Brain In A Vat

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

I’ve come up with a proposed solution to the brain-in-a-vat problem that I would like to submit for comment here. If it is not original, forgive me. I just started thinking about it a couple of days ago:

…

Consciousness is awareness of external reality, accomplished by the senses and reason. Animals are conscious, but they live at the perceptual level and cannot make wider identifications as humans can. Man can know more than his perceptions actually give him, although his perceptions are the foundation upon which he builds his additional knowledge.

If a person is unconscious, how can he know he is unconscious? He can’t, because he is unconscious. In fact, he doesn’t even know he exists, because he doesn’t know anything. That’s what unconciousness is.

But if he is conscious, he can know he is conscious, just as he can tell the difference between a dead man and a living man. But to be conscious, he must be aware of something external to his consciousness. One cannot be aware of being conscious until he has done so, because he is not conscious until he has done so.

Thus, consciousness comes into being without any knowledge, tabula rasa, with a blank slate in terms of cognition.

His perceptions begin to give him data, and he becomes conscious. As he gets more and integrates it more with his faculty of reason, he has more knowledge, more awareness of reality.

As he grows, he sees more, makes wider identifications, and integrates his new knowledge into what he already knows. The rules here are the laws of identity and non-contradiction. Since reality is what it is, it cannot be otherwise. A cannot be non-A. He cannot allow contradictions to exist in his thinking. If there are contradictions, he is making an error somewhere. There are no contradictions in nature.

If a brain first becomes conscious in a vat, its knowledge is limited to the sensory input given him and the conclusions it can draw from that. Either it is given enough to allow him to know he is in a vat or he isn’t. If all he ever sees is a blue haze, he isn’t going to know much of anything. If he is actually shown that he is in a vat, he can know it. In some cases, he can be given enough info to figure it out for himself without being actually shown.

Suppose he is put into the vat later in life, with a lot of previous experiences. Suppose, for example, that he is aware of the brain in the vat scenario. Then the illusionist would have to actively conceal the fact that he is in a vat, being very careful to not give him enough info to figure it out–just as a magician conceals a hidden door to deceive people.

But suppose the the brain is, in fact, out of the vat. He is then in the same position as the illusionist who is creating the illusions, able to see and know everything the illusionist knows. In fact, he could put someone’s brain in a vat himself.

So he knows he is not a brain in a vat, just as the illusionist knows.

And the illusionist HAS to know what is really going on in order to create the illusion, to make something appear to be other than what it is. If it’s not an illusion, something that contradicts what is real, then all he has done is remove the brain’s sensory appartatus and create a new one for him. The “simulation” is not a simulation. It’s reality.

Thus, a man outside a vat can know he is not in a vat.

2

Why do you say this?

3

Consciousness is awareness of reality. The only thing not external to a conscious entity is itself. But a consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction. In order for it to identify itself as consciousness, it must first have been conscious of something else. Once the conscious entity has some content, it can become conscious of itself as a consciousness.

4

But isn’t it possibly that the brain in the vat is fed precisely the same sensory inputs that you have had since you were born?

You don’t know whether you are or are not a brain in a vat. You have no evidence either way (and can have no evidence). All knowledge comes from experience: it is possible that all of your experiences have so far have been artificially generated. And so, you have no real for justification for believeing you are not a brain in the vat, so you have no knowledge that you are not a brain in the vat.

The brain in the vat scenario is by definition unfalsifiable - there simply is and never will be a solution.

although I have to say, brain in the vat or non brain in the vat - this Cornish Mutiny still tastes pretty damn good to me :smiley:

5

What you don’t seem to understand is that Mr. Burke considers the idea of himself in a vat without input … a CONTRADICTION.
He has to first have experience of something outside himself to know that he is himself.

He knows he is himself. Therefore he is not in a vat!

-WL

6

“But isn’t it possibly that the brain in the vat is fed precisely the same sensory inputs that you have had since you were born?”

I’m assuming you mean I was not born in a vat and that my inputs were real, in which case the simulation the brain in a vat perceives is just my life experiences. It’s still a delusion, in principle like any other delusion, because the brain in a vat is not seeing it in real time. It’s not really happening as it perceives it. He may as well be seeing a biographical movie.

But remember, I have not claimed that a brain in vat cannot be deluded. I have conceded that a brain that has been in a vat all of its conscious existence can be deceived because it has no other sensory input. What I have claimed is that a brain outside a vat can know it’s not in a vat, which is the question. (A crazy man doesn’t know he is crazy because he is crazy and unable to grasp reality, including the fact that he is crazy. But a sane person can tell he is sane because he has no such mental disability.)

If, however, the brain in a vat is seeing it in real time, the input is not a delusion. The brain in a vat is seeing reality. The device creating the illusion is just an artificial set of senses or aids to his senses.

7

Mr. Burke, as a medical professional I assure you that you are in fact in a “vat” consisting of your fleshy carcass and fatty brain tissue. The deception however is that you consider this current carcass of yours to be somehow fundamentally more real time than all other imaginable vats.

8

Ok, but why do you believe that in order for consciousness to ‘identify itself as consciousness’, it must have been conscious of an external world? Can’t I be conscious of my own thoughts without being conscious of an external world? It doesn’t seem like having a thought and being conscious of having a thought are the same thing.

Also, I don’t think that you can say that consciousness ‘must first be conscious of something else’, because in the act of being conscious of something else one must of course already be conscious. It sounds like you are talking really about self-consciousness when you say ‘identify itself as consciousness’, because to identify one’s own conscious states would be an act of self-consciousness.

Could Descartes have simply said, “I think, therefore the external world must exist”?

9

What do you mean by “fundamentally more real time”? I was using “real time” as meaning in the present. Perhaps, I should have stated that.

10

Nous writes,

“I don’t think that you can say that consciousness ‘must first be conscious of something else’, because in the act of being conscious of something else one must of course already be conscious.”

I’m saying that one must first be conscious of something before he can be aware of being conscious, before he becomes self-conscious, that is, before he becomes aware of being aware of things.

You can’t be aware that you are running before you start running.

The brain acquires the capability of consciousness at some point and begins perceiving things. Only after that can it become self-conscious of itself as a conscious entity, aware that it is perceiving things.

(BTW, this isn’t really important to the brain in a vat puzzle. I was just setting the stage for discussing the issue.)

11

that’s exceptionally well put.

12

Dear Mr. Burke,

I will explain to you a finer distinction between consciousness as understood in philosophy and the layman’s notion of the same. Suppose that you are under medical narcosis, or simply intoxicated and are “way out of it”. For a time, your body lays drooling hopelessly on the couch, and you have no recollection of yourself ever arriving at the couch, or the house where the couch is located. You realize all this once you awake. QUESTION: How do you realize this? ANSWER: You do so by ordering your brain to check its memory. This memory is not your consciousness, it is, for our purposes, a machine that operates on demand. Due to chemical poisoning the machinery fails to produce the memories you request. You have no recollection of arriving, yet you had, and at the time you were quite possibly very conscious and aware of yourself, and quite possibly were having a grand time in every respect. You begin to see our problem.

Thus, it’s entirely possible to be conscious now and not recollect it later.

Secondary question: were you conscious while your brain was poisoned and “way out of it”, on the couch? You do not recollect it now, but were you? Your answer, I know, is a resounding “no”, but why this? Why, my good Mr. Burke? Must you make the entirety of all philosophy of mind a subheading to the availability and responsiveness of your brain’s paltry memory bank?

Tertiary question: is a braindead patient (zero brain electrical activity) conscious? We can perhaps be fairly certain he does not feel his body, his memory, or have any recourse to the thousands of other services the brain’s machinery normally provides him at his whim in life. But is he conscious? And again, I have suspicions that you are giving premature negative answers!

Lastly a person whose body is disintegrated wholly by a powerful explosion. Is he conscious? Many investigators jump to assume that it is THE BRAIN that has the capability of consciousness. Mistake. The brain itself, you see, is already a vat. You are quite conscious of this your vat, as you have seen all the requisite anatomy schematics.

This is philosophy: the explosive battlefield whereupon we fight on the side of Mind against the vulgar trickeries of our own language.

In summary, a very easy illustration of your entire problematick may be had if you imagine a sailboat cutting across a body of water. Behind the moving boat, there will always be a characteristic “wake” or trace. Consider now, would it be wrong to equate this trace with the sailboat itself? Yet this is what the layman does, for he does not realize that his “self-recollection”, his “consciousness” is purely a function of memory (symbolized here by the slowly disappearing wake), not at all consciousness. True self-recollection would then involve the recollection of the sailboat itself, all while the machinery of the brain is on purpose kept SILENT.

-WL

13

Agreed, but that’s not what you said. You said that you must first be conscious of something else before you can become aware of your own consciousness. I’m just saying they can, and typically do, all happen at the same time.

Consciousness and self-consciousness are not the same thing, so you should be careful to indicate which you are speaking about.

14

Just to be clear, by supposition BIV’s do not have sensory experiences (they have no sense organs).

15

I don’t follow you here. For one thing, the original supposition by Putnam is that all sentient beings are BIV’s, so there is no illusionist. This is to assure the fact that none of the BIV’s are causally connected to the world in such a way as to secure that the referents of their terms are in the external world. This supposition is crucial to Putnam’s own proposed solution.

But suppose someone thinks he is the illusionist. Why doesn’t the BIV skeptical hypothesis apply to him just as well? You suppose that the individual who thinks he is the illusionist knows that he is not a BIV, but how does he know this?

16

Mr. WL,

There is a conscious subject and an object of consciousness that the subject is aware of. As I explained, once a subject becomes aware of something external to it, an object, it can then become aware of the fact that it is conscious. But it cannot be conscious of being conscious until then, until it has in fact functioned as a conscious faculty. It would be like knowing you are running before you start running.

Is there something in your reply that contradicts this? Because if there is, I would like for you to explain it more clearly and then tell me how you know that without being conscious in the way I just stated.

Consciousness itself is a very fundamental faculty. You have to be conscious of something before you can have any memories, before you are confronted with how well you remember anything, how well your consciousness functions while intoxicated; while you are whacked out, insane, in a hospital, a vat or otherwise.

Being aware is something all conscious beings DO. It is just what it is, and its validity is axiomatic, something that cannot be denied without the denier admitting he is conscious in the act of denial. Knowing what consciousness is, is something one can do without a philosophy degree because we all experience it.

I might add that I long ago stopped paying attention to mainstream modern philosophers. That’s because most are advocates of epistemological skepticism and claim that man can know nothing with certainty. I tended to disagree with that, but in a spirit of compromise, I chose to take their word for their claim that they don’t know crap. I, on the other hand, am capable of certainty. And since they don’t know anything–not even that I exist–they are in no position to dispute my claim. I might add that for most of my 67 years, mainstream philosophers have denied that there was any reality or that the term “reality” had any meaning, something I vehemently disagreed with. My understanding is that in the last decade or so, however, they have come around. And denying the fact that reality is real is no longer in fashion.

So, you can see that I have been ahead of the curve with some with this philosophy business, and you have to do more than wave a degree and be a smart aleck to intimidate me.

But anyway, this is an aside from the main issue of the brain in a vat? Do you have anything comprehensible to say about the solution I offered?

17

One clarification. Although “being aware” is often offered as a description of what it is to be conscious, they are not quite the same thing. There are many things that people consciously do that they are not in fact aware of doing (even though the acts are intentional).

FWIW, most philosophers I know do believe that we can know some things with certainty (in fact, the great majority of philosophers I know believe this).

How do we get from “man can know nothing with certainty” to “they don’t know anything” and “they don’t know crap”? Do you think knowledge requires certainty?

18

Nous,

“…the original supposition by Putnam is that all sentient beings are BIV’s, so there is no illusionist.”

I haven’t read Putnam. My knowledge of the BIV puzzle has been gained by some message board arguments about it, dialogues on a private e-mail list run by a professional philosopher, and Googling around a bit. I might add that after starting this thread, I discovered that there was already a thread on the natural philosophy board about it in which the original poster there was discussing it the way I present it, as “a different perspective.” You can see it here:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=167888

I got the impression somewhere that the original question involved an “evil genius” of some kind as the illusionist and how could we know he wasn’t running everything, etc.

As for me, if there were no illusionist, where does the “simulation” come from? And if the brain was in a vat from birth, it’s easy to see that it could be deceived, as I state above by limiting its perception to, say, a blue haze and giving it no further info. It would know nothing of the real world. You may as well, however, be discussing the philosophical significance of a bullet in the brain.

…

“But suppose someone thinks he is the illusionist. Why doesn’t the BIV skeptical hypothesis apply to him just as well? You suppose that the individual who thinks he is the illusionist knows that he is not a BIV, but how does he know this?Nous”

You could hypothesize multiple and/or successive illusionists, but that would not get you around the fact that somewhere there HAD to be a creator of the illusion who was in touch with reality. That’s because an illusion is an ILLUSION, a creation that contradicts something real somehow. And the illusionist would have to have known how to create the illusion, just as a magician understands his tricks. If there were no such contradictions, there would be no illusion. That would mean the the apparatus creating the illusion is really just a set of artificial senses giving the BIV real data. The BIV then would be privy to everything anyone else would be.

19

check out descartes… the meditations…

-Imp

20

Putnam says, “Instead of having just one brain in a vat, we could imagine that all human beings (perhaps all sentient beings), are brains in vat…Perhaps there is no evil scientist, perhaps (though this is absurd) the universe just happens to consist of automatic machinery tending a vat full of brains and nervous systems.” (this is from Putnam’s 1981 Reason, Truth and History)

Putnam’s BIV hypothesis is a contemporary version of Descartes’ evil demon hypothesis. Putnam tries to argue from facts about semantic externalism to the conclusion that we could not be BIV’s in the way supposed in his skeptical scenario. So Putnam is interested specifically in exploring the anti-skeptical implications of semantic externalism.