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The dream argument is the postulation that the act of Dream provides preliminary evidence that the we trust to distinguish reality from illusion should not be fully trusted, and therefore, any state that is dependent on our senses should at the very least be carefully examined and rigorously tested to determine whether it is in fact reality.
In Western philosophy this philosophical puzzle was referred to by Plato ( Theaetetus 158b-d), Aristotle ( Metaphysics 1011a6), and the Academic Skeptics.Epictetus, Discourses Book I, Chapter 5, Section 6 It is now best known from René Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy. The dream Logical argument has become one of the most prominent skeptical hypotheses.
In Eastern philosophy this type of argument is sometimes referred to as the "Zhuangzi paradox":
He who dreams of drinking wine may weep when morning comes; he who dreams of weeping may in the morning go off to hunt. While he is dreaming he does not know it is a dream, and in his dream he may even try to interpret a dream. Only after he wakes does he know it was a dream. And someday there will be a great awakening when we know that this is all a great dream. Yet the stupid believe they are awake, busily and brightly assuming they understand things, calling this man ruler, that one herdsman—how dense! Confucius and you are both dreaming! And when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming, too. Words like these will be labeled the Supreme Swindle. Yet, after ten thousand generations, a great sage may appear who will know their meaning, and it will still be as though he appeared with astonishing speed.莊子, 齊物論, 12. Zhuàngzi, "Discussion on making all things equal," 12. from Zhuàngzi, Burton Watson trans., Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 43. [1]
The Yogachara philosopher Vasubandhu (4th to 5th century C.E.) referenced the argument in his "Twenty verses on appearance only." Attracted by dream culture in the book of Zhuang Zhou, Jacques Lacan and his followers applies Zhuang Zhou's thought about dreams to the realms of psychoanalysis and ideology.
The dream argument came to feature prominently in Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. Some schools of thought ( e.g., Dzogchen) consider perceived reality to be literally unreal. As Chögyal Namkhai Norbu puts it: "In a real sense, all the visions that we see in our lifetime are like a big dream…"Chögyal Namkhai Norbu Dream Yoga And The Practice Of Natural Light Edited and introduced by Michael Katz, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, NY, , pp. 42, 46, 48, 96, 105. In this context, the term 'visions' denotes not only visual perceptions, but also appearances perceived through all , including hearing, Odour, , and touch, and operations on perceived mental objects.
Those who argue that the world is not simulated must concede that the mind—at least the sleeping mind—is not itself an entirely reliable mechanism for attempting to differentiate reality from illusion.
Many contemporary philosophers have attempted to refute dream skepticism in detail (see, e.g., Stone (1984)). Ernest Sosa (2007) devoted a chapter of a monograph to the topic, in which he presented a new theory of dreaming and argued that his theory raises a new argument for skepticism, which he attempted to refute. In A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge, he states: "in dreaming we do not really believe; we only make-believe."Sosa, Ernest (2007). A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press. . Jonathan Ichikawa (2008) and Nathan Ballantyne & Ian Evans (2010) have offered critiques of Sosa's proposed solution. Ichikawa argued that as we cannot tell whether our beliefs in waking life are truly beliefs and not imaginings, like in a dream, we are still not able to tell whether we are awake or dreaming.
The dream hypothesis is also used to develop other philosophical concepts, such as Valberg's personal horizon: what this world would be internal to if this were all a dream.
Philosopher Daniel Dennett expanded on this idea with his cassette tape hypothesis of dreaming. He conjectured that dreams are not real conscious experiences, and are instead pseudo-memories that emerge upon awakening from sleep. These pseudo-memories do not correspond to any real dream experiences, and are instead strictly fabrications of experiences that never occurred.
Philosopher Jennifer Windt has counter-argued against dream skepticism, drawing on the psychology of lucid dreaming, and has advanced a conceptual framework of dreaming as real imaginative experiences.
Malcolm, N. (1959) Dreaming London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 2nd Impression 1962.
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