What if I told you that all you have came to believe in life is false. That everything you have ever know to be true is a lie. What if I told you that is all a figment of your imagination. You are not real? This methodology was voiced through a man named René Descartes. His strategy was to believe false anything that can cause the slightest ounce of doubt, which means anything that had deceived him was therefore false. As the ‘Father of Modern Philosophy’, Descartes methods and theories really caused people to question everything about their existence. In this essay we will focus on Descartes’ first meditation and the arguments (dreaming and evil demon) which they provide.
Descartes was a French man who studied philosophy throughout the 18th century. Midway through his life he decided to change, this resulted in him forgetting everything he came to believe and be reborn into a world of scepticism. Descartes took the first step to changing his thought process forever. He discarded everything he thought was truth and refused to see true even the most basic of premises. This restriction of beliefs helped Descartes attack the foundation of every truth. The senses are used to validate ideas about life. If the senses are proven to lie then how can a person believe anything these sense have told them. This methodology shown below helped Descartes create the dream and evil demon argument.
“All that up to the present time I have accepted as most true and certain I have learned either from the senses or through the senses; but it is sometimes proved to me that these senses are deceptive, and it is wiser not to trust entirely to anything by which we have once been deceived.”1
The Dream Argument features in the first meditation created by Descartes. At night we all go to sleep; when we sleep, we dream, however when dreaming are we aware we are dreaming? You are in your car driving to work. You are stuck in traffic so put the radio on. You have a sip of your coffee and the traffic starts to move. It feels real. You then open your eyes and are awake. You know exactly what you are doing thus you reach a conclusion that you are awake. The dream argument states that it is impossible to know if you are dreaming or awake as your senses deceive you in a dream therefore, can deceive you when awake, which mean you can never know if you are living or dreaming. This can be shown more clearly through the use of premises.
“P1: If I really know that P, then I can rule out the possibility that I am merely dreaming that P.
[If I cannot tell whether I am dreaming, then I cannot really tell whether there is a table in front of me. If I was merely dreaming the table, then there (probably) would not really be a table in front of me.]
P2: But I cannot rule out the possibility that I am merely dreaming that P.
[There does not seem to be any test that I can perform that I can use to definitively determine whether I am dreaming or not. For any test we come up with, it seems we can dream that we perform it and dream that we get whatever results.]
C: So I do not really know that P.”2
This highlights that dreams can be so vivid and lifelike that we are unable to distinguish the difference between real life and dreams, however when awake nearly everyone is certain that they are not dreaming as they find life runs in a normal way. Many philosophers have tried to refute the dream argument by saying you cannot feel pain in dreams however recent studies have shown that pain can in fact inhabit your dreams. A study conducted in February of 2010 has went into grave detail on how pain can be physically felt in dreams as well as in real life. Thus concluding that a person can be fooled into thinking their dream is their life. Study referenced in notes as source 4. It can be stated that this argument is both Sound and Valid, both premises are true and the conclusion follows on from the premises. The only way an argument can be valid is if the conclusion is a consequence of the premises. Therefore the argument is valid as it can’t be confirmed that you are aware you’re dreaming in a dream. I believe the conclusion is true and that the premises can’t be argued which means that the argument is sound. The dream argument is strong as we can never truly be certain that we have not just dreamt we have awoken which means that we can’t be certain that we are not dreaming.
Further on in the first meditation, Descartes describes how he imagined that an evil demon/genius of immense power has deceived him all his life. This demon has used this power to complete the ultimate illusion, our external world. The evil demon argument suggests that we are all under the control of an omnipotent being who is bent on deceiving us. This means that we don’t have a body and are just a brain that is fed information by this demon. This argument was used to help demonstrate Descartes senses argument. If we can’t trust our senses to provide information about our world, then we also cannot trust the deductions that we have made through use of our senses. Therefore we must conclude that there is something bigger which has made those choices for us.
“P1: If I really know that P, then I can rule out the possibility that there is an all-powerful evil genius deceiving me about P.
P2: But I cannot rule out the possibility that there is an evil genius deceiving me.
C: So I do not really know that P”3
The evil demon argument is the best Skeptical argument as it works for both complex and simple objects in life. However, Descartes himself did not necessarily agree with this argument. He believed that there is no way to prove that an evil demon doesn’t exist so therefore can’t be certain that his reasoning is reliable. The evil demon argument is strong as it allows for an omni being to exist without problems. The existence of God was a flawed theory because of the problem of evil, however the evil demon argument accounts for that evil, thus being the evil demon instead of the all good demon.
Both the evil demon and dream argument are very similar. Both contain a premise which highlights certainty, both are sound and valid, and both cause us to rethink how we look upon our world. However, both also have flaws. For the dream argument one can argue that dreams are normally never connected whereas life is, therefore you can tell that you have just had a dream because life picks up and dreams don’t. Another argument is that in dreams the laws of nature are broken, this means you can fly, talk to the dead, and breathe underwater, all of which are impossible when awake. Then for the evil demon you could state that the argument itself if self defeating as if this demon existed would he let us think about him? If the demon aloud us to think about him existing then this would mean that he is physically making us think about him which means that he wants us to know that he really does exist. Thus making us have a judgement which means we have free will. This means that we are not controlled by this demon at all because we have the ability to think for ourselves. Another argument is that the evil demon can’t create doubt about our existence as that would require us to exist and not at the same time which is utterly impossible. It would require us to think we are thinking when really we are not thinking at all. I think, therefore I am. In order to think, one must exist. In order to exist, one must have to think. Descartes stated that everyone thinks, this means that we have souls and do in fact exist. In order for an evil demon to mislead, you need to exist. However, the only way in which one exists is if they are constantly thinking. In order to think we must then be thinking for ourselves which then means that we are not being controlled by anything more powerful than us. Which finally means there must be no evil demon as he would have to make us think we are thinking when truthfully we aren’t thinking at all.
In conclusion, both the dream and evil demon argument are sound and valid and strong. However, I feel that the dream argument is stronger than the evil demon argument. I believe this because when dreaming nobody is aware they are dreaming. It doesn’t matter what occurs in that dream, you feel like it is reality. Even in dreams mathematics still exists as three bananas and five apples will still always make eight pieces of fruit. The dreaming argument is also stronger at verifying that the senses are unreliable because in dreams our senses deceive us therefore making our senses unreliable. Both of the arguments however back up Descartes theory of the senses and allows humans to change the way they think and be more Skeptical.