ABSTRACT

I TURN now to a philosophical problem traditionally associated with the topic of dreams. In Chapter 1 we noted Descartes’ claim that he had often been deceived in sleep by dreams and his assertion that there are ‘no certain indications’ by which one may discern whether one is awake or asleep. Socrates asks Glaucon, ‘Does not dreaming, whether one is awake or asleep, consist in mistaking a semblance for the reality it resembles?’ (Plato, (1), v. 476), and it is implied that the answer is plainly affirmative. Socrates puts to Theætetus the question, ‘What evidence could be appealed to, supposing we were asked at this very moment whether we are asleep or awake?’, and the latter replies, ‘Indeed, Socrates, I do not see by what evidence it is to be proved; for the two conditions correspond in every circumstance like exact counter-parts’ (Plato, (2), 158b-158c). In his Objections to the Meditations, Hobbes says ‘It is sufficiently obvious from what is said in this Meditation that we have no criterion for distinguishing dreaming from waking and from what the senses truly tell us’; and he even chides Descartes for boring his readers with mention of this well known truth: