am i a butterfly, dream argument

You are flying around the garden. You are feeling ecstatic. You can finally say you are “free”……. all until you open your eyes and realise that that was all a dream.

This is the story of Zhuang Zhou Meng Die, or the Dream Argument from the ancient philosopher Zhuangzi.

Everything in that “dream” seemed so real, yet, it all was fiction when Zhuangzi woke up. So…… how would Zhuangzi know if he was a butterfly and dreaming about being a human. You would never know until you “wake up”.

Just like the movie Inception, where you only know it is a dream until after you go back to “reality”.

French Philosopher Rene Descartes suggested skepticism about the realness of reality. We cannot be sure of anything or anyone’s validity or their existence per se.

Our brains perceive straw in water to be distorted when it’s still straight; Our brains perceive the “person” in the mirror at a distance from us.

The human brain is not reliable.

You might argue that we have mathematical equations and advanced technology to reduce subjective-ness in this world, but all the data, calculations…