Descartes Dream Argument Analysis
In his first meditation, Descartes proposes that there is no way for a person to tell whether or not they are always dreaming. “I see so plainly that there are no definitive signs by which to distinguish being awake from being asleep” (Descartes 10). According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Descartes holds dreams in the received view of dreaming, better understood as sleep in folk psychology. The received view, in addition to maintaining that dreams are experiences that occur during sleep, holds that dreams do not consist of inaccurate memories,dreams are experiences that occur during sleep in realtime, and in sleep we can actually judge and reason.Therefore, by refuting these claims that folk psychology holds, Descartes’ dream argument is undermined. I will argue it is impossible to verify dreams, that there exists such a thing as dreams that are produced at the moment of waking, and that it is impossible to communicate logically during sleep.
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It is impossible to verify dreams.
According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “[t]he received view is committed to the claim that we do not wake up with misleading memories.” To expand, let’s say that my friend and I have a sleepover. I tell my friend to tell me the next morning the dream he had the night before. He tells me of a dream in which he had a vague memory of being chased down by a bear in a forest. According the the received view, I should not for a second doubt this friend's presentation of what happened in his dream. He could certainly be leaving out certain details, but there is no way that that he is mistaken with the concept of a bear and woods. Where the received view, and therefore Descartes are undermined though, lies in the fact that there is no way of verifying dream
reports.
Further adding to the argument against the received view and therefore Descartes’ dream argument is that there exists such a thing as dreams that are produced at the moment of waking. I think back to a particular scene in a movie where a man thinks he is engaging in a make-out session with a women, only to quickly awake to his dog licking his face to which he quickly acts in disgust. When a dream ends in an outside stimulus that wakes the individual up, dreams appear more spur of the moment and quick rather than experiences which occur during sleep and in real time. On the basis of these sorts of dreams, both the received view and Descartes’ dream argument are undermined.
Finally, there is the impossibility of communicating logically during sleep. By logically, I mean that me and the friend mentioned above could not have a conversation while I am conscious and he unconscious about his bear and woods dream. Further adding to this argument is the philosopher Norman Malcolm, who alleges that one cannot say the statement “I am asleep” while also being asleep. Malcolm argues that it is true that somebody could say these words during sleep, but to think that the person is actually letting this be known is absurd.
The lucid dreamer proves to be a very hard-to defeat adversary of the received view and in particular my arguments that it is impossible to communicate logically during sleep and that it is impossible to verify dream reports. Stephen LaBerge was able to successfully challenge both of these with his 1990 study.
In this study LaBerge was able to set up a system in which the lucid dreamers relayed the content of their dreams to LaBerge via REM. The eye movements were graphed and the participants would effectively give dream reports that matched the indication of the graphs (e.g. if Billy moved his eyes left to right to left this was predetermined by LaBerge to mean Billy was lucid dreaming). If one takes LaBerge’s patient's’ ability to verify their dream reports as valid and that the communication LaBerge had with the lucid dreamers for communication, then both of my presented arguments are successfully undermined.
Descartes proposed that the similarity of dreams and everyday life proposes the problem that we may never know whether we are always in a dream state or not. It would then be true that Descartes held that the waking state and the dream state were so similar to one another that they were rather difficult to distinguish. Dreams though, are so ungraspable that regardless of view, it is hard to validate anything about them. In real life though, I can validate whether someone is running for president of the United States or not, or whether my last grade was an A.
It is impossible to verify dreams.
According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “[t]he received view is committed to the claim that we do not wake up with misleading memories.” To expand, let’s say that my friend and I have a sleepover. I tell my friend to tell me the next morning the dream he had the night before. He tells me of a dream in which he had a vague memory of being chased down by a bear in a forest. According the the received view, I should not for a second doubt this friend's presentation of what happened in his dream. He could certainly be leaving out certain details, but there is no way that that he is mistaken with the concept of a bear and woods. Where the received view, and therefore Descartes are undermined though, lies in the fact that there is no way of verifying dream
reports.
Further adding to the argument against the received view and therefore Descartes’ dream argument is that there exists such a thing as dreams that are produced at the moment of waking. I think back to a particular scene in a movie where a man thinks he is engaging in a make-out session with a women, only to quickly awake to his dog licking his face to which he quickly acts in disgust. When a dream ends in an outside stimulus that wakes the individual up, dreams appear more spur of the moment and quick rather than experiences which occur during sleep and in real time. On the basis of these sorts of dreams, both the received view and Descartes’ dream argument are undermined.
Finally, there is the impossibility of communicating logically during sleep. By logically, I mean that me and the friend mentioned above could not have a conversation while I am conscious and he unconscious about his bear and woods dream. Further adding to this argument is the philosopher Norman Malcolm, who alleges that one cannot say the statement “I am asleep” while also being asleep. Malcolm argues that it is true that somebody could say these words during sleep, but to think that the person is actually letting this be known is absurd.
The lucid dreamer proves to be a very hard-to defeat adversary of the received view and in particular my arguments that it is impossible to communicate logically during sleep and that it is impossible to verify dream reports. Stephen LaBerge was able to successfully challenge both of these with his 1990 study.
In this study LaBerge was able to set up a system in which the lucid dreamers relayed the content of their dreams to LaBerge via REM. The eye movements were graphed and the participants would effectively give dream reports that matched the indication of the graphs (e.g. if Billy moved his eyes left to right to left this was predetermined by LaBerge to mean Billy was lucid dreaming). If one takes LaBerge’s patient's’ ability to verify their dream reports as valid and that the communication LaBerge had with the lucid dreamers for communication, then both of my presented arguments are successfully undermined.
Descartes proposed that the similarity of dreams and everyday life proposes the problem that we may never know whether we are always in a dream state or not. It would then be true that Descartes held that the waking state and the dream state were so similar to one another that they were rather difficult to distinguish. Dreams though, are so ungraspable that regardless of view, it is hard to validate anything about them. In real life though, I can validate whether someone is running for president of the United States or not, or whether my last grade was an A.