Brain In A Vat Research Articles

퍼트남의 통 속의 뇌 논증 비판 - 몇 가지 그림들 -

퍼트남의 통 속의 뇌 논증 비판 - 몇 가지 그림들 -

Machines: to Have or to Be?

When we think about “machines”, or “robots”, or “AI”, what comes to our minds is generally an extension of our common relationship with objects in our humane and mundane world: there is a clear distinction between the subject, “we”, and the object. Upon review of some of the most important literary trends of the last centuries, this article invites us to consider the prevalence of this classical ontological division, taking into consideration examples such as Frankenstein, the “brain in a vat” thought experiment, and the last advances towards the reality of “cyborg” beings. The question behind the article bring us to consider to what extent an absolute division between us and machines is still a thing in our days.

Why Dreaming Worlds aren’t Nearby Possible Worlds

Abstract A familiar anti-sceptical response (à la Sosa) to radical sceptical scenarios employs the safety of knowledge. Radical sceptical scenarios are purported to be too modally remote to really threaten knowledge of ordinary propositions. Why? Because knowledge requires safety, and safety requires the target belief to be true in all nearby possible worlds, but radical sceptical scenarios purportedly take place at distant possible worlds. Hence, the safety theorist claims that radical sceptical scenarios don’t challenge our knowledge of ordinary propositions. But it's alleged by Sosa and others that there's one radical sceptical scenario that can’t be dismissed so easily: the dream scenario. After all, unlike evil demons and brains in vats, ‘dreaming is a daily part of our lives…it is too close for comfort’. In this paper, I sketch an argument to the effect that there's good reason to think that the dream of dream scepticism describes a modally remote possibility, in which case I argue that if the safety-based anti-sceptical response is successful against the evil demon sceptical scenario, the brain in a vat sceptical scenario, and other Cartesian sceptical scenarios in this mould, then it's successful against the dream sceptical scenario as well.

Scepticism About Scepticism or the Very Idea of a Global ‘Vat-Language’

This paper aims to motivate a scepticism about scepticism in contemporary epistemology. I present the sceptic with a dilemma: On one parsing of the BIV (brain-in-a-vat) scenario, the second premise in a closure-based sceptical argument will turn out false, because the scenario is refutable; on another parsing, the scenario collapses into incoherence, because the sceptic cannot even save the appearances. I discuss three different ways of cashing out the BIV scenario: ‘Recent Envatment’ (RE), ‘Lifelong Envatment’ (LE) and ‘Nothing But Envatment’ (NBE). I show that RE scenarios are a kind of ‘local’ sceptical scenario that does not pose a significant threat to the possibility of perceptual knowledge as such. I then go on to consider the more radical (or global) LE and NBE scenarios, which do undermine the possibility of perceptual knowledge of an ‘external’ world by positing that it is conceivable that one has always been envatted and, hence, trapped in a ‘global’ illusion. I start by assuming that we could be in such a scenario (LE or NBE) and then spell out what we would need to presuppose for such scenarios to be capable of being actual. Drawing on some central insights from Wittgenstein’s anti-private language considerations, I show that the truth of a global scepticism would presuppose the possibility of a private ‘vat-language’, a notion that cannot be rendered coherent. But, if so, then neither can the sceptical scenarios that presuppose such a conception.

Sensitivity, Safety, and Brains in Vats

Sensitivity, Safety, and Brains in Vats

“Where, O Death, Is Your Sting?”: The Resurrected Body, Its Cyborgnetic Future and the Advent of Christian Transhumanism

The 21st century’s robotic revolution will have massive effects on human societies. Neuroscientists have experimented with the idea of preserving the brain after death through vitrifixation in the hopes of uploading the minds of individuals into the cloud or cyborgnetic bodies. However, the likelihood of duplicating the 86 billion neurons in the human connectome is remote. Yet neuroscientists have had some success in connecting brain cells to robots, which echoes the philosophical question of “Brains in a Vat.” This article addresses the consequences of such a development for Christianity. Since Christianity is predicated on resurrection and life everlasting, the transhumanist vision of connecting the human brain to cyborgnetic bodies, particularly if it becomes popular, poses a serious challenge. This article suggests a way in which Christianity may be able to incorporate that vision into Christian theology, leading to the advent of Christian transhumanism.

Mundane hallucinations and new wave relationalism

AbstractRelationalism maintains that mind‐independent objects are essential constituents of veridical perceptual experiences. According to the argument from hallucination, relationalism is undermined by perfect hallucinations, experiences that are introspectively indistinguishable from veridical perceptual experiences but lack an object. Recently, a new wave of relationalists have responded by questioning whether perfect hallucinations are possible: what seem to be perfect hallucinations may really be something else, such as illusions, veridical experiences of non‐obvious objects, or experiences that are not genuinely possible. This paper argues that however well new wave relationalism may handle brains in vats, drug users “seeing” pink elephants, and other extraordinary hallucinations, it struggles to accommodate mundane hallucinations, such as “hearing” your child cry out from the room down the hall when she is actually sound asleep or “feeling” vibrations on your thigh even when your phone isn't in your pocket. Mundane hallucinations are best explained as byproducts of noise in the perceptual system, and noise‐induced hallucinations are resistant to the strategies that new wave relationalists deploy to explain away other hallucinations. Mundane hallucinations can thus underpin an especially powerful version of the argument from hallucination.

Putnam se gebrekkige modellering van sy brein-in-'n-houer-denkeksperiment

Hilary Putnam gebruik die "brein-in-'n-houer"-denkeksperiment om die voorwaardes van verwysing (referensie) deur middel van taal te ondersoek. Hy bou 'n moontlike wêreld vir sy brein-in-'n-houer (BIH) om te demonstreer dat sulke breine nooit self deur middel van taal sal kan aandui dat hulle breine-in-'n-houer is nie. Die rede hiervoor is dat die taal van so 'n brein nooit die vermoë om te verwys ontwikkel nie, omrede die taal van die brein-in-'n-houer nooit kontak maak met 'n buitetalige werklikheid nie. Putnam maak die teoretiese aanname dat die menslike verstand geen toegang het tot 'n buitetalige werklikheid nie, buiten die toegang wat ons sintuie verskaf. Ek redeneer dat Putnam foutiewelik die buitetalige werklikheid gelykstel aan dit waartoe ons tradisionele vyf sintuie ons toegang gee. As hierdie stelling korrek is, dan is Putnam se modellering van die menslike verstand/brein onakkuraat, aangesien hy nalaat om kerneienskappe van die funksionering van die menslike brein in te sluit in sy brein-in-'n-houer-denkeksperiment. Hierdie bevinding impliseer dat mense, korrek gemodelleer, baie sterker kwaliteite besit as wat Putnam in sy BIH-denkeksperiment ten toon stel.

The Impoverished Representations of Brains in Vats

Abstract In this article, the notion that brains in vats with perceptual experiences of the same type as ours could perceptually represent other entities than shapes is challenged. Whereas it is often held that perceptual experiences with the same phenomenal character as ours could represent computational properties, the present author argues that this is not the case for shapes. His argument is in brief that the phenomenal character of a normal visual experience exemplifies shapes – phenomenal shapes – which functions as the vehicle for our perceptual representation of shapes. Due to the unique mereological structure of shapes, phenomenal shapes are unable to reliably track any property but shapes. In so far as reliable tracking is a necessary condition for perceptual representation, phenomenal shapes can consequently and contrary to received wisdom only represent shapes.

We Don't Know We Have Hands and it's Fine

Based on the brain in a vat thought experiment, skeptics argue that we cannot have certain knowledge. At the same time, we do have the intuition that we know some things with certainty. A way to justify this intuition is given by semantic contextualists who argue that the word “knows” is context sensitive. However, many have objected to the intelligibility of this claim. In response, another approach called “moderate pragmatic contextualism” was invoked, which claims that “knows” itself is not context sensitive, but knowledge assertions are. I show, however, that to refute skepticism, moderate pragmatic contextualism rests on unjustified and implausible assumptions as well. Since no form of contextualism works as a response to skepticism, I argue that we should simply accept skepticism. However, I argue that skepticism is not a problem because skeptic pragmatic contextualism can offer a plausible explanation of why we have the intuition that our ordinary knowledge claims are true, even though they are not. I conclude that skeptic pragmatic contextualism offers the most plausible response to the brain in a vat thought experiment.

Précis of The Appearance of Ignorance: Knowledge, Skepticism, and Context, Vol. 2

The Appearance of Ignorance develops and champions contextualist solutions to the puzzles of skeptical hypotheses and of lotteries. It is argued that, at least by ordinary standards for knowledge, we do know that skeptical hypotheses are false, and that we’ve lost the lottery. Accounting for how it is that we know that skeptical hypotheses are false and why it seems that we don’t know that they’re false tells us a lot, both about what knowledge is and how knowledge attributions work. Along the way, the following are all explained and defended: Moorean methodological approaches to skepticism, on which one seeks to defeat, rather than refute, the skeptic; contextualist responses to skepticism; contextualist substantive Mooreanism; the basic safety approach to knowledge and the double-safety picture of what knowledge is; insensitivity accounts of various appearances of ignorance; the closure principle for knowledge; and the claim that our knowledge that we are not brains in vats is a priori, despite its being knowledge of a deeply contingent fact.

Is Putnam's 'brain in a VAT' hypothesis self-refuting?

Is Putnam's 'brain in a VAT' hypothesis self-refuting?

Brains in a VAT and memory: How (not) to respond to Putnam's argument

Putnam's argument that we are not brains in a VAT has recently seen a resurgence in interest. Although objections to it are legion, an emerging consensus seems to be that even if it successfully refutes one version of the brain in a VAT scenario, lifelong envatment, it is powerless against a different one, recent envatment. Although initially appealing, I argue in this paper that this response-merely replacing lifelong envatment by recent envatment-is a bad response to Putnam's argument. Yet there is a different version of the brain in a VAT scenario, recent memory-altering envatment, that Putnam's argument does not refute and is also sufficiently radical. The crucial issue turns out to be which epistemic sources sceptical scenarios may attack. I argue that there's no convincing reason for exempting memory from the sceptical attack: Sceptical scenarios must target memory to be sufficiently radical and they can do so without violating any constraint on sceptical scenarios. In the end Putnam's argument doesn't fail because of some 'deep' philosophical mistake, but because it overlooks how flexible and adjustable sceptical scenarios are.

We Don’t Know We Have Hands and It’s Fine

Based on the brain in a vat thought experiment, skeptics argue that we cannot have certain knowledge. At the same time, we do have the intuition that we know some things with certainty. A way to justify this intuition is given by semantic contextualists who argue that the word “knows” is context sensitive. However, many have objected to the intelligibility of this claim. In response, another approach called “moderate pragmatic contextualism” was invoked, which claims that “knows” itself is not context sensitive, but knowledge assertions are. I show, however, that to refute skepticism, moderate pragmatic contextualism rests on unjustified and implausible assumptions as well. Since no form of contextualism works as a response to skepticism, I argue that we should simply accept skepticism. However, I argue that skepticism is not a problem because skeptic pragmatic contextualism can offer a plausible explanation of why we have the intuition that our ordinary knowledge claims are true, even though they are not. I conclude that skeptic pragmatic contextualism offers the most plausible response to the brain in a vat thought experiment.

The advantages of neomoorean antiskeptical strategy

This paper aims to argue in support of the neo-Moorean attempt(s) to solve a skeptical paradox. It defends the thesis that neo-Mooreans retain advantages and avoid disadvantages of rival anti-skeptical strategies - namely epistemic contextualism. The puzzle that a radical skeptic poses is exemplified by Nozick?s famous Brain in a Vat thought experiment, which enables construing valid arguments consisting of jointly inconsistent but independently plausible premises. The first and the second part of the paper are devoted to Nozick?s conditional analysis of knowledge and De Rose?s epistemic contextualism, both based on the sensitivity principle. Referring to De Roses? contextualist theory, we demonstrate that the failure of Nozick?s conditional analysis of knowledge to provide a satisfactory answer to a skeptical paradox does not concern the sensitivity principle but rather closure denial and embracing the so-called ?abominable conjunction?. In the third part, we point out the weaknesses of the presumably most successful, contextualist response to the paradox. We explain that even though DeRose?s anti-skeptical strategy is built upon Nozick?s theory, he successfully surmounts its difficulties. Yet it seems that as a contextualist, he necessarily makes some concessions to a radical skeptic. Eventually, the article introduces Black?s neo-Moorean anti-skeptical theory based on the sensitivity principle as a strategy that makes neither concessions, nor counterintuitive proposals.

The Brain in a Vat, edited by Sanford C. Goldberg

The Brain in a Vat, edited by Sanford C. Goldberg

There are Actual Brains in Vats Now

There are brains in vats (BIVs) in the actual world. These “cerebral organoids” are roughly comparable to the brains of three-month-old foetuses, and conscious cerebral organoids seem only a matter of time. Philosophical interest in conscious cerebral organoids has thus far been limited to bioethics, and the purpose of this paper is to discuss cerebral organoids in an epistemological context. In doing so, I will argue that it is now clear that there are close possible worlds in which we are BIVs. Not only does this solidify our intuitive judgement that we cannot know that we are not BIVs, but it poses a fundamental problem for both the neo-Moorean (i.e. safety-based) antisceptical strategy, which purports to allow us to know that we aren’t BIVs, and the safety condition on knowledge itself. Accordingly, this case is especially instructive in illustrating just how epistemologically relevant empirical developments can be.

Study of ‘Brain in Vat’ or ‘Brain in Fluid’? Scenario in Nayomi Munaweera’s What Lies Between Us, A Different Perspective

Study of ‘Brain in Vat’ or ‘Brain in Fluid’? Scenario in Nayomi Munaweera’s What Lies Between Us, A Different Perspective

Mózgi w naczyniu

Although there is a disagreement about how Putnam’s argument should be understood, it is possible to point to several elements of this argument which are common for many different reconstructions. In this paper I have tried to show that not all of them are unquestionable. And I want to propose a new way in which self-refutation of statement „I am a brain in a vat” may be understood. A form of this reconstruction is neutral for controversy about metaphysical realism or skepticism – it differs from the argument suggested by Putnam’s text. But I think that a story about envatted brains is simply a story about a language.

Calling the Skeptic’s Bluff: Brains, Vats, and Irrelevance

Dogmatists often exploit the skeptical argument based on the brains-in-a-vat (BIV) scenario as a test case for their epistemological enterprises. I argue that this ‘argument’ does not deserve our attention, so it should not be used as a test case. I first show that the possibilities of empirical knowledge and of skeptical scenarios are inconsistent (the Inconsistency Thesis). If so, the BIV-skeptic must make the case for preferring such scenarios over the possibility of empirical knowledge. The central argument of my paper is that the BIV-skeptic can neither rely on any selection principle (e.g. conceivability) for this purpose, nor can she claim that she needs no such principle. Then I will show that we can even dispense with the Inconsistency Thesis: if the skeptic wishes, she may allow for the possibility of empirical knowledge. The essay concludes with considering the morals of the above argument for the dogmatist (or simply, epistemological) endeavor.