March 26, 2024 3:10 pm
(TLDR; If we are living in a dream, then at the very least, there is 1) a knowable level of reality to it and 2) the dream we are living in belongs to ourselves and not to something else. But, since we feel that we are living in reality, for all intents and purposes, let us just call it our reality and go to sleep. )
In one of my philosophy classes today, we analyzed Descartes' first meditation in which he delivers the Dream Argument —which is, by the way, nothing novel— we have all at one point or another said "what the h*ll, it's all just a dream!" It sure feels like an unanswerable question, so is there even a way we can solve this puzzle? Luckily, there's some things we have at our disposal that we can use to arrive at some sort of an answer.
First off, how does the dream argument go? According to Descartes, (and all of us from personal experience), when we are dreaming, we can't know that we are in a dream. For all we know, the dream is reality. And then we wake up and realize there was no way the dream could have been reality, for god's sake the dream was completely unbelievable. For example, (Not that anyone needs an example,), here's the a dream I had the the other day:
A bear was chasing me. I reached into my backpack and grabbed my surfboard which I used to get out of the woods? Now I'm at a wedding in Las Vegas for my sister. The wedding is being officiated by the cashier I had at Whole Foods earlier that week. The end.
It's obvious in hindsight that the dream was totally preposterous. But again, during the dream, no way to tell.
Descartes says this same thing basically:
"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 fact I am lying undressed in bed! Yet at the moment 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 know what I am doing. All this would not happen with such distinctness to someone asleep. Indeed! ... I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep. The result is that I begin to feel dazed, and this very feeling only reinforces the notion that I may be asleep." (Descartes, First meditation, 19)
It's a pretty compelling story—especially because if we have the capacity to dream, then who's to say that we aren't living in one ourselves. This is where it can get really easy to dwell on what we can never know and we definitely do not want to have an existential spiral into madness. So it's crucial we stay focused and look for somethings that we do have at our disposal to get this sorted out.
Fortunately for us, we have dreams of our own. This might not seem like a big help, but think of it as giving us a baseline for what it would even mean to live in a dream. I didn't come up with this, I'm just following similar reasoning as Descartes for right now.
Descartes points out that in both our dreams and our wakeful states, there are certain truths that stay constant. While the big picture of the dream is distorted and non-sensical, there is a whole list of things that remain very sensical nonetheless. In my example dream, amidst all of the craziness, here's what remained sensical:
1. The bear was the color brown.
2. There was a quantity of one single bear.
3. The bear was bigger than I was in size.
4. The bear chased me at a different time than I was in Las Vegas for the wedding.
The fact that there are certain things like color, quantity, size, time, etc. that remain invariant to whether we are dreaming or awake suggests that these are real. So, even if we are living in a dream, there is certain baseline reality that we interact with. Descartes explains this with his famous Painter Analogy in which he says that dreams are like paintings, "fashioned in the likeness of things that are real," such that even if the "eyes, head, hands, and so on- could be imaginary, it must be admitted that certain other simpler and more universal things are real" (Descartes, 20)
While Descartes sticks to these "corporeal things" as reality, I would like to point out another aspect of dreams that remain constant in my wakeful state: the "I." Specifically, "I", Arden Frantzen, have never once been anyone but Arden Frantzen in my dreams. I've been various different versions of Arden, some completely opposite of all the wakeful Arden Frantzen's traits. In my dreams, I've even adopted personas of other people, like my older sister Ella. (Maybe Freud would have something to say about this...) Regardless, even being Ella, I was still being Ella through Arden. I think there's a lot here. The fact that the "I" remains throughout dreams and wakefulness implies a certain reality of the "I." So, even if we are just dreaming, I am extremely happy that "I" am the one who is dreaming this.
There's a very deep comfort in knowing that at least "I" am not living out a dream of someone else.
This makes me want to ramble about the "I," but that is it's own series of blog posts to come. Regardless, I feel quite comfortable with this as a stopping point for now.
So, let us recap:
If we are living in a dream, then at the very least, there is 1) a knowable level of reality to it and 2) the dream we are living in belongs to ourselves and not to something else. But, since we feel that we are living in reality, for all intents and purposes, let us just call it our reality and go to sleep!
I am not finished talking about reality. We haven't even gotten to the Matrix question or the question of a physical reality. I am also not finished talking about dreams. We haven't even gotten to why we have them or what they mean. So, stay tuned!
With much love,
Arden : )
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