9. Are Dreams Indistinguishable in a Way That Matters? One need not be a Freudian to believe that dreams have causes, in which case most of us might be picked at random, in a futuristic scenario, and made to dream in a connected, realistic way so that our lives become lengthy dreams. Under that Matrix-like supposition, can I be said to know that I now see a hand? I might of course be dreaming in a maximally realistic way that I see a hand. Could I reason my way out by noting that, since I am wondering whether this is just a dream, therefore I cannot be dreaming? Can I conclude that this must be reality, not a dream, and that I really do see a hand? No, that certainly would not satisfy. If I wonder whether I am one of the dreamers in the first place, my doubt must extend to whether I am really wondering, or only dreaming that I am wondering.
10. Let us step back. Suppose I could now about as easily be dead, having barely escaped a potentially fatal accident. Obviously, I cannot distinguish my being alive from being dead by believing myself alive when alive, and dead when dead. Similarly, I cannot distinguish my being conscious from my being unconscious by attributing to myself consciousness when conscious and unconsciousness when unconscious. But that is no obstacle to my knowing myself to be alive and conscious when alive and conscious. So, perhaps the possibility that we dream is like that of being dead, or unconscious? Even if one could never tell that one suffers such a fate, one can still tell that one does not suffer it when one does not. Why not say the same of dreams?
I guess what Sosa has in mind is the notion that the skepticism starts with a thought about what it is like to be asleep. When one is asleep, one does not, as a matter of fact, realize it (most of the time). Even if one "thinks" about it in the context of the dream, there is no way of ensuring that one is, as Sosa puts it "really wondering" and not just dreaming that one is wondering. And that is the source of the skepticism:
1) If I were asleep, I wouldn't be able to tell I was asleep.
Therefore,
2) I don't know now that I am not asleep.
3) If I don't know that I am not sleeping, then I don't know X.
Therefore,
4) I don't know X.
But thinking about that argument in the context of being unconscious and being dead allows us to see that the first inference isn't a valid one because even though _were_ I asleep, I couldn't accurately judge the matter, so long as I am awake, I can judge just fine. That all seems actually like it might be right, and he's got an interesting point about the asymmetry here in that one does feel one can trust one's judgments about whether one is asleep or awake so long as one is awake.
But then he goes on to say that one cannot accurately think "I am asleep" just as one cannot accurately think "I am not thinking." He does this on the grounds he initiates at the end of 9. If one were asleep, one would not "really" be thinking it, but only dreaming that one was thinking it. Similarly, he thinks, as long as one is "really" thinking "I am awake," it must be true; because if it weren't, it would not be the case that one thought that one was awake.
That seems to push back the argument onto the question of how one can tell if one is "really" thinking that one is awake, or just dreaming that one is thinking one is awake -- which looks like the exact same problem Sosa started with in the first place (namely, of how one can tell the difference between being awake and being asleep). It looks like his claim there is that as long as you are awake, you can tell.
It is hard to see how this doesn't collapse into a kind of regress, because the sleeper could dream that she could tell the difference between being asleep and being awake (even if she couldn't really tell), and further the sleeper could sleep-think "I really think I am awake." But I suppose Sosa might be ready to say that it is okay that you cannot know you can tell that you are awake, as long as you can tell. And there is no danger really in believing this falsely, since even if you were "believing" it in a dream, you wouldn't actually be believing it, but just dreaming that you believe it, and you aren't really responsible for the content of your dreams. So you can't go wrong!
Consider the case of the "lucid" dreamer here to test this. The case requires a revision of Sosa's claim that if you are dreaming, you cannot "really" think you are dreaming. If you can actually be awake in a dream, and not just dream that you are awake in a dream, then you would be responsible for your beliefs. You really could have thoughts and beliefs while you were dreaming. But notice that the cases of "lucid" dreaming are co-extensive with the cases in which you can tell you are dreaming. So if such cases, which Sosa leaves out of his account, are possible, they are also irrelevant from the perspective of epistemological skepticism about dreaming without knowing it.
This post and the last, especially regarding Heraclitus, remind me of much of the discussion of dreaming in Pursuits of Happiness. Cavell says in the intro, "The Ibsen, and these films, declare that our lives are poems, their actions and words the content of a dream, working on webs of significance we can cannot or will not survey but merely spin further. In everyday life the poems often seem composed by demons who curse us, wish us ill; in art by an angel who wishes us well, and blesses us." There's something very important, too, about the relationship between dreaming and forgetting on Cavell's account, which also seems Nietzschean as a useful forgetting, not an absolute denial.
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