The Dream Argument Of Rene Descartes

In “Bad Dreams, Evil Demons, and the Experience Machine: Philosophy and The Matrix”, Christopher Grau analyzes Rene Descartes argument concerning reality. The argument starts on page 181 in the bottom left hand corner of the page and continues onto page 182, ending at the bottom right corner of the page. In this text, Grau explains Descartes argument that what one may interpret as reality may not be more than a figment of their imagination and then uses it to develop his own argument. Grau explains that you cannot know whether you are in the dream world or the real world, and therefore argues that we cannot be sure that our beliefs about the world are true.

Descartes’ dream argument from his First Meditation leads people to doubt their senses. Descartes begins the argument with thinking that we can tell whether we are dreaming or not based on our experiences. However, he then realizes that it is not possible to recognize if we are dreaming or are awake. Since we cannot distinguish between the two, our perceptions and senses can be doubted. This is the purpose of the dream argument and proven true by Descartes, which makes the argument convincing.

In “Bad Dreams, Evil Demons, and the Experience Machine: Philosophy and the Matrix”, Christopher Grau explains Rene Descartes argument in Meditation. What one may interpret as reality may not be more than a figment of one’s imagination. One argument that Grau points out in Descartes essay is how one knows that what one think is an everyday experience awake is not all a part of a hallucination. He uses the example of dreams to draw a conclusion about is claim based on experiences one would experience with dreaming. He asserts that there are times when one wake up from a dream that seems to be “vivid and realistic” however soon finds that it was not. The experience of reality in the dream was all a part of the mind. If dreams seem to be

The topic of this essay is Descartes’ First Meditations and I will be discussing in detail the Dreaming argument and the Evil Demon argument.

(1) If I am to be certain of anything, I must be certain there is no evil demon.

When Descartes remembers occasions when he is dreaming, he falsely believes he is awake. Reflecting on this, Descartes thinks he cannot

Descartes dreaming argument suggests that perhaps our senses cannot be fully trusted because we cannot be certain we are not dreaming, and this means we therefore cannot be certain of anything. His evil demon argument is similar but uses the idea of an evil demon deceiving you instead of your senses. These sceptical arguments mean that we cannot be certain of anything at all for it may be happening whilst we are dreaming, or we are being tricked into thinking it is happening. I do not agree with Descartes because I feel that I can be certain I am not dreaming, and I do not believe that other supernatural creatures; such as an evil demon exists.

The dreaming argument was based upon the idea that both waking and sleeping (dreaming) experiences can be very similar, and that distinguishing between the two may not be possible. This led to Descartes doubting that waking experiences are actually infact waking experiences and not dreams. Descartes developed this argument and claimed that in order to be certain of any experiences, we have to be certain that we are not dreaming. However, Descartes continued and

Many different interpretations of Descartes’ dream argument could derive from his theory. In lecture we interpreted Descartes’ Dream Argument as follows:

One of Rene Descartes’s most famous arguments, from his not only from his first meditation but all of the meditations, is his Dream Argument. Descartes believes that there is no way to be able to distinguish being in awake from being in a state of dreaming. In fact you could actually be in a dream right now. Rene Descartes’s theory that one is unable distinguish being awake from dreaming, as interesting as it is, can be at times a little farfetched, along with a few contradictions to himself, Descartes’s dream argument does not entitle himself to any sort of claim.

The Dreaming argument first showed up in Descartes First Meditation, where he focusses on the task to educate himself on his own doubt. When meditating he starts to think about how he has a hard time distinguishing himself from being asleep and awaking. This is how the dreaming argument came forth. The Dreaming Argument easily said is “If I am certain of anything, then I have to be certain that

The first section will explore how the philosophical question of determining dream from reality is brought up in the movie, Inception. By using scenes and dialogue from the movie, the personal dilemma of determining dream from reality for Cobb will be illustrated. The second section will use Descartes’ Rationalist theory and Hume’s Empiricist theory to examine Cobb’s dilemma and to explain the challenges faced by one who questions whether they are dreaming or in reality. In the third section, the writer of this paper will provide advice to Cobb on how to handle his dilemma of dream versus reality and compare and contrast which philosopher, Descartes or Hume, would agree with that advice. The paper ends with a conclusion highlighting the philosophical question of whether one can determine the difference between dreaming and reality, Cobb’s dilemma of dream versus reality, and how Descartes and Hume would view it.

In the excerpt of Certainty, Moore provides a series of arguments against the Dream Argument. In this paper, I will present Moore’s claims and focus on analyzing his reasoning for why the skeptic’s hypothesis is inconsistent. Throughout the essay, I will argue that Moore’s inconsistency approach is unable to disprove the Dream Argument by showing how his explanation does not reject the main premises of the argument.

Dream Skepticism has been debated largely since Descartes’ projection of those ideas. Descartes believed many irrational thoughts in relation to dreaming, which proposed ideas that nobody at his time had ever seen before. Descartes’ challenging of the traditional ideas and proposing new ones in which challenged the minds of the individuals, as well as trying to convince the masses that dreaming had some sort of value for an individual that would carry on into his conscious world. Throughout these different ideas lied his main notion: the dreams produced in the human brain while unconscious are not false or fiction, rather, they present the truths that lie in our very minds and therefor should hold value to the dreamer himself. Descartes believed

Dreaming Argument is one of the most famous arguments, is bring a question to the reality of the substance world. Throughout his dreaming argument, Descartes cannot tell whether or not he’s dreaming. He noticing how strong and realistic his occurrence is. “Setting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hand, and so on.”(First Meditation pg 13) That cause to doubt, state that he has often had dreams that were as it was real, when in fact he was dreaming. This show that he was unsure about knowing the difference between dreaming and reality. Descartes points out that people may be dreaming when they