The premise of this is Descartes throwing aside all his previous learned assumptions and questioning them as he develops new beliefs. An interesting idea, no? Although, very time consuming, I'd assume.
He starts all of this with the possibility that he is simply dreaming-- yes, like the Matrix. I never saw the whole trilogy, but I remember the idea that the reality we lived in was a complete simulation similar to the idea Descartes presents.
I don't mean to shake stuff up for no reason, but what if this was true? What if it all was a dream? Our philosophy TA asked us this question in her presentation for us to discuss (our class is about 9 people, which makes for amazing discussion). My answer?
It doesn't matter.
What would we do if it was in fact, all a dream? Wake up? Untrue. In fact, we wouldn't know it was a dream until we woke up.
On a different (and slightly more selfish note), I personally need to be able to believe that this answer doesn't matter, or that this isn't a dream (which we couldn't really prove anyway). I need this because on a day to day basis, I have to motivate myself to keep going, and to keep living my life-- everyone does. People wouldn't take out the trash if they believed the trash didn't actually exist anyway. They wouldn't work for money if it was a contrived concept to buy contrived items like food, clothes, and mortgage.
A larger scale paints a completely different picture. Everything we have learned is based on one obvious concept-- that we exist. That the atoms we split, the papers we write, the stock we trade are all actual things. Existence is the given in every proof we make.
This is a rather short and to the point entry. Just something I thought to get off of my chest, I suppose. Others might have been thinking, Well, why wouldn't you want to know if the world you live in is actually some intricate simulation?
So that there was my explanation. You couldn't do anything about it anyway, so why fret? Which isn't necessarily a transferable concept. I base this on the assumption that most things are not hopeless. This is one situation in which there is ACTUALLY nothing that can be done, which is rare.
Anyway, opinions? Feel free to take this in another direction.
3 comments:
Interesting post. I had a similar conversation with some friends back in my college days. What if, we suggested, life were nothing more than a complex weave of "assumptions". The core assumption, of course, is that we exist in the first place. I found this idea incredibly liberating, not because I didn't want to accept responsibility, but because if indeed reality is nothing more than assumptions we share with each other, then there is at least a chance we can redefine our own reality. Not all of my friends found it so exciting an idea. She almost dropped out of school because she saw the idea as scary and depressing.
Thanks for the thought-provoking post!
http://idiotsstew.blogspot.com
Thanks once again for stimulating thought. I recently tried to read my college philosophy text book, and was reminded of how taxing really thinking through things can be. One of the first chapters in the book explores the question of whether God exists. Amazing discussions.
It is my understanding that there are some tribes along the Amazon who have pretty much been isolated from modern civilization. As much as I would like to have some anthropological study made of them to delve further into this concept, I would not want to have the modern world and all of its issue invade their "world view." Thanks again for making me think. We need more people like you.
"is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?"
E. A. Poe
http://www.heise.de/ix/raven/Literature/Authors/poe/works/dream.within.a.dream.html
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