philosophy essay: evaluating descartes’ dream argument

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  • 8/9/2019 Philosophy Essay: Evaluating Descartes Dream Argument

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    Philosophy Final Paper: Evaluating DescartesDream Argument

    Ben James

    June 5, 2013

    Introduction

    In this paper I will evaluate Descartesdream argument (as summarized in the following section) with the intent

    to determine the soundness of Descarteslogic, and ultimately opine on whether it seems correct that we are

    unable to differentiate between a state of waking and dreaming in which case our perceived experiences may be

    false. Descartesdream argument is a key foundation on which Descartes bases further conclusions about

    perception and god in hisMeditations.

    This paper will begin by summarizing the key points of Descartesdream argument; it will then evaluate

    criticisms against these arguments as espoused by other philosophers; and ultimately conclude by stating that

    although I agree with Descartespremises regarding the inability to differentiate between sleeping and waking

    (when viewed with skeptical doubt), I find the subsequent conclusion that he draws regarding the falsity of our

    experiences to be inherently contradictory and therefore unable to be relied upon.

    Summary of DescartesDream Argument

    Descartesdream argument is summarized in his first meditation:

    As if I were not a man who sleeps at night, and regularly has all the same experienceswhile asleep as madmen do when awake indeed sometimes even more improbable ones.How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events that I am here in my

    dressing-gown, sitting by the fire when in fact I am lying undressed in bed! Yet at themoment my eyes are certainly wide awake when I look at this piece of paper; I shake my

    head and it is not asleep; as I stretch out and feel my hand I do so deliberately, and I knowwhat I am doing. All this would not happen with such distinctness to someone asleep.Indeed! As if I did not remember other occasions when I have been tricked by exactlysimilar thoughts while asleep! As I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that thereare never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from beingasleep. The result is that I begin to feel dazed, and this very feeling only reinforces thenotion that I may be asleep.

    From hisMeditations, I believe that Descartesdream argument may be broken down into the following parts (it

    is important to note this is my own classification system and not one present in DescartesMeditations):

    1. First Premise: The content of our dreams is the same as the content of our waking experience.

    2. Second Premise (follows from first premise): There is nothing in our dreams which would indicate that

    we are dreaming.

    3. First Conclusion (drawn from first and second premises): We cannot be sure whether we are dreaming

    or awake.

    4. Second Conclusion (follows from first conclusion): We may be dreaming now.

    5. Third Conclusion (drawn from second conclusion and first and second premises): What we experience

    may be false illusions.

    I will evaluate this argument by analyzing each premise and conclusion separately on the following pages.

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    First Premise: The content of our dreams is the same as our waking experience.

    Descartes states this first premise most explicitly when elaborating on his dream argument in his sixth

    meditation; here he states, Every sensory experience I ever thought I was having while awake I can also think

    of myself as having while asleep.

    In researching criticisms of Descartesdream argument I found this first premise to be the most fervently argued

    against. I suspect this is because dreaming can be a rather subjective experience and one which is also difficult

    to accurately capture. Consider, for example, that dreams often involve fantastical events which may be difficult

    to understand especially with fleeting recollectionthis is very different than memories which can be easily

    verified (for example, you can check the oven you believe you turned off) and logically deduced.

    I believe the clearest arguments against his premise were espoused by John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. In his

    Essay concerning Human Understanding, Locke argued that dreams do not contain physical pleasure and pain

    which we find in an awakened state; stated pithily here:

    I believe he [Descartes] will allow a very manifest difference between dreaming of being in the fire, and being

    actually in it.

    Hobbes argued against the same premise but with a different logic. To Hobbes, the difference was dreams do

    not contain the same sense of the absurd found in reality. This was stated inLeviathanwhen he wrote:

    Because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdities of my waking

    thoughts; I am well satisfied, that being awake, I know I dream not; though when I dream, I think my self

    awake.

    While both arguments seem logical, they also seem to be quite personal and I believe that Descartes here would

    argue Locke and Hobbes have taken too narrow a view of dreaming. In my opinion, Descartes views dreams

    as similar to imagination in which the possibilities are limitless. This is evident when he states that he can

    imagine dreams that mimic sensory experiences he has while awake, and more generally in his reflections about

    the unknown nature of dreaming and of his distrust in sensory perception. [Limitless is used here as a

    generalizationI believe Descartes considers there to be some intellectual core to both dreams and

    consciousness, but I do not believe this detail is relevant to the dream argument (as it applies equally to dreams

    and consciousness), and thus elaborating on it would be off topic and potentially confusing. I also feel the use of

    such a generalization is important to note.]

    Assuming my belief that Descartes would argue dreaming to be limitless, we could say then that it is possible

    for a dream to contain both physical pain and a sense of the absurd. For this reason, I do not find these

    arguments able to prove Descartesfirst premise false.

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    Second Premise: There is nothing in our dreams which would indicate that we are dreaming.

    Although similar to the first premise, I believe this statement is slightly more encompassing. Here we can find

    Descartesexplanation in his first meditation where he writes: I see plainly that there are never any sure signs

    by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep.

    As was the case with the first premise, I believe criticisms of the second may be due to the subjective nature of

    dreaming, and in fact one could argue that the criticisms of Locke and Hobbes could be rephrased to attack this

    premise (e.g. having a sense of the absurd would indicate one is not dreaming), but they could also be dealt with

    in the same manner as discussed previously. It is worth noting, however, that in this case there is also a new

    criticism posed by John Austin which suggests that dreams poses an intangible yet perceptible atmosphere

    which distinguish them from when we are awake. He exemplifies this concept in his work Sense and Sensibilia:

    I may have the experience of dreaming that I am being presented to the Pope. Could it be seriously

    suggested that having this dream is qualitatively indistinguishable from actually being presented to the Pope?

    Quite obviously not. After all, we have the phrase a dream-like quality; some waking experiences are said to

    have this dream-like quality, and some artists and writers occasionally try to impart it, usually with scant success

    to their works If dreams were not qualitatively different from waking experiences, then every waking

    experience would be like a dream; the dream-like quality would be, not difficult to capture, but impossible to

    avoid.

    I find the subjective nature of this criticism to be a weakness (for example, I think some people would truthfully

    describe certain waking experiences as having a dreamlike quality), but more importantly I believe that, similar

    to the critiques of Locke and Hobbes, it is based on too narrow a view of dreaming, as espoused by Descartes.

    To further this point, its worth highlighting that in hisMeditationsDescartes evaluates this difference between

    dreaming and waking with an approach of extreme skepticism and doubt. Take, for example, his introduction to

    his second meditation where he writes:

    I will suppose then, that everything I see is spurious. I will believe that my memory tells me lies, and that none

    of the things that it reports ever happened. I have no senses. Body, shape, extension, movement and place are

    chimeras. So what remains true? Perhaps just the one fact that nothing is certain.

    Understanding this extreme skepticism to be Descartesmethod, we can again suggest that it would be possible

    for a dream to remove this dream-like qualitythus making it more realistic to the point that one does not

    distinguish it from being awake, and thus suggesting that Austins argument does not prove the second premise

    false.

    First Conclusion: We cannot be sure whether we are dreaming or awake.

    Having shown that I accept the two underlying premises, I also accept this conclusion. However, in

    understanding why I accept this conclusion it is important to note that I have assumed Descartes

    characterization of dreaming is so broad, and based upon such a strong sense of doubt, that waking and

    dreaming have become synonyms.

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    This idea that dreaming and waking are without contrast allows us to accept the second conclusion:

    Second Conclusion: We may be dreaming now.

    Given our analysis of Descartesinterpretation of dreaming, then what difference does it make whether we are

    dreaming or waking (as the two have experiences cannot be distinguished)? From this conclusion, Descartes

    makes his final conclusion of the dream argument:

    Third Conclusion: What we experience may be false illusions.

    It is with this final conclusion that I find a contradiction in Descartesargument.

    To understand this contradiction, it is first important to review again that as I have argued and understood

    Descartesdream argument, to successfully prove his first two premises he treats waking and dreaming as

    synonyms (this is how he is able to prove that we could be dreaming now just as we could be awake). However

    he now attempts to make a claim about false illusions which only makes sense if there is a difference between

    waking and dreamingthis is where I find a contradiction.

    If there is no longer a distinction between waking and dreaming then there can be nothing to compare and

    contrast (i.e. false illusions). To use an overly simplified examplehow can one critique or analyze counterfeit

    currency if there is not real currency on which to base ones analysis and contrast against?

    For this reason, I believe Descartes cannot go on to make claims about perception and God (as he advances in

    later sections of hisMeditations) because they are based on a contrast between the reality of a conscious world

    and the falsitys of a dream world which he has previously assumed to be one in the same.

    Summary

    This paper set out to analyze Descartesdream argument and found that the underlying premises were sound

    when they assumed dreams could inhabit limitless boundaries similar to ones imagination. This allowed

    dreaming to become comparable to waking and thus Descartesconclusions that we cannot distinguish between

    the two and therefore in fact that we may be dreaming proved correct. However, Descartes then attempts to use

    this as a basis to draw conclusions based on distinctions between dreaming and waking (for example that

    dreaming has false illusions) which is at odds with his underlying premises and therefore inconsistent.