From the philosophical source, it could be stated that what we consider to be reality is not actually reality, but rather a dream world. So, what is reality? How do we know what we experience when we wake up is true reality? We could be plugged into a human-pod, like in The Matrix, where an operator is connected to our minds making us believe what we are experiencing is real. I am to explore this idea of reality and dreaming throughout this essay using key philosophers like Descartes, Locke and Berkeley.
Rene Descartes claimed that “senses, in [his] experiences, are deceptive and it is prudent not to trust those who have deceived us ”. In other words, Descartes explains that we can’t be sure of anything around us because our senses can deceive
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So, can’t it be accepted to not exist until it is proven that it does exist? This is seen in the judicial system, for example: “innocent until proven guilty”. People claim that what they see outside their window is this reality, but how do they know? You can’t say something exists until it is proven, right? Arguably, people will claim that reality does exist because you can use sense perception to prove it. However, Descartes would support my philosophy, as I object to this claim, because sense perception can deceive us. For example, there was an experiment led by psychologists, Simmons and Chabris, called: “The Invisible Gorilla” . People were asked to count the number of passes made by the players wearing white in a basketball match . Simultaneously, a man dressed as a Gorilla walked through the match, stayed in the centre for a while, beat its chest, and then continued to walk across to the other side. Many people who did this experiment did not see the gorilla. We were made to think there was no gorilla but in actual fact there was a gorilla. So, psychology seems to help prove to us just how unreliable our senses can be. This is why I think that reality should be proven as “justified true belief” . However, it is also possible to counter argue by stating that our senses don’t deceive us; rather, it is how we interpret what the senses give …show more content…
All that can possibly exist is what is perceived in our minds. However, the implication I find from this is that this would mean that people don’t exist because I wouldn’t be aware that they could perceive, which seems illogical. The reciprocity argument seems to highlight this quite well. This is because in order for something to be perceived in our mind, the object must have existed in the external world before entering our minds. If this is not the case, how is it possible to perceive something without experience of it? For example: if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If nobody is there to perceive the sound, then how can we know the sound actually existed? This is because to know something has existed, somebody had to have perceived its existence. However, a possible response to this would be that if we use the experiences that go on in our head as a guide to what is real, then what we are actually doing is indirectly claiming that the physical world is non-existent and what is in our head is the only thing which exists. This I agree with because without a mind to perceive for us, then nothing would seem to exist. So, “Is life a dream?” In my opinion, I would like it to be. But if it is truly a dream in my head, why can’t a change things so I enjoy
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 reality and one would not have any concept that one is dreaming how does one know that one is not dreaming now? Descartes point is that one cannot justify reality in the sense that one could be dreaming right at this moment and not know therefore one cannot trust the brain as an indicator of what is reality.
In chapter ten of the book “Problems from Philosophy”, by James Rachels, the author, the author discusses the possibilities of human beings living in an actually reality, or if we are just living in an illusion. Rachels guides us through concepts that try to determine wiether we are living in a world were our perception of reality is being challenged, or questioned. Rachels guides us through the topic of “Our Knowledge of the World around Us”, through the Vats and Demons, idealism, Descartes Theological Response, and direct vs. indirect realism.
Have you ever experienced a dream or a nightmare that seemed like reality? Most people in the world today would say that they have. Although this realistic dream experience does not occur often, when it does, clear distinctions are hard to make between the dream and reality. Theories exist that explain dreams as our subconscious
...ey are still dreaming. Once people begin to notice irregularities and they realized they a dreaming, “At that point many people temp to panic about it, others that already know about lucid dreaming may continue the dream”. (McNamara 1-2). In the short story “An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” the idea of Dream and Reality is exemplify in a different way. Peyton Farquhar has a dream in the last minutes of his life. At that moment he sees himself escaping from death, but he could not avoid reality. (Bierce 203)
René Descartes was a French philosopher who refused to believe that true knowledge was obtainable through the means of sense perception. Descartes believed that the senses; as we know them, could be manipulated and twisted into providing false understanding of the external world. In the search for the truth amongst what we perceive in life, Descartes is justified in his claims that our senses cannot be trusted. Only by questioning all that is known as human beings, can one find the absolute truth in life. Through the use of two different thought experiments, Descartes uses reasoning to questions what we perceive as reality and truth.
According to Descartes, “because our senses sometimes deceive us, I wanted to suppose that nothing was exactly as they led us to imagine (Descartes 18).” In order to extinguish his uncertainty and find incontrovertible truth, he chooses to “raze everything to the ground and begin again from the original foundations (Descartes 59).” This foundation, which Descartes is certain to be the absolute truth, is “I think, therefore I am (Descartes 18).” Descartes argues that truth and proof of reality lies in the human mind, rather than the senses. In other words, he claims that the existence of material objects are not based on the senses because of human imperfection. In fact, he argues that humans, similarly to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, are incapable of sensing the true essence or existence of material objects. However, what makes an object real is human thought and the idea of that object, thus paving the way for Descartes’ proof of God’s existence. Because the senses are easily deceived and because Descartes understands that the senses can be deceived, Descartes is aware of his own imperfection. He
In Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy he proposes several arguments regarding human perception. He begins this exploration by examining the principles that his beliefs are founded on. By doing this, Descartes is choosing not to question each of his beliefs individually; he is choosing to examine the foundation of his perceptions. Descartes proceeds to question where he has attained his knowledge. The answer, he decides, is from his senses. Descartes also determines that there have been instances where his senses have been deceptive. It is from this idea that Descartes forms his deductions for Meditations I, II, and VI, and begins to question the concept of dualism.
In Descartes’ second meditation, he offers up an argument for Defective Nature Doubt that brings forth the idea that we can’t be certain of anything we perceive being actual and real (153). Descartes thinks that there is a possibility that we are constantly being deceived due to the fact that we don’t know, with perfect certainty, know where our ideas originate from (154). He tries to describe a method in order to dispel this Defective Nature Doubt by giving an argument for the existence of God. I think that the argument he gives for the existence of God is valid, yet I find it to be unsound due to the fact that a few of his premises are can easily be debated. In order to express this opinion, I will first provide explanations of the premises and conclusions of the argument, and then I will critique the premises that I find to be inadequate in order to support my opinion that Descartes’ argument is valid but unsound.
It is easy for us to believe that what we experience with our senses is true, including in our dreams, but according to Descartes, we should look beyond our senses and use reasoning to determine what is certain. Descartes’ question, “For how do we now that the thoughts that arise in us while we are dreaming are more false than others, since they are often no less vivid and explicit?” (34), is asked so that we will acknowledge that our senses can easily mislead us. This should then cause us to use reasoning to differentiate between truth and illusion, and both authors agree that reasoning should be the guide to true knowledge. Though he believes in the attainability of certain knowledge through using reasoning, Descartes argues that there are only a few things about which we can be certain. Descartes’s philosophy “Cogito, Ergo Sum,” which means I think, therefore I am proves this. He believes that because our mind acknowledges that we can think and have doubts, we can be sure of our existence; if we stopped th...
... something when it fact, we never ask ourselves why we know it. We tend to take for granted what counts the most in this world, that is, knowing ourselves. Human beings think that knowledge of things will lead them to enlightenment. But in reality, it is nothing but an illusion made by man himself to create a kind of path towards success. Those who follow this path will get nowhere close to success, rather, they bring upon suffering along the way, pulling us farther from ourselves. Thus, if only we were aware of this deceptive nature of language and metaphor to that of knowledge, we would come to understand that truth indeed is nothing but a man-made word and is therefore a mere figment of our imagination. The facts do not count, only our interpretations of them. So it seems that Reality then isn’t so far from our dreams, perhaps it’s really the other way around.
In the first meditation by Descartes, he argues that everything he perceives as reality might as well be the work of an all-powerful evil demon whose only objective is to deceive him. As such, anything he perceives as being real, and therefore able to know exist, could be an illusion created by the evil demon.
He quickly releases that this is the foundation of most of his beliefs. He first acknowledges that sometime our senses can deceive us, but say that our senses is mostly sturdy. It is after this that Descartes realizes that there has been times where he has been sleeping and in his dream he was certain that he was awake and sensing real objects. Though his current senses may have be dream senses, he suggests that even dream senses are drawn from our experience of us awake. He then discovers that there are times in which he cannot distinguish whether he is in his waking state and his dream state.
Within meditation one Descartes subjects all of his beliefs regarding sensory data and even existence to the strongest and most hyperbolic of doubts. He invokes the notion of the all powerful, malign demon who could be deceiving him regarding sensory experience and even his understanding of the simplest mathematical and logical truths in order to attain an indubitable premise that is epistemologically formidable. In meditation one Descartes has three areas of doubt, doubt of his own existence, doubt of the existence of God, and doubt of the existence of the external world. Descartes’ knowledge of these three areas are subjected to three types of scepticism the first where he believes that his senses are being deceived ‘these senses played me false, and it is prudent never to trust entirely those who have once deceived us’. The second of the forms of scepticism revolves around whether Descartes is dreaming or not ‘I see so clearly that there are no conclusive signs by means of which one can distinguish between being awake and being asleep’. The aforementioned malign demon was Descartes third method of doubt as he realised God would not deceive him.
When one really thinks about it, the only thing we can be sure of is the existence of our minds. Whatever one believes is all perceived through senses, emotions, and thoughts such as sight or past experiences/knowledge. In actuality, anything we perceive cannot be believed as fact. On one end of the spectrum, extremists known as solipsists would argue that nothing exists but their minds, they make up the entirety of their reality and nobody else even exists. The floor beneath our feet does not exist and neither do our peers. If you try to argue that this life you lead is real because you can see the world, or through science, or that it is a dream that even if so, would still be perceived as a reality. Your senses have to be filtered through your mind, but to do that your mind has to tell you about the external world- which is what is being called into question- so trying to prove that your senses are reliable will leave to arguing in circles. Science again has this same issue- if one cannot establish the reliability of the senses in relation to an external w...
We are taught, at a young age, how important our five senses are. These senses are essential to survival and are the necessary feedback for our existence. The question becomes though, what are really our senses? Touch, smell, sight, hearing, taste are the ones engrained into us, but there’s more to it, we can sense temperature, acceleration, movement, and even intangible things such as hostility, fear, or even someone or something’s gaze. While questioning why these are important and vital senses it raises a question of what is not included in the taught set of senses. Are senses real or are they a figment of our imagination created to give us a virtual reality? When people have senses that are better than others does that make our senses reliable? Rene Descartes ran into these questions himself in his Meditations on First. He distorted the perspective of senses by relabeling the concept of dreams, the beliefs of a powerful entity, and the mind itself. Descartes decides to call all individual opinions into doubt,