Brain-in-a-VAT Theory
Brain in a Vat
“Brain in a jar” or the isolated brain
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. This is an updated version of Rene Descartes “Evil Demon” thought experiment originated by Gilbert Harman. If youre new to this podcast then I recommend listening to the episode about consciousness and self-identity to get another perspective of Rene Descartes’s philosophies regarding identity and the naturalization of the soul.
This philosophical thought-piece is common in science fiction stories as it outlines a scenario in which a mad scientist, machine, or other entity might remove a person’s brain from the body, suspend it in a vat or life-sustaining liquid, and connect its neurons by wires to a supercomputer which would provide it with electrical impulses identical to those the brain normally receives. If we were to classify this mad scientist as a god or higher entity, perhaps Extraterrestrial beings or beings in a higher dimension of reality. If this is so, I theorize that this allows the controller to observe all scenarios for a decision we make in a realities timeline which then branches off into billions if not trillions of possible outcomes, thus rendering each outcome a possible choice for the entity to follow in order to complete their experiment.
In some stories, the super computer would then be simulating reality (and appropriate responses to the brain’s own output) and the ‘disembodied” brain would continue to have perfectly normal conscious experiences, such as those of a person with an embodied brain, without these being related to objects or events in the real world.
In a book titled “Critiques of Content Externalism” there lies an excerpt by Terence Horgan, John Tension, and George Graham entitled “Phenomenal Intentionality and the Brain in a Vat”
The authors collectively comment in Descartes philosophy in the First Meditation envisioned the possibility that he was the victim of an enormously powerful, enormously clever deceiver, that his experiences were radically nonveridical, and that his were massively false. Versions of this scenario have figure centrally in epistemology especially in discussion of radical cartesian skepticism. Like I stated before this scenario has been posed in a high-tech guise: as some variant of the “brain in a vat” scenario.
Arguments Against the VAT
One of the ways some modern philosophers have tried to refute global skepticism is by showing that the brain in a vat scenario is not possible. In his Reason. Truth and History (published in 1981), Hilary Putnam first presented the argument that we cannot be brains in a vat, which has since given rise to a large discussion with repercussions for the realism debate and for central theses in the philosophy of language and mind.
The brain in a Vat scenario is just an illustration of this kind of global skepticism: it depicts a situation where all our beliefs about the world would presumably be false, even though they are well justified. Thus if one can prove that we cannot be brains in a vat, by modus tollens one can prove that metaphysical realism is false. Or, to put it in more schematic form:
1. If metaphysical realism is true, then global skepticism is possible
2. If global skepticism is possible, then we can be brains in a vat
3. But we cannot be brains in a vat
4. Thus, metaphysical realism is false (1, 2, 3)
Brains in a Vat and Self-Knowledge
Ted Warfield (1995) has sought to provide an argument that we are not brains in a vat based on considerations of self-knowledge. This self-awareness seldom considers sentient beings and other forms of life. These arguments can also erase the philosophies of BIPOC (Black and Indigenous People of Color)’s philosophies that observe animals as self-aware, as some believe sentient beings have souls and are just as relevant in any argument for or against knowledge and personality. The simplified arguments against the desired metaphysical conclusion are as following:
1. I think that water is wet (again humans and animals can feel the splashy wetness of water like cmon dude that’s one of the 9 senses so ??)
2. No Brain in a vat can think that water is wet
3. Thus, I am not a brain in a vat
Alright, here we go:
Quick definitions to go over as we continue this conversation about these thesis:
• Empirical meanings derived from or guided by experience or experiment.
• A priori and A posteriori (Latin for ‘from the earlier’ and ‘from the later’) are terms used in philosophy to identify two types of knowledge, justification, or argument, characterized by the use of empirical evidence found in experience or the lack thereof.
•
Premise (1) is said to follow from the thesis of privileged access, which holds that we can at least know the contents of our own occurring thoughts without empirical investigation of our environment or behavior. Warfield’s strategy is to present each premise as non-question begging against the global skeptic, in which case at no point can we appeal to the external environment as justification. Since the thesis of privileged access is said to be known a priori whether we are brains in a vat or not, premise 1 can be known non-empirically.
Premise 2
A little trickier to establish non-empirically. The main argument for it is by analogy with other arguments in the literature that have been used to establish content externalism. The main strategy is derived from Putnam’s twin earth argument (1975): imagine a world that is indistinguishable from Earth except for one detail: the odorless, drinkable liquid that flows in the rivers and oceans is composed of the chemicals XYZ and not H20. If we take Oscar on Earth and his twin on Twin-earth, Putnam argues that they would refer to two different substances and hence mean two different things: when Oscar says “pass me some water” he refers to H20 and means water, but when Twin-Oscar says “pass me some water” he refers to XYZ and thus means twin-water. As Burge and others have pointed out, if the meaning of their words are different, then the concepts that compose their beliefs should differ as well, in which case Oscar would believe that water is wet whereas Twin-Oscar would believe that twin-water is wet. While Putnam’s original slogan was “meanings just ain’t in the head,” the argument can be extended to beliefs as well: “beliefs just ain’t in the head,” but depend crucially on the layout of one’s environment.
If we accept content externalism, then the motivation for (2) is as follows. In order for someone’s belief to be about water, there must be water in that person’s environment: externalism rejects the Cartesian idea that one can simply read off one’s belief internally (if so then we would have to say that Oscar and his twin have the same beliefs since they are internally the same). So it doesn’t seem possible that a BIV could ever come to hold a belief about water (unless of course he picked up the term from the mad-scientist or someone outside the vat, but here we must assume again Putnam’s scenario that there is no mad-scientist or anyone else he could have borrowed the term from). As Warfield puts it, premise (2) is a conceptual truth, established on the basis of Twin-earth style arguments, a matter of “armchair” a priori reflection and thus able to be established non-empirically.
The problem with establishing (2) non-empirically though is that the externalist arguments succeed only on the assumption that our own use of “water” refers to a substantial kind, and this seems to be a matter of empirical investigation. Imagine a world where “water” does not refer to any liquid substance but is rather a complex hallucination that never gets discovered. On this “Dry Earth,” “water” would not refer to a substantial kind but rather a superficial kind. The analogy to the BIV case is clear: since it is not an a priori truth that “water” refers to a substantial kind in the BIV’s language, it cannot be known non-empirically that “water” is substantial or superficial; if it is a superficial kind, then a BIV could very well think that water is wet so long as it has the relevant sense-impressions.
Examples in Pop-Culture:
1. The matrix film series and comics: Created by The Wachowskis in 1999 and owned by Warner Bros. pictures. The series features a cyberpunk story of the technological fall of man, in which the creation of artificial intelligence led the way to a race of self-aware machines that imprisoned mankind in a virtual reality system—the Matrix—to be farmed as a power source. Every now and then, some of the prisoners manage to break free from the system and, considered a threat, become pursued by the artificial intelligence both inside and outside of it. The Matrix films makes numerous references to films and literature, and to historical myths and philosophy including Buddhism, Vedanta, Advaita Hinduism, Christianity, Messianism, Judaism, Gnosticism, existentialism, obscurantism, and nihilism. The films' premise resembles Plato's Allegory of the cave, René Descartes's evil demon, Kant's reflections on the Phenomenon versus the Ding an sich, Zhuangzi's "Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly", Marxist social theory and the brain in a vat thought experiment. Many references to Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation appear in the first film. Baudrillard himself considered this a misrepresentation,[62] although Lana Wachowski claims the point the reference was making was misunderstood.[63] There are similarities to cyberpunk works such as Neuromancer by William Gibson,[64] who has described The Matrix as "arguably the ultimate 'cyberpunk' artifact."[65]
Fun Fact!
One of the co-directors confirmed that the Matrix movies are an allegory for gender transition. Lilly Wachowski, who co-wrote and co-directed the film with her sister Lana Wachowski, told the streaming service Netflix about the intention behind the sci-fi movie in an interview posted on YouTube. The pill is his "gateway to seeing the world as it is and the systems built to define and control his identity" and is also "an apt metaphor for hormone therapy," one message in the thread says.
Wachowski said that she was glad people are speaking about the trans narrative in the "Matrix" movies.
"I love how meaningful those films are to trans people and the way that they come up to me and say: 'These movies saved my life,'" she told Netflix.
2. Agents of SHIELD, specifically season 4 which is a spinoff show based in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
3. The brain of Morbius
4. The City of Lost Children
5. Fallout
6. Donovan’s Brain
7. Fallout
8. Futurama
9. Ganger in Doctor Who
10. Inception
11. Lost especially the season 3 episode “Flashes before you eyes”, and the “flash-sideways” sequences in the 6th and last season
12. Repo men’
13. Robocop
14. Saint Row IV
15. Source Code
16. “Ship in a bottle” episode of Star Trek: Next Generation
17. Total Recall
18. Transcendence
19. White Christmas Pt. II episode of Black Mirror
20. Altered Carbon
Citations
Terence Horgan, John Tension, and George Graham. Critiques of Content Externalism. “Phenomenal Intentionality and the Brain in a Vat”. 1989. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=JWw1wGFt8KUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA297&dq=brain+in+a+vat&ots=M_hv4fxqbs&sig=UK5hM-_O2PNOv3w9zxjqenWY9Io#v=onepage&q=brain%20in%20a%20vat&f=true (accessed August 25, 2020).
Lance P. Hickey. “The Brain in a Vat Argument”. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/brainvat/#H1 (Accessed August 25, 2020)
