The Reality of Dreams, Essay Example

Descartes tells us that, in order to see what is real, we must first doubt all we know with our senses.  Our senses can deceive us.  He utilizes the argument of a fictitious dream state to support his arguments that reality must be judged based on doubting what we think we know about the world.  For instance, he suggests that hands, feet and bodily movements are the same in a dream state and when we appear to be awake.  Therefore, he questions whether we can ever truly know if we are awake or asleep and must doubt what we think we know.  Although Descartes attempts to question reality and tells us to doubt our senses using the argument of perceived reality in the dream state, this argument has many flaws and does not accurately convince this reader that we must question our senses.

First of all, Descartes’ argument is compelling in the sense that many dreams do appear to be real when the person is dreaming.  There are countless times where people are dreaming and feel that they are literally encountering the circumstances and events within their dream state.  Also, many people will wake up from a dream and feel that they are still in the dream or are taken by surprise at how real the dream appeared to be.  Most individuals will take their dreams so seriously that they will wake up their spouse or loved one in order to describe the events of the dream to emphasize how real the events appeared to be.  This portion of Descartes’ argument is the most compelling because it forces us to analyze a familiar event or circumstance that every single person has likely experienced at one point or another.

Although Descartes’ argument of the reality of dreams appears to be compelling, it has several flaws that are necessary to discuss.  First of all, when we are not dreaming, we have control over our own actions.  This argument could likely arouse a heated discussion of philosophical control, but the truth of the matter is that we are able to make decisions on how to act and react in the real world.  Many dreams do not provide the same control.  Dreams can often be thought of as watching a movie that we are the main character.  This also suggests that the world around us is not controlled in reality, but has a certain sense of control in a dream.  This control within a dream results from the power that our consciousness has over the actions and circumstances within a dream.  We are the directors of our own dreams, even if the dreams may not always be exactly what we want them to be.  For instance, the individual may have an interview coming up that is causing him a lot of stress.  This stress and self-doubt may create a dream scenario where the events of the interview occur horribly and the person is denied the job, or the interview may not even take place because of car troubles.  The main point is that dreams can be controlled by our consciousness whether intentionally or unintentionally.  In a skit about dreams, comedian Jeff Foxworthy states that he is not directing his dreams, but in reality we are all the directors and lead actors in all of our dreams.  On the other hand, we do not have that same control in our real lives.  The real world may present us with similar situations as our dreams, but there is no major puppeteer controlling our actions or the events that take place.