Unsolution to Punam's BIV

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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In Putnam’s paper “Brains in a Vat”, he purports to answer the question of how we can know that we are not brains in a vat. I’ve been doing some work on his solution, and I think have found a way to make it impotent. Here goes:

Putnam’s solution is essentially to say that we are not brains in a vat because we are obviously not the things we refer to when we say “brains” and “vats”. The referents of those words do not apply to our situation. Even if we were brains in a vat, says Putnam, when we asked ourselves whether we are brains in a vat, we would be right to answer “no,” because then the referent of our words “vat” and “brains” would not be real world brains and vats, but brain and vat shaped electrical signals fed to us by the scientist that keeps us envatted.

My response is in two parts:
While I accept that we cannot refer to a vat that we are housed in directly, we can refer to it indirectly with no problem. We can do this because certain aspects of our existence transcend the specifics of our experience. I’ll refer to these as ‘relations.’ A relation is an abstract concept that exists as a sort of link or comparisson between two objects. Where as the referents of words that refer to objects will differ between the real world and in the vat world, I argue that relations do not.
In the case of brains in a vat, there are number of possible relations that we could refer to. One possibility is ‘self-representation.’ When a BIV has an experience as of looking down, it sees not a vat, but a body. That body is the brain’s self-representation (in the movie The Matrix, Morpheus calls this “residual self-image”). The brain in the vat, too, can refer to a thing’s self-representation. It can then ask “Is there a thing such that I am that thing’s self-representation?” This avoids any problems of reference because the relation of ‘self-representation’ is the same whether you’re in the vat or not. The referent of the words “self-representation” is not context dependent in the same way that the words “brain”, “vat”, “table”, etc. are. So the question coherently refers to what “Am I a brain in a vat?” would refer to, if we could refer outside the vat.

A second mode of attack involves an intuition pump:
Take Putnam’s vat world. In it, everyone is a brain in a vat and always has been. People are connected to some sort of matrix-like experience generator, and since everyone is in the same vat, people can share common experiences. These people cannot refer to their vat, because their word “vat” refers to vat-shaped signals from the experience-generator.
Now imagine that from the point of view of the people in this vat world, there is a brain in a vat. That is, there is a brain-shaped signal appears to be in a vat-shapped signal.
The question I want this scenario to make available is this: What does the brain in the vat that the brains in the vat see(From now on, the BIVIBIV) refer to when it perceives itself to be talking about a chair? Well, it refers of course to a chair-shaped-signal-shaped signal But a chair-shaped-signal-shaped signal is just a chair-shaped signal: all chair-shaped-signal-shaped signals are chair-shaped shaped. So the BIVIBIV can refer to its own vat, because its vat-shaped signals are the same vat shaped signals that the other brains in the vat experience.
A BIV can then ask of the BIVIBIV “What if this brain’s words refer to the same things as my words refer to?” If the BIV knew the answer to be affirmative, then it would know that it was a BIV. So the skeptical question is just the same, only again more roundabout. I too can ask “How do I know a brain in a vat would not refer to the same things to which I refer with its words?” Putnam’s solution fails to respond.

This is still rough, but I think the problem is solid, and leaves essentially the same problem untouched by Putnam’s work. Please try to find out where my reasoning goes wrong. I actually came up with this while I was writing a paper in support of Putnam, and I really like his response. But I’m not as convinced by it as I once was.

[EDIT]: grammar, etc.

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the leap behind believing that you are or are not a brain in a vat and the proofs associated with that problem run along a similar vein as descartes’ ontology and the evil demon problem…

ultimately there is no “proof” that you are not a brain in a vat or that you are being decieved by an evil demon unless you take it on faith that you are not…

-Imp

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Mega-bump.

I started this thread to flesh out an idea I was working on for my undergraduate senior project, but it didn’t generate much discussion, and after I graduated I forgot all about it.

But after moving it to the new forum, I thought I might try to revive it. If nothing else, Putnam’s solution to The Matrix question is worthy of inspection. Are words really only as good as their actually-experienced referents? My reaction, reading over what I wrote, was to doubt whether “brain” and “vat” don’t have a symbolic meaning that already captures what I make explicit above, in which case Putnam’s argument never even gets off the ground.

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It’s not much of a linguistics answer, but believing one is a brain in a vat is as verifiable as believing in any divinity.
Meaning; there’s no reason to lift a finger to prove that you aren’t a brain in a vat.
Instead, the burden rests on the assertion that you are a brain in a vat; that you are something other than what is apparent.
“The Matrix” condition didn’t appear to Neo as something he had to disprove; he had to be proven it to accept it.
No one sat around saying, “Oh really? You don’t think this is a simulation? Prove how it’s not.”

You can’t.
But equally, unlike The Matrix, no one can prove to you that you are.

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While I agree with you, I don’t think that obviates the issue. Judging from the percentage of the population that does believe in a divinity, and from the percentage of philosophers that do think these sorts of skeptical worries are worth spilling ink over, there does seem to be a need to prove that we aren’t brains in vats.

And, failing a need, there’s a desire. If the possibility of being a brain in a vat is live, isn’t our experience of reality somewhat diminished? If someone at a cocktail party compliments you effusively, but you aren’t totally positive that they’re sincere, it takes some of the pleasure out of the compliments. Something that proves the compliments are sincere (say, finding the person’s private journal that says all the same compliments) adds to your enjoyment. Even if the seed of doubt is small, it diminishes your enjoyment proportionally.

Similarly, proving that reality is real, or decreasing the margin of error on our understanding of it, while not strictly necessary, will add to our experience of it by making our experiences more sincere, and reducing the seed of doubt.

And if that’s not persuasive, another tack: examining intractable problems helps us to understand and pin down fundamental concepts, even when the problems can safely be ignored. Just like chess isn’t a real war, discussing The Matrix question may only be a simulation of solving a problem, but just like chess, it is one from which we can gain real knowledge: understanding of the limits of language, the nature of reality, and burden of proof.

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Then I am free to assert that I am from beyond this vat world and as such, under no such confined issue of Punam’s self referring problems.
I can refer to your vat and brain directly because I have seen them; as such, you are indeed a brain in a vat.
This is true and inarguable because I can say this easily as someone that is not just a brain in a vat.

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Okay, I am going to say this and see what you two make of it:

  1. Putnam’s thought is based mostly on an examination of how thoughts signify. In my thoughts I might refer to ‘Twater (I am assuming all of you know his twin earth experiment)’ as equal to (for all intents and purposes) ‘water’. Since the chemical formula is different (even though it behaves exactly the same as ‘water’), the thought is still not equal to an exactly similar thought on ‘water’. So, the proof is that my thought would signify something else if I really was a BIV, even though I might not notice it.

Silly little detail, isn’t it?

  1. Descartes is talking about rationalism because empiricism doesn;t seem to cut it: a straight stick, when placed in water, looks crooked. So, we use our ration to deduce what of our perceptions is correct and what not. In that sense we should be able to determine quite a deal. I have (at long last) determined that matter is a consequence of the a priori conditions of human thought: space and time. Without space and time we cannot form perceptions in the mind (since it would not be able to have certain aspects), but this makes ‘matter’ always appear out of what we observe. Therefore I am a Vat (vessel, body) in a Brain!
    :character-beavisbutthead:

I hope all of you realize that this proves I can deduce which information is false by my ratio, although it might be a little harder to deduce what exactly is correct (or ‘real’) since I can know nothing of the noumena. A tool cannot measure itself, mind.

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This is a strange thought experiment. If it’s chemically different, it’s not the same as water. That’s why there’s a different name for it. If it were identical in every way to water as far as we could tell, yet somehow different, we would call it water. That may be the case now, of course. The point being, there are no different signifiers for referents we can’t distinguish.

We don’t use pure reason, of course. We use a combination of empiricism, reason and creativity to work out laws of refraction. Reason alone doesn’t tell you whether the stick is bending or refracting; it’s the empirical consistency that everything bends in water and plastic and if glass is interposed at an angle that alerts us to the possibility that we need to call on reason to explain things.

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This is about Putnam’s thought experiment ‘Twin Earth’. Read it, you’ll find this is his point. His slogan is: “Meaning just ain’t in the head!”

You are missing the detail that we use our ratio to ‘grasp’ out of what we observe. That is how our perceptions are formed. So, our senses only indicate something is transpiring. From that point on we start investigating what exactly is transpiring. We know what transpires because our consciousness tells us so. Consciousness is that which can be acted upon: like a membrane.

Do you see what I am talking about?

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I think my argument provides some problem for the Twin Earth thought experiment, and Putnam’s conclusion that “meaning just ain’t in the head.” Rather than ask whether both H2O and XYZ are water, what if we ask whether the solid and liquid forms of H2O and the solid and liquid forms of XYZ are related to each other in the same way, namely being the solid and liquid forms of the same molecule. When me and my twin (call him Twarleas) think of that relationship, are we thinking of the same thing?

The answer seems to be yes, because the relationship doesn’t depend on the specific chemical formula of the substance (as even on earth, we can have the same relationship across essentially all molecules). While we may get gummed up asking whether Twarleas is talking about H2O when he says “water,” we can be sure that he’s talking about the same relationship as we are when we each talk about the phase shift of our respective liquids.

This distinction is related to the reason/empiricism question. It gets at a distinction of order between empiricism and reason. For instance, the colors and sounds and touch sensations I get are one type of empirical experience, which I classify as, say, “water.” But once I’ve packaged those sensations as a coherent whole, I can return to the empirical world to find that same package over and over again, and then make further, larger rational conclusions from those packages. So some colors and touch sensations that I experience together I call “water,” others I call “ice,” and then I find from empirical experience a relationship between these two conceptual packages to make a new package: “phase change” (the change from water to ice).

The difference between the type of empirical data and reasoning that leads me to “water” and that which leads me to “phase change” is a difference of order: second order empirical data (the reading on the thermometer when a phase change happens) depends on first order empirical data and first order reasoning (grouping colors, sounds, touches, etc. into “water,” “ice,” “thermometer,” etc.). And certain higher order referents do seem to have consistent meaning between earth and Twin Earth, even if we grant that lower order referents do not.

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I’m familiar with it, I just think it’s a silly thought experiment. Accepting the basic premise, for the above-mentioned reasons: there is nothing that’s different but undetectably-so. Otherwise we couldn’t detect the difference to classify it. If twater is really physically different to water, then we are clearly talking about different things. Just like if petroleum took the place of water in this world. We might say ‘they use X like we use Y’, and we can do for intercultural differences. If it’s the same thing, we say that twater is a translation of water, just like Wasser and voda and eau.

It is philosophy gone silly. If you imagine ridiculous things, your intuition and gut feeling gets all messed up. Language and logic go on holiday and you start seeing phantom solutions. By all means look at meaning, and reference, and perception… but if you have to back up your arguments with twin worlds and alien physics rather than ordinary examples, there’s something gone wrong.

More fundamentally, it’s based on a dualistic conception of the mind as substantial, a space of ideas and structures mirroring or modelling (or even creating) the physical world. The mind’s categorically not like that. It’s a medieval superstition that should have been shaken off and stayed shaken off. In my view. :slight_smile:

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@ Twarleas:
The fool’s gold example is a nice one. However, it comes down to the same distinction: there is a difference (in this case it can be shown by experiment). Before we show the difference by experiment an individual might not be aware of this though. So, that individual might use the word gold and think of gold, while referring to the lump of fool’s gold in his pocket. It being fool’s gold makes the thought bout fool’s gold, with a negation in the thought (concerning the fool’s). That is why the slogan ‘Meaning just ain’t in the head!’ applies.

While second order empirical data (nice term btw) can be important, I do not think it changes anything really. We would need to know how things would react in reality to compare and to conclude that something is amiss. However, we can conclude to something not being as it seems by rationalism. I do not think 2nd order empiricism has this power since it is still empirical and the test specified that it were the senses that were influnced by the computer. Not thought itself.

@ Twonly Twuman:
The point is, as said above (to Twarleas), that we may think something to be x, while it is y. And calling it x does not make it y. That may lead to the thought that x=y, while x=x and does not become y by means of our misunderstanding. That is the entire point. We would only think to be discussing x, while we would be discussing y.

and I didn’t even mention the Super Spartan yet!

Query:
What do you think the mind is, then?

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We can be wrong or ignorant, of course; I don’t see the philosophical requirement of a thought experiment to point that out! It may be that there are two different things we understand and talk of as “water”, and if we avoid the harmless one we will never age; both substances are called water at the moment though. If everyone treats iron pyrites as gold and knows no difference, then “gold” to those people means “gold or iron pyrites” to us.

I’m looking for a Daniel Dennett article about the dangers of bizarre thought experiments, I can’t remember the term he uses. If I find it I’ll let you know, it’s a good read.

I don’t think it’s a thing, I think it’s a catch-all concept for a lot of things. Abilities, dispositions, behaviours… At least, it’s not a magical acausal motor that powers the body, as the traditional picture has it. Understanding something is an increase in ability and a setting-in-order of concepts, not a mental process whereby fact-substance is converted into knowledge-substance and filed in a library, for example.

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He wouldn’t think of ‘gold’ as we understand it, but of ‘gold’ as he understands it, which includes fool’s gold. Unless he attributes to ‘gold’ sufficient qualities to distinguish between fools gold and gold (such as a certain melting point or density, or perhaps even that the material can be sold for a lot of money), his concept of gold covers both gold and fools gold.

It’s like jade. Before the 19th century, ‘jade’ was one material, and everyone’s concept of jade treated a group of objects as all made of the same material. After the 19th century, ‘jade’ is two materials: jadeite and nephrite. The concept has changed, so the meaning of the word jade had changed (even though the referents have not). Unlike with fool’s gold, which not-so-implicitly says “not gold,” “jade” still refers to both. Still, if we decide that one of the materials is jade and the other isn’t, people who use the term “jade” before we make that decision weren’t wrong to call both jade. Contrary to Putnam, here meaning is in the head: the world stays the same, only the concept is divided.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuition_pump

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@ OH & Carleas:
My point was that every thought has two parts: the major and the minor premisse. That means an image and a reference. So, Putnam’s argument is that the thought is different because the reference changed. I think the argument both of you are making is that the image is the same. Lacan says that thoughts are signifiers: signposts. The post itself and the reference as to the distance to the thing-in-itself.

Is that the miscommunication?

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I think my argument is that the image is the same for certain types of images. Take an thing like “up”. Whether on earth or on the moon, when I tell someone “look up”, they know what up means. The meaning of the word, and the concept behind it, transcends the specifics of being on one sphere versus the other. Even if we accept that meaning can change when the referents change, there are some words that retain their meaning even when all the players are changed. I call it a “relation” above, and I think of it as like an equation that relates a bunch of variables. Even when we change the variables (the referents of those concepts), the equation remains the same.

We could therefore agree that Twarleas isn’t talking about water, but still maintain that he is talking about phase shifts.

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I think so too. I think Twarleas and Carleas would have the same image (minor premisse), but not the same reference (used as a major premisse). Depending on what one would call a thought the thought would be equal or un-equal. Since Putnam includes the reference he calls them un-equal and therefore comes to the slogan: “Meaning just ain’t in the head!”.
:character-oldtimer:

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The thought may in that sense be different, but is the meaning of the thought necessarily so?

Just to take a theoretical example: “the President of the United States is the most powerful man in the world”. Is my thought associated with the concept “President of the United States” different now than it was when GWB was president, because the man referenced is different? Is it different than it was a week ago, because Obama has aged since then? And what if I mistakenly believe GWB is still president?

It can’t be in this case that “President of the United States” is a neutral administrative term unaffected by the specific referent man, because of the “most powerful man” identifying the person in that role. But I do think that the meaning has remained unchanged for as long as I’ve considered the POTUS (whoever the referent applied to) to be the most powerful man in the world.

On the other hand, “the President of the United States has a lovely smile” clearly changes. Hmm. Time to get back to my Russell, I think.