“...I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep.”
How meta is this argument?
I always thought the argument was supposed to be that the information is the same in both cases—the waking state and the sleeping state—and thus we cannot tell from that information whether an inference to the corresponding reality of the objects represented by the information can be successfully made.
But if that is so, the objection can be pressed that if the information is sensory, then the inference is implied (if the senses work), and if it is not, the inference fails. And in the waking state the information is sensory, while in the dream state it is not—it is imaginary.
Descartes can forestall this objection by insisting that the distinction between imaginary information and sensory information cannot be detected by the conscious mind that is the subject of the mental states in question. But if that were so, then how could the mind ever tell the difference between imagination and the intellect? Wouldn’t it follow that we were always subject to illusions and imagined things all the time? That seems an extreme overreach.
If the argument is pitched at a more meta level, he can shimmy out of this. It is not that the nature of the information itself is opaque to us, but that we must rely on some other information (some meta-, secondary information) to sort out this otherwise opaque, primary information. So, if we have red patch information:
there is a red patch in my visual field right now
then we need information about that information to tell us whether it is imaginary or sensory.
Either:
there is a red patch in my visual field right now that is being delivered by my functioning, wide awake eyes
or else:
there is a red patch in my visual field right now that is being delivered by my overactive imagination.
If the dream argument is supposed to go that high up, Descartes avoids my earlier worry, but then it looks puzzling in a different way. The meta-information move makes it seem as though the higher-order thoughts are about the lower-order thoughts—perhaps that is right—but this seems at odds with Descartes’s view that the intellect, when it knows what is true, takes as its object ideas that are ‘clear and distinct’. In fact, that is how the intellect knows it is judging truly—the clear and distinct criteria are met. But it seems completely at odds with this to think that the clear and distinct things that the intellect knows are less-sure perceptual ideas about red patches and the like. Those are the very paradigm of non-clear and non-distinct ideas. Hence it seems strange to think that Descartes sees the intellect as piggy-backing on perception this way.
I might not figure this out until meditation 6.
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Timothy Chow on the NF consistency proof and Lean
12 hours ago
6 comments:
descartes makes a well argument when distinguishing the difference between a dream and reality. how do we know when we are awake or asleep? sometimes we are sleeping but our dreams seems so real that we think we are awake until something happens in our dream that allows us to wake up and realize that it was all a dream. this ties into his idea that its not imaginary unless we can prove it. for example, in meditation 1, he says that our bodies are real and its not just an illusion because there are paintings of our bodies and paintings are concrete objects and are real. paintings are not an illusion therefore we know our body are real and not just a figure of our imagination. i believe that descartes is trying to say that if we can prove what we are seeing is real than we are awake and not asleep.
i agree with francinia's last sentence that if we can prove what we are seeing is real than we are awake and not asleep. Descartes is a little rash to claim that there are no signs to distinguish being awake from asleep, at first. let's take a look at the obvious one's: if you dream a purple elephant with wings and three trunks, and you wake up afterwards in your bed and realize there's no purple elephant with wings and three trunks anymore, then that is clearly a distinction between a dream and conscious. also, when you are asleep, you are unconscious, when you are awake, you are conscious, simple concepts that Descartes does not seem to grasp. i know this is a very blatant, generic argument but this is the truth.
I do not really agree with francinia's last sentence because Descartes says that when you believe in God the dreams we have while asleep should in no way make us doubt the truth about our beliefs while awake. But he also says being asleep would not prevent it from being true. So therefore i think that he is saying it does not matter whether you are asleep or awake because one is not anymore false than the other.
hi, decartes is not trying to tell us how to determine whats real from whats a dream. All he is telling us is that we can't necessarily be certain that everything that we percieve is reality. there might be some other possible exiplinaiton for what is happening to us as well. I think that this is also the reason why he presents the demon example for us as well.
I found the idea of trying to determine whether a person is dreaming or whether they are awake interesting because from my own experiences I have found myself trying to figure out whether I have dreamt something or whether it was real. Sometimes a person can dream and when they wake up they have trouble figuring out what is true and what is not. Its kind of like being in another reality. Sometimes it hard to distinguish reality from other things. People have a tendency of being lost in their own world to get away from the problems of reality. This is what happens in dreams. Its an escape from a person problems and fears in the world.
I think decartes is absouluty right in the way he describes how dreams are so hard to distinquish from being real or being asleep. Its funny how even though if I'm have a dream that should involve pain, i've never felt it, but you don't think, gee, why didn't I feel that? The argument you could also make is that i've also caught myself in REAL life, and thought at times, am I dreaming?
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