Taped Confession of Epistemology

Taped Confession of Epistemology
In 1996, I was on a study abroad program as a freshman in college. The trip was a six week tour of the Volga region of Russia, which also consisted of a three week cruise of the Volga River. After the cruise, the ship docked in Moscow and then the students were to board a train to go to St. Petersburg.
While on the cruise, my bunk mate was the professor. Because this was in June, White Nights was in effect and as a result, it was quite difficult to get to sleep. Every night, the professor would talk about his walk-man and how lucky he was to have one to go to sleep with at night. We had a great relationship, so I would tell him that he might wake up dead and his walk-man stolen because he made fun of me not having one! I also was his teaching assistant, so we would often joke with each other about death threats. So this threat was nothing to be alarmed with.
Finally, after three weeks of dealing with the professor, I was looking forward to not having to bunk with him in St. Petersburg. When the ship docked in Moscow, the captain informed us that we needed to return by 8:00 pm so that we would not miss the train going to Petersburg. On a side note, I had lived in Moscow for two years, so I left the rest of the students and made my way around town to see some friends. I returned to the ship at 8:00, loaded my luggage onto a bus and waited for the rest of the students.
At 8:30, the captain of the ship was furious because the professor and the rest of the group had not returned to the ship to go to the train station. Since I was the only one there, the captain opened the cabins and I loaded the entire group’s luggage onto the bus. Finally at 9:30, the professor and the students arrived. The professor thanked me for saving the day, got on the bus, and we all left for the train station.
I was so relieved to finally sit down in a sleeper car on the train. Just as the train was about to leave, a student rushed into my cabin and said I was given the wrong ticket. We grabbed my bags and ran to the other end of the train and jumped on, just as the train was pulling out. Exhausted, I sat down and was not at all amused to find that I was sharing a cabin with the professor. It was because of him that I was exhausted and if it had not have been for me, the students would all be stuck in Moscow – I was not happy. As a consolation, the professor said that I could listen to his walk-man, just because I had saved the day.
I had no problem falling asleep that night. Not even the threat of the Russian mob robbing the train kept me awake. A few hours into my sleep, I had a dream wherein the tape in the walkman had finished and I needed to put in a new tape. In my dream, there was a cupboard filled with tapes and so I grabbed one and tried to pull it out of the wall, but it would not budge. I figured I needed more muscle put into it, so I started pulling with both hands.
I don’t know what forced me to wake up, but to my astonishment, instead of grabbing a cassette tape, both my hands were around my professor’s neck! He woke up screaming, “What are you doing?” I simply said, “I thought your neck was a tape” and quickly fell back asleep.
Epistemological Understanding of the Dream In reading Feldman (2003), there are many ways of interpreting the dream that I had in Russia. The Standard View says that our views and knowledge are based on perception, memory, expert testimony, introspection, and reasoning. Feldman (2003) also shows how different epistemological theories, namely Evidentialist, Foundationalist, Reliabilism, and Skepticism, shape the way that we view the world and formulate our beliefs and knowledge. The question that is asked is what is a true belief?

Perspective
In trying to understand my dream and not interpreting it, there are parts of the dream that are true based on one’s perspective. According to Cartesian thought, my senses all said that I was founded on the belief that I was pulling another cassette tape out of the wall, because that is what my mind saw. In reality though, my perspective was wrong because I was physically pulling on my professor’s neck – which was his perspective. My dream was not true belief because it was not true for both me and my professor. I was wrong because I was not pulling on a physical tape and my professor’s idea was right because his neck was being pulled.
Justification and Foundationalism
Traditional Analysis of Knowledge says that my beliefs are justified based on a foundation of evidence (Feldman, 2003). Even though I was pulling on a tape in my mind, I was actually pulling on the professor’s neck. My belief of pulling on the tape was not justified, therefore was not true. Even though physically, my belief was not true, based on Cartesian thought, I was justified because my senses said that what I was pulling was the tape and not something else. Cartesian thought is the basic belief that what one sees, feels, how one thinks, is justified and true (Feldman, 2003). Feldman (2003) shows that a problem with Cartesian thought is one’s mental state is not free from error. Consider for instance that the experiences of a schizophrenic. The experience is no less real to the mentally ill patient than it is for a sane person. Just because it is not reality, does it make it less real for the schizophrenic? Even though my dream was very real, subconsciously something was not right, because I woke up in the middle of pulling the tape and once I realized I was choking the life out of my professor, I stopped and went back to bed.

Coherentism Another reason that I may have woken from the dream could be based on Coherentism which states that one’s beliefs must conform to one’s experiences (Feldman, 2003). My basic belief system does not support murder and even though I thought that I was pulling on a tape, instinctively I knew I was pulling on my professor’s throat and because that was wrong, I woke up.
Introspection and Reasoning My introspection of the incident is interesting. There is no reason why I should have had the dream and physically acted it out. I have had only one other occasion when I was a boy that I ever did any sleep walking and it was after I had gone on a very long hike and was extremely tired. The fact that I was tired must have triggered the response to sleep walk, or physically act out the dream. As well, throughout the trip, the professor and I would often joke with each other by saying that we were going to kill each other, specifically over the walkman. Thinking back on it now, I could not say that to anyone without triggering red flags, but for over a month, the two of us would jokingly say, “I am going to kill you.” My professor really thought that I was acting it out that night, which only makes the situation more comical – more so for me than for the professor of course! My belief system does not in any way conform to the idea of murdering someone and for that reason, I did not fully follow through with choking my professor. The reasoning behind the dream was based on 1) always wanting to use the walkman throughout the trip, 2) always joking with the professor and he with me that we were going to kill each other, and 3) I was extremely tired from having poor sleep, moving everyone’s luggage to the bus, and then running with a 70 pound bag from one end of city-block train to the other.
Conclusion
Our experiences can be interpreted by many ways based on different types of epistemological theories. Even though my dream was very real to me while I was dreaming, it was no way real physically. In my perspective, I was pulling on a tape and to my professor’s perspective, which seemingly was more correct; I was trying to kill him. Our beliefs are only as true and correct as the foundation upon which they are founded. When I woke up from my dream there was no evidence that I was pulling on a tape – the evidence was my professor’s neck. In addition, from my professor’s perspective, he knew that I was basically a sane person and would never hurt another person intentionally and therefore laughed at the situation. In short, our beliefs and knowledge need to be founded on a true foundation. The fact that the cassettes never existed in my dream makes my dream unfounded and therefore, not true. There is no evidence that supports my dream state that I was pulling on a tape. The true foundation of this belief is the evidence that I was very tired, was upset at having to do more work than needed, and was perturbed at the professor. As such, I had a dream wherein my professor thought that I was trying to kill him. The understood reality though, is I was only trying to grab a new tape to listen to!

Reference
Feldman, R. (2003). Epistemology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.