By Dr Tromans

Introduction

Dr Tromans, Editor

It has been a great pleasure to be involved with the publication of Veritas for the second (and final) time. I owe thanks to the two student editors (from my Lower Sixth Philosophy class), Charlie Ballero and Eden Halperin. Much credit to them, not only for contributing articles but also for giving their time to help with the editing of the competition entries.

This edition contains submissions for three essay competitions addressing the relation between literature and philosophy/theology. Other pieces have been submitted as “open entries” . Thanks to all students who submitted entries.

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Do you know that you are not dreaming right now? If so, how? If not, does it matter?

By Oli Weiner (U6C2)

We have all read and seen children’s books and films, such as “Alice in Wonderland”, that hook the audience into a gripping story, that the audience thinks has actually happened to the main character, only to be told at the end that it was all a dream. How do we know that this is not true too of reality? What if when we die it is revealed to us by some extraordinary being that what we have just lived was merely a dream relayed in first person, and if that is the case, why should we care? We too have all heard the phrase, “pinch me, I must be dreaming.” The use of this phrase instructs an action to be done that stimulates the receptor cells of the skin in order to “wakeup” the brain in order to deliver the feeling of pain, and in so doing prove that we are awake rather than dreaming. But what if our mind, or as Descartes speculated, an evil demon, has deceived us into performing this action and feeling a response, and this all happens whilst we are dreaming. In this essay, it will be concluded that we do know that we are not dreaming, but even if we did not, it would not matter.

Moments that happen while we’re sleeping, such as rain falling onto the roof or a car driving past, often become incorporated into our dreams. Sigmund Freud recalls a story of a man who dreamt he was at the guillotine during

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the French revolution and awoke just as the blade hit his neck. He found that his headboard had fallen and struck him just where the blade had done in his dream. We think we know when we are awake and when we are asleep, when we are dreaming and when we are not, but it is actually not so clear. Many people experience waking up yet still feeling like the dream was real. Some people claim to have unbearable and persistent insomnia, but sleep studies often shows that while they believe they are awake, they are actually asleep, dreaming that they are lying in bed, tossing, and turning for hours at a time. They wake up convinced that they had not slept at all. So, is there a way to distinguish being awake and being asleep? In his Meditations, René Descartes argues that there is no difference. He begins the book by questioning whether or not we can know anything at all. One of the sceptical arguments that he puts forward is the Dream Argument. Descartes describes two scenarios, one in which we have something, such as legs and another in which we are sleeping and dream about having and using our legs. In the scenario, the dream is so realistic that when Descartes wakes up, he does not know whether he had just dreamt it. Descartes argues that dreams are often indistinguishable from veridical perceptions and therefore we cannot know that the two are objectively different. Thus, he makes the following argument:

P1: If I don’t know that I am not dreaming, then I do not know if I have legs;

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P2: I do not know that I am dreaming because dreams and reality are often indistinguishable;

C1: Therefore, I do not know if I have legs.

Here, Descartes’ argument aims to show that we cannot distinguish reality from a dream and therefore we do not know whether or not we are dreaming.

However, this is a weak argument, and Descartes even provides a solution to the argument himself. Descartes notes that dreams are rarely connected to waking memories, and when a character in a dream disappears, we often do not see them ever again. Furthermore, dreams are often discontinuous, whereas reality is not. With this argument, Descartes attacks the second premise, that dreams are indistinguishable from reality, by showing that the nature of reality as a continuous chain of events with characters that we meet over and over again, is objectively different from dreams, which do not usually repeat themselves and are discontinuous. Descartes argues that it is human nature to seek a regular schedule with regular activities, which we do not experience in dreams and therefore dreaming cannot be reality. For example, in reality, we get up and go to school or to work every day and see the same people and have the same lessons, whereas in dreams we do not follow a regular schedule.

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Nevertheless, the sceptic could respond to this objection and say that through lucid dreaming, we can create a regular chain of events in dreams to create a “dream life” that is indistinguishable from reality. However, this is a weak response too as by saying that we must lucidly dream to create regularity in the “dream life” admits that we must do something outside of a dream, namely in the real world, to make dreaming seem like reality and thus we do still know that we are not dreaming.

The strongest objection to Descartes Dream Argument, which ultimately defeats it, and proves that we do know whether or not we are dreaming, comes from G.E. Moore. Moore flips Descartes’ argument around to form the following argument:

P1: If I do not know that I am not dreaming, then I do not know that I do not know that I have legs;

P2: I do know that I have legs;

C1: Therefore, I know that I am not dreaming.

The sceptic could respond to Moore’s argument by saying that the argument is begging the question. We cannot know for certain that we have legs because, as Descartes showed with his Evil Demon Argument (the idea that we cannot know anything because we are tricked into believing it by an evil demon), we cannot be certain that we know anything. Moore responds to this

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objection very well by saying that by assuming that we cannot know whether or not we have legs, the sceptic too has begged the question and therefore they must give a reason to prove why we cannot know that we don’t have legs. The sceptic can respond to this objection; however they fall into Moore’s trap. The sceptic would have to respond by giving the following modus ponens argument: P1: For every person S, and every truth p, S knows p if and only if S is able to prove p;

P2: But nobody can prove that they have legs;

C1: Therefore, nobody knows that they have legs;

C2: Therefore, we do not know whether we are dreaming or not.

Whilst Moore agrees that nobody can prove whether or not they have legs, he rejects the first premise, that something is only knowable if it is provable. Moore argues that there are certain a posteriori facts that we have deduced via our sense experience. These beliefs are basic and include things such as “water boils at 100°C”, and also “humans have legs” and we know them to be true. Moore argues that we know this to be true because all of humanity can verify that by nature, humans have legs. Therefore, Moore’s argument is correct. Moore’s objection to Descartes is incredibly strong and therefore we do know when we are dreaming and thus, I do know that I am not dreaming.

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In evaluation, whilst the sceptical argument that we cannot be certain about anything is somewhat convincing, we are able to ascertain that there is a difference between dreaming and reality and therefore we do know that we are not constantly dreaming.

So far, I have clarified that we can make a distinction between what we call dreaming and what we call reality and therefore the phrase “pinch me, I must be dreaming” can be used correctly to distinguish between what we call real life and dreams. However, how do we know that we are not constantly living in a dream world in which we falsely think that a reality exists? Is death the part at the end of the story when we are told that everything was just a dream?

Everybody experiences times during which the world doesn’t seem real and substantial as things go wrong, such as after the death of a loved one, or a natural disaster. We feel shocked and have a blank stare, saying things like “This can’t be happening.” It may be true that “time heals everything” and in time reality feels real again, but some people don’t and hallucinate for the rest of their lives. We can also experience the feeling of “this can’t be happening, it’s like a dream”, when someone is ecstatic:

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everything can seem unreal. These experiences give the basis for the notion that life could actually just be a dream, only we don’t notice until there is a moment when things don’t seem real and we glimpse the dream for a while before lapsing back into it quite unconsciously, like if a sudden bang momentarily wakes us up in the middle of a dream and we become aware of the dream before drifting back to sleep and allowing it to continue. Plato’s image of the cave teaches us that the illusory nature of life has fooled us, with the exception of the few who have woken up and seen reality. Plato compares everyday life to watching shadows dance on the walls of a cave, and only those who turn around and see the sun projecting the shadows know what is real and where the illusion comes from. Personal experience, philosophy, and art have endorsed an idea that reality sometimes feels wrong under ordinary circumstances.

The world feels real 99% of the time, which we might think to be enough proof that we do not live in a dream, but modern science cannot prove that the physical, mindindependent world can be trusted. When we are dreaming at night in bed, a dream feels real until we wake up, so how do we know that we are not experiencing an exceptionally long dream that we have not yet woken up from.

Additionally, nothing about reality can be scientifically proven. Matter can be reduced to invisible waves that have no definite location in time and space. The big bang

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created a universe where time and space exist, but there is nothing verifiable about what existed before it. At best, all that we can verify about reality is that it matches a universal experience. Everything comes to us as experiences, and even when reduced to mathematics, experience is how that exists too – all we know about mathematical truths comes from the human brain, not from nature.

Furthermore, are we to say that the testimony of people who have transcended everyday reality, is not as valid as the testimony that insists on everyday reality. They cannot simply be dismissed as they could be right when the vast majority of humanity is wrong, just as Copernicus was right in regard to the orientation of the solar system. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that it is highly unlikely that there is no reality. The same arguments that defeated the Brain in the Vat argument can be applied here.

The strongest argument against Dream Theory is argued by Wittgenstein. He says that to doubt the existence of reality requires some background knowledge and understanding of why it is possible that life is but a dream. Therefore:

P1: To doubt, we must have some background knowledge;

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P2: To doubt reality with the argument that we are just living one big dream does not hinge on any background knowledge, it is merely a theory;

C1: Therefore, we cannot doubt our reality;

C2: Therefore, we are not constantly dreaming.

This is a strong objection to the theory that we are simply living a dream because it strikes at the very possibility of us living a dream. Wittgenstein is arguing that there is no point theorising about purely living a dream because we have no reason to think that that is what is happening. The sceptic cannot respond to this objection because there is no scientific evidence to suggest that we are constantly living a dream and therefore it is unlikely that we are constantly dreaming.

In conclusion, although we cannot rule out the possibly that life is but a dream, the fact that we can distinguish between our concept of reality and our concept of a dream, combined with the fact that it is highly unlikely that life is nothing but a dream proves that we can know when we are and are not dreaming.

Pragmatists wonder why the notion of life as a dream matters. It makes a difference because we may want to transcend the dream. We may not fear death. We may identify with a self that is timeless and unbounded and therefore live life to its fullest. We may too stop

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experiencing emotions and instead constantly feel calm, alert, and open. We may feel detached, as if witnessing how life unfolds rather than being tossed and tumbled in the chaotic stream of daily events.

On the other hand, life has existed on Earth, either as reality or as a dream for thousands of years and will continue to do so. As argued by Aristotle, the main goal of life is to become virtuous and help others to do so in order to achieve a state of Eudaimonia. Bentham argued that the purpose of life is to provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Kant argued that the purpose of life is to fulfil our duty, pursue our ends and help others to do so in order to reach a Kingdom of Ends. We can also find purpose to life through family, work, and religion, amongst various other sources. It does not matter whether we are living in a dream world, or in reality, as the purpose of life from all viewpoints will not be changed: what difference does it make if we are living in a dream?

To conclude, we should keep on pinching ourselves to make sure that we are awake, because the chances that we will wake up at the end our life and be told that we have just lived a dream are so slim and claims that we will wake up have no grounding. We can distinguish between dreams and reality and therefore we do know when we are and are not dreaming. Furthermore, continue living life to its fullest and finding purpose because whilst the chances are so slim, even if we are told that we are living

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in a dream, what difference does it make? To summarise, we do know when we are dreaming, and even if we did not, it does not matter.

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Selected Bibliography

Is life really a dream? – the Chopra foundation (2018) Choprafoundation.org. Available at: https://choprafoundation.org/articles/is-life-really-adream/ (Accessed: June 3, 2021).

Lacewing, M., 2014, Philosophy for AS: Epistemology and Philosophy of Religion. London: Routledge. Psychology Today, 2019, “Is life a dream?” Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/mysteriesconsciousness/201907/is-life-dream (Accessed: June 5, 2021).

Thompson, E., 2017, Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Windt, J. M., 2021, “Dreams and Dreaming”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2021, edited by Zalta, E. N. Stanford University Press.

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