Journal Two: Descartes; “How do we know we aren’t dreaming?”

"If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time."

– Marcel Proust.

The first thing that comes to mind when I ponder the question Rene Descartes presents is the mental image of a computer in a 1960s science fiction television series breaking down after someone presents it with a logical paradox.

I knew this question was going to be a tough one, so I asked around; people at work mostly. I came to regret that decision fairly quickly as all I got were derisive grins and insultingly condescending language, and the phrase “just pinch yourself” over and over, each person who said it thinking they were being clever and original.

Infuriating as it was though, it’s hard to blame their skepticism about the question, even with the inexcusable rudeness.

It’s pretty much common knowledge that the events of a dream are often impossible, or unlikely to occur, in physical reality. They are also outside the control of the dreamer, with the exception to this being known as lucid dreaming, in which dreamers realize that they are dreaming, and are sometimes capable of changing their dream environment and controlling various aspects of the dream. The dream environment is often much more realistic in a lucid dream, and the senses heightened.

I myself have never experienced a lucid dream. At least to my knowledge as I frequently forget my dreams and those that I do remember are generally the kind that recurs.

And this is where the rude people, let’s call them Nate and Frank because those are their names (no changing the names to protect the innocent here), lose points on their argument. If you are not in a lucid dream, then how can you be aware that you are dreaming? The old familiar cliché is that if you are dreaming and you pinch yourself, you will wake up, like Nate and Frank said. Although people who repeat this cliché usually aren’t being jerks when they say it. Can you tell I’m still bitter?

Anyway, things aren't quite that simple. It is the nature of dreams that we often take them for reality — while dreaming we are unaware that we are in fact in a dream world (or dream state, or any other phrase you can think of), except again in the case of lucid dreaming. Of course, we eventually wake up (hopefully for some, unfortunately for others), and when we do we realize that our experience was all in our mind.

Descartes himself wrote; "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 in 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! As if I did not remember other occasions when I have been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep! As I think about this more carefully, 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." (Meditations, 13)

The thought that what we believe to be the “Real World” could all be just a dream is a familiar one in philosophy, poetry, literature, and film (i.e The Matrix, The 13th Floor, etc.). Many people, myself included, have at one time or another been struck with the thought that we might mistake a dream for reality, or vice versa. The idea is reinforced when you realize that many people have the same types of dreams; dreams that involve flying for example. From a paper presented at the 1995 Conference of the Association for the Study of Dreams by Linda Lane Magallón; "… flying was by far the most common theme in their successful mutual dreams. 82 of these mutual dreamers had the experience of dream flying prior to joining the projects."

Of 161 mutual dreams, the content range in that same study were as follows:

24 (38) Flying

13 (21) Exploration

12 (20) Recreation

12 (19) Communication and observation

11 (18) Fantasy feats and imagery

11 (18) Emotional concerns

5 (8) Sex

3 (3) Other

When we dream, we are usually ignorant that we are in such a state. Given this, and the fact that dreams can sometimes come across as vivid and realistic as “Real Life”, how can you rule out the possibility that you might be dreaming even now, as you sit (or walk, or stand. Whatever) and read this? This is the kind of mind-fuck Descartes forces us to think about (and damn him for it). It seems we have no justification for the belief that we are not dreaming. If so, then it seems we similarly have no justification in thinking that the world we experience is the “Real World”. Indeed, it becomes questionable whether we are justified in thinking that any of our beliefs are true.

And that perhaps in scarier than anything we can come across in our dreams, even the ones that involve running gun battles with dinosaurs while my teeth are falling out.