Discussion Of The Arguments Of Descartes Discourse

Descartes claims in his Discourse on Method that our dreams and conscious thoughts are untrue, but is this truly the case? Because of these questions of existence, it seems like, if Descartes’s arguments are taken a certain way, his arguments might be taken to imply that our lives are just a dream. Are we living in a universal soap opera directed by the Divine, and the question of who shot J.R. will never be resolved because we will all wake on Judgment Day from the dream of existence? If we are questioning existence, how can we know that our lives are just dreams? Descartes says in marginal 32 that “[…] the same thoughts we have while awake can come to us also while we are sleeping, without there being any that are then true […],” which
causes him to throw out any thought that has entered his mind as more factual or true than a dream. Yet, he is using thought experiments to prove his Method. If we follow this argumentation, can we follow the rest of Descartes’s logic, or does this premise derail his entire argument? If his whole argument is derailed, can we truly accept that we think, and that is the only way to ascertain that we exist?
First, Descartes says that dreams can have the same content as our waking thoughts, and thus neither can be trusted.
But, is this idea necessarily true? Dream reading as a whole may be a finicky and unreliable undertaking, but there are plenty of instances in the Bible and the Church where dreams either directly predicted events, such as the events with Joseph in the Old Testament, or where the dreams were enlightening, such as the revelations St. Julian of Norwich, or both, in the case of the Revelations of St. John in the New Testament. Descartes says that he accepts religion, specifically Christianity, without doubt. If so, then the importance and experience of dreams cannot be part of the reason we suppose that both thought and dreams are untrue. Even if dreams are only sometimes true, by ignoring all of them, we are losing a particular way of gaining insight and truth that the Divine gave us access to, even if that insight is only into the important and effects of our waking
thoughts.
I have personally never been given any great Revelation in my dreams, except that I may be a little too obsessed with both Shakespeare and Henry V.
But, though my dreams reflected my conscious thoughts and obsessions, they are not the same as those thoughts. My waking thoughts are more organized and deeper, so my dream about Henry V was shorter and more shallow than my nearly 25 page paper about Henry V. And I doubt that Descartes could actually write his Discourse on Method while asleep, much less think these thoughts cohesively while asleep. The higher functions of our Minds are more readily accessible when we are awake, which is why most every teacher prefers conscious students to sleeping ones. So, this idea that our conscious thoughts coming to us at night may be part of why we can trust either does not seem to carry the weight of Descartes’s
argument.
Dreams are not inherently true or not true, but there is no question that we experience dreams, as well as conscious thought, which is exactly what Descartes is using to create his Method. He comes to the conclusion in marginal (), using conscious thought that he has decided to count as “not more true than the illusions of my dreams,” that his existence is proved by his ability to think; “I think, therefore I am.” So, everything moving away from this most simple and core principle is based on the experiment and experience of existence. Every thought experiment and every observation he makes is an experience he has that he uses to further his Method. If ‘experiences’ and ‘experiments’ are semantically the same thing in French, then experience is as important to prove existence as experiments, and dreams are definitely an experience. One cannot dream if one does not exist, just as one, presumably, cannot think if one does not exist. This means that dreams cannot be shrugged off as easily as Descartes seems to. Even if Descartes is only getting rid of the dreams and thoughts he had before the Method, he cannot really get rid of these experiences, evidenced by the fact that he prefaces the introduction of his Method with autobiographical information. He did not suddenly reset his life or his experiences when he decided to make the Method, even if he pretended to have no thoughts or suppositions from before that moment.
Thinking may be a way to ascertain existence, but mere existence is boring. It is our experiences that make us individual. It is our thoughts and our memories and our logic, both true and flawed, that make us who we are as people. Ignoring previous thoughts or dreams in order to achieve the Method is not possible, and even if it were, would we sacrifice the things that make us who we are for true logic? Descartes does not even do this, and he made the Method, as evidenced by the autobiographical information he gives in preface to the Method. He gives these things up in theory, but cannot in practice. He may be able to achieve a certain level of self-imposed amnesia for his thought experiments, but it does not last forever. To Descartes’s point, thinking is certainly one way to ascertain existence. It is a basic level of existence. But, humans can dream, and not just in sleep. We can create methods of logic and inquiry and beautiful art. We are more than existence. Our souls, our place in the vast universe demands that we do more than exist and take up space in this mortal world, but that we create and explore and dream.