Descartes Was A Metaphysical Philosopher Whose Main Goal

In “Bad Dreams, Evil Demons, and the Experience Machine: Philosophy and The Matrix”, Christopher Grau analyzes Rene Descartes argument concerning reality. The argument starts on page 181 in the bottom left hand corner of the page and continues onto page 182, ending at the bottom right corner of the page. In this text, Grau explains Descartes argument that what one may interpret as reality may not be more than a figment of their imagination and then uses it to develop his own argument. Grau explains that you cannot know whether you are in the dream world or the real world, and therefore argues that we cannot be sure that our beliefs about the world are true.

He gives another scenario of when he lies in the bed he can dream that his he is sitting by the fire with is nightgown when in fact there is no such event he is undressed in the bed. This reinforces that idea one cannot trust what one is experiencing to actually be real. What proof can one bring that one awake other than oneself “just knowing”. This is the point Descartes wan to call to attention.

Descartes first presents this idea with the statement "How often does my evening slumber persuade me of such ordinary things as these: that I am here, clothed in my dressing gown, seated next to the fireplace -- when in fact I am lying undressed in bed!" (Descartes 490). By using an experience of his own, Descartes shows how dreams can be asymptotic to reality. Descartes implies that he often sits next to his fireplace, clothed in his dressing gown, so his dream that he is doing so is very believable. In conclusion, one cannot distinguish between a dream and reality because the gradient between them is so finitely small at times.

According to Descartes’, “As I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep.” This is the fundamental principle of the Dreaming Argument. The scenarios in which we experience whilst we are asleep are comparable to the scenarios we experience whilst we are awake. Often, we struggle to tell from our own perspective where our experiences are derived from; it is difficult to differentiate whether our experiences stem from reality or our dreams. The issue with this is that our unconscious

Descartes’ Dreaming Argument comes from his thinking that there is no way of knowing if you are sleeping or if you are awake. To know something is to have no doubt of a fact, it must be a justified true belief. To be justified it must hold logical reason, you cannot state something is true without evidence. In order for it to be true it is not enough to justify it, but it must be justified with true facts. Finally, you must believe it, in order to know something it must be true in your mind. As a result Descartes doubts his consciousness as he cannot truly know that he is awake. This spurs Descartes to question if any perceived knowledge of reality is really true. Descartes calls his senses into questions as he notes, “it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once” and therefore concludes that as a result it is prudent, never to trust his sense. In

When Descartes remembers occasions when he is dreaming, he falsely believes he is awake. Reflecting on this, Descartes thinks he cannot

Descartes dreaming argument suggests that perhaps our senses cannot be fully trusted because we cannot be certain we are not dreaming, and this means we therefore cannot be certain of anything. His evil demon argument is similar but uses the idea of an evil demon deceiving you instead of your senses. These sceptical arguments mean that we cannot be certain of anything at all for it may be happening whilst we are dreaming, or we are being tricked into thinking it is happening. I do not agree with Descartes because I feel that I can be certain I am not dreaming, and I do not believe that other supernatural creatures; such as an evil demon exists.

The dreaming argument was based upon the idea that both waking and sleeping (dreaming) experiences can be very similar, and that distinguishing between the two may not be possible. This led to Descartes doubting that waking experiences are actually infact waking experiences and not dreams. Descartes developed this argument and claimed that in order to be certain of any experiences, we have to be certain that we are not dreaming. However, Descartes continued and

Many different interpretations of Descartes’ dream argument could derive from his theory. In lecture we interpreted Descartes’ Dream Argument as follows:

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.

The Dreaming argument first showed up in Descartes First Meditation, where he focusses on the task to educate himself on his own doubt. When meditating he starts to think about how he has a hard time distinguishing himself from being asleep and awaking. This is how the dreaming argument came forth. The Dreaming Argument easily said is “If I am certain of anything, then I have to be certain that

Descartes stated “… I perceive so clearly that there exist no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished from sleep…” (1641). This statement displays how he came to the realization that he cannot trust his senses to tell him the difference between what is a dream and what is reality. In comparison, Neo

Rene Descartes uses his writings in Meditation I and II to attempt to decipher if everything that he has already known is real or if it is just a trick on behalf of God. Interestingly, Descartes believes that his senses deceive him, and that God could be deceiving him as well. Another interesting point that Descartes states is the concept of dreaming, which he compares dreams as if they are painted images. However, then what is the case if the dream that we are dreaming represents something in which has already happened while we were awake? Does this occurrence mean that the event is happening all over again, or is our mind just too consumed with thinking about the situation again? Following Descartes statement about how we rely on our senses to know what is true, and since we do not use all of our senses while dreaming, then the event that occurs while we are in a dream state cannot be true. We do know, however, that we exist

Rene Descartes once said “Humans have two primary states of consciousness: waking and dreaming.” Descartes argued that humans do not have the ability to know whether they are dreaming. A dream is constructed according memories and thoughts. When we enter a dream we have no grasp on reality, so we believe the dream to be real life. For example, when people have nightmares they often scream and or become physically violent during the duration of the dream.

In this text, Descartes first categories dreams as false but “lively and sharp”, yet asserts immediately afterwards that whatever we conceive vividly must be true (17). At first glance this is very confusing, because he seems to say that dreams are both true and false. This contradiction is later clarified, however, when he mentions that our reasoning when asleep is not as complete as when we are awake (18). Perhaps dreams are misleading not as a result of their content, but because we lose our rationality while asleep and have a harder time comprehending what we perceive. Being asleep is like reading a book in hieroglyphic script, and being awake is doing so with the Rosetta Stone. The two states are equally as valid, yet it still easier to understand the natural world when equipped with reason, than it is to understand dreams without. Al-Ghazali points out that “a state may arise that bears the same relation to the waking state as waking state does to dream”. This of course is the mystic state. As was demonstrated earlier, reaching this