true interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them" (Gardner, Skeptical, 10).One idea of what dreams are, can be found from the Indian philosophy. A realist claims that objects that experience presents as existing externally do in fact exist internally. The denial of externality appeals both to those who doubt that experience is identical with existing objects, and those who think that experience is there only if objects are not external. Dream are a great appeal to those philosophers who deny externality. Objects appear as distinct from the cognition of them. They do not appear as if they were in the subjects cognition alone, since to dream of an object is to dream of an object located in space. Both the Cartesian skeptic and the Berkeleyan idealist use dreams to challenge externality. The idealist accepts the doubt that dream cast upon externality but idea not accept the implication of the non-verdicality of cognition. The disagreement about the consequence of denying externality was recognized by Kant. He distinguished between the Cartesian problematic idealism and Berkeleyan dogmatic idealism. But there were two famous philosophers that have differing views on the way that dreams are used. Buddhist Vasubandhu and Advaitin Sankara are the two men that wrote about the ideas of dream and externality. Vasubandhu is an idealist in a sense given by his own characterization of the position "that which is distinguished does not exist thus; all is therefore mere representation in consciousness" )Ram-Prasad, American, 225). He argues that experience presents us with a distinction between consciousness itself and the objects of which we are conscious. But such objects do no exist as thus experienced; they are mere appearances. Vasubandhu uses the idea of dreams to display the claim that an account of experience does not need this cognition-object distinction. He claims that such an acc...
