Brain In A Vat Research Articles

Los propósitos de razonar, ilustrados con el argumento externista anti-escéptico de Putnam

Desarrollo varias hipótesis sobre los propósitos de la argumentación racional, parcialmente inspiradas en el análisis de Jackson sobre el concepto de petitio principii. Destaco como especialmente relevante entre tales propósitos la referencia a los potenciales destinatarios de una argumentación. Ilustro la discusión con un caso concreto: el argumento elaborado por Putnam para demostrar que no somos cerebros en una cubeta. Presento una versión de ese argumento y lo defiendo frente a una posible crítica (inspirada por una objeción de Falvey y Owens contra un argumento muy similar) que lo acusa de prejuzgar la cuestión.

Putting the Brain at the Heart of General Education in theTwenty-First Century: A Proposal

A general education course is presented that would consider Western intellectualhistory from the brain’s point of view. Although the sciences of thebrain have developed rapidly only in recent decades, the figure of the brainas humanity’s uniquely distinguishing organ has loomed large for centuries.The course, which is designed for a ten-week term and includes both booksand films, is organized around signature contexts in which the brain has takencentre stage, such as ‘the mind of God’, ‘world brain’, ‘brainwashing’and ‘brain in a vat’. The course description is accompanied bya justification that draws attention to the perennial and pervasive humandesire to fixate on the brain, often as a means to transcend our default biologicalsettings.

Brain in a Vat or Body in a World? Brainbound versus Enactive Views of Experience

We argue that the minimal biological requirements for consciousness include a living body, not just neuronal processes in the skull. Our argument proceeds by reconsidering the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment. Careful examination of this thought experiment indicates that the null hypothesis is that any adequately functional “vat” would be a surrogate body, that is, that the so-called vat would be no vat at all, but rather an embodied agent in the world. Thus, what the thought experiment actually shows is that the brain and body are so deeply entangled, structurally and dynamically, that they are explanatorily inseparable. Such entanglement implies that we cannot understand consciousness by considering only the activity of neurons apart from the body, and hence we have good explanatory grounds for supposing that the minimal realizing system for consciousness includes the body and not just the brain. In this way, we put the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment to a new use, one that supports the “enactive” view that consciousness is a life-regulation process of the whole organism interacting with its environment.

Could a Brain in a Vat Self‐Refer?

Abstract:Radical sceptical possibilities challenge the anti‐realist view that truth consists in ideal rational acceptability. Putnam, as part of his defence of an anti‐realist view, subjected the case of the brain in a vat to a semantic externalist treatment, which aimed to maintain the desired connection between truth and ideal rational acceptability. It is argued here that self‐consciousness poses special problems for this externalist strategy. It is shown how, on a standard model of first‐person reference, Putnam's brain in a vat will be mistaken in its rational self‐ascription of externalist predicates. The natural response, which employs an alternative model of first‐person reference, is shown to have the equally realist consequence that there are enquiry‐transcendent truths about the self.

Fallibilism, Contextualism and Second-Order Skepticism

Fallibilism is ubiquitous in contemporary epistemology. I argue that a paradox about knowledge, generated by considerations of truth, shows that fallibilism can only deliver knowledge in lucky circumstances. Specifically, since it is possible that we are brains-in-vats (BIVs), it is possible that all our beliefs are wrong. Thus, the fallibilist can know neither whether or not we have much knowledge about the world nor whether or not we know any specific proposition, and so the warrant of our knowledge-claims is much reduced and second-order skepticism is generated. Since this is the case in both skeptical and everyday contexts, contextualism cannot resolve the paradox. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

An old problem for the new rationalism

A well known skeptical paradox rests on the claim that we lack warrant to believe that we are not brains in a vat (BIVs). The argument for that claim is the apparent impossibility of any evidence or argument that we are not BIVs. Many contemporary philosophers resist this argument by insisting that we have a sort of warrant for believing that we are not BIVs that does not require having any evidence or argument. I call this view ‘New Rationalism’. I argue that New Rationalists are committed to there being some evidence or argument for believing that we are not BIVs anyway. Therefore, New Rationalism, since its appeal is that it purportedly avoids the problematic commitment to such evidence or argument, undermines its own appeal. We cannot avoid the difficult work of coming up with evidence or argument by positing some permissive sort of warrant.

Reliabilism and Brains in Vats

According to epistemic internalism, the only facts that determine the justificational status of a belief are facts about the subject’s own mental states, like beliefs and experiences. Externalists instead hold that certain external facts, such as facts about the world or the reliability of a belief-producing mechanism, affect a belief’s justificational status. Some internalists argue that considerations about evil demon victims and brains in vats provide excellent reason to reject externalism: because these subjects are placed in epistemically unfavorable settings, externalism seems unable to account for the strong intuition that these subjects’ beliefs are nonetheless justified. I think these considerations do not at all help the internalist cause. I argue that by appealing to the anti-individualistic nature of perception, it can be shown that skeptical scenarios provide no reason to prefer internalism to externalism.

How to take skepticism seriously

Modern-day heirs of the Cartesian revolution have been fascinated by the thought that one could utilize certain hypotheses that one is dreaming, deceived by an evil demon, or a brain in a vat to argue at one fell swoop that one does not know, is not justified in believing, or ought not believe most if not all of what one currently believes about the world. A good part of the interest and mystique of these discussions arises from the contention that the seeds of such arguments lie in our ordinary epistemic practices, so that external world skepticism can arise "from within". But is this contention correct? I doubt it.

Cyborg brain in Robert Lepage's Possible Worlds

According to Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline, the two scientists who coined the term ‘cyborg’, artefact-organism systems could extend human unconscious, with self-regulatory controls being only one possibility. Their research was not only concerned with improving humans’ physiological and psychological performance through drugs and body prostheses, but also through their imagination. If these scientists were more interested in altering astronauts’ spirits for outer space explorations, the brain in a vat in Possible Worlds (Robert Lepage, 2001) suggests the possibility via a brain connected to a computer of exploring alternative inner worlds and split subjectivities produced by parallel states of consciousness. The concepts of the brain in a vat and possible worlds have already been examined separately in film studies, but the combination of the two has received less consideration. This essay examines how the nested worlds suggested by the envatted brain and the multiplication of possible worlds in this film may function as metaphors for ideologically saturated subjectivities in a computational world. Through reflexive strategies, this film encourages viewers to use their imagination and curiosity to increase their awareness about the network of information they are part of, and the fast-paced, changing world that surrounds them in an era of globalization and bioengineering revolutions.

The Abductivist Reply to Skepticism

Abductivists claim that explanatory considerations (e.g., simplicity, parsimony, explanatory breadth, etc.) favor belief in the external world over skeptical hypotheses involving evil demons and brains in vats. After showing how most versions of abductivism succumb fairly easily to obvious and fatal objections, I explain how rationalist versions of abductivism can avoid these difficulties. I then discuss the most pressing challenges facing abductivist appeals to the a priori and offer suggestions on how to overcome them.

How I Know I'm Not a Brain in a Vat

[...] imagine that a human being (you can imagine this to be yourself) has been subjected to an operation by an evil scientist. The person’s brain (your brain) has been removed from the body and placed in a vat of nutrients which keeps the brain alive. The nerve endings have been connected to a super-scientific computer which causes the person whose brain it is to have the illusion that everything is perfectly normal. There seem to be people, objects, the sky, etc; but really all the person (you) is experiencing is the result of electronic impulses travelling from the computer to the nerve endings.

A Butterfly Dream in a Brain in a Vat

Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream story can be read as a skeptical response to the Cartesian Cogito, ergo sum solution, for it presents I exist as fundamentally unprovable, on the grounds that the notion about “I” that it is guaranteed to refer to something existing, which Descartes seems to assume, is unwarranted. The modern anti-skepticism of Hilary Putnam employs a different strategy, which seeks to derive the existence of the world not from some “indubitable” truth such as the existence of myself, but from the meaning of some particular assertion I make. In this paper, I argue, however, that Putnam’s argument fails to deliver on the promise of showing the self-refuting nature of the skeptical hypothesis, as it relies on a double use of “I”, a fallacy of equivocation, reflecting an unsolved tension between the argument’s general premise, which is rather Zhuangzian in spirit, and his unwitting adoption of that unwarranted notion about “I”. I try to show further that the skepticism in Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream not only can be used to refute the proofs of the existence of the empirical I, but also is effective against accounts concerning the existence of the transcendental I.

An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge. By Dan O'Brien

An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge. By Dan O'Brien

A refutation of global scepticism

Various possibilities, that one is dreaming, that one is being deceived by a deceitful demon, that one is a brain in the vat being stimulated to think one has a body and is in a regular world, have been invoked to show that all one's experience-based beliefs might be false. Descartes in Meditation I advises that in order not to lapse into his careless everyday view of things he, or at least his meditator, should pretend that all his experience-based beliefs, indeed all his ‘habitual opinions’, are ‘utterly false and imaginary’. What is taken for granted by Descartes’ pretence, and is allegedly demonstrated by the sceptical scenarios mentioned above, is that it is logically possible that all one's experience-based beliefs are false.1 But for a typical agent this is simply not possible. To give a mundane example: on the basis of my sensory experience I believe the following two claims:

What's wrong with possibilism

Now it is not possible that both these claims are false. The negations of (1) and (2) are jointly inconsistent. So, necessarily, at least one of (1) and (2) is true. So, it is not possible that all my experience-based beliefs are false. So, contra the widely accepted view, the possibilities that one is dreaming, or is being deceived by a deceitful demon, or is a brain in the vat, do not show that it is possible that all one's experience-based beliefs are false.2 Q.E.D.

Virtue and Continence

John McDowell argued that the virtuous person (VP) knows no temptation: her perception of a situation silences all competing motivations - be it fear in the face of danger or a strong desire. The VP cannot recognize any reason to act non-virtuously as a reason, and is never inclined to act non-virtuously. This view rests on the requirement that the VP rationally respond, and not merely react, to the environment - it rests on the requirement that the relation between the VP and the world (ethical requirements) must rule out the possibility that the VP is a brain in a vat. I will argue that the opposite is true: virtue requires a sensitivity to temptation. The VP, as such, must be able to recognize reasons for performing non-virtuous actions as reasons, and be inclined to perform them. She must find nothing human alien. This is so because the VP must possess the ability to understand non- virtuous agents, and understanding necessarily involves vulnerability to temptation. Otherwise, it will be argued, the VP views the actions of others as determined from outside the space of reasons. But the VP, like any other person, must have the ability to view the actions of others as rational responses to the environment, not only as reactions to it. Put differently, the VP's view of others must rule out the possibility that they are brains in a vat - the possibility that their actions are merely caused, rather than justified, by the facts. Finally, it will be suggested that an amended conception of the VP can meet both requirements: view others as rationally responsive to the world, without relinquishing its relation to the facts.

PHYSICAL SCALE EFFECTS AND PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS

Abstract: The scales across which physical properties exist are vast and subtle in their effects on particular systems placed locally on such scales. For example, human experiential access is restricted only to partial segments of the mass density, size, and temperature scales of the universe. I argue that philosophers must learn to appreciate better the effects of physical scales. Specifically, thought experiments in philosophy should be more sensitive to physical scale effects, because the conclusion of a thought experiment may be undermined by unintentionally ignored scale effects, and the changes required to obtain the foreground state of affairs in a thought experiment might require unacknowledged scale-spanning changes to the contextual background. I discuss four philosophical thought experiments: Putnam's Twin Earth and Brain in a Vat, Searle's Chinese Room, and Chalmers's Zombies Without Qualia. I close by briefly defending the greater interest and importance of physical possibility over logical possibility.

Brain in the Vat

Brain in the Vat

External World Skepticism

AbstractRecent literature in epistemology has focused on the following argument for skepticism (SA): I know that I have two hands only if I know that I am not a handless brain in a vat. But I don't know I am not a handless brain in a vat. Therefore, I don't know that I have two hands. Part I of this article reviews two responses to skepticism that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s: sensitivity theories and attributor contextualism. Part II considers the more recent ‘neo‐Moorean’ response to skepticism and its development in ‘safety’ theories of knowledge. Part III argues that the skeptical argument set out in SA is not of central importance. Specifically, SA is parasitic on skeptical reasoning that is more powerful and more fundamental than that displayed by SA itself. Finally, Part IV reviews a Pyrrhonian argument for skepticism that is not well captured by SA, and considers a promising strategy for responding to it.

HOW IS DESCARTES' ARGUMENT AGAINST SCEPTICISM BETTER THAN PUTNAM'S?

‘If a person can think of an F, then that person has come into causal contact with an F in the right way’ is a premise in an obvious reconstruction of Putnam's argument that we are not brains in vats. ‘If a person can think of an F, then that person has come into causal contact with an F or with something at least as good as an F’ is the only controversial premise in Descartes' argument for the existence of God. Putnam's principle entails Descartes', which suggests that we should enquire after better versions of Putnam's proof. I present three variations and conclude that Putnam's semantic theory does not have anti‐sceptical consequences. In contrast, given Descartes' cognitive situation, he was perfectly justified in accepting the soundness of his argument for the existence of God.