Abstract

The dream argument and its role in Cartesian doubt continue to engage commentators. As recent scholarship shows, a consensus has yet to be attained. In what follows I attempt to resolve the current debate by offering an account of the dream doubt which captures Descartes’s rhetorical strategy in Meditation I. A faithful reading of the text, I propose to show, reveals that the dream doubt is not entertained seriously nor is it proposed merely for the sake of methodological skepticism. It is rather an integral part of a dogmatic intrusion of Cartesian science at a pivotal point in the critique of prescientific experience. After presenting the proposed interpretation, I examine the accounts offered in the current scholarship.