Comparing Descartes Views On The Difference Between Dreams And Reality

632 Words3 Pages

Another marker might be that waking life has continuity which is not present in a dream. When one is dreaming one can defy the natural rules and anything can become true. However, in reality this does not occur. Therefore, we can know a difference between the dream world and reality. At first glance, this opposing argument might appear to be valid and sound. Nevertheless, is not sound. This is because the first premise that of the continuity present in waking life and not in dream is not truth. I know from my own experience and many others may know too that not all dreams are scenes put together with nothing that matches it to the previous ones. Seeing that some dreams have continuity, then the argument fails and cannot prove a difference between the dream world and waking life.
Further criticism on Descartes argument of dreaming and its reflection on the external world might not be about the premises of this argument and proving that dreaming and waking life can be differentiated. An opposition might be born …show more content…

For example, how we know that tomorrow the sun will rise. We base our knowledge from past experiences, nonetheless, there is no test to show that the sun will come up other than waiting till the next morning to see if it occurs as expected. Yet, this opposition does not provide certainty that the event will happen according to the past experiences, there could be an extraneous variable which has never been part of our experiences that occurs and prevents the expected outcome of occurring. So, this counter argument would have to be explained in more detail because the skeptics can also say that in the end someone might have thought he was awake, and experienced things with certainty, when in reality they might have just dreamt it. Which in return would make premise two follow premise one

Open Document