What Is Real · ages 7–10
How do you know you are awake?
In a dream you are sure everything is real. You are always sure.
Dreams are convincing from the inside. You never doubt a dream while you are in it - doubt arrives only when you wake up, and by then you are already somewhere else.
This gives us a genuine puzzle: what test would prove you are awake right now, that would also work inside a dream? If you cannot find one, that is interesting - not silly.
The sensible move is to stop needing certainty every second. You can notice you might be wrong, and still eat breakfast, do your homework and be kind.
Try it
Keep a dream diary for four nights. Write whatever you remember immediately, without tidying it up. Then read the four pages and look for one place where 'the rules' that apply when you are awake do not apply in the dream. Those cracks are where your imagination lives.
What do you think?
Do you think there is a right answer to this question?
Talk about it
- Are you responsible for things you do in a dream?
- Could you be dreaming right now - how would you check?
- Is a dream less important because you cannot keep it?
Yes, but… — the arguments people actually make
Dreams don't hurt, so they're obviously not real.
Some dreams do hurt. You wake up upset at someone who did nothing, which means the dream did something real to you.
If you can't tell, the question doesn't matter.
It matters the moment you tell a friend about your dream as if it happened. You can tell the difference afterwards — just not inside.
Being asleep and awake are obviously different.
Not while you are asleep they are not, and you cannot check before you decide to trust your senses.
What other philosophers think
- ZhuangziThe butterfly dream. Its point is not that dreams are real — it is that you cannot step outside both states to check which one you are in.
- René DescartesTook it as a reason to build knowledge on something that survives even if everything he sees is fake.
- Ibn SinaA person created in mid-air, with no sight, sound or touch: would they still know they exist? He said yes, and that this shows the self is not just the body.
If you want to go further
- Meditations on First Philosophy — René DescartesMeditation I, the dream doubt, in full.
- Zhuangzi — ZhuangziThe butterfly chapter, roughly 300 BCE, and easier to read than Descartes.
- The Concept of Mind — Gilbert Ryle1949. Goes after the idea of a mind as something separate and ghostly.
Most of these were written for adults, which is why it is worth reading them with someone older.