Page 134 - Darwin's Dilemma: The Soul

Darwin’s Dilemma: The Soul

Never, of course, can we guarantee that the people around
us, or even the life we are experiencing at this moment, are not a
dream. When we dream, we can touch a piece of ice and perceive
its cold wetness and transparency in a perfect form. When we
smell a rose, we perceive its unique scent in an equally flawless
manner. The reason is that the same processes take place in our
brains when we really smell a rose or only dream that we are do-
ing so.
That being so, we can never know when we are experiencing
the true image and perfume of a rose. In fact, we never have direct
experience of a real rose in either case, and in either event. Neither
the image nor the perfume of the rose are anywhere in our brains.
Therefore, neither case represents reality, as Gerald O’Brien
describes:

Yes, we’re asleep in our beds, our eyes are shut and yet we are hav-
ing for many people some very vivid visual experiences. We are in
our visual experiences situated in a world populated by people, by
things happening around us and while we’re in the dream state to all
the world it appears to us as though we’re actually in the world in
some sense. Now that’s really important because that tells us that
our brains are actually capable of constructing our visual experi-
ences in this way in our dreams. And this then suggests, to some
philosophers and theorists of the mind in general, that perhaps
when we’re awake and looking around at the world, our common-
sense understanding is wrong. Perhaps indeed that all of our expe-
riences, all of our visual experiences of the world are in some way
constructed by the brain and that this commonsense view that we are
in direct contact with the world is actually wrong. 76
If someone is aware that he’s dreaming, he will not be
frightened by a car approaching, will realize that the goods and
money he acquires are transitory, and will harbor no greed for
them. He knows that the blessings and beauty he possess-

132