The dream argument is the postulation that the act of dreaming provides
preliminary evidence that the senses we trust to distinguish reality from
illusion should not be fully trusted, and therefore any state that is
dependent on our senses should at the very least be carefully examined and
rigorously tested to determine whether it is in fact reality.
Synopsis While people dream, they usually do not
realize they are dreaming. This has led philosophers to wonder whether one could
actually be dreaming constantly, instead of being in waking reality. In the West,
this philosophical puzzle was referred to by Plato and Aristotle. Having
received serious attention in René Descartes' Meditations on First
Philosophy, the dream argument has become one of the most prominent
skeptical hypotheses which clearly has an archetype in elements of Plato's
Allegory of the Cave also. This type of argument is well known as
"Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly": One night, Zhuangzi dreamed that he was
a carefree butterfly, flying happily. After he woke up, he wondered how he
could determine whether he was Zhuangzi who had just finished dreaming he was a
butterfly, or a butterfly who had just started dreaming he was Zhuangzi. This
was a metaphor for what he referred to as a "great dream":
He who dreams of drinking wine may weep when morning comes; he who dreams of
weeping may in the morning go off to hunt. While he is dreaming he does not
know it is a dream, and in his dream he may even try to interpret a dream. Only
after he wakes does he know it was a dream. And someday there will be a great
awakening when we know that this is all a great dream. Yet the stupid believe
they are awake, busily and brightly assuming they understand things, calling
this man ruler, that one herdsman ‑ how dense! Confucius and you are both
dreaming! And when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming, too. Words like
these will be labeled the Supreme Swindle. Yet, after ten thousand
generations, a great sage may appear who will know their meaning, and it will
still be as though he appeared with astonishing speed.
Some schools of thought in Buddhism, consider perceived reality literally
unreal. As a prominent contemporary teacher, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, puts it:
"In a real sense, all the visions that we see in our lifetime are like a big
dream [...]". In this context, the term 'visions' denotes not only visual
perceptions, but appearances perceived through all senses, including sounds,
smells, tastes and tactile sensations, and operations on received mental
objects. Simulated reality
Dreaming provides a springboard for those who question whether our own
reality may be an illusion. The ability of the mind to be tricked into believing
a mentally generated world is the "real world" means at least one variety of
simulated reality is a common, even nightly event.
Those who argue that the world is not simulated must concede that the mind—at
least the sleeping mind—is not itself an entirely reliable mechanism for
attempting to differentiate reality from illusion.
Critical discussion In the past, philosophers John Locke and
Thomas Hobbes have separately attempted to refute Descartes's account of the
dream argument. Locke claimed that pain in dreams are not of the same intensity
as pain in reality. Various scientific studies conducted in the late 20th
century provided evidence against Locke's claim by concluding that pain in
dreams can accurately mirror pain in waking life. Hobbes's refutation claimed
that dreams are susceptible to absurdity while the waking life is not.
Many contemporary philosophers have attempted to refute dream skepticism in
detail). Perhaps most notably, Ernest Sosa has devoted a chapter of a recent
monograph to the topic. There, Sosa presents a new theory of dreaming and
argues that his theory raises a new argument for skepticism, which he
attempts to refute. In A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective
Knowledge, he states: "in dreaming we do not really believe; we only
make-believe.” Jonathan Ichikawa and Nathan Ballantyne & Ian Evans have
offered critiques of Sosa's proposed solution. Ichikawa argued that as we
cannot tell whether our beliefs in waking life are truly beliefs and not
imaginings, like in a dream, we are still not able to tell whether we are
awake or dreaming. Popular culture
In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, Alice finds the Red King
asleep in the grass; Tweedledum and Tweedledee tell her that the Red King is
dreaming about her, and that if he were to wake up she would "go out—bang!—just
like a candle...." A similar theme is explored in The Legend of Zelda: Link's
Awakening, told from the perspective of the dreamer in his own realm of dreams.
In the 1999 movie The Matrix, machines imprison the human race and plug them
into "the Matrix", an enormous machine system that uses human bioelectricity
and body heat as a biological battery to power the machines. Connected to the
Matrix, the humans are kept in a dream-like state, in which they dream of
being in the world as it is today; they have no reason to suspect that it is
anything other than the real world. Certain people sense the innate
artificiality of the illusion and, through various means, "wake up",
breaking free of the Matrix. The overall theme of the series is the "waking
dream" scenario, and speculations on which reality is preferable. This
concept is further explored during the second Matrix film where one of the main
characters appears to be able to utilize abilities usually used in the "dream" in
what the character currently believes is "reality", leaving the viewer to
question if the character is in fact in reality, or if they are still inside the
dream. In the original television series The
Twilight Zone, the episode Shadow Play concerns a man trapped in a recurring
nightmare in which he dreams he is a prison inmate sentenced to death and to
be executed; he tries to convince the characters in his dream that they are
only figments of his imagination and that they will cease to exist if the
execution is carried out. In the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode
Far Beyond the Stars, After losing a close colleague in the Dominion War,
Captain Sisko confides in his father about leaving Starfleet. Sisko suddenly
experiences visions that he is an African-American named Benny Russell who
lives in 1950's America and writes stories for a Science-Fiction pulp
magazine. Inspired by a drawing of a space station, Benny writes a story
about a Captain Sisko set on Deep Space Nine in a future where the racial
prejudices of the period no longer exist. Benny then faces backlash from
the publishers who refuse to run a story about a black Captain resulting in Benny
suffering a nervous breakdown. The episode left it ambiguous whether
Sisko's life in the 24th century is real or the result of imagination combined
with mental illness. Richard Linklater's Waking Life deals
mostly with this subject, revolving around a man being aware of having been
trapped inside his own dream. In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode
Normal Again Buffy is poisoned by a demon, causing her to flash between her
life as usually portrayed on the series and another reality, where she has been
in a mental institution for 6 years for believing the original reality. The
viewer and Buffy herself are presented with uncertainty as to which reality is
the hallucination; Buffy even mentions that she was institutionalized after she
saw her first vampire and wonders whether she might have been
hallucinating a life with exciting, supernatural elements since then. The
non-supernatural world has both her parents alive and together. Both
realities appear completely plausible, in a paradox of sorts. She opts for the
world with no vampires or other supernatural beings, as her life as a
Slayer is full of pain and grief. However, when her mother tells her she
is strong and capable, she returns to her "Slayer" reality. The last scene
shows her sitting in the mental institution, in a vegetative state and
hallucinating her life as a Slayer. Christopher Nolan's movie Inception
deals with the fictional science of shared dreaming. The characters enter
others' minds, to steal ideas, or in the rare case of inception itself, plant
them while the target is unaware they are dreaming. Once in a dream, the
characters can enter other layers or dreams within dreams. In the movie,
characters can distinguish a dream by using totems, unique items whose
properties and behavior are different in a dream than in the waking world. In the
end, the film leaves open the question of whether the protagonist is himself
dreaming. Films such as Total Recall and Blade
Runner, which are both based on stories by Philip K. Dick, also hinge upon the
idea that what you remember and perceive is not always real.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty greatly explores the protagonist
Raiden's diminished sense of reality, and that what you perceive may not be
what is truly reality. Ted Dekker's Circle Series protagonist
wakes up in an alternate reality every time he goes to sleep.
Doctor Who explores the idea of the dream argument many times. In the ninth
episode of series four "Forest of the Dead", the Doctor's companion Donna is
"saved" into the Library's hardrive and begins to live out an imaginary and fake
reality; unaware that the reality she is living in an illusion until a disfigured
woman who had been killed in the "real" world and respectively submitted into
the hard drive convinces her that her life is not real. In the seventh episode
of series five Amy's Choice the two companions of the Doctor, Amy and Rory
Pond, have to decide between two realities; one where they are happily
married and the other where they are still travelling with the Doctor, and
the only way to escape is to kill yourself in the fake reality. Since they
are not sure which one is fake and which is real, they are hesitant to choose. In
the Christmas special of 2014 Last Christmas, this concept is once again
used where an alien species latches onto your brain to devour it, but makes you
dream so you are unaware while they digest. Similar to Inception, it
explores the ideas of shared dreaming and the main characters question whether
they're awake or still in a dream. The Doctor points out there are multiple
ways to determine the answer, such as asking questions that you do not know
the answer to, having different people read the same book and discover that the
text is different, or even the appearance of fictional characters, such
as Santa Claus. See also
Cartesian doubt Consensus reality
Evil demon False awakening
Maya Multiverse
Reality in Buddhism Social simulation
Solipsism Notes
References Ballantyne, Nathan; Evans, Ian. "Sosa's
Dream". Philosophical Studies 148: 249–252. doi:10.1007/s11098-008-9309-y.
Ichikawa, Jonathan. "Skepticism and the Imagination Model of Dreaming". The
Philosophical Quarterly 58: 519–527. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.546.x.
Sosa, Ernest. A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge. New
York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-929702-3.
Stone, Jim. "Dreaming and Certainty". Philosophical Studies 45: 353–368.
doi:10.1007/BF00355443.