Published paper in the journal Acta Analytica entitled “The Cogito, Dreamt Characters, and Unreal Existence”. It’s on self-knowledge and certainty in Descartes’ Meditations and Borges’ The Circular Ruins. Available open access here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12136-023-00543-6
Abstract:
Borges’ The Circular Ruins tells the story of a magician who turns out to be a character in a dream. Leibowitz (2021) argues that this scenario undermines the rational indubitability of Descartes’ Cogito. The magician, he argues, is an unreal appearance and therefore does not exist. I argue that Borges drew a distinction between reality and existence and that he was right to do so. There are various senses of reality and the sense in which a dreamt character is unreal poses no threat to their existence or to the indubitability of the Cogito. The magician is unreal because he is a mind-dependent, illusory and fake. Nonetheless, he can be certain that he thinks, therefore he is
