Vanilla Sky Skepticism

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The film Vanilla Sky presents an interesting scenario in which a subject, known as David Aames, is placed in a dream of his choosing in order to avoid the harsh realities of his life. However, as the dream becomes a nightmare, David begins to realize that there is something extremely wrong about the life he has been living. By showing this process of David questioning his reality, the film presents a philosophical idea known as skepticism. Skepticism is a philosophical idea that consists of questioning whether or not the world we live in is real or a dream. The film presents an interesting scenario in which skepticism can be analyzed. Through skepticism, the film Vanilla Sky presents the importance of knowing that a person is living a real…show more content…
A woman named Julie caused the accident when she drove David and herself off a bridge. The accident resulted in her death, but David survived and he was forced to live with his new injury. The accident happened on a night when he met a woman he really liked, who was named Sofia. Because of this, David chooses to have his dream begin as he forms a romantic relationship with Sofia. In the beginning of the dream, David has his face reconstructed, he is happy with Sofia, and he faces no threat from the men that he believes want to take over his company. However, this blissful state of his dream doesn't last. David begins to have a nightmare in which he begins to confuse Sofia and Julie's identities. He also becomes paranoid that his company board is trying to frame him for a crime, and he begins to question whether or not his face was ever reconstructed. This nightmare results in him fighting…show more content…
Descartes also presents a skeptic scenario during one of his meditations. Descartes creates a scenario where he questions if there is an all-powerful malicious demon tricking people and making them believe things that aren't true. This demon can deceive the natural senses to trick people into perceiving things that don't even really exist. This scenario is truly frightening because it implies that a person can't trust their very own senses. This scenario differs from the one in Vanilla Sky because in Vanilla Sky all of the aspects of David's dream/nightmare come from things he had seen in his life. Because of this, there is some truth that his dream is based on. The malicious demon case implies that every aspect of a subject's dream is false because the demon controls the dream. Therefore, in the malicious demon case, it would be impossible for a subject to realize they are in a dream. In the Vanilla Sky case, David realized he was dreaming by remembering what happened in his real life. Through this, David used skepticism to prove the world he was living in wasn't real. The malicious demon case is different because a subject could not be skeptic if they had no reality to compare their dream

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