In Descartes' "Meditations on First Philosophy", he attempts to construct a system of Reality by identifying those things that one can know for sure, and then having established the "foundation", hopefully working outwards. One of his arguments (with himself) is how do you know that reality isn't just a dream. How do you know you're not dreaming right now?
Can we devise a simple test of determining dream from reality?
The Test of Feeling
My intuition tells me that one can tell dream from reality by some sort of feeling. It can't be defined exactly, but reality feels real and dreams are, well, dreamlike. Therein lies the root of this post, because I have run that test and run it repeatedly and never been correct.
I have, very occasionally, in the past, had a euphoric dream where something happens to me that is so good that it is almost literally unbelievable. And almost as often as this happens, my pessimism, even in the dream, will kick in and I will think to myself, "This is a little too good to be true, am I dreaming right now?" And so I do whatever one does to make this determination: I think, I consider, I look at the world around me, I try to determine whether I am currently awake. Looking deep down, examining my thoughts/mind to the deepest levels I can, I absolutely HAVE to conclude that I'm really awake. Every single time, it's been the same and I've always been wrong. As much as we might assume dreams feel differently, they don't in any way that I know of.
The Test of Waking
One test might be: you transition into reality by waking up but in dreams there is no waking up, therefore you can tell them apart. The problem with this is that I've had dreams where I've woken up within the dream. In fact, there was one time where I woke up from a dream, was still dreaming, and then woke up from that dream and was still dreaming. I was two levels deep and "woke up" three times before I was really awake.
The Test of Continuity
Another test might be that when you are in reality, you may remember your dream, but in your dream you won't remember reality. This is pretty similar to the Test of Waking - it amounts to having the transition in one but not the other. You might combine them both and say that since you are aware of your dream in reality and not aware of your awakened life in your dream, the awakened life is more real as much as the highest reality encompasses the lesser realities.
The problem with this test is people, like myself, who usually don't remember their dreams. If the test of reality is being aware of dreams, then you must conclude reality isn't real when you don't. This test is also defeated on the other side by the "dream within a dream" problem.
As a speculation, I've never tried to remember yesterday from within a dream, but I imagine this test would also fail in that if you tried to remember yesterday in a dream, your mind would come up with a false yesterday.
The Test of "Screens"
This is more an idea than any concrete test. Lots of people find that in their dreams, there are never "screens" - smartphones, laptops, computers, television. Or, when there are, they don't work properly. It's apparently very rare to properly look at a screen and see a correct visual image in a dream. I find this generally holds true for me, I've had dreams of screens but they usually are not working as I would like and I get frustrated.
I have had at least one experience where I've used a smartphone in a dream and everything worked fine, so this is not a perfect test. I suppose it at least is the best idea so far, as long as you judge by percentages.
The Test of Perfect Predictions
This final idea is the most tenuous of all and, for all I know, only applies to me. I find in dreams a strange phenomenon that whenever I come up with an idea or predict something, I am right 100% of the time (as far as I can remember).
Say for instance, I hear a low rumble coming from behind a hill. If I think "I wonder if that's a snowmobile", it will turn out to be a snowmobile. Or if I meet someone and theorize that they're a banker, if I find out what they do, they will turn out to be a banker. It seems to me that the mechanism of guessing and the mechanism of dreaming may be locked together in some fundamental way that doesn't allow differentiation.
So perhaps making a prediction and finding it to be wrong is proof that you're awake. Even if this were correct, it would be better to have a test for whether you're dreaming - I guess if you make a correct guess, you have to keep guessing. It's another probabilistic test.
The Test of Whatever They Do in Inception
No idea.
Conclusion
The weird thing about all of this conjecture is that there was one time I correctly realized within a dream that it was a dream. But it was only once and I don't know how it was done. I once had a dream when I was a kid that on the bureau next to my bed was a Bat Phone. I was a big fan of the 1960s Adam West Batman and I loved that red phone that lit up when someone was calling. In the dream, I had one and then I thought (again, the pessimism) "Wait a minute, do I really have a Bat phone? No, I don't. This must all be a dream." That was the only time in my life I can remember realizing a dream was a dream. I don't know how it happened and I think I woke up shortly after.
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