Question

Is there any way that you can tell whether you are awake or dreaming? Is Descartes right that he cannot tell the difference? Try to identify and explain at least two ways that dreaming experiences and waking experiences are different. Please answer in 2 paragraphs or more.

Answer 1

According to scientific research, we see a dream in our REM sleep since our brain is more active. According to Sigmund Freud's theory, the dream is due to our unconscious mind becoming active during our sleep. Whatever we dream is the result of disguised fulfillment of a repressed wish.

There are two types of dream one is day-dreaming this is our thought, our plan to fulfill our wish and achieve the goal. The science accepts dreams as what we see when we are asleep and in the REM stage. When one sees a dream in his sleep the heart rate increases, if it is a dream that has negative psychology effect we are frightened and feel uncomfortable in our sleep we perspire and wake up suddenly from the dream and feeling of fear haunts. If it is a pleasant dream it gives a pleasant feeling once we are awake. Most people can recognize between the dreams or they are awake. Sometimes on rare occasions, people just close their eyes and see a dream that type of dream has altogether different feelings.

People who are in search of truth often say that they are guided by God in their dream.

René Descartes was a philosopher, thinker, and mathematician. He had a strong faith in God. According to him, we cannot see God but we have sensory organs to feel the presence of God because God has no physical body he is immaterial. According to him, we cannot believe our Senses in waking life.

According to him, the benevolent God is the only truth, and what we believe to be true maybe the outcome of the dream. The dreams are the outcome of our experiences that we have in our waking life those become the received view of dreaming thus the dream and waking life can have the same content. As sleep produces what we had experienced when we are awake it creates confusion whether we are awake or asleep. His dream theory is hypothetically similar to his demon theory. It states that if a person is right in his belief that he is not deceived by evil or a demon and he is, in reality, having a waking life experience he will be unable to distinguish between the reality and the dream-like state because he will be unable to distinguish between the reality and experience, and dream is the outcome of experiences we have in our waking life.

People have many experiences and scientifically proved that one dreams what is in his unconscious mind or what he experiences in his daily life in awaking condition for example if one sees sudden violence on the road that affect him and it remains with him when he goes to sleep, the same scene and incident would get repeated and he would visualize as if it is happening at that moment when he is asleep. The person would have a faster heart rate and palpitation the same feelings that he had experienced when he had seen the violence in the awake condition. The dreaming condition lingers with us and has a psychological effect while the daily experiences are forgotten when we are busy in our daily routine because it passes onto our unconscious mind.

Mostly the dreaming conditions are hazy and many incidents get together and come as a single incident in our dream that makes us able to distinguish that it was a dream but it gives a good feeling when we see the people who are already dead in our dream talking to us.

The dreams are sometimes the reflection of what we were thinking when we are awake, thus we can distinguish that it was a dream and reality is still a dream.