Impressions that Linger...
Descartes is probably best known for his Meditations on First Philosophy and contributions to inquiries related to mind, body, and identity that still plague modern philosophical circles. A seventeenth century French thinker, it is in his honor that "Cartesian dualism" is invoked in order to reference the distinction between body and mind, the material and the immaterial.
Across his reflections, spanning mathematics and science to theology and metaphysics, the subject of dreaming is perhaps one of the lesser explored aspects of his meditations. Nearing the end of the first and throughout the second of his Meditations, the subject of dreaming is explored briefly, casting doubt onto the entire realm of experience. In invoking dreams, Descartes intends to demonstrate that one can doubt anything, even one's own experiences of so-called reality.
Few can flawlessly and consistently distinguish dreams from states of wakefulness. Lost at sea, we thus find ourselves misled by dreams, sometimes to the point that even in the first few moments upon waking, we continue to feel such a dream was real. Have you ever dreamed that a loved one had died, finding yourself waking up crying? Perhaps you've gotten into a heated argument in a dream, or an incredibly frustrating situation, waking with a lingering sense of anger. Dreams, especially the most vivid of them, leave us with emotional impressions that linger into the daytime, casting ripples into our waking life.
Continuing in our December dreaming theme, we explore the approach to dreaming undertaken by Descartes, whose radical doubt led him to call into question whether his entire experienced reality was a dream.
Like Painted Images
Beginning in "Meditation One," when his certainty about the experienced world first proceeds to unravel, Descartes reflects on the deceptive nature of dreams, which so closely resemble waking reality that they often mislead him into an illusory perception of the world.
Knowing that he has often mistook the contents of a dream for waking life, Descartes is thrown into confusion. Even in noting the distinct sensations of his wide-awake eyes, his head free from the heaviness of sleep, and the deliberate movement of his hands, he is still forced to doubt his experience. Despite his distinct perceptions of the fireplace and paper in front of him on which he records his reflections, he questions their reality.
Such things would not be so distinct for someone who is asleep. As if I did not recall having been deceived on other occasions even by similar thoughts in my dreams! As I consider these matters more carefully, I see so plainly that there are no definitive signs by which to distinguish being awake from being asleep. As a result, I am becoming quite dizzy, and this dizziness nearly convinces me that I am asleep.
Upon expressing such disorienting disbelief, Descartes decides to entertain the possibility he is in fact asleep and dreaming, inviting his readers to do the same. We are asked to enter into the dream alongside him.
What we see in our slumber are like painted images, Descartes reflects, based off of some truly existing form beyond the dream. How else could we have seen them in the dream if they were not based on some truth? After all, dreams draw upon waking reality to a large extent, just as a painter in depicting a mythical beast will combine the features of animals that truly exist. Distorted as they may be, they find some corresponding truth in the world beyond. Dreams are like painted images depicting mythical creatures, amalgamating pieces of reality into a fabricated new form.
Bedeviling Hoaxes
In admitting that dreams correspond at least in part to reality, to the extent that the bodies that occupy dreams must reflect bodies in the "real" world, or at least that basic elements of experience such as colors carry some truth to them, Descartes preserves a piece of his sanity. Quickly, however, he slips back into the dream, prompted by his reflections on whether God has maliciously deceived him through bedeviling hoaxes, dream-like appearances intended to mimic reality.
I will regard the heavens, the air, the earth, colors, shapes, sounds, and all external things as nothing but the bedeviling hoaxes of my dreams, with which he lays snares for my credulity.
Despite the discomfort such bedeviling hoaxes cause him, Descartes proclaims that he will commit himself fully to this meditation, as an experiment of sorts, to see where it leads him, to discover what it reveals. Except rather than an observer's neutrality, some agony seems to characterize his questioning.
Descartes is a prisoner to his dream, which holds him captive, surrounded by padded walls, lulled by its deceptive promises of safety. He lucidly reflects on this painful possibility.
I am not unlike a prisoner who enjoyed an imaginary freedom during his sleep, but, when he later begins to suspect that he is dreaming, fears being awakened and nonchalantly conspires with these pleasant illusions.
Fearful that he has become a prisoner to the bedeviling hoaxes that hold him tightly in their grasp, Descartes worries he will be incapable of the courage necessary to step out of the dream, that he will succumb to the illusion. He concludes his first meditation by reflecting that he dreads being awakened from this dream, given that "the toilsome wakefulness which follows from a peaceful rest" is accompanied not by the light of clarity but by the shadows of the larger philosophical questions looming over him.
Utterly Cease to Exist
As a result of these uncertainties, in "Meditation Two," Descartes admits to feeling as though he has been dragged under the waves as if in a whirlpool. Rather than drown in the vortex of doubt, however, he commits himself to clarity and thus investigates that which is most clear to him: that he is a "thinking thing." Perhaps his excessive thinking is what stirs the water to the point of agitation. His meditations certainly appear more stressful than they are peaceful.
During this meditation, Descartes continues to probe his so-called reality until he arrives at some certainty. He does so by stripping away all that he once knew, then rebuilding the foundations from the ground up. His process includes dissecting each component of his experience, whether the body, the senses, or thought itself.
What about sensing? Surely this too does not take place without a body; and I seemed to have sensed in my dreams many things that I later realized I did not sense. What about thinking? I make my discovery: thought exists; it alone cannot be separated from me. I am; I exist—this is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking; for perhaps it could also come to pass that if I were to cease all thinking I would then utterly cease to exist. At this time I admit nothing that is not necessarily true. I am therefore precisely nothing but a thinking thing; that is, a mind, or intellect, or understanding, or reason—words of whose meanings I was previously ignorant. Yet I am a true thing and am truly existing; but what kind of thing? I have said it already: a thinking thing.
Herein seems to lie the root of his problem. Descartes believes that if he were to cease thinking, he would cease to exist. Regardless of the soundness of his reasoning, it seems clear that his meditations take a particularly discursive style, quite in contrast to meditations that still the burning, churning, turning of thoughts and the cascading currents of construing and conceptual proliferation. For other meditators, thinking subsides into an ambient clarity. Perhaps such meditators utterly did not exist in the first place. Setting aside metaphysics for now, the basis from which Descartes undertakes his meditations is nonetheless quite natural. "I" must exist, mustn't I?
Despite the complexity of such questions, his consistent invocation of dreams as a source of deception is an essential point for consideration. Here is where Descartes sits in his meditations beside meditators of other traditions, from the various strands of contemplative science pre-dating him, who also questioned the dream-like nature of so-called reality.
Descartes on Dreaming
While there remains much more to be unpacked from Descartes, we pause here for the time being with a concluding meditation, one that likewise invites you to participate.
Most relevant to our meditating with Descartes is the question of dreaming, the distinction between dreaming and waking. Can you actually feel a difference? Some dreams are so vivid, full of color, texture, emotion, that they elude our scrutiny. Rather than being caught and named dreams, they float on by without question until we awaken. Yet when one begins to scrutinize even waking life, waking reality, then the question takes on new depth.
Notice the feeling of switching between states, upon waking from a dream. How do you actually divide the two states of "dreaming" and "being awake"? What does it feel like to emerge from a dream, back into waking life? Perhaps the distinction between dreaming and waking is thinner, more porous and permeable, than otherwise assumed.
What reflections do these questions raise for you? Let us know by leaving a comment and contributing to the discussion. Smooth sailing on this course as you navigate the fine line between dreaming and waking.
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