Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Archive

Volume 2 Number 2, July  2001

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Dreaming with Descartes

  by

Darren Domsky  

Abstract

 

          Descartes’ dreaming argument is commonly disregarded as an     unconvincing or uninteresting intellectual exercise.  I offer an opportunity to look at that argument, and the beliefs and sentiments it is ground in, in a new light.  Perhaps there is unnoticed sincerity in Descartes’ oft-dismissed words.

 

 

How often has it happened to me that in the night I dreamt that I found myself in this particular place, that I was dressed and seated near the fire, whilst in reality I was lying undressed in bed!  At this moment it does indeed seem to me that it is with eyes awake that I am looking at this paper; that this head which I move is not asleep, that it is deliberately and of set purpose that I extend my hand and perceive it; what happens in sleep does not appear so clear nor so distinct as does all this.  But in thinking over this I remind myself that on many occasions I have in sleep been deceived by similar illusions, and in dwelling carefully on this reflection I see so manifestly that there are no certain indications by which we may clearly distinguish wakefulness from sleep that I am lost in astonishment.  And my astonishment is such that it is almost capable of persuading me that I now dream. [1]

 

 

                                                           * * *

1:43 a.m.   

                              I have to write quickly.  Before I forget.

 

          I have now had the most terrifying experience of my entire life.  Never have I been this afraid.  Looking at my hands, I’m amazed at how badly they are still shaking.  I’m having great difficulty holding my pencil.

          At approximately 12:00 a.m., I went to bed.  I woke up not long after.  At least, I think I woke up.

          You see, moments ago I awoke from a most astonishing series of dreams.  The thing was, I didn’t know I was dreaming in any of them.  As far as I knew, I was fully awake, fully conscious and aware of my surroundings--by God, I felt as awake as I ever have--but I wasn’t.  In each one, I was sitting and thinking as I am now, believing that I had just woken up, just as I believe now, and each time, one by one, it turned out I was wrong.  They were all dreams.  Even the last one, the most awful one, was just a dream.  Of course, I only know this because I awoke from it just like the others.  Now I sit up in bed, scribbling out my thoughts.

          While I was still dreaming this last dream, believing I was finally awake and free of it all, I took a deep, trembling breath and began to think.  Just like I am thinking now, mind you.  Just like I am thinking now.  In fact, even as I sit here and write, I am not sure that it is not all for nothing.  I'm not sure about anything.  I’ve lost my grip on reality.

          In that dream, I was thinking about all the prior dreams and pondering Descartes' dreaming argument.  I sat and wondered along with him what it was I knew for sure.  Keep in mind, I was dreaming this.  I was as conscious and deliberate as I am now, looking around in this same dark room that I am looking at now.  The first thing I concluded was that I would never again know for sure that I was awake.  That was something I could never trust again.

          I concluded that I did always think, though.  Even then, in the dream, I concluded "yes, I think, I know I think".  There was no "I am", though; it seemed a silly, unwarranted step.  The way I thought it, "something here that I am inclined to call `me', that __________ is inclined to call `me', is thinking and wondering about __________ and where __________ exists and if the things around __________ are real, or if any of this makes sense in the reality (world) of __________."  I knew that there was thinking.

          Curiously, though, I didn't know that two plus two was four.  Not consistently, anyway.  It felt like it made sense, but I had the eerie feeling that it might not.  "I can honestly imagine", I said to myself, "that in reality two and two might not be four, or that the entire line of thinking doesn't even make sense in the first place."  No, I couldn't trust my mathematical knowledge.

          As I thought these thoughts about self and about mathematics, though, my mind repeatedly snapped back to the one overriding thought.  How, I asked myself, could I have ever been so confident in the world around me, in the world around __________, in the first place, that waking up from it could be so traumatic?  What was it that had allowed to me to so easily ignore the possibility that everything around me was a mere fiction?  Had I tacitly assumed that fictions always leave clues?  Had I for some reason assumed that such an eventuality was impossible?  Or, had I subconsciously decided to smile smugly and simply not worry about it?  If I had done any of these things, how had I done them so lightly?  Especially, that is, when I really have no reason at all to believe that there would be clues, that such an eventuality is impossible, or that this very thing isn’t what I should worry most about.  After all, though I cannot imagine it actually happening, I still worry about being struck by lightning, sometimes a lot.  How had I let slip so easily, so completely, the worry that maybe I am engulfed in a mirage?

          I was reminded suddenly of every child’s fear that there is a monster hiding under the bed or inside the closet.  How many of us, I wondered, grow up thinking that we have simply overcome our fear of monsters, when in fact all we have really done is managed to convince ourselves that there probably is no monster actually hiding there.  I thought to myself, “What an interesting trick, to conclude from our confidence in a monster’s absence that monsters don’t really concern us.  How strange, that if we suddenly heard a strange growling in the night we would have to change two of our beliefs.”

          I also came to wonder, sitting there and finally “awake”, whether or not life itself was just a years-long dream.  Now that I had consciously and in all awareness seen what it was like to have the walls of reality tumble down around me, I wondered if death was perhaps just the tumbling of a more external set of walls.  Now that even that has turned out to be a dream, and even those walls have come tumbling down, my suspicion about death grows stronger and stronger.  When Death comes, will He be holding a scythe, or will it be a alarm clock?  Which alternative is more disturbing?

          Now, I sit here in my bed, awake and amazed and scribbling my thoughts, and I think back in awe at how real everything had seemed in that last dream.  How convincing it was to lay in this very same way in this very same bed, in my very same bed.  I wonder to myself now, in fear and in awe, how can I take this world seriously.  How will I ever leave that dream behind?  How can I look around now, now that I’m awake, and trust my own eyes?  How can I ever believe that it's not just another dream?  I'm feeling my blanket, breathing, looking around.  But I've seen this show before--when I was awake in that last, most awful dream--and I’ve learned.  I will never take anything for granted again.  Not even now.  Still my hands are shaking.

          And you, you who sits there reading these scribbled out words, tell me you just don’t understand.  Smile condescendingly, and tell me about how sure you are, about how confident you are in the world around you.  Tell me, but whatever you do, don’t ask yourself why it is you are so careful to hide your toes under the sheets at night.

          Yes, I realize now some remarkable things.  I realize that, in deciding to trust the external world, I have been lulled into thinking it was silly to call it trust in the first place.  How did I let this lulling happen so unnoticed?  How long have I been confusing ‘logically possible’ with ‘logically possible, but of course clearly false’?

          And I realize now, in counting all the things we’ve learned about the world around us, that the great big numbers have made us over-excited, and have caused us to forget that even number one was really only tentative.  Is it really only when your hands are shaking this way that you can realize you have mistaken trust for knowledge?

 

          Wait.

 

          I just heard a noise in the kitchen.  I'm sure I heard it, it just happened.  A noise--I think someone is in my apartment!  Enough playing with Descartes, I think to myself.  There's an intruder in the apartment!  My pencil drops.

          Kathy, my wife, sits up beside me, more asleep than awake.  I believe she must have heard it too.  Is someone going through our pots, I wonder?  Christ, I think I hear our pots clinking!  I'm astonished at the sound.  Kathy's tired, and she hasn't awakened yet.  There, she wants to get up, so I gently bar her way with my arm.  Maybe we shouldn't make any noise.  Maybe no one's here, and it's coming from the hall outside.

          But wait.  That dream, that absolutely convincing last dream-- I'll never believe anything again.  I'll never believe that I won't wake up soon.  Not even this time.

                   2:27 a.m.            

A burg      A burglar? In here?  My thoughts trip over themselves.  Kathy's waking, but I can't help continuing with Descartes, dancing with the question of what I know, quickly, before that dream fades away and I've been awake too long and forget my thoughts.  It might not be real.  By God, it might not be real.  I had been a fool not to realize it before, to trust so confidently that surely it all is real.  And the life-long dream--I have to hurry and write this down!  Oh, how it would explain so much!  All my questions, my unanswered philosophical questions about this mysterious world, (who created it, or what?--why is it here?--why am I in it?--what meaning does it all have?--the watchmaker--the problem of evil--panpsychism--other minds--something, rather than nothing--so many questions, I can't even think of them all), might have answers!  Real answers, ones that make perfect and clear sense, might exist, eluding us all until we die, until we really wake up.  What would you say after waking up from something like that?

          "Wow, it all seemed so real!  Christ, it was all so real I'm ready to throw up.  But now, now so many things make sense.  Of course I didn't know why I existed, or what meaning there was.  I've been asleep for 72 years!  But how odd it is that I really never let myself suspect anything, not even for one serious second.  How very strange, to have ruled out this eventuality as though ruling it out was dictated by its slim likelihood.  As though I could meaningfully estimate such a thing’s likelihood in the first place!  But now I’m awake, really awake, and finally I can put that strange, 72 year dream behind me.”

          There!  I heard a click!  Something opened, maybe a cupboard door.  Kathy’s mostly asleep but she wants to get up and see what it is.  I feel her press against my arm.

          Wait!  How do I know it's real?

          Right now, sitting in my bed, I'm awake, I'm completely awake.  Christ almighty, this is what it is like to be awake.  But how can I be sure?  What could a test be?

          Feel the covers.  Hurry, idiot.  Your wife will get up soon and walk into a gun barrel.  Yes, these are my covers.  Of course they're my covers.  Look around.  Is this my apartment, my real apartment?  Yes, damn it.  I can see every damned detail, feel every texture.  Of course this is my apartment.

          Can I change the environment, in a way I shouldn't be able to?  Make a purple dinosaur pop up?  Silly.  Crazy.  Have I gone nuts?  What has happened to me?  Will I never recover from a damned dream?

          Humour me, Mister.  Humour me, because that last one was the dream of dreams.  I woke up in bed, conscious and confident and thinking about my life, but it was all a lie because just now I really woke up.  I was asleep but conscious and I wondered the same exact thing I am wondering now and it turned out I was right to wonder!  I was sure I was wrong--I knew I was wrong, being silly, playing games within games--but I wasn't.  I had been sleeping.  Make the dinosaur appear!

          I can't.

          But this happened before.  I was convinced, before.  Sit there, concentrate, and make the dinosaur appear.

          I'm trying.  I'm really trying.  I can't.

          My wife creaks our creaky bed, seems about to kick a leg out.

          Stop playing inside your mind, Darren.  Put your dream aside, and protect your wife from whoever is in the kitchen.  It's probably nothing, so go and look.  Come on.  You know when you're awake.  Christ, pinch your arm!  There, it hurts!  Do you have to pinch it again?  See, it still hurts!  This is real.  There is a reality.  Quit pretending that you don’t really believe it.  Of course you believe it.  Protect you wife!

          I look at my wife.  Her hair is so exact, so precise.  I wonder why, when I was dreaming, I never thought to look, to notice how this was absent.  Why didn't I just take an honest look?  Look at those fibres, the individual strands.  Look, in that faint light that shines through our bedroom window, look at how this faint ethereal light reveals each single strand of beautiful streaming blond hair.  How could I have not looked at it when I had been dreaming?  It's so obvious that I’m awake now.  How could I have been so convinced that I was awake before?

                   2:42 a.m.            

No!  IN        No! I can never know that!  I knew it before, I knew it and then I woke up.  I knew it, just like I know it now.  Everything was as real as it is now.  The pinch hurt just as much.  Just as much!  I knew I was awake, I knew it, and then I woke up.  I sat up in bed, covered in the same sweat that now sits cold on my skin, and I realized that I really hadn't known.  It was all a lie.  I knew it and it was all a lie.

          I can hear G.E. Moore mocking me, questioning my sincerity.  I can imagine his voice, telling me to look at my hands and to quit pretending that I don't know they’re there.  But I've learned from that dream.  I've learned that I don't know.  That I'll never know again.

          But my wife is getting up.  I have to stop her from going.

          Why?

          What?

          Why stop her?

          To protect her.  From the burglar.

          But you think you're still dreaming.

          No I don't.  I, ... no, I only wonder.  I suspect that I might be dreaming.

          So sit and let her go.  Let her check who's in the kitchen.

          Don't be stupid.

          Why, Darren?  What's so stupid?  Nothing's real any more.  You can never tell if you're dreaming.

          I can't tell.  I can never tell.

          Then let her go.

          I turn and look at my wife's hair.  She's tired, her eyes are closed, and she sits back a bit, maybe to rest, maybe to get a sense of direction, maybe to listen.  Look at that hair.  It was a dream, leave it behind.  Live your life!

          But it might be a dream again!

          Then let her go.  Put your arm down.  Sit and look around at your imaginary bedroom and play games with yourself.  There!  Another noise.  Someone's in the non-existent kitchen still.  Someone's broken in, maybe stealing all your imaginary property.  Maybe they've got an imaginary weapon.  Sit, though.  Close your eyes and wait to wake up.  Maybe the sunlight will bring you to your senses, when dawn finally arrives.  Maybe a gunshot will.

          I ... don't know what's real.

          Yes you do.  Enough pretending.  This is real.  You've had dreams before, and you've been awake before.  Quit lying, pretending you don't know the difference.  Leave Descartes in the grave.

          I grab the covers with my sweaty palm, feel the trail of thread sewn in its edge, feel its intricate pattern.  My God, how could it possibly be a dream?  I press my palm against my face.  If I'm not awake now, when am I ever awake?

          Kathy's rubbing her eyes.  Good God, I've got no time to think.  Feel your heartbeat, Darren, feel it!  There, the rush of adrenaline, the throbbing pulse.  For Christ's sake, you can't dream this!

          Kathy spins, puts her legs on the ground.

          Stop her!  What are you doing!  Think what you're doing!  Have you really gone insane!

          Am I insane?

          I move to take Kathy’s wrist.

          Wait!  One more test!

          What?

          One more test!  You have to be sure!

          No.  No more games.  I'm going to protect my wife.  It's not a dream.

          You don't know that!

          Yes, I do.

          Will her to lay down again.

          What?

          Will your wife to lay down again.  Don't say anything, don't even move.  Will it.

          But I'm awake now.

          Will it!

          Such soft, blond hair.  How could I have ever doubted it?  I refuse to doubt it.  It was all just a bad dream.  I'm going to see a councillor in the morning, get some help and put those dreams behind me.  Recover from them.  There must be someone who can help me.  Surely there's a difference between being asleep and being awake.  Surely, there's something.  Good Lord, I can hear myself breathing!

          Will it!

                   3:01 a.m.            

                    Eternity passes.  A second passes.

          Fine!  Fine!  Kathy, I want you to lay back down on your pillow.  I will it.

 

          I watch in silence as my wife calmly lays back down.

 

          A silent scream, a scream of one's own mind into the abyss that surrounds it, where you, your body, does not move at all, that scream is so frightening, so terrifying, that I honestly would rather burn alive than feel it ever again.  I watched my wife lay back in bed and my mind started shrieking, screaming, screaming over and over and over like it was being chewed alive.  I looked around at the world, at the real world, the only world I had, and I realized that it was not real.

          Taking the first breath was the most difficult.  Nothing had changed, nothing at all, except that there she was, laying on her pillow, going back to sleep.  The bed, the apartment, the burglar in my kitchen--I suddenly knew, gasping to breathe, that none of it was real, even while I was sitting there!  I knew it was all false, but there I sat, still in the dream, looking around!

          I was in a dream world, again.  Even now, the horror of it scars my soul.  It was a dream!  My God, it was all a dream!

          Near trembling, my mind screaming, I focused myself.  Surely I was wrong.  I had to be wrong.  I turned to Kathy again and willed her to say something silly, out of the blue.  (It was a particular sentence--a clear test.  I've already forgotten what the sentence was.)  I sat and listened as she opened her mouth and spoke the words, one by one.

          Screaming, more frantic, deafening, silent screaming.  God almighty, I was looking around, looking at all the detail and genuineness of it all, and it was not real.  It seemed as real as anything can seem.  But it wasn't.

          Quickly, while there was still time, I looked around, nervous, thinking.  What did I know, for sure?  What can I still not doubt?

          I looked around.  Yes, I was still thinking, I had been thinking the whole time.  __________ thinks.  Two and two?  No, I couldn't trust it.  The world, my surroundings?  Is there anything about it I can trust?  Look at it, I commanded myself, look at the room, the covers, that beautiful blond hair spread out in the dim light.  That continuing noise in the kitchen.  My God, why were the noises continuing?  What kind of tyranny was this?  I wanted to yell out to the burglar, shout out “thank you, but you can stop making noises now because none of this is real any more.”  Nothing was real any more.  How could I ever trust again?

          "Kathy," I thought, "say __________."  (Again, a forgotten sentence).  Again, she spoke the words.

 

                   3:11 a.m.            

                    When I awoke (?), at 1:30 a.m. sharp, I woke up silently, sitting up in bed without a sound.  Kathy slept soundly, and I saw that she had not appreciably moved since we fell asleep.  I crept out of bed, fumbled for a pad of paper and an unfamiliar pen, went into the bathroom, shut the door, and turned on the light.  (I could not bear to start writing in bed again, as I had in this last, most cruel dream.)  I sat on the cold floor, and began to write this out.  I've been writing down the time as I've gone, if only to make it more real.  As though a watch could be a reality-maker.

          I've been awake and writing, but the screaming has not stopped.  Of course, it’s slowly become less shrill, less horrible.  But it's there.  My mind is still screaming.

          Is this what death is like?  When I wake up on the other side, will I curl up on a bathroom floor and try for hours to make my hands stop shaking?  Will I try to write it all down then, too?

                   3:14 a.m. 

                    And even if I do wake up on the other side of death, will I even then be able to trust what I see?  Will it be my last scream, or do the screams go on into eternity?  Is this Hell?

          My mind returns to Descartes.  I long to know if he ever spent a night huddled in the light of a candle, listening to his own silent scream.  Did he begin his Meditations like this?  Were his hands shaking?

          And when he writes that his astonishment is such that he is almost persuaded that he now dreams, is he sincere?  Or is he lying, and writing ‘almost’ to shield his credibility--to hide his ever trembling hands.  If his astonishment is really only almost capable of persuading him thus, would he even write the sentence?

                   3:21 a.m.            

                   I am too afraid to turn the light out again.  Too deathly afraid.  In the dark, it's so much more difficult to tell what's real, so hard to look for confirming details.  I am going to spend the rest of the night on this bathroom floor and cling to the shelter of a light bulb.  May daylight come quickly.

 

                   3:26 a.m.            

                    Wait.

 

          I think I hear something. [2]

 

 

Notes

[1]  René Descartes, Meditations on the First Philosophy, from Descartes, The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911 -- reprinted with corrections 1931), Volume I, 145-46.

 

[2] I would like to thank Margaret Van de Pitte, Lesley Jacobs, and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this work.