The Cartesian Dream Argument and an Austinian Contrast Argument

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One response to “The Cartesian Dream Argument and an Austinian Contrast Argument”

1. 

   john doran

   August 27, 2025

   While I would also reject Austin’s P2, I would do so for slightly different, but related, reasons.
   I would note, first, that your CP:
   CP: if a term T applies to everything, then T is meaningless
   is not an accurate translation of Austin’s P2:
   P2: If the phrase ‘dream-like quality’ were “applicable to everything,” then “the phrase would be PERFECTLY meaningless. (emphasis mine)
   given that there is a clearly defensible distinction between a sentence being “meaningless” and being “perfectly meaningless”. (i use ‘sentence’ because a proposition cannot be meaningless. or so say i.)
   as an example of that distinction, take chomsky’s renowned:
   CH: the invisible green ideas sleep furiously
   while it seems obvious that CH expresses no proposition, and is thus ‘meaningless’ in some sense, its putative meaninglessness is also not clearly ‘perfect’, since the sentential constituents are individually meaningful.
   i would say that, for a sentence to be ‘perfectly’ meaningless, it would have to be something closer to gibberish, like:
   GP: creech feh greeble bleem
   (i leave aside the question as to whether GP reasonably qualifies as a ‘sentence’.)
   therefore, whether or not the sentence described in P1 expresses a proposition, it is not ‘perfectly’ meaningless, and P2 fails.
   anyway, while i agree with the sequel of your argument, and the counterexamples you provide to your CP, i would also reject Austin’s argument on the simple expedient that it fails to express Descartes’ actual argument, and is so far forth an example of ignoratio elenchi.
   Descartes’ original argument is not a so-called Contrast Argument, concerning semantics or meaningfulness, but rather a basic appeal to epistemology:
   D1: if SOME dream-states are indistinguishable from waking-states while IN those dream-states, then for any belief i may have that i am in a waking-state, it is possible that i am mistaken in that belief, and that i am, in fact, in a dream-state.
   D2: some dream-states are indistinguishable from waking-states while IN those dream-states.
   Therefore:
   D3: it is possible that i am always mistaken when i believe that i am in a waking-state.
   it seems obvious to me that D2 is true: if it were not so, then everyone would always be aware of being in a dream-state while IN every dream-state, but i am sure i am not alone in being desperately relieved upon waking from a bad dream, precisely because only moments before i was simply and straightforwardly convinced i was awake and about to be killed/hurt, etc.
   as a related aside, what i have always found fascinating is that, when we awake (from a dream), we have a memory of having been asleep; but when we fall asleep (and enter a dream), we have no memory of having been awake.

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