Comparing Skepticism And Dreaming Argument

Descartes’ skeptical arguments begin from the thought that everything can be doubted; the first being our senses. He claims that our senses can sometimes deceive us (e.g. when viewing things from far away). Things that can deceive us once, have the possibility to be deceiving us all the time—giving us reason to doubt all sensory claims. This leads to a problem since humans rely on empirical knowledge. If one cannot consider any claim delivered by sense to be true knowledge, then it gives reason for one to doubt reality. Following is the dream argument in which what seems to be tangible reality, is an effect of a dreaming experience. Descartes gives the example of dreaming he is sitting by a fire when in actuality he could be asleep

Descartes’ dream argument establishes itself based on the premise that I cannot distinguish between my most clear and evident perceptions and vivid dreams. He begins this argument by pointing out how our main source of belief, our senses, can be deceptive. Descartes flirts with the idea that possibly his senses are deceiving because he is insane.

Descartes opens Meditations on First Philosophy by telling us that in order to purify our knowledge from falsehood we must become radical skeptics, and question everything we know as we clear our minds from what we believe to be true. Descartes soon realizes that this is a major problem. Because if he is doubtful of everything, there is nothing to be known as true and he would have no foundation to build his thoughts off of. Pondering this, he came to realize that he himself must be real because of his ability to think and to doubt. He then concludes that his sensory perception as well as imagination cannot be trusted because it is impossible to determine reality this way. In dreams, our sensations are seemingly true, but they are actually false. As for our imaginations, we can conjure up a plethora of impossibilities, so it obvious they cannot be considered reliable. After studying honeycomb wax, he determines that his intellect is the only mental property that can be trusted to produce clear and distinct truths.

Descartes, being a philosopher who believed strongly in his sleep, pondered over the fact that he sometimes would have trouble distinguishing his experiences in dreams from waking experiences. Systematically our senses are deceiving us, and since some of our beliefs are based on perceptions, our dreams could indeed make us perceive false perceptions and senses, right? Well, this is how Descartes formed his argument of dreaming. This argument relates directly with his argument of error about our senses deceiving us, and once something deceives us, it is never trustworthy again. So since our senses have been proven deceivable in the past, then there is no way to trust them now. This is where he forms his conclusion that we must doubt everything

In Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, the first meditation he hypothesize an argument which suggest that there is no definitive way to validate whether we are awake or dreaming. Now, Descartes does not actually believe that the world we live in is an entire dream, he uses the dream argument as a way to break us in our beliefs and acceptance of sensory experiences; causing doubt. In the meditations Descartes target is to investigate knowledge. In order for the metaphysical problem to be dealt with it is important for Descartes to sort out truths and know with certainty. He successfully unravels all attempts to show a difference in being conscious versus unconscious validating his argument. First I will explain why Descartes presents the dream argument, next I will explain the dream argument itself, and lastly, I will proceed to prove it true.

René Descartes was an extremely influential 17th-century philosopher and came up with many ideas that still persist to this day. One of those ideas was Cartesian skepticism, which states that “the view that we do not or cannot have knowledge in regard to a particular domain,” knowledge, in this case, is justified, true, beliefs. He first comes up with his idea of skepticism in the first part of his work “Meditations On First Philosophy,” aptly named “Of the things which may be brought within the sphere of the doubtful.” In his first meditation, he discusses his doubts with sensory illusion/error, possible dream states, and regarding deception by an evil demon. However, after dissolving his first two doubts, he gets stuck on the third and

First, Commonsense Skepticism provides the opportunity for us to know many of the most obvious things that we know. This includes the truth of simple perceptions, such as is my wife tells me there are elephants standing in our backyard, I know with certainty there are none there. Or, that if someone tells me that nothing will happen to me if I step out in front of a moving bus, I know for certain that I will have a great chance of getting hurt if I do that. These are easy conclusions based in commonsense to problems that can keep humans reasonably safe.

In a chapter of A Reply to my Critics Moore responds to what he thinks are general misunderstandings of his argument:

Descartes uses three arguments to question what we’ve previously known about doubt: the dream argument,

Descartes is dealt with the problem of skepticism and how to overcome it. In order to overcome skepticism, he decides he must enforce it strictly upon his experiment and therefore attempt to explain around skepticism. Descartes put a heavy belief on the ability to deceive and how empirical thought is not to be trusted as sense can be

René Descartes (1556-1650) considered a rationalist claims that before we can describe reality or what it means to exist, one must know what reality and existence is. Descartes proposed that it is pointless to claim something is real without justification. However for something to be justified it must be also be indubitable. In [René Descartes, Meditation I, 1641] Descartes argues that ones beliefs can be systematically doubted. All truths, for example; beliefs, ideas, thoughts, and matter should be doubted in order to build a belief system that is indubitable. In this essay I will discuss the methods of doubt; these include perceptual illusions, the dream problem, and a deceiving God. I will also discuss the phrase I am, I exist and I am a thinking thing that passed the method the doubt. I will use these methods of doubt and phrases to explain why the arguments are either weak or strong and whether I agree to their meaning.

Skepticism, also known as Pyrrhonism, is the philosophical belief that one should not make claims of truth. Skepticism in philosophy originated in ancient Greece with Pyrrho of Elis, who, during his travels, found himself incapable of rationally deciding which school of thought was correct. Once he admitted this, he claimed he achieved inner peace, which became the ultimate goal of the early Skeptics, known in ancient Greece as Skeptikoi (“Skepticism”).

“Skepticism is the philosophical attitude of doubting the knowledge claims set forth in various areas and asking what they are based upon, what they actually establish, and whether they are indubitable or necessarily true. Skeptics have thus challenged the alleged grounds of accepted assumptions in metaphysics, in science, in morals and manners, and especially in religion.” (Britannica Encyclopedia) A skeptical argument disputes an important class of common sense beliefs.

How many times have you said, “No way, I do not believe it!” It is our natural tendency not to believe in something that we have not seen with our own eyes or experienced it personally. There is a saying, “seeing is believing” which has led us to a world full of skeptics. We want proof so we are not gullible fools. Skepticism, or scepticism, as it was spelled back in the ancient times, was pondered by philosophers who tried unsuccessfully to figure out the thought process and how we gain knowledge. Philosophers gave deep thought to determine how we arrive at such true beliefs and knowledge of the external world. Three such philosophers were Rene Descartes, David Hume and Christopher Grau. Rene Descartes was a French philosopher in the early 1600’s; David Hume was a Scottish Philosopher in the 1700’s, and Grau an American philosopher Professor born in 1970. The timeline s important because philosophical views have evolved over time. All three men were from different eras, but they each explored, argued, and addressed the topic of skepticism from their philosophical view. This proves that they take the subject of skepticism seriously, just as we should too. There is good reason to believe that a human’s knowledge of the external world results from both a posteriori knowledge acquired through sensory experience and a priori knowledge which is innate. Descartes, Hume, and Grau through their personal views and skeptical

Descartes states that the world we live every day might all the false due to the devil demons, external worlds could be mistaken, which we should never fully trust the external world, it is necessary to doubt our sense in the external world. We cannot be sure that everything that our sense is telling us is truth because we are dreaming or not. Therefore, Descartes also doubts if the dream is separate from the reality, and how are we able to distinguish the difference between dreaming and awake. Descartes provides an example of either