Pumpkin with an Earthenware head: asleep or awake? At least you're not dead.

“I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep.” (CSM 13). Descartes makes it clear that although we may never actually be able to tell whether we are indeed awake or asleep, for the marks of wakefulness can be simple imagined and fabricated while we are asleep, there are certain things in this world which cannot be doubted as per their actual existence and reality. Wilson states, “The question Descartes wishes to raise is not whether I can know that this or that sense experience is veridical, but whether I can know with certainty that the senses ever afford us truth at all (apart from the reality of simples)” (Wilson 18).

These ‘reality of simples’ is not completely clear to me. But my estimation of these mysterious small nuggets of truth in an unsure world are Descartes examples of color and certain sciences. He explains that colors cannot have been produced without the aid of their actually being in existence. So, though we may not be able to tell whether these colors are reflections of a true world outside of our own minds and dreams, these colors do indeed exist in reality. He also states that along with colors simple sciences and math are “transparent truths” that remain valid whether awake or asleep. Yet even this idea of math can be so skewed when asleep that we could conceivably convince ourselves that 2 + 3 = Monkey or something such. So, in my view even these supposedly indubitable truths may be called into question, but the reality of color does seem to remain true.

What I did find very interesting, which I had previously not even considered until it was brought up in class is the fact that the emotions we feel in dreams are as true in the make believe world of our minds as they are in the physical world of reality. Emotions transcend the idea that we can simply convince ourselves in a dream that we are lounging in our PJs or whether we actually are. Either way whether real or imagined the feeling of calm is undeniable. But emotions are not solid foundations for discovering something solid, timeless, and space less like the science Descartes is proposing he has set out to discover.

Though we are not mad and no matter how hard I try I have been unsuccessful in turning myself into a squash it seems that whether or not we are mad does not make that much of a difference for the simple fact that I can never be sure of anything, ever, whether I am truly awake or asleep outside of the reality of colors and my own emotions, but even madmen perceive colors and have emotions so sanity doesn’t seem that special anymore.