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Analyzing Descartes 'Dreaming Argument'

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Topic 2: The Dreaming Argument Patrick Wahl February 12, 2017 The topic I will be discussing is the “Dreaming Argument” by Descartes. This argument begins towards the beginning of the second paragraph and ends in the middle of the third paragraph on page thirteen in the First Meditation of Descartes’ “Meditations on First Philosophy”. Descartes uses this argument to support the argument of the whole First Meditation that we can doubt the knowledge that is obtained through our sense. Descartes begins his argument by comparing the dreams he could have to the dreams of a madman. He says he has similar experiences as one would except of a madman why asleep, if even sometimes more outlandish ones (Descartes, 13). He goes on to describe how his dreams in the past contained events that are hardly different from the time he considered himself to be awake. Theses help to support the claim that there is no way to tell whether or not he is dreaming or awake. This defines Descartes’ first premise to be “If you cannot distinguish between the time when you are dreaming and the time when you are awake using the sense, then the sense can be doubted. …show more content…

He begins to support this premise by starting with, “Suppose then that I am dreaming and these particulars – that my eyes are open, that I am moving my head and stretching my hands – are not true” (Descartes, 13). In this sentence he is talking about a dream in which his senses are telling him that he is preforming a bunch of physical actuals, but he is being deceived by his senses. He goes on to say that within the dreams he has the objects, no matter how fictional, are created from real parts and colors. Thus if in dreams we create things out of real objects and colors then our senses cannot distinguish between dreams and

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