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 In reading Dennett I stumbled upon a particularly striking passage about sleep. He writes, “But why does sleep need a ‘clear biological function’ at all? It is being awake that needs an explanation…If we could get away with it, we’d ‘sleep’ our entire lives.” The more I thought about this comment the more I realized how much I disagreed with this statement. Now don’t get me wrong… I love my sleep as much as anyone else does but, having said this I would never want to sleep away my entire life. In fact, if I had it my way I wouldn’t sleep at all. The only reason I sleep is because I enjoy being awake and I can’t enjoy being awake if I am not fully rested. Unlike Dennett I do think that “being up and about, having adventures and completing projects, seeing our friends and learning about the world” is the whole point of life. I don’t think that the whole point of life is to sleep. I am different from a tree in that I don’t and wouldn’t want to spend my whole life sleeping.

An individual may be able to create a reality in their head when they dream but, it is not the same as experiencing reality. When I dream it does feel that what I am dreaming is real but, all I have to do is wake up to realize it was all just my imagination creating stories. Some may argue that we have no way of knowing that the world we live in now is a dream but, I beg to differ. Maybe I am only dreaming that I am typing on my computer right now and when I go to bed I will actually be experiencing reality but, it seems highly improbable. Without stepping on the heels of the film “The Matrix” too much, I like to believe that this world that I know is real and therefore the whole point of life is to experience this reality. I don’t think that being awake needs to be explained at all. Rather, I think anyone who wants to spend their entire life sleeping needs to do a little explaining. I am taking a rather strong stance here so if anyone in the class disagrees with me, I would love to here their story…