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Bad Dreams Evil Demons And The Experience Machine Analysis

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One of the most argued philosophical concepts about life revolves around the question, “What is reality?” Are we really awake, experiencing the real world or is your perceived reality just a dream? Christopher Grau, a philosophy professor, continues to analyze possible answers to those questions in “Bad Dreams, Evil Demons, and the Experience Machine: Philosophy and The Matrix” by adding arguments from Descartes, Dancy, Putnam, Nozick, and Unger, and compares some of the parallels between the theories thought by the philosophers with concepts found in The Matrix. The main philosophical view-point discussed as well as argued is skepticism, but more specifically Cartesian skepticism. It is essentially doubting the previous beliefs one has before analysis and in this case, doubt reality. …show more content…

The apparent obvious answer would be along the lines of, “If you’re dreaming, you can pinch yourself awake,” but that does not satisfy the complexity of reality and philosophers would not accept an answer that simple. He brings into the argument René Descartes’ Meditations and the point that since when we dream, it seems real and not dream-like, how can you tell that you still are not dreaming at this very moment? It appears there is no justification or real answer to tell if everyday experiences are not just hallucinations but Descartes claims since we have some knowledge about there being a difference between reality in dreaming, we must have experienced both at some point. The analogy the philosopher presents is similar to how a painter is not able to create a painting without paints, prior knowledge of reality must be experienced to determine what is

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