would have guessed. If a child is introduced to the conceptnof a tiger by showing her cuddly toys and gasoline advertisements,nit does not follow that she cannot doubt that thesenare real tigers: she can, and should, (c) It may be true thatnthe framework of our ordinary reasonings cannot be subjectnto the same doubts and tests that we bring to bear onnelements of our experience (crudely, we check claims bynseeing how well they fit together with central assumptions ofn”our” consensus reality). It does not follow that we cannnever be confronted by gross conflicts of framework andncentral assumptions. The thought that we are asleep andndreaming (i.e., do not have the immediate access that wen• had supposed to the real causes of experience) is certainlynnot confined to Cartesian philosophers in a skeptical mood,nthough it has been part of our office as “state-kept schoolmen”nto help people to forget this, (d) The desperatenassertion made by others that we cannot even conceive ofnthe possibility that we are vat-brains (i.e., that all ournexperiences are induced in us by mad scientists tamperingnwith the neural network of brains suspended in a nutritivensolution) rests on the claim that we can never reach beyondnour experience to speak of how things are. But that is itselfntantamount to the claim that we are irremediably asleep andndreaming, (e) Supposing that I have a son, he maynuncontroversially claim to be “awake” in the sense that henhas heard what I have said, and will respond appropriately.nHis denial that he is awake, in context, probably amountsnonly to a refusal to get up or engage in conversation, anrefusal to wake up to his commitments (as defined by me). Ifnhe fails to hear or to respond in rationally appropriate ways,nthat is evidence that he is not really awake, not really whatnhe must be if he is to be directly engaged with the real world.nIf he is able to say, with some justice, that he is not awake,nthen he is not entirely asleep (always assuming that I amnawake enough to be sure of what he said). It does not follownthat he is entirely awake. Actually, if he says he is awake, henis quite likely to be wrong, even in ordinary terms. Thenclaim that “our ordinary life-world” is the unique andnunquestionable framework of all that we think and do isnsimple panic, and it amounts to exactly the skepticism that itnseeks to allay.nTo be “asleep and dreaming” is to be embedded in one’snown particularity, blind to the real world that is thenground of our experience, responsive to Umwe/f-objectsnrather than to Reals (a creature’s Umwelt is the world of itsnexperience, determined by its biological kind). “For thosenwho’ve woken up there is one common world; eachnsleeper’s turned aside to a private one,” said Heraclitus. Asnwe believe that we are awake we conclude that all those whondo not notice or care about our objects are dreaming. Wenassume that people are more awake and alert the more theynsee things the way we “naturally” do. But we can questionnwhether we are as distant from a direct acquaintance withnReals as we imagine them to be. We can, through thenexercise of intellectual discipline, form a notion of the realnworld, which then serves to reveal our ordinary visions asndreamlike; But this is only believable if we have a “high”ndoctrine of reason, a very traditional belief that reason unitesnus with the powers-that-be. If we believe instead that ournreasoning powers, like our perceptions, are only thosen18/CHRONICLESnnnexpected of placental mammals in a worid governed only byntime and chance, then we can have no rational assurancenthat our most carefully experimental science has any morenthan local, pragmatic value. Science, on those terms, nonmore tells us how things are than ordinary perception does.nIf scientific reason gives us any access to the noumenalnreality “beyond” or “beneath” our Umwelts, it can only benbecause that reality is not quite what scientism supposes.nWe are most awake, most in touch, when our personalnworids are shrunk, and the worid itself stands upright, just asnit is. Our own worids cannot accommodate that vision,nwhich is reality itself, and so we look back on it as onto anblank—just as in ordinary dreams we cannot recall thenworid we mistakenly conceive to be “the one and onlynwaking worid.” We must wake up to our true identities asnreasoning beings — not beings with a gift for calculation, butnones capable of the theoretical vision in which subject andnobject are One. Traditional philosophy consists solely innlearning to know the Deity by habitual contemplation andnpious devotion. “We are to stop our ears and convert ournvision and our other senses inwards upon the Self,” and sonmount on the wings of logos and eros to “the true object ofnour longing,” abolishing in thought the preoccupation ofnthe eyes (according to Maximus): that is why, so Philo tellsnus, the High Priest must strip off the soul’s tunic of opinionnand imagery to enter the Holy of Holies.nWhen we think we are awake, we think the objects wenconfront are ones that were there while we slept, and thatncauses our own perception of them. A better analysis ofnperception — or, at any rate, the analysis that common sensenprefers — reveals that the things we perceive are not thencause but the content of our perception, the mind-realmnwhich it is appropriate for us to have. We do not supposenthat the sheep-tick’s Umwelt, its phenomenal universe, isncomposed of things-as-they-are: its Umwelt is how things arenfor a (or that) sheep-tick. We readily assume that ournUmwelts; as well as being richer, are truer, and though thenassumption is not strictly verifiable, we are perhaps entitlednto build upon it. We could even say that what is noumenalnfor the sheep-tick is phenomenal for us. We can see andnexplain what it is whose echo or shadow’ appears in thentick-world: just so the scientist’s dream may serve to explainnthe ordinary human one. Those for whom the earth’snrotation is phenomenal have access to something merelynnoumenal for those who live on earth. We may, bynextension, form the idea of entering a mode of consciousnexistence in which what was noumenal for us becomesnphenomenal: equivalently, our consciousness is taken upninto the divine mind.nTo be asleep and dreaming is to have present to onenobjects not strictly identical with the causes of our being,nand to be turned aside into our individual or species-worlds;ndream-worlds are also typified by absurdity of logic and ofnvalue. It is a mark of what we see in our dreams that they donnot live up to our rational demand for logical consistency.nNeither does the realm we fondly call waking reality: witnessnstandard paradoxes re change, time, and space. These arennormally “solved ambulando” — which is to say, not solvednat all, but consciously ignored. But there is more to thenconviction that we are dreaming than logical puzzlement,njust as the claim is not relevant solely to epistemology. Wen