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What's It Like to Be a BIV? A Dialogue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 December 2015

MICHAEL VEBER
MICHAEL VEBER*
Affiliation:
EAST CAROLINA UNIVERSITYveberm@ecu.edu
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Abstract:

Several subjects are fully convinced that they are brains in vats whose experiences are hallucinatory. They confront a ‘skeptic’ who raises the possibility that they are not brains in vats who lack and hallucinate hands but ‘brains in skulls’ who have hands and see them. Familiar responses to skepticism are offered in support of the claim that the subjects know they do not have hands. The philosophical significance of this looking-glass approach to skepticism is also discussed. It is suggested that these familiar responses to skepticism do not achieve anything because, if we begin from the assumption that we are brains in vats, we can employ those same responses to skepticism to support the claim that we know we do not have hands. One interlocutor argues that things are not so dismal. The main conversation is framed by a discussion among night watchmen at some sort of skepticism laboratory.

Keywords

epistemologyskepticismsources of knowledge and justificationtheories of knowledge and justificationdogmatismphilosophy of mindperception
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , Winter 2015 , pp. 734 - 756
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2015 

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