Descartes' Skepticism From His Dreams

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I am in the habit of sleeping, and representing to myself" (47) some of the same things he recognizes and does in daily life. Of course, ha also admits that he also dreams "even sometimes others less probable, which the insane think are presented to them in their waking moments" (47). Descartes finds that he is uncertain now whether he is awake or dreaming, and so the experience of the senses has to be doubted because it is indistinguishable at the time from the dreaming state. Descartes suggests that we pretend we are asleep and accept that all that we sense is false and illusory.
To test this, he suggests supposing that he is reaming and that his every action is merely an illusion, so much so that he might assume he does not even have the body he has already stated he does have. He states that there must then be real objects corresponding to what we sense in our dreams, and so there is some correlation between the illusion and reality.
Descartes thus determines that ...

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also suggests a relationship between waking and dreaming when he says, "Those who compared our life to a dream were perhaps more right than they thought" (229). He also finds that the soul involves itself in many activities when we are asleep, and he relates this to perception as Descartes does by stating that while things may not be clear when he is asleep, they are not fully clear when he is awake, either. Descartes has assumed that he pretend he is asleep to examine this issue, but he could assume he is awake and come to a different or modified conclusion. Yet, the mere possibility that he might be dreaming suggests that he should be skeptical with regard to accepting the ...

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