Abstract
In Reason, Truth and History, Hilary Putnam considers the possibility that all conscious beings are brains in a vat, connected to a giant computer that just happens to stimulate and monitor the nerve firings of the brains in such a way that the brains' collective 'inner experience' just happens to match our own (see Putnam for details, pp. 5-7). Putnam, apparently, is willing to concede that there is such a possible world, but he attempts to prove that our world is not that world. In an analogous fashion, Putnam might allow that there is a possible world in which he does not exist, but argue that our world is not that world by raising the question 'do I exist?' and noting that since he can raise that question, he most certainly exists. As a first approximation, Putnam's Brains in a Vat argument goes something like this.
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