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My TSA essay (Come in, read and comment!)

I exited the exam hall early as I've finished my essay and got a good feeling about it (still do now). I wrote it in a simple, easily digestible manner with a heavy dose of wit, but also concise with my points and got deeper with every point. But I want to know what you guys, fellow TSA takers or not, think. I answered the philosophical question "Can you ever tell whether you're dreaming or not?"

Can't exactly remember what I wrote, but I remember I wrote the definition of the act of dreaming as "experiencing a supernatural world that is outside the realms of reality". I then moved on to say that in order to know whether I'm dreaming or not, I would have to do some physical and philosophical checks.

The first one would be the simple "psychological" physical checks. It is deemed that in a dream, words morph and jump around and the number of fingers on your hand are not always constant. With this argument forward, I closed it with "seeing that I can clearly see five fingers on my left hand pressing against this sheet, and still able to write this essay without words jumping around (yet) I can conclude that I'm not dreaming."

The next check is a check of self-awareness and existence of some form of decision-making. Because in dreams, you're seeing a five-sensical movie, of which your course of action is linear. I ended this one with "seeing that I'm thinking of what to write next on this sheet and which restaurant to dine at for dinner, I suppose conclusively that I'm not dreaming."

I provided a counter-argument for my third point. Basically I said there could be external influences acting upon our "real" selves that affects our decisions in this realm. For example, there could be a pen placed between my fingers that's making me write this essay here. "Hence", I ended, "There could be external factors making me write this essay and you reading it."

For the conclusion, I brought everything home. Mentioned that while I passed the checks, I could still very well be in a dreaming state where everything happening around me is influenced by the "outside" world. I ended this very cheekily (I think) with "However, I will know whether I'm dreaming or not when I get that Oxford offer."

So tell me what you guys think! Do you think I can be seriously considered with this essay? For reference, I'm applying for PPE at Balliol College, and predicted A*AA in Maths, economics and History.
Your essay doesn't matter much, your application will depend upon the MCQ part.
Your essay looks to be quite thoughtfully constructed and that is probably what matters, not whether you are 'right' or not.
With that said you can't conclude whether you're dreaming or not from the arguments you've made. How do you know that everything around you, isn't just a figment of your imagination, and that the Universe is just something you made up?
(edited 9 years ago)

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