Explicate Descartes dream argument, taking care to lay out what it Essay

Explicate Descartes dream argument, taking care to lay out what it calls into doubt and the reason it does. How might you respon - Essay Example In Descartes’ dream argument, he casts several doubts about the things he knew. First, he does not believe that all the information received by our senses is accurate. After his revelation, he undertook an intellectual rebirth. His first prompt was to throw away everything he knew and believed in before proving himself that they were satisfactory. He concluded that it would be difficult to analyze each idea individually, instead, he attacked the foundation. In his argument, he states that he often dreams of things that seem real in his sleep. In one dream where he sits by a fire, he can feel the warmth of the fire just like when he is awake. He concludes that if his senses can convey warmth while he is dreaming, then he cannot trust the fire exists when he feels it in his waking life. He goes ahead to argue that if we dream that our hands and bodies exist then they actually do. Even if certain objects do not exist, the basic colors that compose them exist. He trusts his percep tions of the existence of self-evident truths such as shapes and numbers because he believes in an omnipotent God who created these things. It can be argued that when we are asleep we could feel things similar to when we are awake because we cannot tell whether we a dreaming or not. It leads one to wonder whether we could just be constantly dreaming instead of being awake. Questions continue to flow in the human brain whether the knowledge we are gaining at any given time is true. He further states that, he does not have a body, instead, it is a brain filled with information and illusions by a powerful being. Similarly, to justify that our senses deceive us, a person will have to recognize an error has occurred. In simple terms, one has to distinguish between being mistaken and being correct. It means one has to see the deceptions and avoid being deceived. Ironically, therefore, in the presentation of examples of how senses can deceive, one is also justifying that they can see throu gh deceptions. This undercuts the very claim argued. Therefore, when Descartes argues that he is deceived by his senses, he is indirectly arguing that he has seen through these deceptions. From Descartes’ explanations we can state that the difference between understanding and imagining is that, when we understand, the mind turns towards itself and inspects its ideas, but with imagining, the mind creates something in the physical world that matches with the thing in mind. We can say that imagination only exists due to the presence of the body. The thinker claims that it is impossible for us to tell whether we are dreaming or not. However, dreaming differs from being awake in many respects. He does not mean this literally though, he is merely trying to demonstrate that senses can be deceiving. First, the continuity available when one is awake does not exist in the dreamland. Things in the waking world remain the same daily unlike the dream world where things can change. Similar ly, the dream world and the waking world have different rules. For instance, in the dream world the dead can walk and humans can fly among other strange things. As such, Descartes’ arguments do not warrant the amount and degree of skepticism that he holds. Various key exceptions for Descartes’ arguments include, first, he does not consider even the existence of the external reality. Descartes’