Leviathan And Rene Descartes's Theory Of Walking And Dreaming

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Has one ever speculated how to differentiate between walking and dreaming? Thomas Hobbes, a materialist, expresses his comprehension that walking and dreaming are distinct entities in his essay named, Leviathan. In this paper, I will strongly argue the significance of how and what Hobbes attempts to establish, Rene Descartes’s view on dreams, Descartes’s Meditator response, and Hobbes’s reply to Descartes. Without further ado; let me initiate the critical analysis of Hobbes’s approach of dreaming and walking.

To commence, Hobbes attempts to establish that the mind is based on the foundation of imagination. The conception of motion is responsible for sense to transform into an imagination formulated by memory (58-60). For example, an object …show more content…

Hobbes’s endeavor was to express an ideology that imagination is known as a “decaying sense” (59). Thus, dreaming experience expresses that they are made up of imagination and senses. When one is sleeping the other senses of the body modifies to become numb. This numbness leads to images in the mind to formulate when sleeping with the use of one’s memory (60). For instance, in the morning, one saw a rabbit and retains the characteristics of the rabbit even though the rabbit is not in front of them anymore. The rabbit becomes part of an experience and stored in the memory. Subsequently, when asleep the image of the rabbit may form in the mind because one saw the rabbit when they were awake. While dreaming one could see and hear the rabbit even though it is not there in reality. When one dreams the thoughts are not interfered by the outside forces. Thus, one has the ability to have a reflection towards a dream when awake but cannot reflect being awake when one is dreaming (60). When one is awake there are outside objects that reflect imagination. However, when one dreams, it is only impacted by internal objects that impact the imagination. For example, walking by a flower you get an image in mind of the appearance of a flower. Hence, if one had to

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