In this paper I will look at the tenability of a few responses to the statement, "I don't know that I'm not dreaming right now." Once this is done I will look at the implications of this statement for our beliefs in an external world. I do not expect to trick the reader or myself into knowledge either way concerning this statement. Instead we can chip away at some of the knowledge that might get in the way of us giving an honest response.
Many philosophers have trodden this ground before. Most of them are after a conclusive response, the response that will stand up to objections and will once and for all tell us that, "We are not dreaming!" Now, lets just first look at the possibility of this "final answer." If we were to read this imaginary paper we would know conclusively and instantly through its clear rhetoric and rock-solid argument that this is real. It is difficult for us to see what the premises of this argument might be, but we know what the conclusion must be. Here are some possible premises;
I know that I'm not dreaming because:
1 I remember waking up this morning. This premise seems clear enough, and has a strong intuitive push behind it. How could I be dreaming if I have already woken up? Here we can gain the power to identify our wakefulness by delving into the recent past. This ability to retrieve information, and formulate an if-then statement based on that same information seems to be an important part of awareness.
2 There is a continuity to experience. This premise draws on something similar to the previous one, and although not all may feel that there is a continuity to their experience, most will admit that there was nothing disjunct about drinking the morning coffee and driving to work. Each piece can be accounted for and has its place in time and space. Dreams are often discontinuous compared to our daily routine, time and space become malleable characters. In dreams we can jump from place to place with insignificant temporal consequence.
3 I am more in control. Some might find this laughable, others quite sensible. In dreams things are a little out of control, sometimes even control of our own body. Not only is control in the dream a bit looser, but while dreaming it seems we give up most of our functional roles completely.
4 I can easily form words to describe what is happening. This ability is also likened to awareness and control. It might be more cogent to replace the term "control" by "access." We would thus arrive at a formulation of awareness based on linguistic access to "what is happening." In our waking lives we find little difficulty explaining how to cook a meal, or what is happening on a soap opera. But in a dream we can be far from this, so taken aback by the spectacle of the dream that we merely begin running. This happen that we cannot, and do not begin to explain.
5 I don't remember having fallen asleep. For some reason this statement carries less intuitive firepower than its corollary, I remember waking up this morning. It is most likely because we hear people, presumably awake, say that they don't remember having fallen asleep. Awareness during the process of falling asleep must be weakened a little, otherwise we would always remember having fallen asleep.
6 God exists and he would never do that to me. This is how Descartes usually boils down for me. It is a strong argument for those who have already been convinced of a benevolent God. Unfortunately arguments instantiating God are taken seriously only in small circles.
7 Things are stable. There are no sudden radical changes to our environment, as their often are during a dream. The clock on the wall reads good time, the couch isn't getting up to move. There is a level of expected behavior that we can trust inanimate objects to continue with in waking life that the dream contradicts.
1 I have had false awakenings before so even though I remember having woken up this morning I have little reason to believe I am not just waking into another dream. Some have experienced this phenomenon, others not, but it is surely conceivable. I have had nights where it seems I wake up at least three or four times before I start to trust I am "really" awake.
2 Waking life is discontinuous. This claim would need stronger support than the previous, but I believe there exists at least some scientific backing. In a way the continuity of waking life is broken up into segments spaced out by dreams. So although from minute to minute I might posit some continuity to my experience, overall there are large pieces missing.
3 Many things are out of my control. And not only that, but some things that I once could control I can no longer control. Take for example bodily functions such as a heartbeat, or the endocrine system. I may never have direct control of these things. It might be possible for me to eventually gain control of these things, but this possibility of fluctuating control seems absurd and dreamlike itself.
4 I often run into difficulty describing what is happening. This won't happen under most normal circumstances, but if when I try to give this overarching description of whether or not I am dreaming it quickly arises. We also run into difficulty describing why we are attracted to someone, or "what it's like" to eat a kiwi. It seems that being tongue-tied is not something restricted to dreams.
5 I never remember having fallen asleep. This was mentioned briefly earlier. Falling asleep is uncharted territory, and I have little empirical or rational evidence stopping me from saying I just fell asleep and started dreaming.
6 Hrmf. God doesn't exist for me in the sense that He would lift the veil of dreaming from my eyes if I were to ask. I have not talked to someone who could stand on Descartes position for long without bending or breaking.
7 Things are not so stable. Entropy is the endemic tendency for chaos to increase. We would like to think that this instability is manageable, and often occurs without drastic consequence. But electronics, constantly growing in complexity fail with increasing frequency. The light switches suddenly don't work, the clock is fast three hours and twenty-two minutes for no good reason. The stability of waking life a bit of illusion, a bit of repetition, and a lot of time spent fixing things.
Now our toolbox is full of bent and melted tools. We are without good reason either way to believe we are dreaming, and it seems that arguments based on matters of fact are quite useless in this situation. We are in search of a form of knowledge that goes beyond evidence are argument because all our evidence is questionable. What does that leave us with?
It is a common belief that during dreaming we give up our awareness at the very least, and our agency is reduced to choosing to lie down to fall asleep. The idea of being aware while sleeping has fascinated many, but remains seemingly impossible. There seems to be a gap in access to dream content. We lack the words, and often don't form memories concrete enough to even begin to form words. We would like to hold reality in a different regard: we form new memories easily (in most cases), we have direct access to our state even if we lack the words to describe it, we are even afraid of being forgotten. The dream character seems to let these things slide by. What happened before in a dream will often give us little to no bearing to what is happening now. A dream character does not fear being forgotten upon waking. Some even surpass the fear of death, embrace it, and act it out.
These characteristics are outside the realm of what we call normal behavior. They are normally attributed to ancient sages, or present day lunatics. "People whose power is real fulfill their obligations, people whose power is hollow insist on their claims." The dreamt character makes no claims about his or her reality, but simply deals with matters at hand. In this view the spouting of claims is reflex, and the following insistence upon them is due to the fear that they are wrong. But then we insist, "I don't know that I'm not dreaming," we are making claims of a different kind. This claim will bring the reader to possibly reassess what his or her obligations really are. If I might be dreaming, then why the hell am I sitting here writing a philosophy paper? It points to the fact that things matter to us that aren't material. Here is the dreaming argument itself:
As we can see, most of the paper so far has dealt with P1, different ways of affirming or denying it. P2 does not bear much argumentative weight but points at an important aspect of awareness. From this vantage point I have certain phenomenal and linguistic access to the paper in front of me. I am aware that it is sitting there in this regard. Now, the question is whether I can be aware that the paper is in front of me while I am asleep. I might have phenomenal and linguistic access to it at the time, but I can't very well describe it to someone until I wake up. Is this a sort of half awareness then, where we have lost communicability with the outside world. But to the dreamer, it would seem I were still communicating with the outside world. This is the sense in which I don't know if the paper is really in front of me. I hold true beliefs about the paper existing (in my dream), but not if I want to spread this to all possible worlds.
So the statement "there is a paper in front of me" can take the form of a linguistic gesture. When saying, "I know there is a paper in front of me" I am not making claims about the paper's "reality" or any of its individual property besides its physical designation of being in front of me. If we view it under the light of a context dependent linguistic pointing we can strike P2 and say that, in a way I do know that the paper is in front of me. But this knowledge is different than the sort of knowledge the argument is trying to arrive at. We want a more rigid form of knowledge, not merely linguistic and phenomenal access, but also validity, or "reality." We want to find a stamp that says, "This paper is really in front of the real me." Not only does it appear to be there, as if in a dream, but it is also really there, for everyone to see.
It is obvious here that in the stricter reading of P2 knowledge of the paper goes beyond our seeing, touching, and ability to describe. It goes further into something that we could call a "reality check." It is hard to see how a philosophical argument could really be a reality check. Take for example the perfect paper we posited in the beginning. Assuming we are still able to read in our sleep, what would happen if I read the paper that proved I wasn't dreaming? It would be deluding me in the least, and at most make the dream awfully boring. If the paper suddenly spoke up and said, "I am really in front of you!" then I would have to believe I am dreaming. That might be a good reality check, when inanimate objects start to speak.
Is that really the best we can do? I honestly do not think so. My response is that there is much uncharted water. We are trying to do all the work of determining whether or not we are dreaming from an already assumed waking state. Have you ever sat up at night and tried to convince yourself you are dreaming while you fall asleep. Suddenly you wake up and you are really a bird, or the banister for some ride at Disneyland. Awareness can survive the process of falling asleep, as is the case with lucid dreaming. It is an all too common fallacy to believe I am either awake or asleep. There exists a gradient, though some parts of me are now awake, other lie resting dreaming up the next sentence.
The philosophical conundrums pile on top of each other, one by one, when we try to take these examples. Obviously there is some sort of consciousness outside of our awareness if we can have complete conversations with dream entities. And what does that imply for this paper?
____________________ I wrote this paper following a brief study of Stephen LaBerge?'s work on http://lucidity.com . It was done in the effort of convincing me that I was or was not dreaming, hopefully increasing my own dream lucidity when the opportunity presents itself.