John Locke's Cinem The Cartesian Perception Of The External World

Basing his philosophy on the reliability of the senses to perceive the external world, John Locke disapproves of the notion that our understanding of reality could be confined simply within some simulation, namely a dream. His retort to dream skepticism involves an imaginary scenario in which a dream skeptic is asked to place his hand into a furnace. Pain, to Locke, does not exist in a universal form, but rather is experienced in varied manners in differing states of consciousness, with radically greater intensity perceived in a waking state than can be produced in dreams—assuming that consciousness exists in a binary, that the state enjoyed presently is the only wakeful state, and there is not a greater degree of sensation in a higher state of consciousness. Along Locke’s logic, the skeptic’s decision to refuse placing his hand in the furnace validates this pain as being excruciating to such a degree that it could not be accurately represented in the mind of the dreamer without an external impetus, regardless of some applicable prior experience, differing from a Cartesian view which asserts that any …show more content…
These images, despite being composed from a multitude of prior experiences, are perceived by observers to the same level of visual precision as items in reality, to the point that the images’ “vividness [would interfere] with their sleep,” (Sacks 36). This exemplifies the subconscious mind’s ability to recreate its prior experiences with a high level of fidelity, implying that Locke’s delineation between sensations of pain in states of dreaming and in states of wakefulness are