I’m sure many can relate with me when I say that my dreams have been so vivid and lucid at times that I’ve sometimes found myself hesitating when trying to recall if the events within the dream had actually occurred or not, even after I’d been awake for hours already and had gone about my day. Similarly, I’m able to remind myself of the desperation and agony some dreams were able to cause me to feel, where I remember wishing so hard that I could just wake up from the all too corporeal situation I had temporarily believed to be reality. Another example that immediately came to mind was the phenomenon of déjà vu—that strange, eerie, limited moment in time when you swear you have been in a particular spot and had already lived through an exact event previously. It is instants like these that allow me to get a glimpse into Descartes’ lack of confidence in a concise consciousness argument.
When he makes the point that what we witness in sleep is very much based on realistic representations, he ties the images of what is true and false together, and shows how they depend on one another to exist in order to form what we have always thought of as being the present existence. We aren’t able to recognize an absolute concreteness until we are able to distinguish between real life and illusion. Is it reasonable to say that there is a definite reality when we don’t know for sure what happens after this portion of our so called “being” is up, and is it because of our Cartesian ways that we have all come to accept a universal form of entity? No one can really be certain.
I find your writing about dreams interesting, I could definitely read more. If you like art and writing you should read the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.
ReplyDeleteThe most crucial part of the book is when the reader starts writing three pages of hand written free mind writing every morning instantly when waking up. The moment when our dreams our ending is when we are most creative. I had trouble getting in the habit of doing and and need to start again.
I too find your analysis of dreaming intriguing, especially because in class we have yet to actually discuss the state of dreaming, instead our descartes discussion focused on the aftermath of his meditations, opposed to the meditations themselves
ReplyDeletei myself am a very avid dreamer, and sometimes confuse my dreams with reality, going so far as to say "remember when_____" when in reality i merely dreamt the situation. Like rob i too have found inspiration in my dreams, and i believe this is because the Cartesian logical limits are not necessarily concrete, the lines are burred. For me as a writer this time is critical to my processing.
Also additionally being a lucid dreamer who experiences the best dreaming during the middle of the afternoon, i have channeled this and used it to justify napping constantly :]