Last night I woke up to my clock radio blaring some song, I don't remember which one. Point is, I wasn't ready to get up. I hit what I thought was the snooze bar, but it didn't have any effect. The music kept playing.
Then I opened my eyes and the radio wasn't playing. Because whatever time it was, it was still way too early for the alarm to go off. I had just dreamed that it was making a racket, trying to get me up.
Now every once in a while, I have what you might call a dream. They're really more like hypnagogic states. I'll be lying in bed and there will be some unusual stimulus, usually noise, especially loud metal clanking. And again, I'll open my eyes and it will become obvious that none of this was real.
This was kind of like that. But not really. When my eyes had been open for a minute or so, and before I rolled over and went back to sleep, I heard noises from upstairs. Talking, things falling or being knocked over, and erratic bursts of music. So while I'd been asleep, information from the world outside me had penetrated my headspace.
Philosophy tends to be thought of as somewhat abstract, removed from our actual lives. But epistemology, which has been the study of how we know what we know, has been of vital importance since Ancient Greek times. Philosophy has a place in the world, and is a natural activity.
Then I opened my eyes and the radio wasn't playing. Because whatever time it was, it was still way too early for the alarm to go off. I had just dreamed that it was making a racket, trying to get me up.
Now every once in a while, I have what you might call a dream. They're really more like hypnagogic states. I'll be lying in bed and there will be some unusual stimulus, usually noise, especially loud metal clanking. And again, I'll open my eyes and it will become obvious that none of this was real.
This was kind of like that. But not really. When my eyes had been open for a minute or so, and before I rolled over and went back to sleep, I heard noises from upstairs. Talking, things falling or being knocked over, and erratic bursts of music. So while I'd been asleep, information from the world outside me had penetrated my headspace.
Protagoras deserves recognition for being.the first philosopher in Western history to explicitly address the problem of error, if only by denying its existence. For most of us, though, his position on perception is intrinsically unsatisfying (much as relativism more generally can seem frustratingly flaccid in the face of certain hard truths about the world). Plato, for one, thought it was nonsense. He noted that even a breeze must have its own internal essence, quite apart from whatever it blows o, and essentially advised Protagoras to get a thermometer. But Plato also rejected the whole notion that our senses are the original source of knowledge. Since, as I mentioned earlier, he thought our primordial souls were at one with the universe, he believed that we came to know the basic truths about the world through a form of memory. Other philosophers agreed with Protagoras that the senses are a crucial conduit of information, but, unlike him, they acknowledged that perception can fail. This seems like a reasonable position, and one we are likely to share, but it raises two related and thorny questions. First, how exactly do our senses go about acquiring information about the world? And second, how can we determine when that information is accurate and when it is not?
(Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, Ecco Press/HarperCollins, 2010, pp. 55-6)
Philosophy tends to be thought of as somewhat abstract, removed from our actual lives. But epistemology, which has been the study of how we know what we know, has been of vital importance since Ancient Greek times. Philosophy has a place in the world, and is a natural activity.
2 comments:
When we sleep we go from dreaming to deep unconsciousness multiple times during the night. It seems to me that while you were sound asleep the noises being made by your neighbors tripped you into a dream state where you became dimly aware of the sounds - especially the music. When it didn't stop after you'd made an effort to turn off your radio alarm and you'd had a few minutes to regain conscious awareness you understood the source and, hopefully, returned to sleep. It makes sense that maintaining vestigal awareness during sleep might be some kind of ancient protective device. Then again there are times when nothing short of being doused in cold water will have that effect.
I have a couple of different hypnagogic experiences to being assaulted by loud noises - the first is that I'll find myself reading a book only to realize there is no book and the other is suddenly becoming aware of a huge blue sky and bright sunlight.
It's true that if you pay attention that certainty about being right or wrong are equally empty approaches to developing as human beings. It is the ability to accept responsibility for our errors and learn from them that allows us to flourish.
We'd all be better off if there was more respect for philosophy rather than opinionating.
In general I don't have any trouble getting back to sleep if I have to get up for any reason (usually bladder-related) or if I wake up on any account. Some people have more of a problem with it, I think. One secret is, I don't look at the clock. If I did I might psych myself out by thinking of how little time I had to sleep now. Instead I just roll over and enjoy whatever slumber I might have. As for that dream it was momentarily unnerving because there was a sense of doing something and not doing it at the same time, as nothing was happening. So it was a relief in a way to wake up and find the real source. But yeah, as an evolutionary feature it would make sense to maintain some kind of vestigial awareness. In the early days of humanity we often weren't in safe places when we lay down to sleep. Which, you know, still goes sometimes.
Well, you know you must be some kind of reader if your unconscious mind is putting phantom books in your hand.:) I'm curious about the blue sky and sunlight, if it represents a kind of delayed reaction.
Mistakes are inevitable. Sometimes big, sometimes little. It's not necessary to beat yourself up, just to be willing to step back and reassess.
Vive la philosophie.
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