The Big Question

669 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Night dreams vs reality

Thamar Callender-Leslie
Mr. Cowley
April/May2015
Philosophy3 249 (HZB3M1)
The Big Question (Reality)


















How do we know the difference between Dreams and Reality? You may feel certain that you are not dreaming right now, but you're probably just as certain that you are not dreaming while you have been dreaming -- You see the issue here? Almost all of us experienced a dream that we were almost certain was real. Inception is a movie about a man named Dom Cobb who’s a thief with the rare ability to enter people's dreams, enabling him to steal secrets from their subconscious. Not to get confused with reality a totem is used to test if one is dreaming or not. Ariadne refers to this as “An elegant solution for …show more content…

He stated “I think; therefore I am.” He suggested that we should temporary pretend that everything is questionable. Furthermore, any statement you make about the outside world is uncertain. For example someone could say; “I just seen a ghost at the corner of my eye”. But in reality it could have been your cat running across the hall. Although this may be true it doesn’t necessarily mean ghost don’t exist. Why? Because the truth of reality is different from person to person -- it's what we experience with our minds, rather about the objective truth. On the subject of this thinking is something that can never be doubted. Our everyday sense can never be fully trusted, dreaming provides preliminary evidence that the senses we trust to distinguish reality from illusion can easily be fooled. Therefore any state that is dependent on our senses should be doubted and at the very least be carefully …show more content…

To refresh your memory Rene Descartes believed that ‘any state that is dependent on your sense should be doubted and at the very least be carefully examined’ For this exact reason a totem is used to differentiate the dream world and reality. Like Rene said; doubt everything. Another example is the infinite “Penrose Staircase” when the dreamer makes its victim believes its walking up a flight of stairs, when they’re really just walking a loop. This goes to show our senses can easily be deceived. Rene once said “our memory can never connect our dreams with each other and with the course of life, in the way it is in the habit of doing with events that occur when we are awake.” Long story short we never know when we’re dreaming until we wake up. This quote connects to the movie Inception when Ariadne is introduced to the dream world and is confused on how she spontaneously got to the Coffee

Show More
Related

  • Christopher Grau's Bad Dreams, Evil Demons, and the Experience Machine: Philosophy and the Matrix

    548 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Reality is Like A Dream in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates

    1504 Words  | 4 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce

    1285 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...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)

    Read More

  • An Examination of the Second Meditation of Descartes

    1585 Words  | 4 Pages

    Baird and Kaufmann, the editors of our text, explain in their outline of Descartes' epistemology that the method by which the thinker carried out his philosophical work involved first discovering and being sure of a certainty, and then, from that certainty, reasoning what else it meant one could be sure of. He would admit nothing without being absolutely satisfied on his own (i.e., without being told so by others) that it was incontrovertible truth. This system was unique, according to the editors, in part because Descartes was not afraid to face doubt. Despite the fact that it was precisely doubt of which he was endeavoring to rid himself, he nonetheless allowed it the full reign it deserved and demanded over his intellectual labors. "Although uncertainty and doubt were the enemies," say Baird and Kaufmann (p.16), "Descartes hit upon the idea of using doubt as a tool or as a weapon. . . . He would use doubt as an acid to pour over every 'truth' to see if there was anything that could not be dissolved . . . ." This test, they explain, resulted for Descartes in the conclusion that, if he doubted everything in the world there was to doubt, it was still then certain that he was doubting; further, that in order to doubt, he had to exist. His own existence, therefore, was the first truth he could admit to with certainty, and it became the basis for the remainder of his epistemology.

    Read More

  • Brain Gives Birth to Reality

    1174 Words  | 3 Pages

    Therefore, all that we sense is an illusion and everything outside the mind is uncertain of existence. Furthermore, this leads to the justification that our existence is based on our minds.... ... middle of paper ... ...

    Read More

  • The Theory Of Dualism In Descartes's Theory Of Dualism

    1506 Words  | 4 Pages

    He suggests that the physical substance (body) and mental substance (mind) are different in nature from each other. He believes that what we see could possibly be deceiving us and that this world might just be a dream.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Descartes Meditations 1 And Blackburn's Think

    1333 Words  | 3 Pages

    As Blackburn says, dreams are not as coherent as everyday life, they are shakier. Similar to this, Descartes says that dreams are like a painting. Objects could look like they are real; made in the fashion of those in the waking world, so therefore they have to be real giving a basis for scientific observations. These corporeal objects give rise to concentrations of science such as astronomy, medicine, physics, that use the observations that could seem doubtful if we are to take the dreaming argument into consideration without allowing for the fact that dreams must be based on waking life, and others, such as mathematics and geometry, are still unquestionable no matter if you try to base the dream off of reality. As Descartes says, “where I am awake or asleep, two and three added together are five.” Taking all of this into consideration, whether or not one is dreaming some science still remains, meaning observations are still viable in scientific knowledge. So my answer that you may use observations with care and thorough study still holds true, because even in a dream state there is still rational mathematics and science based off of reality. Along with these facts, many dream states can be recognizable through their slight disillusionment from everyday life, leading to one to realize they are asleep (lucid dreaming), which is not

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Descartes Dream Argument

    1001 Words  | 3 Pages

    Any truth that can exist in one can exist in the other. Because of this, there is no definite way to tell if an experience is dreamt or not. The arguments against this are purely speculative, based on personal experiences, and perhaps experiences of others, but that is not enough. Just because one person may not feel pain during a dream, signifying some sort of differentiation between the two states, does not mean another person doesn’t. Because all the evidence against this argument are purely speculative and circumstantial, it proves that we cannot prove consciousness at any given moment with Cartesian certainty. A waking state does exist, however, our ability to differentiate it from a sleeping state is impossible, leading to confusion about experiences. Having Cartesian certainty about whether or not we are dreaming at any given moment allows us to evaluate all the other aspects that might be skewed our findings. Because we may be asleep at any moment, who is to say our knowledge and experiences aren’t all dreamed? The brain, although a complex mechanism, is not complex to come up with the ideas that we have experienced within them. We may form new ideas based on our experiences, but the basis of it must have been experienced at one point or another. Our brain’s need reference for knowledge, and for us to know absolute truths, we need to understand that some truths may not be as

    Read More

  • Descartes Proof Of God

    1660 Words  | 4 Pages

    He concludes he did not create the idea of God. A finite being is incapable of creating an idea of an infinite possibility. Therefore, God must have created the idea already in him when he was created. Concluding that God exists. He also touches upon the idea in which he resolves that it cannot be a deceiver.

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay: Cartesian Skepticism Created By René Descartes

    892 Words  | 2 Pages

    With Descartes’ ideology of the senses and how they allow for deception of the individual, how are we supposed to be able to differentiate between when we are in a dream or when we are actually in reality? When we are in a dream as well as in reality, the senses seem real and we believe that what we experience is true; however, according to Descartes, the only way to determine whether or not an individual is experiencing a dream is through the use of their thought processing. Within reality, there are certain aspects that allow one to realize that they are presently living in reality. These two main aspects are routine and patterns that are performed on the daily basis such as, going to work, eating breakfast, or even brushing your

    Read More

  • Innate Ideas

    1450 Words  | 3 Pages

    “We owe the notion of “the mind” as a separate entity in which “processes” occur to the same period, and especially to Descartes” (Rorty, 2008, p. 234). Plato was the first philosopher to argue that there was something beyond our body. Descartes agree with Plato on this theory and explored this idea more in-depth. Stating that these innate ideas exist, but they remain idle in our minds until a significant event awakens them. He arrived at this idea by doubting everything that he was taught was the truth, and he even doubted his own sense saying that they were deceptive, and after using philosophy of doubt he came to the realization of his existence through the logical reasoning. After he established that his senses were not real, he began to doubt his brain, he stated that our dreams are an interpretation of reality, even though they seem so real. He says that it was only thr...

    Read More

  • Sleeping and Dreaming

    4847 Words  | 10 Pages

    The Ancient Greeks had surprise dream encounters with their gods. Native Americans turned to their dreams for guidance in life. Shamans dreamed in order to gather information from the spirits. Sleep and dreams define eras, cultures, and individuals. Sigmund Freud’s interpretation of dreams revolutionized twentieth-century thought.

    Read More

  • Sigmund Freud's Psychology: The Dreaming And Modern Dream Theory

    1601 Words  | 4 Pages

    There are many perceptions of what a dream actually is. Some view dreams as the subconscious trying to speak to people, and others see it as religious visions of the future. Over the years, physicians and psychologists have collected countless amounts of research and evidence to support their viewpoints on dreams. I have always believed that dreaming is a time when the brain develops and analyzes important information (Bernstein 149). Dreams do not mean anything specific, and everyone has their own cultural perspectives of dreams. In reality, no one has the power to analyze and tell people the meanings of their dreams. According to Bernstein’s psychology book, dreaming is a time when the brain experiences story-like perceptions and sensations.

    Read More

  • Dreams Essay

    1519 Words  | 4 Pages

    The word dream has many meanings most people know dreams as events that play in people's minds that occur during sleep. The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary describes it as, “A series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.” In the ancient times, many civilizations thought of dreams as omens of the future, while others believed that their soul would travel (Rathus 158). Dreams are like movies they range in characters, the impossible can happen, and sometimes they are in black and white or seem to be in slow motion. Dreams occur mostly during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep. During this stag...

    Read More

  • The Reflection Of Rene Descartes

    723 Words  | 2 Pages

    Reading his meditation make me think about how it is important to think about what is true and what is false. I think that he was making one see the importance of questioning one’s senses about whether it is false. It is also important that one does not become too skeptical about things. One should be moderate about what we should question.

    Read More

More about The Big Question

Open Document