Thricegreat wrote: Wed Aug 26, 2026 3:12 am
And finally, when I considered that the very same thoughts (presentations) which we experience when awake may also be experienced when we are asleep, while there is at that time not one of them true, I supposed that all the objects (presentations) that had ever entered into my mind when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams. But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be something; And as I observed that this truth, I THINK, THEREFORE I AM, was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the Sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search.
Rene Descartes, "Discourse on the Method"
My point was that the feeling of reality is not sufficient evidence of reality. Whereas Descartes' point is, even if all apparent reality is false, the fact that I am thinking cannot be doubted. That is a bit different. It changes the question from 'How can I distinguish waking from dreaming? to 'What remains certain even if I cannot distinguish waking from dreaming?'
Descartes would agree with me that dreams can seem so real that we cannot tell them apart from waking experience. As proof, my dream was a case of a failed internal reality test. When I asked, 'Could this be a dream?' I answered 'No, because it feels too real.'
The point is, if the criteria for reality are vividness, coherence, sensory richness, familiarity, a feeling of certainty, etc. (in other words, all the qualities of waking like that make us think 'this is real'), my dream shows that these can all be present within an experience that is later classified as a dream.
It undermines the justification that says, 'I know waking life is real because it feels real.'
The mere
feeling of reality is insufficient justification for distinguishing waking experience from dreaming. I wouldn't say that waking life and dreaming are essentially the same thing. But I would say that appearances are unreliable. We need to apply analysis.
In fact, we can apply analysis to Descartes and identify his mistake (from a Madhyamaka standpoint), which was was to treat grammar as metaphysics.
The sentence "I think" has the grammatical structure, subject -> verb, which Descartes treats as revealing an entity (I) that performs an action (thinking).
But MMK Chapter 2 (
), which is about whether there can be a mover that exists separately from movement, asks whether such conclusions are justified.
The statement "Thinking occurs" does not require an inherently existent thinker any more than "Raining occurs" requires a thing called the rainer standing behind the rain and performing the activity.
A flower appears to bud, bloom and wilt, and we can of course designate a thing as a flower when it has the capacity to do those things, unlike a rock. But that is not the same as finding an inherently existing flower independent of the process. It's an imputation, and not really there.
IMO Decartes' inference, 'I think, therefore I am' involves a hidden reification: There is thinking -> thinking requires an agent -> therefore there is an inherently established agent, 'I'. But MMK Chapter 2 would refute that middle step.