One of Rene Descartes’s most famous arguments, from his not only from his first meditation but all of the meditations, is his Dream Argument. Descartes believes that there is no way to be able to distinguish being in awake from being in a state of dreaming. In fact you could actually be in a dream right now. Rene Descartes’s theory that one is unable distinguish being awake from dreaming, as interesting as it is, can be at times a little farfetched, along with a few contradictions to himself, Descartes’s dream argument does not entitle himself to any sort of claim.
Descartes wrote the Meditations on First Philosophy were first published in the year 1641 in Latin. There are six total Meditations that Descartes had written. One thing that stood out was that Descartes had written the Mediation in a first person point of view which a nice switch up compared to other writers. Reading about the Dream Argument does get a person thinking about dreams one has at nights. James Hill calls Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy “an unconventional philosophical text” (Hill, 1). There have not been other philosophers that have taken a crack at the topic of dreaming and have made an interesting and impacting theory. Descartes argument is a quite an interesting one. Descartes takes a good endeavor to make sense of something that is quite supernatural that even scientists today have trouble giving a 100 percent true explanation. At the roots of what Descartes is attempting to put forward it does seem logical and simple.
At the beginning of the very first meditation, Descartes states that he has lost his trust with his senses because they can be easily deceived (Descartes, 18). While dreaming sometimes it feels very real just as it does whi...
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... dream argument. When the creator of the argument is not 100 percent behind it, it is very difficult to get behind it yourself. Even with the farfetched ideas, contradictions and inconsistencies of Rene Descartes’s dream argument it is still a very interesting outlook at the topic that has not been seen from Descartes angle from anyone before. However, due to of all these negative attributes that are attached to Descartes’s Dream Argument cause it to fail to create any claim.
Works Cited
Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. Donald A. Cress. 4th ed. N.p.: Hackett, 1998. Print.
Hill, James. "Descartes' Dreaming Argument and Why We Might Be Sceptical of It." The Richmond Journal of Philosophy 8 (2004): n. pag. Print.
Simpson, Peter. "The Dream Argument and Descartes' First Meditation." Auslegung 9 (1982): 300-10. Print.
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
case that Descartes would consider a case of thinking but you would not? Does dreaming count as a
When Descartes remembers the occasions that occur while he is dreaming, he falsely believes that he has a conscious mind, as in being awake. Reflecting on this, Descartes believes he cannot tell whether or not he is dreaming. In Descartes own words, he quotes:
A man whose ideas and perceptions of his time shocked many and he is considered the father of modern philosophy. His views and understanding of the world could be seen to many as radical, as he set out to understand himself and the nature of ideas and existence. His goal in writing the Meditations on First Philosophy written in 1641 was to show the clarity and distinction of ideas through the existence and immortality of God. This man, named Rene Descartes, had to place himself in the shoes of doubt, seen in meditation I. His doubts consisted of the senses in their original distinction such as a square book or a soft blanket and senses in seemingly apparent distinction which Descartes argues about when one dreams. He states that even the most vivid senses in our dreams could be subject to doubt.
Descartes’ dream arguement that he engages in within the ‘First Meditation’ is very complex and tends to have readers feeling skeptical if they are truly awake and no whats going on in the world around them, or if they are actually just dreaming. His arguementcan be both easy to understand as well as breaking down claims to know certain things going on around the world. Descartes describes how people believing they are awake and not dreaming right now may be shaken and wary. At first glance, it came to my perspective that Descartes is delusional to believe that one might believe that they are dreaming and are not awake. I believe this because when one wakes up in the morning they are awake and no longer dreaming, when they open their eyes they see the world and they begin to once again exsist within the world, therefore to be dreaming is not certain and therefore would not make sense to a regualr person. Descartes highlights in his defense the lack of insight a person has in the condition when dreaming, while not awake. In “First Meditation”, Descartes states:
Second, Descartes raised a more systematic method for doubting the legitimacy of all sensory perception. Since my most vivid dreams are internally indistinguishible from waking experience, he argued, it is possible that everything I now "perceive" to be part of the physical world outside me is in fact nothing more than a fanciful fabrication of my own imagination. On this supposition, it is possible to doubt that any physical thing really exists, that there is an external world at all. (Med. I)
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.
Throughout “Mediations I and II”, Descartes disputes definitions of reality and identity, establishing a precursor to Emerson’s philosophy. Initially, Descartes questions all notions of being. In “Mediation I”, Descartes begins his argument explaining the senses which perceive reality can be deceptive and “it is wiser not to trust entirely to any thing by which we have once been deceived” (Descartes 59). But, he then continues to reason; “opinions [are] in some measure doubtful…and at the same time highly probable, so that there is much more reason to believe in than to deny them” (Descartes 62). Descartes maintains trust within his established personal beliefs though he may doubt certain physical senses. Additionally, Descartes seeks to establish his identity in “Meditation II”. Even as he questions his very existence, he begins trustin...
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.
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
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.
Rene Descartes is recognized as an influential abstract thinker. Although there have been objections to his idea's, he continues to invoke thinking among huge numbers of people. In the first meditation, Descartes does an excellent job of convincing the reader that all the information received from the senses can be called into doubt. He uses concrete arguments to show how humans often have the tendency to assume things they don't really know about, espically when this information is based on the senses. This work is a classic because of the originality of Descartes ideas, and the matter-of-fact way that he presents them. These are just some of the ingredients that compose a classic philosophy masterpiece.
The most important of these is the agency, or control, of the subject over its own mind. While it may be evident that, of course, one has control over what one thinks about, in reality, there are many cases in which thoughts arise unbidden, or a memory suddenly appears, fresh as day. A good example of this may, in fact, be dreaming. Dreaming is a case in which our psychic apparatus controls the dream, and yet, what we perceive as ‘ourselves’ in the dream does not actually have agency over the content or progression of the dream itself, nor privileged information about what events will emerge. If, according to Descartes’ method, we are to get rid of any faculty that has been shown to be not totally reliable, then we are to get rid of the faculty of agency, which of course would undermine the method of doubt, that assumes the faculty of agency precisely in order to doubt. This is one reason to render doubtful the validity of Descartes’ method, however, it is not enough to salvage external world
[1] Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. 1641 [Translated by John Veitch (1901)] Meditation 6, http://www.classicallibrary.org/descartes/meditations/9.htm
In short, I summarized Descartes position of the relationship of the mind and body. After that I discussed two objections to his argument which were related to the mind existing without the body and that the mind is not divisible while I discussed how Descartes might respond to these arguments. These arguments adequately show that Descartes argument for mind/body dualism is false.