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Dreams Essay examples

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Dreams

Although the idea of dreams has always been a psychological one, there is a philosophical side to them. Descartes once said, "For all I know, I might be dreaming" (Bruder/Moore, Philosophy, 81). This conjecture of Descatres was one that explained the concept of dreams. He asked the question, How do we know that we are not dreaming and our whole life is but a dream? There can never be an answer to this question but it proves that there is a philosophical view of dreams. A dream is a form of mental activity that occurs during sleep. Dreams reveal our inner most secrets and even allow us to emerge our hidden selves. Because they unleash some of our most intimate experiences, every dream is unique. Most dreams are in …show more content…

Essayist, humanist, and skeptic Michel Montaigne wrote "I believe it to be true that dreams are the true interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them" (Gardner, Skeptical, 10). One idea of what dreams are, can be found from the Indian philosophy. A realist claims that objects that experience presents as existing externally do in fact exist internally. The denial of externality appeals both to those who doubt that experience is identical with existing objects, and those who think that experience is there only if objects are not external. Dream are a great appeal to those philosophers who deny externality. Objects appear as distinct from the cognition of them. They do not appear as if they were in the subjects cognition alone, since to dream of an object is to dream of an object located in space. Both the Cartesian skeptic and the Berkeleyan idealist use dreams to challenge externality. The idealist accepts the doubt that dream cast upon externality but idea not accept the implication of the non-verdicality of cognition. The disagreement about the consequence of denying externality was recognized by Kant. He distinguished between the Cartesian problematic idealism and Berkeleyan dogmatic idealism. But there were two famous philosophers that have differing views on the way that dreams are used. Buddhist Vasubandhu and Advaitin Sankara are the two men that wrote about the ideas of dream and

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