illustrate global or Cartesian skepticism. You are told to imagine the
possibility that at this very moment you are actually a brain hooked
up to a sophisticated computer program that can perfectly simulate
experiences of the outside world. Here is the skeptical argument. If
you cannot now be sure that you are not a brain in a vat, then you
cannot rule out the possibility that all of your beliefs about the
external world are false. Or, to put it in terms of knowledge claims,
we can construct the following skeptical argument. Let "P" stand for
any belief or claim about the external world, say, that snow is white.
1. If I know that P, then I know that I am not a brain in a vat
2. I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat
3. Thus, I do not know that P.
The Brain in a Vat Argument is usually taken to be a modern version of
René Descartes' argument (in the Meditations on First Philosophy) that
centers on the possibility of an evil demon who systematically
deceives us. The hypothesis has been the premise behind the movie The
Matrix, in which the entire human race has been placed into giant vats
and fed a virtual reality at the hands of malignant artificial
intelligence (our own creations, of course).
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 (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. As we shall see, however, it remains far from clear how
exactly Putnam's argument should be taken and what it actually proves.
1. Skepticism and Realism
Putnam's argument is designed to attack the possibility of global
skepticism that is implied by metaphysical realism. Putnam defines
metaphysical realism as the view which holds that "…the world consists
of some fixed totality of mind-independent objects. There is exactly
one true and complete description of 'the way the world is.' Truth
involves some sort of correspondence relation between words or
thought-signs and sets of things." (1981, 49). This construal brings
out the idea that for metaphysical realists, truth is not reducible to
epistemic notions but concerns the nature of a mind-independent
reality. This characterization finds an accurate target in those
scientific materialists who believe in a "ready-made" world of
scientific kinds independent of human classification and
conceptualization. There are, however, many self-professed
metaphysical realists who are not happy with Putnam's definition; it
saddles the realist with the classical difficulty of matching words to
objects and of providing for a correspondence relation between
sentences and mind-independent "facts." The metaphysical realist is
forced to construe her thesis ontologically, as an adherence to some
fixed furniture of objects in the world, which ignores the possibility
that ontological commitment may be specified not as a commitment to a
set of entities but rather to the truth of a class of sentences or
even of whole theories of the world.
One proposal is to construe metaphysical realism as the position that
there are no a priori epistemically derived constraints on reality
(Gaifman, 1993). By stating the thesis negatively, the realist
sidesteps the thorny problems concerning correspondence or a "ready
made" world, and shifts the burden of proof on the challenger to
refute the thesis. One virtue of this construal is that it defines
metaphysical realism at a sufficient level of generality to apply to
all philosophers who currently espouse metaphysical realism. For
Putnam's metaphysical realist will also agree that truth and reality
cannot be subject to "epistemically derived constraints." This general
characterization of metaphysical realism is enough to provide a target
for the Brains in a Vat argument. For there is a good argument to the
effect that if metaphysical realism is true, then global skepticism is
also true, that is, it is possible that all of our referential beliefs
about the world are false. As Thomas Nagel puts it, "realism makes
skepticism intelligible," (1986, 73) because once we open the gap
between truth and epistemology, we must countenance the possibility
that all of our beliefs, no matter how well justified, nevertheless
fail to accurately depict the world as it really is. [See
Fallibilism.] Donald Davidson also emphasizes this aspect of
metaphysical realism: "metaphysical realism is skepticism in one of
its traditional garbs. It asks: why couldn't all my beliefs hang
together and yet be comprehensively false about the actual world?"
(1986, 309)
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)
This article focuses mostly on claim (3), although some philosophers
question (2), believing there may be ways of presenting the skeptical
thesis even while granting Putnam's argument.
2. Putnam's argument
The major premise that underwrites Putnam's argument is what he calls
a "causal constraint" on reference:
(CC) A term refers to an object only if there is an appropriate
causal connection between that term and the object
To understand this criterion we need to unravel what is meant by
"appropriate causal connection." If an ant were to accidentally draw a
picture of Winston Churchill in the sand, few would claim that the ant
represented or referred to Churchill. Similarly, if I accidentally
sneeze "Genghis Khan," just because I verbalize the words does not
mean that I refer to the infamous Mongolian conqueror, for I may have
never heard of him before. Reference cannot simply be an accident: or,
as Putnam puts it, words do not refer to objects "magically" or
intrinsically. Now establishing just what would count as necessary and
sufficient conditions for a term to refer to an object turns out to be
tricky business, and there have been many "causal theories" of
reference supplied to do just that. Many have taken the virtue of
Putnam's constraint (CC) to be its generality: it merely states a
necessary condition for reference and need not entail anything more
controversial. Sometimes it is claimed that endorsing (CC) commits you
to semantic externalism but the issues are more complex, since many
internalists (for example, John Searle) appear to agree with (CC). The
relation between externalism and Putnam's argument will be considered
in more detail later (in the section "Brains in a Vat and
Self-Knowledge").
With the causal constraint established, Putnam goes on to describe the
Brain in a Vat scenario. It is important to note exactly what the
thought-experiment is, for failure to appreciate the ways in which
Putnam has changed the standard skeptical nightmare has lead to many
mistaken "refutations" of the argument. The standard picture has a
mad-scientist (or race of aliens, or AI programs…) envatting brains in
a laboratory then inducing a virtual reality through a sophisticated
computer program. On this picture, there is an important difference
between viewing the brains from a first or third person viewpoint.
There is the point of view of the brains in a vat (henceforth BIVs),
and the point of view of someone outside the vat. Clearly when the
mad-scientist says "that is a brain in a vat" of a BIV, he would be
saying something true, no matter the question of what the BIV means
when it says it is a brain in a vat. Furthermore, presumably a BIV
could pick up referential terms by borrowing them from the
mad-scientist. Thus when a BIV says "there is a tree" referring to a
simulation of a tree, it would be saying something false, since its
term "tree," picked up from the mad-scientist to refer to an actual
tree, in fact refers to something else, like his sense-impressions of
the tree. Putnam thus stipulates that all sentient beings are brains
in a vat, hooked up to one another through a powerful computer that
has no programmer: "that's just how the universe is." We are then
asked, given at least the physical possibility of this scenario,
whether we could say or think it. Putnam answers that we could not:
the assertion "we are brains in a vat" would be sense self-refuting in
the same way that the general statement "all general statements are
false" is.
The thought-experiment stipulates that brains in a vat would have
qualitatively identical thoughts to those unenvatted; or at least they
have the same "notional world." The difference is that in the
vat-world, there are no external objects. When a BIV says "There is a
tree in front of me," there is in fact no tree in front of him, only a
simulated tree produced by the computer's program. However, if there
are no trees, there could be no causal connection between a BIV's
tokens of trees and actual trees. By (CC), "tree" does not refer to
tree. This leads to some interesting consequences.
A standard reading of a BIV's utterance of "There is a tree" would
have the statement come out false, since there are no trees for the
BIV to refer to. But that would be only assuming that "tree" refers to
tree in the BIV's language. If "tree" does not refer to tree, then the
semantic evaluation of the sentence becomes unclear. Sometimes Putnam
suggests that a BIV's tokens refer to images or sense-impressions. At
other times he agrees with Davidson who claims that the
truth-conditions would be facts about the electronic impulses of the
computer that are causally responsible for producing the
sense-impressions. Davidson has a good reason to choose these
truth-conditions: through the principle of charity he would want to
interpret the BIV's sentences to come out true, but he would not want
the truth-conditions to be phenomenalistic. Thus it turns out that
when a BIV says "There is a tree in front of me," he is saying
something true—if in fact the computer is sending the right impulses
to him.
Another suggestion is that the truth-conditions of the BIV's
utterances would be empty: the BIV asserts nothing at all. This seems
to be rather strong, however: surely the BIV would mean something when
it utters "There is a tree in front of me," even if its statement gets
evaluated differently because of the radical difference of its
environment. One thing is clear, however; a BIV's tokening of "tree"
or any other such referential term would have a different reference
assignment from that of a non-envatted person's tokenings. According
to (CC), my tokening of "tree" refers to trees because there is an
appropriate causal link between it and actual trees (assuming of
course I am not a BIV). A brain in a vat however would not be able to
refer to trees since there are no trees (and even if there were trees
there would not be the appropriate causal relation between its
tokenings of "tree" and real trees, unless we bring back the standard
fantasy and assume it picked up the terms from the mad scientist). Now
one might be inclined to think that because there are at least brains
and vats in the universe, a BIV would be able to refer to brains and
vats. But the tokening of "brain" is never actually caused by a brain
except only in the very indirect sense that its brain causes all of
its tokenings. The minimal constraint (CC) then will ensure that
"brain" and "vat" in the BIV language does not refer to brain and vat.
We are now in a position to give Putnam's argument. It has the form of
a conditional proof :
1. Assume we are brains in a vat
2. If we are brains in a vat, then "brain" does not refer to brain,
and "vat" does not refer to vat (via CC)
3. If "brain in a vat" does not refer to brains in a vat, then "we
are brains in a vat" is false
4. Thus, if we are brains in a vat, then the sentence "We are
brains in a vat" is false (1,2,3)
Putnam adds that "we are brains in a vat" is necessarily false, since
whenever we assume it is true we can deduce its contradictory. The
argument is valid and its soundness seems to depend on the truth of
(3), assuming (CC) is true. One immediate problem is determining the
truth-conditions for "we are brains in a vat" on the assumption we are
brains in a vat, speaking a variation of English (call it Vatese).
From (CC) we know that "brains in a vat" does not refer to brain in a
vat. But it doesn't follow from this alone that "we are brains in a
vat" is false. Compare:
(A) "Grass is green" is true iff grass is green
(B) "Grass is green" is true iff one has sense-impressions of
grass being green
(C) "Grass is green" is true iff one is in electronic state Q
On the assumption that we are brains in a vat, (CC) would appear to
rule out (A): "grass" does not refer to grass since there is no
appropriate causal connection between "grass" and actual grass. Thus
the truth-conditions for the statement "grass is green" would be
nonstandard. If we take them to be those captured in (B), then "Grass
is green" as spoken by a brain in a vat would be true. Consequently
the truth-conditions for "we are brains in a vat" would be captured by
(D):
(D) "We are brains in a vat" is true iff we have sense impressions
of being brains in a vat
On this construal of the truth-conditions, "We are brains in a vat" as
uttered by a BIV would presumably be false, since a brain in a vat
would not have sense-impressions of being a brain in a vat: recall a
BIV's notional world would be equivalent to the unenvatted, and he
would appear to himself to be a normally embodied person with a real
body etc. However, if we follow Davidson and adopt the
truth-conditions of (C), we would have the following:
(E) "We are brains in a vat" is true if and only if we are in
electronic state Q
Now it is no longer clear that "We are brains in a vat" is false: for
if the brain is in the appropriate electronic state, the
truth-conditions could well be fulfilled. There are other
reconstructions of the argument that do not depend on specifying the
truth-conditions of a BIV's utterances. What is important is the idea
that the truth-conditions would be non-standard, as in:
(F) "We are brains in a vat" is true if and only if we are BIVs*
Now since being a BIV* (whatever that is) is not the same as being a
BIV, we can construct the following conditional proof argument:
1. Assume we are BIVs
2. If we are BIVs, "we are brains in a vat" is true if and only we are BIVs*
3. If we are BIVs, we are not BIVs*
4. If we are BIVs, then "we are BIVs" is false (2,3)
5. If we are BIVs, then we are not BIVs (4)
Notice that the argument leaves the antecedent of the conditional
open, what Wright calls an "open subjunctive." We do not want the
premises of the argument to be counterfactual, following the train of
thought "If we were brains in a vat, the causal constraint would
entail that my words 'brain in a vat' would come to denote something
different, BIV*." For then we would be assuming that we are not brains
in a vat, when that is what the argument is supposed to prove.
Nevertheless, there are still problems with the appeal to disquotation
to get us from (4) to (5). Even if, by virtue of the causal
constraint, the sentence "We are BIVs" is false, an intuitive
objection runs that this change of language should not entail falsity
of the proposition that we are brains in a vat. As we shall see, many
recent reconstructions of Putnam's argument are sensitive to this
point and try to account for it in various ways. In the following
section, I shall focus on two of the more popular reconstructions of
the argument put forward by Brueckner (1986) and Wright (1994).
3. Reconstructions of the Argument
Brueckner (1986) argues that even if we grant the reasoning of the
above argument up to (4), the most the argument proves is that if we
are brains in a vat, then the sentence "We are brains in a vat" (as
uttered by a BIV) is false, and that if we are not brains in a vat,
then "We are brains in a vat" is false (now expressing a different
false proposition). If correct then the argument would prove that
whether or not we are brains in a vat, "we are brains in a vat"
expresses some false proposition. Assuming the truth-conditions of a
BIV would be those captured in (D) we could then devise the following
constructive dilemma type argument:
1. Either I am a BIV or I am not a BIV
2. If I am a BIV, then "I am a BIV" is true iff I have sense
impressions of being a BIV
3. If I am a BIV, then I do not have sense-impressions of being a BIV
4. If I am a BIV, then "I am a BIV" is false (2,3)
5. If I am not a BIV, then "I am a BIV" is true iff I am a BIV
6. If I am not a BIV, then "I am a BIV" is false (5)
7. "I am a BIV" is false (1, 4, 6)
If "I am a BIV" expresses the proposition that I am a brain in a vat,
and we know from the argument that "I am a BIV" is false, then it
follows that I know I am not a brain in a vat, thus refuting premise
(2) of the skeptical argument. However, can I know that "I am a brain
in a vat" expresses the proposition that I am a brain in a vat? If I
am a brain in a vat, then "I am a brain in a vat" would, via the
causal constraint on reference, express some different proposition
(say, that I am a brain in a vat in the image). So even if "I am a
BIV" is false whether or not I am a BIV, I might not be in the
position to identify which false proposition I am expressing, in which
case I cannot claim to know that my sentence "I am not a brain in a
vat" expresses the true proposition that I am not a brain in a vat.
Some philosophers have gone even further, claiming that if the
argument ends here, it actually can be used to strengthen skepticism.
The metaphysical realist can claim that there are truths not
expressible in any language: perhaps the proposition that we are
brains in a vat is true, even if no one can meaningfully utter it. As
Nagel puts it:
If I accept the argument, I must conclude that a brain in a vat
can't think truly that it is a brain in a vat, even though others can
think this about it. What follows? Only that I cannot express my
skepticism by saying "Perhaps I am a brain in a vat." Instead I must
say "Perhaps I can't even think the truth about what I am, because I
lack the necessary concepts and my circumstances make it impossible
for me to acquire them!" If this doesn't qualify as skepticism, I
don't know what does. (Nagel, 1986)
Putnam makes it clear that he is not merely talking about semantics:
he wants to provide a metaphysical argument that we cannot be brains
in a vat, not just a semantic one that we cannot assert we are. If he
is just proving something about meaning, it is open for the skeptic to
say that the bonds between language and reality can diverge radically,
perhaps in ways we can never discern.
There is yet another worry with the argument, centering once again on
the appropriate characterization of the truth-conditions in (2). If
one claimed in response to the above objection that in fact I do know
that "I am a brain in a vat" expresses the proposition that I am a
brain in a vat (whether or not I am a brain in a vat), one may have in
mind some general disquotation principle:
(DQ): "Grass is green" is true iff grass is green
If it is an a priori truth that any meaningful sentence in my language
homophonically disquotes, then we can a priori know that the following
is also true:
(F): "I am a brain in a vat" is true iff I am a brain in a vat
Here is the obvious problem: if we are not to beg the question, we
have to be open to the possibility that we are brains in a vat,
speaking Vatese. Then we would get:
(G): If I am a BIV, then "I am a BIV" is true iff I am a brain in a vat.
However, (G) gives us truth-conditions that differ from premise (2) of
Brueckner's argument:
(2) If I am a BIV, then "I am a BIV" is true iff I have
sense-impressions of being a BIV
If we assume (CC), then (G) and (2) are inconsistent, since the term
"BIV" would refer to distinct entities. No contradiction ensues if we
assume we are speaking in English: for then (G) would presumably be
false (appealing to CC). But the problem is that we cannot beg the
question by assuming we are speaking in English: if we assume that,
then we know in advance of any argument that we are not speaking in
Vatese and hence that we are not brains in a vat. But if we do not
know which language we are speaking in, then we cannot properly assert
(2).
One response to this is to formulate two different arguments, one
whose meta-language is in English, the other whose meta-language is in
Vatese, and show that distinct arguments can be run to prove that "I
am a BIV" is false. Even if successful, however, these arguments run
into the objection canvassed before: if I do not know which language I
am speaking in, even if I know "I am a brain in a vat" is false, I do
not know which false proposition I am expressing and hence cannot
infer that I know that I am not a brain in a vat.
Similar worries plague Crispin's Wright's popular formulation of the
argument (1994):
1. My language disquotes
2. In BIVese, "brains in a vat" does not refer to brains in a vat
3. In my language, "brains in a vat" is a meaningful expression
4. In my language, "brains in a vat" refers to brains in a vat
5. My language is not BIVese (2,4)
6. If I am a BIV, then my language is BIVese
7. I am not a BIV
There are several virtues to this reconstruction: first of all, it
gets us to the desired conclusion without specifying what the
truth-conditions of a BIV's utterances would be. They could be
sense-impressions, facts about electronic impulses, or the BIV's
sentences may not refer at all. All that is needed for the argument is
that there is a difference between the truth-conditions for a BIV's
sentences and those of my own language. The other virtue of the
argument is that it clearly brings out the appeal to the disquotation
principle that was implicit in the previous arguments. If indeed (DQ)
is an a priori truth, as many philosophers maintain, and if we accept
(CC) as a condition of reference, the argument appears to be sound. So
have we proven that we are not brains in a vat?
Not so fast. The previous objection can be restated: if I do not yet
know whether or not I am a brain in a vat before the argument is
completed, I do not know which language I am speaking (English or
Vatese). If I am speaking Vatese, then so long as it is a meaningful
language, I can appeal to disquotation to establish that "brains in a
vat" does refer to brains in a vat. But this contradicts premise (2).
The problem seems to be that (DQ) is being used too liberally. Clearly
we do not want to say that every meaningful term disquotes in the
strong sense required for reference. If so, we could take it to be an
a priori truth that "Santa Claus" refers to Santa Claus. But "Santa
Claus" does not refer to Santa Claus, since there is no Santa Claus.
We could introduce a new term "pseudo-reference" and hold that "Santa
Claus" pseudo-refers to Santa Claus, and then attach further
conditions on reference in order to establish what it would take for
the term to truly refer. One proposal (Weiss, 2000) is the following
principle:
W: If "x" psuedo-refers to x in L, and x exists, then "x" refers to x in L
Thus, given the disquotation principle we know that in my language
"Santa Claus" pseudo-refers to Santa Claus. Supposing to the joyful
adulation of millions that Santa Claus is discovered to actually
exist, then given (W) "Santa Claus" refers to Santa Claus. Now this
also seems too simplistic: as Putnam pointed out, in order for a term
to refer to an object we must establish more than the mere existence
of the object. There has to be the appropriate causal relation between
the word and object, or we are back to claiming that in accidentally
sneezing "Genghis Khan" I am referring to Genghis Khan. But whether we
accept (W) or attach stronger conditions to reference, it is clear
that any such move would make Wright's formulation invalid. For then
we would have:
1. My language disquotes
2. In BIVese, "brains in a vat" does not refer to brains in a vat (CC)
3. In my language "brain in a vat" is a meaningful expression
4. In my language, "brain in a vat" pseudo-refers to brains in a vat (DQ)
5. My language is not BIVese (2,4)
6. If I am a BIV, then my language is BIVese
7. I am not a BIV
(5) no longer follows from (2) and (4) given the ambiguity of "refers"
in (2) and (4). If on the other hand we insist on a univocal sense of
reference, then either (2) will contradict the (DQ) principle, or we
are not entitled to appeal to (1), insofar as it would beg the
question that we are speaking English, a language for which the (DQ)
principle applies.
4. 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. He defends
two premises that seem reasonably true, and then he argues for the
desired metaphysical conclusion:
1. I think that water is wet
2. No brain in a vat can think that water is wet
3. Thus, I am not a brain in a vat (2.3)
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) is 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.
5. Significance of the Argument
Some philosophers have claimed that even if Putnam's argument is
sound, it doesn't do much to dislodge Cartesian or global skepticism.
Crispin Wright (1994) argues that the argument does not affect certain
versions of the Cartesian nightmare, such as my brain being taken out
of my skull last night and hooked up to a computer. Someone of a
Positivist bent might argue that if there is no empirical evidence to
appeal to in order to establish whether we are brains in a vat or not,
then the hypothesis is meaningless, in which case we do not need an
argument to refute it. While few philosophers today would hold onto
such a strong verifiability theory of meaning, many would maintain
that such metaphysical possibilities do not amount to real cases of
doubt and thus can be summarily dismissed. Still others see the
possibility of being a brain in a vat an important challenge for
cognitive science and the attempt to create a computer model of the
world that can simulate human cognition. Dennett (1991) for example
has argued that it is physically impossible for a brain in a vat to
replicate the qualitative phenomenology of a non-envatted human being.
Nevertheless, one should hesitate before making possibility claims
when it comes to future technology. And as films like the Matrix,
Existenz, and even the Truman Show indicate, the idea of living in a
simulated world indistinguishable from the real one is likely to
continue to fascinate the human mind for many years to come—whether or
not it is a brain in a vat.
6. References and Further Reading
Boghossian, Paul. 1999. What the Externalist can Know A Priori.
Philosophical Issues 9
Brueckner, Anthony. 1986. Brains in a Vat. Journal of Philosophy 83: 148-67
Brueckner, Anthony. 1992. If I am a Brain in a vat, then I am not a
Brain in a Vat. Mind 101:123-128
Burge, T. 1982. Other Bodies. In A. Woodfield. Ed., Thought and
Object: Essays on Intentionality. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
91-120.
Casati, R. and Dokic J. 1991. Brains in a Vat, Language and
Metalanguage. Analysis 51: 91-93.
Collier, J. 1990. Could I Conceive Being a Brain in a Vat?
Australasian Journal of Philosophy 68: 413-419.
Davidson, Donald. 1986. "A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge,"
in Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald
Davidson. Oxford: Blackwell.
Davies, D. 1995. Putnam's Thought-Teaser. Canadian Journal of
Philosophy 25(2):203-227.
Ebbs, G. (1992), "Skepticism, Objectivity and Brains in Vats", Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly 73
Forbes, G. 1995. Realism and Skepticism: Brains in a Vat Revisited.
Journal of Philosophy 92(4): 205-222
Gaifman, Haim. 1994. Metaphysical Realism and Vats in a Brain. (unpublished ms)
Nagel, Thomas. 1986. The View from Nowhere. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Noonan, Harold. 1998. Reflections on Putnam, Wright and brains in a
vat. Analysis 58:59-62
Putnam, Hilary 1975. The Meaning of "Meaning." Mind, Language and
Reality: Philosophical Papers, Vol 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press
Putnam, Hilary. 1982. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Putnam, Hilary. 1994. Reply to Wright. In P. Clark and B. Hale, eds.
Reading Putnam. Oxford, Blackwell.
Sawyer, Sarah. 1999. My Language Disquotes. Analysis, vol. 59:3: 206-211
Smith, P. (1984), Could We Be Brains in a Vat?, Canadian Journal of
Philosophy 14
Steinitz, Y. Brains in a vat? Different Perspectives. Philosophical
Quarterly 44 (175): 213-222
Tymoczko, T. 1989. In Defense of Putnam's Brains. Philosophical
Studies 57(3) 281-297
Warfield, Ted. 1995. Knowing the World and Knowing our Minds.
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (3): 525-545.
Weiss, B. 2000. Generalizing Brains in a Vat. Analysis 60: 112-123
Wright, Crispin. 1994. On Putnam's Proof that we cannot be brains in a
vat. In P. Clark and B. Hale. Eds, Reading Putnam. Oxford: Blackwell.
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