakened…”(Descartes 16). This idea of lucid dreaming is not very compatible with Descartes’ assertion that there is no way to know when one is dreaming; he himself experienced awareness and control within his unconscious …show more content…
Each step Descartes takes towards his conclusion is more of a leap, and as his assumptions grow larger and larger, so do the gaps within them. The proof that interprets the similarity between sensations in a dream-state and in reality is easily contestable and rather flimsy; there are certainly many sensations that are lacking, and Descartes even contradicts himself further on in Meditations on First Philosophy. His failure to expand upon lucid dreaming and to account for the presence (or lack thereof) of beliefs and memories within the dream-state ultimately results in the collapse of both his idea that it is impossible for one to perceive when they are in a dream and his conclusion. Attributed to Ernest Sosa, this philosophical rebuttal regarding beliefs is perhaps one of the most conceivable arguments against “the dream theory.” Overall, this theory is very entertaining, but quite simply, lacks an adequate
Just because the person is so engulfed in a dream that it is impossible for that individual to recognize disparities between these 2 experiences, these same person can nevertheless tell the difference once he or she has awakened. Moreover, a sensation as clear as pain cannot feel the same as the pain we feel when awaken, some argue. After all, Descartes premise is based on the idea that there is nothing in reality that a dream cannot replicate so vividly that we are unable to tell the difference. But he also said that dreams borrow, in a sense, some but not all things from reality so these may not be but somewhat plausible events made up by our
In the first meditation, Descartes makes a conscious decision to search for “in each of them [his opinions] at least some reason for doubt”(12). Descartes rejects anything and everything that can be doubted and quests for something that is undeniably certain. The foundation of his doubt is that his opinions are largely established by his senses, yet “from time to time I [Descartes] have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once”(12). First, Descartes establishes that error is possible, employing the example of the straight stick that appears bent when partially submerged in water, as mentioned in the Sixth Replies (64-65). Secondly, he proves that at any given time he could be deceived, such is the case with realistic dreams. Further, Descartes is able to doubt absolutely everything since it cannot be ruled out that “some malicious demon … has employed all his energies in order to deceive me” (15). The malicious demon not only causes Descartes to doubt God, but also sends him “unexpectedly into a deep whirlpool which tumbles me around so that I can neither stand on the bottom or swim on the top”(16). Descartes has reached the point where he must begin to rebuild by searching for certainty.
He quickly releases that this is the foundation of most of his beliefs. He first acknowledges that sometime our senses can deceive us, but say that our senses is mostly sturdy. It is after this that Descartes realizes that there has been times where he has been sleeping and in his dream he was certain that he was awake and sensing real objects. Though his current senses may have be dream senses, he suggests that even dream senses are drawn from our experience of us awake. He then discovers that there are times in which he cannot distinguish whether he is in his waking state and his dream state.
The teaching of Descartes has influenced many minds since his writings. Descartes' belief that clear and distinct perceptions come from the intellect and not the senses was critical to his ultimate goal in Meditations on First Philosophy, for now he has successfully created a foundation of true and certain facts on which to base a sold, scientific belief structure. He has proven himself to exist in some form, to think and therefore feel, and explains how he knows objects or concepts to be real.
With Descartes’ ideology of the senses and how they allow for deception of the individual, how are we supposed to be able to differentiate between when we are in a dream or when we are actually in reality? When we are in a dream as well as in reality, the senses seem real and we believe that what we experience is true; however, according to Descartes, the only way to determine whether or not an individual is experiencing a dream is through the use of their thought processing. Within reality, there are certain aspects that allow one to realize that they are presently living in reality. These two main aspects are routine and patterns that are performed on the daily basis such as, going to work, eating breakfast, or even brushing your
Descartes begins the excerpt by stating that because many things he learned in his childhood turned out to be false, he felt it was necessary “to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last,” (22). Such a tedious task would require an immense amount of time; although in comparing his beliefs to a building, Descartes intends to start at the beginning or at the “foundations” of his beliefs so that when he finds doubt in the support, every belief that is based on the foundation will be disregarded. He begins this doubt with the senses, for he believes that every opinion he has is derived from the senses, and that because the senses “deceive us,” they are not reliable sources of information (22). Like a “madman,” Descartes must therefore doubt the existence of everything he sees, and he further moves into questioning the difference between real life and dreams. According to Descartes, the images placed before us in ...
In “Bad Dreams, Evil Demons, and the Experience Machine: Philosophy and the Matrix”, Christopher Grau explains Rene Descartes argument in Meditation. What one may interpret as reality may not be more than a figment of one’s imagination. One argument that Grau points out in Descartes essay is how one knows that what one think is an everyday experience awake is not all a part of a hallucination. He uses the example of dreams to draw a conclusion about is claim based on experiences one would experience with dreaming. He asserts that there are times when one wake up from a dream that seems to be “vivid and realistic” however soon finds that it was not. The experience of reality in the dream was all a part of the mind. If dreams seem to be reality and one would not have any concept that one is dreaming how does one know that one is not dreaming now? Descartes point is that one cannot justify reality in the sense that one could be dreaming right at this moment and not know therefore one cannot trust the brain as an indicator of what is reality.
René Descartes in the first of his Meditations offers the simple yet profound “Dreaming Argument” for scepticism. His Meditator asserts that most knowledge claims arise from our sensory interaction with the external world and, since our senses are occasionally unreliable, they cannot always be trusted. (Descartes I.3-4) Additionally, we regularly have vivid dreams about plausible events and, while asleep, are often convinced of being awake. Since we can be in dream-like states while “awake,” such as when seeing an illusion, and can also be fooled while “dreaming” to believe we are awake, the Meditator concludes that no convincing distinction can be made between the two states. This entails we cannot rely on sensory experience as the basis for
With the senses, it is believed that the experiences before have been stored away in the mind while the person was awake, only to be recollected when the person is asleep. When Descartes addresses this, he states that it “seemed to have sensed in my dreams many things that I later realized I did not sense .” It is hard to tell which experience was caused by the individual, whether directly or not. According to Descartes, there are senses that, when experienced in dreams, are not directly caused by the person. However, the senses can tell if a person is awake by the way they feel when they are recollected. During the dreams, the senses are faded, because the senses are merely memories at this point, ghosts of what they had been at the time of conception. If the senses were real, it feels as if a wire is stuck inside your mind. If the person pays enough attention, he/she can actually feel the brain registering the sensation. Lastly, the senses, when gathered, control the understanding of
Descartes offers a naturalistic solution in the final paragraph of the sixth meditation in the form of a continuity test: since continuity with past experiences holds only of waking but not dreaming, checking for the requisite continuity is the test for ascertaining that one is awake. The most famous pop culture example of this is seen in the movie Inception. In Inception, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio’s character) and the other members of his team, carry around a totem that distinguishes the difference of whether or not they’re in their own reality or in a dream state. A totem has a special modified quality (such as a distinct weight, balance or feel) in the real world, but in a dream world, the characteristics of the totem will be off. In the movie,
Descartes has presented the dream argument in his work, Meditations on First Philosophy. According to his argument, dreams mirror the experience of the person’s real life. Because of the uncertainty in the process of dreaming, Descartes describes the method of skepticism which distinguishes the truth from illusion.
In addition, the subject itself is of interesting nature as it concerns a concept that is immense and the answer to the question is complex and overwhelming to our minds and the best we currently can do is provide assumptions in philosophical terms. The dream argument is a concept that discusses, in essence, our subconscious, something that is of great interest to us as it is something that we lack knowledge about even though it is defining part of us. And according to Aristotle, “All men by nature desire to know.” (Aristotle, 350 B.C.E, p. 1), something that we cannot deny is that humankind has continually advanced throughout the years. Examples range from, technology like computers or machinery like vehicles. We could also look at our non-material advances like teaching. We human thrive on advancement and are always looking to know more and become more educated. In essence, the reason why Descartes dream argument is so compelling is because it concerns the things that we have always been doubting and in this case, the discussion is about humankind's existence. And that subject is one of the most interesting things that humankind desires to know. It is on par with discussions of how we came to be and the origins of our kind. This is why Rene Descartes dream argument, beyond doubt, is the most compelling of his skeptical arguments compared to his sense argument, which in actuality is connected to the dream argument, and his evil demon argument, which is a sound argument but for it to be true or more compelling than his dream argument you would have to believe and prove the existence of demons which are supernatural beings. In addition, Descartes argument is supported by another philosopher by the name of Sextus Empiricus, who says the same objects
To Descartes, what counts as reality or truth qualifies as knowledge. However for it to be true, the argument or evidence you present would have to be so good that there would not be any possibility for any skeptical substitute, hence testing the wax in two states at two different times to be sure of what it is. In Descartes 1st Meditation, he poses a type of global skepticism in which all our beliefs are challenged. He argues that if he may simply be able to show that there is reason for doubting an opinion then he can put that opinion to the side and rule it out (thus being able to distinguish reality for non-reality and truth from lies). This type of ruling out can be done by observing and testing the very foundations to which we hold accountable for what is deemed real and what may be, and in turn rejecting them. In the above example Descartes using the senses to identify “flavor”, “sounds”, “color”, “scent” can be argued to be misleading at times. This is because to Descartes, we as individuals have no clear standard for differentiating between our our lives when we are awake and the lives we think we experience when we are asleep. However the fact is that whatever we may dream, Descartes argues that the founding elements of these objects in our dreams must undoubtedly have a origin/source/ basis in actual reality. These
How do we know the difference between Dreams and Reality? You may feel certain that you are not dreaming right now, but you're probably just as certain that you are not dreaming while you have been dreaming -- You see the issue here? Almost all of us experienced a dream that we were almost certain was real. Inception is a movie about a man named Dom Cobb who’s a thief with the rare ability to enter people's dreams, enabling him to steal secrets from their subconscious. Not to get confused with reality a totem is used to test if one is dreaming or not. Ariadne refers to this as “An elegant solution for
According to the Oxford Dictionary, a dream is “a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep. Dreams are much more complex than the definition makes them sound. The definition leaves out the how and why the thoughts, images and sensations in dreams occur. There are a great number of theories relating to dreams, but very few questions are answered. There are many ongoing studies relating to dreams.