Once upon a time, when I was but a tween, the Everly Brothers sang “Dream, Dream, Dream,” and crooned “Whenever I want you, all I have to do is…” Yes, that’s right, “Dream, Dream, Dream.” But there was a downside: “Only trouble is, gee whiz, I’m dreamin’ my life away.”

Long before the Everly Brothers, in 1636, Pedro Calderón de la Barca published his classic play La Vida Es Sueño (Life Is a Dream). Just a few years later, in 1641, Rene Descartes, in search of certainty, wrote his Meditations of First Philosophy. Therein he makes strategic use of a dream argument. He wonders whether what he sees before him is just the furniture of a dream. After all, he remarks that “on many occasions I have in sleep been deceived by similar illusions.” Thus he concludes that “there are no certain indications by which we may clearly distinguish wakefulness from sleep,” so perhaps “neither our hands nor our whole body are such as they appear to be.”

Note that we can’t dismiss the dream argument by an appeal to evidence, for example, the indices of rapid eye movement. And why not? Because we might simply be dreaming that we have reviewed the pertinent evidence. Could it be, gentle reader, that you are only dreaming that you are reading this blog post? Golly, isn’t there some way to dismiss the dream argument, perhaps to sleep with the fishes? (Can we take comfort in the story that Descartes, having discovered his Cogito, ergo sum — I think, therefore I am — walked into a nearby bistro for a drink. Asked if he wanted another, he said, “I think not” and disappeared.)

But, no, we can’t wish the dream argument away. Worse, if it is sound, it puts us at risk of a kind of locked-in subjectivity. There’s a horror in imagining ourselves neurologically injured and physically locked-in, conscious yet unable to communicate with anyone. It suggests the horror of being buried alive. In some way, it seems, the dream argument represents the contemporary and endemic isolation of the self.

Still, the dream argument, to be blunt, is a philosophical bust. A first rejoinder is that the argument proves too much. If we accept it, we will have to doubt everything. But this we cannot do. Even Descartes is certain that in the past he has been deceived by his dreams! Doubt always depends on prior belief. Total doubt is conceptually impossible. So the dream argument is self-defeating.

A second rejoinder is that, if we were to accept the argument, it would make sense to suggest that perhaps “I am now dreaming.” Of course, there is the idiomatic “I must be dreaming” of the lottery winner. But the straightforward “I am dreaming” is like a straightforward “I am dead.” Not only do dead men tell no tales, they also don’t say anything. Moreover, if I am dreaming, the statement “I am dreaming” is not an assertion. It is a mere utterance. The same holds if the dreamer instead utters “I am awake.” After all, if in a dream a bachelor utters “I thee wed,” he remains a bachelor. In his posthumous On Certainty (1969), Ludwig Wittgenstein contends that “Someone who, dreaming, says ‘I am dreaming,’…is no more right than if he said in his dream ‘it is raining’, while in fact it was raining.”

Though he was as concerned as Descartes was about certainty, Wittgenstein didn’t think that it was to be found in the subjectivity of an isolated self. Instead, he located it in a web of social interaction. He held that this web is the very source of language. In On Certainty, he seconds Goethe’s dictum that “In the beginning was the deed.” Social interaction is the playing out of our everyday deeds. Cartesian doubt flirts with solipsism. Wittgenstein, in contrast, locates us in the context of the language games, each with a distinct pattern, which emerge from shared forms of life.

Christians can appreciate Wittgenstein’s strategy, as far as it goes. But we affirm so much more. The Gospel of John tells us that “In the beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God; and the Word was God.” But the Word is uniquely dynamic. Our Triune God is utterly different from a limited web of social interaction. As Aquinas teaches, He is pure act, actus purus. So intimately does God love us that He is closer to us than we are to our very selves.