<p>We are going over Descartes my Philosophy class and I was curious to hear what you guys think of his Meditations. We've been focusing heavily on Meditation 1 and 2 where he talks about the Evil Genius and brings up the Dream hypothesis (that we're really dreaming and what we see is not reality). I told my professor that if Descartes was so doubtful that he existed that he should have committed suicide to test if he lived in a dream world or not. In a dream, he would have woken up because that's what happens in all dreams; your about to get severely injured and you suddenly wake up.</p>
<p>Would committing suicide have proved his Dream hypothesis wrong? My professor and I discussed this a bit after class and he said that it wouldn't be conclusive since once he dies there would be no way for him to communicate. I guess in that case it would make Descartes a useless 'thinking thing'.</p>
<p>I gotta watch the Matrix for this class. Pretty awesome stuff. Philosophy can be boring but sometimes there are professors that make it interesting. I got lucky with the professor I have.</p>
<p>First of all, there's the fundamental separation between self and other. For Descartes' line of thought, you kind of have to picture everybody else in the universe as being robots programmed to serve you and your experience, as you cannot be certain of the existence of other consciousness. So to say that he would "prove" he's not in a dream state would mean he would have to prove it to himself. Any observations we make wouldn't count. I'd think the suicide experiment would fail the notion of falsifiability (ie, something needs to be able to be proven false to be considered a fact). Though suicide could prove the dream hypothesis true, if it were false it would result in the demise of the Descartes' and thus couldn't truly be proven to be false (as proof is in a sense subject to Descartes' approval, who is no longer around). You might still have some interesing stuff if you reject falsifiability, but that's a whole new can of worms right there.</p>
<p>Of course, I am pulling all of this out of my ass, but isn't that what philosophy is about anyways?</p>
First of all, there's the fundamental separation between self and other. For Descartes' line of thought, you kind of have to picture everybody else in the universe as being robots programmed to serve you and your experience, as you cannot be certain of the existence of other consciousness. So to say that he would "prove" he's not in a dream state would mean he would have to prove it to himself. Any observations we make wouldn't count. I'd think the suicide experiment would fail the notion of falsifiability (ie, something needs to be able to be proven false to be considered a fact). Though suicide could prove the dream hypothesis true, if it were false it would result in the demise of the Descartes' and thus couldn't truly be proven to be false (as proof is in a sense subject to Descartes' approval, who is no longer around). You might still have some interesing stuff if you reject falsifiability, but that's a whole new can of worms right there.</p>
<p>Of course, I am pulling all of this out of my ass, but isn't that what philosophy is about anyways?
</p>
<p>Although he initially begins by doubting everything, he ends up saying something to the effect of "anything that seems clear and distinct to my mind is most definitely true". So therefore he has confirmed the existence of other individuals (initially thought to be like robots). Although Descartes' first two meditations are fine, his god proof and the subsequent deductions he makes are completely illogical in my opinion.</p>
<p>To address the initial question, I agree with the above poster - I think that suicide could not have proved his dream hypotheses wrong. This belief of mine is based on the assumption that when one dies, the "dreams" cease to occur but in reality we don't know what happens after death.</p>
<p>yup that's who i have. i was taking it last semester but i had to drop b/c the professor was just losing me when we went over plato and that cave. then i saw konopka was teaching this semester and when i read about the matrix i just knew i had to take his class. so far i haven't been disappointed.</p>
<p>Plato's allegory of the cave wasn't really about living in a dream world. It was more about the possibility of there existing things beyond our perception, like additional dimensions. The difference is one claims that we're a dream inside of some higher reality, and the other one implies that we're only experiencing and imperfect projection of some higher reality. </p>
<p>In a much broader sense, the allegory of the cave is a real and useful idea whereas the dream hypothesis amounts to philosophy's usual intellectual masturbation. Take electromagnetic radiation for example. You can think of visible light being what's projected on the wall in front of us. Though we can only actually see a small part of it, the actual spectrum is quite large. It also brings up the possibility of there being higher dimensions. If you had a stick figure living on a sheet of paper, then he would only know of those two dimensions, and would have no concept of a "third" dimension, much like we can't observe any kind of "fourth" dimension. So perhaps the universe is itself some higher dimensional space, but the human mind is limited to viewing it in three dimensions. There's no obvious way for us to be able to check this, because you can't really analyze what kind of space you're in while you're embedded in it.</p>
<p>i'm not a philsophy major, but i seriously think the ancient philosophers far outstrip the medieval-present philosophers ten times millions and over. but, descartes is one of the very few modern thinkers that actually had genius. why? because he reshaped history of philosophy called Cartesian. just like the time period between newton and einstein is called Newtonian Physics, while post-einstein is called Einsteinian physics.</p>
<p>just to make it clear i wasn't comparing Descartes' dream hypothesis to Plato's allegory of the cave. It just so happened that when I was taking Philosophy Human Nature last semester I got lost right when we got to Plato's allegory of the cave. I signed up for Philosophy again this semester and the guy I have now is going through material that I can understand and handle and isn't overloading the class with crazy amounts of reading like a lot of professors will do sometimes.</p>
<p>I just have to comment on what an awesome discussion this is. I've never actually taken a philosophy class (I'm in HS) but have picked up bits and pieces of it along the way. I just realized I really want to take a class in philosophy in college.</p>
<p>Technically I've never taken a philosophy course, I just have a lot of stuff I've picked up from other classes in college/AP English in high school/casual science reading/movies. Two good movies about this stuff are "waking life", and "what the [bleep] do we know?". First one is more pure philosophy, second one is a lot more grounded in science. Both aren't fully accurate, but have enough good ideas to be worth watching.</p>
<p>philosophy can be very interesting but i think it largely depends on the professor and the material being covered. for example, while i was in high school i was taking a college classes on the side. one of those classes was Philosophy: Contemporary Moral Issues. It was an ethics course but it was very fun because we ended up going over John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant. The professor gave multiple examples and we always had in-class discussions, not boring lectures so it was very interactive in a way. To add to it, the readings were hard and many of the articles were written by different people in the 19-20th century dealing with issues such as euthanasia, capital punishment, abortion, gay marriage, etc.</p>
<p>now the professor i had last semester for philosophy: human nature lectured on and on. he stopped to make sure the class followed, but the readings he gave us were too much to take in over one night. i was following along until finally it all caught up to me and i just couldn't retain all the information, especially since the analogies and examples weren't explained that well. but now i'm taking the same class but with a different professor and i'm really enjoying it. i actually find myself talking to the professor after class sometimes about class discussions. i did the same thing when i took that contemporary moral issues course as well. i'd never do that for other classes unless i actually needed to see the professor for something, but philosophy is just one of those subjects that can be really interesting if you have the right professor. but even as much as i can enjoy philosophy sometimes, i would never imagine myself taking it up as a minor or major. i'd be nuts to do such a thing lol.</p>
<p>When life gets tough and nothing makes sense, I turn to anime for guidance...
I also turn to video games...do you remember what Toad told Mario after he failed to rescue Princess Toadstool?..."Your Princess is in another castle." I hold that wisdom dear to my heart.</p>