Decartes on Dreaming

[Claudiu]

In his Meditations, Decartes says that you can't be sure if you're dreaming or awake. So my question is how do you know if you're not dreaming at this very moment as you're reading this? I feel like whatever we say, Decartes can just come back and say that we can dream of what we just said, for example if we our test is that in reality we can't defy the law of gravity yet in dreams we can, Decartes can just say that maybe in this dream right now you are choosing not to defy the law of gravity.

 

[saintandsinner77]

We could ask Descartes, "What is dreaming?" Or, "What do you mean by dreaming?" Now, once he starts defining the dream state, he obviously knows that it is distinct from the waking state/consciousness, thus what's the point of the question?

 

[tommyb]

In his Meditations, Descartes says that you can't be sure if you're dreaming or awake. So my question is how do you know if you're not dreaming at this very moment as you're reading this?

Pascal, in his Pensees, pokes fun at Descartes for this statement. Pascal argues that certain truths are known intuitively and they are no less certain for being so perceived. He cites first principles, the laws or logic, or any self evident proposition which can't itself be proved empirically or rationally. He goes on to assure Descartes that we can trust this intuitive facility on the whole dream thing.

 

[LeeJUk]

Descartes makes this argument your describing regarding dreaming in meditation 1 however he retracts it in meditation 6 due to the fact that dreams aren't connected to past memories however when your awake you can sort of look back and see a succession of events that led to the present.

He was merely using the argument to throw doubt upon the senses so he could start his meditations from a position of doubting everything and then meditations 2-6 are him establishing what cannot be doubted.

 

[jwright82]

Our entire conceptual scheme has been developed under the assumption that we are not dreaming. What this says is that we can't know what dreaming is without our conceptual scheme having paradigm cases of what dreaming is and what dreaming isn't. Someone who has never had a dream wouldn't know what Descarte was talking about. Only someone who has dreamet and been awake would even understand the argument. So the argument assumes that the person they are asking this question of has been awake and has had a dream, so it almost invalidates the question. Look up the brain in a vat problem too, if this interests you more.

 

[Skyler]

I'm not smart enough to have come up with that in my sleep. Just sayin'.

 

[discipulo]

I wonder what the movie Inception could bring to this discussion

Interesting assumptions made by Descartes, in his method of doubt. It seems to me that it is the problem of the one and the many that

he is opposing.

In a sense his Cogito Ergo Sum is already a pre Kantian autonomy of the self, its all centred in the self and what the self and reason

can and cannot know.

 

[Philip]

I would ask (in good Reidian fashion) what reason I have for thinking that I am, in fact, dreaming. Why should I distrust my God-given senses?

 

[LeeJUk]

P.F. Hugh. Descartes briefly makes the same sort of argument throughout the meditations though realising that won't convince some people he argues from a different angle.

 

[Philip]

P.F. Hugh. Descartes briefly makes the same sort of argument throughout the meditations though realising that won't convince some people he argues from a different angle.

Convincing a skeptic isn't my business. Why should I have to? Who made him king?

This is my problem with Descartes: he lets the skeptic in his head make the rules. Why do that? It's futile. If he wants to, he can try to live in skepticism (Hume even admitted that you can't) but I have no burden to convince him.