Saturday, June 30, 2018

Distinguishing Dreams From Waking Experiences

In honor of the fact that it has almost been exactly a year since I first wrote about the sole way to prove to yourself that you are not presently dreaming [1], and also because I recently discussed the matter with an inquisitive friend, I decided to explain here why only the sense of touch and related senses can prove to someone that he or she is awake.  See the link below for a more thorough explanation of the entirety of the proof, as this post is mostly an elaboration on certain components of it.  Still, I will summarize the proof here.

Physical sensations necessitate that one possesses a physical body with which one experiences them.  Dreams, occurring only within a mind, do not involve external stimuli.  Thus, if my sense of touch is active, then I am not and cannot be dreaming, for my mind would be present in my body and not isolated within itself.  Other sensory perceptions can still appear in a dream, though.  A person might feel bladder pressure or hear someone calling his or her name while they sleep.  It is not as if no sensory perceptions at all can infiltrate dreams, and some may even be a part of a dream (maybe certain smells are perceived while dreaming, for instance).  However, since the distinction between a dream and a waking experience is that the former only takes place within a consciousness and the latter takes place in the external world, senses that do not correspond to outer stimuli with absolute necessity are irrelevant to addressing this subject.

The epistemological issue of whether one is dreaming or awake cannot be settled by appealing to, for example, one's sense of sight.  After all, just seeing something doesn't mean that it actually exists outside of your mind: mental images, including dreams, involve seeing something too.  If seeing something meant that the thing has to exist as an external stimulus, then hallucinations would be impossible.  But hallucinations are not impossible, and thus seeing something is not proof of anything except to oneself that one sees that thing.

What of the sense of hearing?  Again, one could hear something that is imagined.  Like with the sense of sight, the sense of hearing does not have to indicate anything about the external world.  Hearing something doesn't mean that the sounds necessarily originated from an outside object or being.  But if one experiences a physical sensation then one must have a physical body, and if one experiences a collision with a physical substance beyond one's body then one must be contacting an external, physical thing.

In order to prove that something physical exists outside of your mind (unlike immaterial things like logic and space that exist by pure necessity), you need to have some sort of physical indicator that the thing in question is there.  Senses like sight and hearing do not meet this qualification.  Only the sense of touch--and sometimes related but distinct senses like the sense of physical pain (nociception) and the sense of temperature (thermoception)--could establish that external, physical objects do exist.

A person without a sense of touch cannot know if an external world exists.  Things like seeing and hearing prove only that specific perceptions exist; physical sensations prove that the sensations, a body outside of one's mind, and (in some cases) physical stimuli outside of one's body exist.  If my mind is experiencing my sense of touch and is aware of my body, then I cannot be dreaming.  Without the sense of touch, a person could never have absolute certainty that he or she is awake, for the closest thing to a proof that he or she could attain would always be open to possible refutation.

Yes, I know with absolute certainty that I am not dreaming at this moment.  But it is not because of my sense of sight, or my sense of hearing, or any other sense which does not by necessity prove the existence of a physical stimulus; it is only because some of my senses are intrinsically physical senses that I can know a world of matter exists outside of my consciousness, inhabiting the immaterial dimension of space.  It is because a dream can only occur within a consciousness that I know my experiences in an actual external world prove to me that I am not dreaming at that moment.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/dreams-and-consciousness.html

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