Argument
Brain in a vat
Overview
In philosophy, the brain in a vat (BIV) is a scenario used in a variety of thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of human conceptions of knowledge, reality, truth, mind, consciousness, and meaning. Gilbert Harman conceived the scenario, which Hilary Putnam turned into a modernized version of René Descartes's evil demon thought experiment. Following many science fiction stories, the scenario involves a mad scientist who removes a person's brain from its host body, suspends it in a vat of life-sustaining liquid, and connects its neurons by wires to a supercomputer that provides it with electrical impulses identical to those a brain normally receives. According to such stories, the computer would then be simulating reality (including appropriate responses to the brain's own output) and the "disembodied" brain would continue to have perfectly normal conscious experiences, like those of a person with an embodied brain, without these being related to objects or events in the real world. According to Putnam, the thought of "being a brain-in-a-vat" is either false or meaningless.
Considered a cornerstone of semantic externalism, the argument produced significant literature, and works such as The Matrix franchise are considered inspired by Putnam's argument.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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II. How we likewise know that the human body is closely connected with the mind. We ought also to conclude that a certain body is more closely united to our mind than any other, because we clearly observe that pain and other sensations affect us without our foreseeing them; and these, the mind is conscious, do not arise from itself alone, nor pertain to it, in so far as it is a thing which thinks, but only in so far…
René Descartes, Selections from the Principles of Philosophy
States what Brain in a vat is; the author is tied to Brain in a vat in the knowledge graph.
And of these Thoughts some are called _Wills_ and _Affections_, and Others of them _Judgments_. Now as touching _Ideas_, if they be Consider’d alone as they are in themselves, without _Respect_ to any other Things, they cannot Properly be _false_; for Whether I _Imagine_ a Goat or a Chimera, ’tis as _Certain_ that I _Imagine_ one as t’other. Also in the _Will_ and _Affections_ I need not Fear any _Falshood_, For tho…
René Descartes, Six metaphysical meditations
States what Brain in a vat is; the author is tied to Brain in a vat in the knowledge graph.
Again, the imaginative power is called by this name--imagination--if the conjecturing (or surmising) power alone use it: and if the speaking (rational) power use it, it is called the thinking (cogitative) power. The heart is the source (spring) of all these powers (faculties), in Aristotle’s opinion; yet the sway over them is in different organs (instruments). Thus the sway over the outward (apparent) senses is in…
Avicenna, A Compendium on the Soul
States what Brain in a vat is.
Philosophers who discussed Brain in a vat
Related ideas
- Cognition
- Argument
- Hinduism
- Philosophy
- Word
- Action potential
- Zhuang Zhou
- Twin Earth thought experiment
- Gilbert Harman
- Metaphysics
- Mind
- Zhuangzi (book)
- Philosophical skepticism
- Knowledge
- Perception
- Denotation
- René Descartes
- Externalism
- Semantic externalism
- Truth
- Crispin Wright
- Embodied cognition
- Meditations on First Philosophy
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Place in the tradition
Part of American philosophy.