The Brain in a Vat Thought Experiment is a scenario designed to make you think skeptically about the world around you. In the scenario, the world you find yourself in is perfectly simulated by a computer connected to your brain which floats in a tank. Once you've thought about the scenario, you need to ask yourself if it's possible that you are a brain in a vat. I propose that it is possible that I am a brain in a vat because I can imagine this to be true. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Your brain is not in your head connected to your body, but rather in a vat of nutrients connected to an extremely sophisticated computer. This computer, let's call it Codey, generates all the sensory input that you have, are, or will ever make in your life. It responds to signals sent from your brain, such as the signal to move your arms to adjust your chair. Codey processes this signal like your nervous system would, except it doesn't actually move your body – because you don't have one. It then shows you the reaction that would have occurred if it were real, giving you the complete illusion that you are sitting in a chair and have just accidentally pinched your finger while trying to raise it a little higher. In addition to generating the world that you are. immersed, as well as all your actions, Codey can make you experience things that do not respect the laws of physics. She could manifest a super sparkly, gravity-defying, rainbow-haired unicorn in front of you. Such an event may seem like a quick way to destroy the illusion, but Codey can make it easier for you to enter any new scenario. Make the world believable enough and it would leave you without context to believe that this is a new environment and something impossible is happening. This thought experiment is often used on a larger scale by considering the possibility that it's not just your brain. a vat, but everyone's brain is in its own vat. All beings who have sentience in this scenario are connected to Codey. We all coexist in the same simulated world and communicate with each other, but we each experience it through our own perspectives. We are also not technically communicating in the usual sense, but only have the illusion that we are communicating since this is facilitated and controlled by Codey. Now think about the scenario described and ask yourself: “Is it possible that I am just a brain in a vat?” » How do you know? The reason we consider all of these hypotheses is to think about global skepticism, whether or not we can be sure that everything we know is true or false. This questioning of knowledge is the main idea explored by the brains-in-vats thought experiment and is often applied to our understanding of truth, consciousness, meaning, etc. To understand this concept, you can break the problem down into a simple example: Take the observation that the sky is blue. If you know the sky is blue, then you know you are not a brain in a vat. However, if you don't know that you are not a brain in a vat, then you don't know for sure that the sky is blue. By this logic, all of science could be based on a misconception, and we would be forced to reevaluate everything we think we know. Many philosophers have made a counterargument to the claim that it is possible that we are vat brains.Hillary Putnam was one of the first, and most famous, to make such an argument in her essay “Reason, Truth and History” (1981). He explains the argument that if we were brains in vats, we would not be able to think that we are. This is demonstrated by his claim that someone in the real world and a brain in a vat would seem to share the same language, but what the words used by the brain in the vat refer to cannot refer to the same things which exist. in the real world. A brain in a vat would only have the concept of what a chair was and be able to experience it conceptually, but because it is a vat-world chair, it is not the same thing than a real chair. Entertaining this philosophical problem has gone beyond just philosophers, it has also made its way into the mainstream media. A famous example of this is “The Truman Show.” This is a film released in 1998 about a man named Truman who is born and raised in a world completely invented for him. The people there are all actors pretending to be his wife, neighbors and even the postman, and it's all filmed in secret for what we would today call a reality TV show. Truman begins to discover that things don't add up and he attempts to free himself and escape the setting. Exactly like the brain in the vat theory, everyone around it is simulated, although this is done using physical props rather than physical props. a virtual reality system that affects his disembodied brain. For most of his life, Truman has ignored the fact that his world is just a facade, and he has no reason to think it could be otherwise until anomalies he cannot explain come to light. start to happen. His interactions with others can be, and are, orchestrated as a simulation, just as Codey does with the brains in the vats. Truman begins to believe that he is being systematically deceived and, unlike us, he tries to prove that he is and escape. The novel, City of Ember, also depicts aspects of the brain in thought experiment vats. The story takes place in a world completely surrounded by darkness. There is electricity, food and water, but they run out quickly. Two children find a mysterious box containing damaged instructions and tools that they piece together to help them discover a secret tunnel outside their town. They follow him and find themselves in the outside world; They then realize that their city was simply underground all this time (DuPrau). Their town relates to the theory because it is, in a way, a simulation created by their ancestors to keep them safe. It is a simulation that everyone believes to be real, and its knowledge is based entirely on that belief, as is our knowledge of our beliefs. The kids find a way out of the simulation, but only because they find an article written by an architect of their house before the city went underground and everyone forgot about the outside world. It is possible that I am a brain in a vat because I can imagine this to be true. If I think about the perception of my finger, I can then break down my knowledge of its existence into all the sensory information I receive from it. If there is no other form of perception than physical perception, then this is the only way I know my finger is real. If there were a super computer capable of simulating all of these sensory inputs exactly as I currently experience them, I can imagine that, as a brain in a vat, I would experience everything exactly asthe same way. I can then imagine that I am a brain in a vat, so it is possible that this is true. By applying a modal theory, we can see how likely it is that other worlds are real and that we may simply be in a different world than this one. we think we are. There is a theory of modality called modal realism that makes the brain-in-the-vat thought experiment easier to understand. This also makes it easier to consider the brain-in-the-vat thought experiment as a real possibility. The concept of modality is a philosophical tool used to ask questions about what is possible and what is necessary for a possible world to be true. Modal realism is the view that if a world is possible, then it is real. This means that there are infinitely many worlds that all exist independently of each other. There is only one warrant to this theory; aAll worlds must exist both spatially and temporally isolated from each other. Other than that, there is no difference between the reality of our world and that of other worlds. We can take the theory of modal realism a step further and say that if we can imagine a world to be possible, then it is real. A world in which the world's inhabitants are brains in vats is a world that we cannot interact with, but we can still assert that it exists through modal realist theory. The next step is to take what we know and ask, “Could our world be this world of brains in vats?” » The answer is “yes!” » Since we can imagine that it is possible that we are brains in vats, then it is possible that we are currently in this world. Indeed, there is no difference between how we would experience our world as brains in vats or as embodied brains. This theory of modality also allows us to speculate that not only does the brains-in-vats scenario exist, but all of its variations also exist as distinct worlds. “The Truman Show” and “City of Ember” are just two of the infinite worlds similar to the world of brains in vats that exist. Truman is alive, in the same sense that we are alive, but he exists in a separate space-time world. He discovers that there are inconsistencies in his reality and ventures to explore them. It doesn't take much creativity to imagine that you could be Truman in your own world "The Truman Show." It is therefore possible that we are there, or, at least, in a personalized version. Our own world is much more similar to the world in which “The City of Embers” exists. Although they live underground and have the tools to explore the limits of their world, they choose to accept their subjective reality without question. It is in the same way that we often accept our own reality, without ever imagining that what we experience is not the whole truth of our world. In the world of Ember City, they have the tools to determine if their experience of their world is true. We don't have such tangible tools as they do, but we do have modal realism theory and other similar theories to help us find our way "above ground." The claim that we are perhaps brains in vats can be refuted if we were to discover a way in which we can differentiate between the way a brain in a vat would experience and the way an embodied brain would experience. This problem was addressed by Dr. Ofra Magidor, current Waynflete Professor of Philosophy.