Results for 'brains-in-vats'

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  1. Brains in vats and model theory.Tim Button - 2015 - In Sanford C. Goldberg (ed.), The Brain in a Vat. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. pp. 131-154.
    Hilary Putnam’s BIV argument first occurred to him when ‘thinking about a theorem in modern logic, the “Skolem–Löwenheim Theorem”’ (Putnam 1981: 7). One of my aims in this paper is to explore the connection between the argument and the Theorem. But I also want to draw some further connections. In particular, I think that Putnam’s BIV argument provides us with an impressively versatile template for dealing with sceptical challenges. Indeed, this template allows us to unify some of Putnam’s most enduring (...)
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  2. Brains in Vats? Don't Bother!Peter Baumann - 2019 - Episteme 16 (2):186-199.
    Contemporary discussions of epistemological skepticism - the view that we do not and cannot know anything about the world around us - focus very much on a certain kind of skeptical argument involving a skeptical scenario (a situation familiar from Descartes’ First Meditation). According to the argument, knowing some ordinary proposition about the world (one we usually take ourselves to know) requires knowing we are not in some such skeptical scenario SK; however, since we cannot know that we are not (...)
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  3. Can brains in vats think as a team?Hans Bernhard Schmid - 2003 - Philosophical Explorations 6 (3):201-218.
    Abstract The specter of the ?group mind? or ?collective subject? plays a crucial and fateful role in the current debate on collective intentionality. Fear of the group mind is one important reason why philosophers of collective intentionality resort to individualism. It is argued here that this measure taken against the group mind is as unnecessary as it is detrimental to our understanding of what it means to share an intention. A non-individualistic concept of shared intentionality does not necessarily have to (...)
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  4.  17
    Of Brains in Vats, Whatever Brains in Vats May Be.Bredo C. Johnsen - 2003 - Philosophical Studies 112 (3):225-249.
    Hilary Putnam has offered two arguments to show that we cannotbe brains in a vat, and one to show that our cognitive situationcannot be fully analogous to that of brains in a vat. The latterand one of the former are irreparably flawed by misapplicationsof, or mistaken inferences from, his semantic externalism; thethird yields only a simple logical truth. The metaphysical realismthat is Putnam’s ultimate target is perfectly consistent withsemantic externalism.
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  5.  75
    Can Brains in Vats Think as a Team?Hans Bernhard Schmid - 2003 - Philosophical Explorations 6 (3):201-217.
    The specter of the ‘group mind’ or ‘collective subject’ plays a crucial and fateful role in the current debate on collective intentionality. Fear of the group mind is one important reason why philosophers of collective intentionality resort to individualism. It is argued here that this measure taken against the group mind is as unnecessary as it is detrimental to our understanding of what it means to share an intention. A non-individualistic concept of shared intentionality does not necessarily have to get (...)
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  6.  75
    There are Actual Brains in Vats Now.Adam Michael Bricker - 2019 - Logos and Episteme 10 (2):135-145.
    There are brains in vats (BIVs) in the actual world. These “cerebral organoids” are roughly comparable to the brains of three-month-old foetuses, and conscious cerebral organoids seem only a matter of time. Philosophical interest in conscious cerebral organoids has thus far been limited to bioethics, and the purpose of this paper is to discuss cerebral organoids in an epistemological context. In doing so, I will argue that it is now clear that there are close possible worlds in (...)
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  7.  37
    Brains-in-vats, giant brains and world brains: the brain as metaphor in digital culture.Charlie Gere - 2004 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 35 (2):351-366.
    This paper argues that the ‘brain’ has become a frequently invoked and symptomatic source of metaphorical imagery in our current technologically mediated and dominated culture, through which the distinction between the human and the technological has been and continues to be negotiated, particularly in the context of the increasing ubiquity of electronic and digital technologies. This negotiation has thrown up three distinct, though interrelated, figures. One is the ‘Brain in a Vat’, in which the brain can connect to and even (...)
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    “The Brain in Vat” at the Intersection. [REVIEW]Danilo Šuster - 2018 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 18 (1):205-217.
    Goldberg 2016 is a collection of papers dedicated to Putnam’s (1981) brain in a vat (‘BIV’) scenario. The collection divides into three parts, though the issues are inter-connected. Putnam uses conceptual tools from philosophy of language in order to establish theses in epistemology and metaphysics. Putnam’s BIV is considered a contemporary version of Descartes’s skeptical argument of the Evil Genius, but I argue that deception (the possibility of having massively false belief) is not essential, externalism does all the anti-skeptical work. (...)
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  9.  59
    Brains in vats and the internalist perspective.James Stephens & Lilly-Marlene Russow - 1985 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 63 (2):205 – 212.
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  10. Of Brains in Vats, Whatever Brains in Vats May Be.C. Johnsen Bredo - 2003 - Philosophical Studies 112 (3):225-249.
    Hilary Putnam has offered two arguments to show that we cannotbe brains in a vat, and one to show that our cognitive situationcannot be fully analogous to that of brains in a vat. The latterand one of the former are irreparably flawed by misapplicationsof, or mistaken inferences from, his semantic externalism; thethird yields only a simple logical truth. The metaphysical realismthat is Putnams ultimate target is perfectly consistent withsemantic externalism.
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    Brains-in-vats, giant brains and world brains: the brain as metaphor in digital culture.Charlie Gere - 2004 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 35 (2):351-366.
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  12.  29
    Generalizing Brains in Vats.B. Weiss - 2000 - Analysis 60 (1):112-123.
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    Generalizing brains in vats.Bernhard Weiss - 2000 - Analysis 60 (1):112–123.
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  14. 7. Brains in Vats.Mark Quentin Gardiner - 2000 - In Semantic Challenges to Realism: Dummett and Putnam. University of Toronto Press. pp. 183-198.
     
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  15. How Can Brains in Vats Experience a Spatial World? A Puzzle for Internalists.Adam Pautz - 2019 - In Blockheads!
    In this chapter, Pautz raises a puzzle about spatial experience for phenomenal internalists like Ned Block. If an accidental, lifelong brain-in-the-void (BIV) should have all the same experiences as you, it would have an experience as of items having various shapes, and be able to acquire concepts of those shapes, despite being cut off from real things with the shapes. Internalists cannot explain this by saying that BIV is presented with Peacocke-style visual field regions having various shapes, because these would (...)
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  16. Brains in Vats.Hilary Putnam - 2003 - In John Heil (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: A Guide and Anthology. Oxford University Press.
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  17. Reliabilism and Brains in Vats.Jon Altschul - 2011 - Acta Analytica 26 (3):257-272.
    According to epistemic internalism, the only facts that determine the justificational status of a belief are facts about the subject’s own mental states, like beliefs and experiences. Externalists instead hold that certain external facts, such as facts about the world or the reliability of a belief-producing mechanism, affect a belief’s justificational status. Some internalists argue that considerations about evil demon victims and brains in vats provide excellent reason to reject externalism: because these subjects are placed in epistemically unfavorable (...)
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  18. Putnam, brains in vats, and arguments for scepticism.A. N. Gallois - 1992 - Mind 101 (402):273-286.
  19. Skepticism Revisited: Chalmers on The Matrix and brains-in-vats.Richard Hanley - 2017 - Cognitive Systems Research 41 (March 2017):93-98.
    Thought experiments involving The Matrix, brains-in-vats, or Cartesian demons have traditionally thought to describe skeptical possibilities. Chalmers has denied this, claiming that the simulations involved are real enough to at least sometimes defeat the skeptic. Through an examination of the meaning of kind terms in natural language I argue that, though the Chalmers view may be otherwise attractive, it is not an antidote to skepticism.
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  20.  9
    Brains in Vats Revisited.Stephen Leeds - 1996 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 77 (2):108-131.
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    The Impoverished Representations of Brains in Vats.Jan Almäng - 2020 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 97 (3):475-494.
    In the present paper, the notion that brains in vats with perceptual experiences of the same type as ours could perceptually represent other entities than shapes is challenged. Whereas it is often held that perceptual experiences with the same phenomenal character as ours could represent computational properties, I argue that this is not the case for shapes. My argument is in brief that the phenomenal character of a normal visual experience exemplifies shapes – phenomenal shapes – which functions (...)
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  22. How do brains in vats experience a spatial world? a puzzle for internalists.Adam Pautz - 2019 - In Adam Pautz & Daniel Stoljar (eds.), Blockheads! Essays on Ned Block’s Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness. MIT Press.
     
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  23. Putnam on Brains-in-Vats and Radical Skepticism.Duncan Pritchard & Chris Ranalli - 2016 - In Sanford Goldberg (ed.), Putnam on Brains in Vats. Cambridge University Press.
  24.  45
    Sensitivity, Safety, and Brains in Vats.Haicheng Zhao - 2023 - Topoi 42 (1):83-89.
    Both sensitivity and safety theorists concur that their accounts should be relativized to the same method that one employs in the actual world. However, properly individuating methods has proven to be a tricky matter. In this regard, Nozick (Philosophical Explanations, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1981) proposes a Same-Experience-Same-Method Principle: if the experiences associated with two method tokens are the same, they are of the same type of method. This principle, however, has been widely rejected by recent safety and sensitivity theorists. (...)
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    Johnsen on Brains in Vats.Anthony Brueckner - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 129 (3):435-440.
    This is a response to a recent Philosophical Studies article by Bredo Johnsen, in which he makes a number of criticisms of Putnamian anti-skeptical arguments.
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  26. Brains in a vat.Anthony L. Brueckner - 1986 - Journal of Philosophy 83 (3):148-167.
    In chapter 1 of Reason, Truth, and History, Hilary Putnam argues from some plausible assumptions about the nature of reference to the conclusion that it is not possible that all sentient creatures are brains in a vat. If this argument is successful, it seemingly refutes an updated form of Cartesian skepticism concerning knowledge of physical objects. In this paper, I will state what I take to be the most promising interpretation of Putnam's argument. My reconstructed argument differs from an (...)
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  27. The Brain in a Vat.Sanford C. Goldberg (ed.) - 2015 - United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
    The scenario of the brain in a vat, first aired thirty-five years ago in Hilary Putnam's classic paper, has been deeply influential in philosophy of mind and language, epistemology, and metaphysics. This collection of new essays examines the scenario and its philosophical ramifications and applications, as well as the challenges which it has faced. The essays review historical applications of the brain-in-a-vat scenario and consider its impact on contemporary debates. They explore a diverse range of philosophical issues, from intentionality, external-world (...)
     
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  28. Putnam on Brains in Vats.Sanford Goldberg (ed.) - 2016 - Cambridge University Press.
     
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  29.  37
    Reply to Sawyer on brains in vats.H. W. Noonan - 2000 - Analysis 60 (3):247-249.
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    Professor Putnam on brains in vats.J. Harrison - 1985 - Erkenntnis 23 (1):55 - 57.
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  31. Brain in a Vat or Body in a World? Brainbound versus Enactive Views of Experience.Evan Thompson & Diego Cosmelli - 2011 - Philosophical Topics 39 (1):163-180.
    We argue that the minimal biological requirements for consciousness include a living body, not just neuronal processes in the skull. Our argument proceeds by reconsidering the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment. Careful examination of this thought experiment indicates that the null hypothesis is that any adequately functional “vat” would be a surrogate body, that is, that the so-called vat would be no vat at all, but rather an embodied agent in the world. Thus, what the thought experiment actually shows is that the (...)
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  32. Reply to Sawyer on brains in vats.Harold W. Noonan - 2000 - Analysis 60 (3):247-249.
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  33.  15
    Skepticism, Objectivity, and Brains in Vats.Gary Ebbs - 1992 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 73 (3):239-266.
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  34. A brain in a vat cannot break out: why the singularity must be extended, embedded and embodied.Francis Heylighen & Center Leo Apostel Ecco - 2012 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 19 (1-2):126-142.
    The present paper criticizes Chalmers's discussion of the Singularity, viewed as the emergence of a superhuman intelligence via the self-amplifying development of artificial intelligence. The situated and embodied view of cognition rejects the notion that intelligence could arise in a closed 'brain-in-a-vat' system, because intelligence is rooted in a high-bandwidth, sensory-motor interaction with the outside world. Instead, it is proposed that superhuman intelligence can emerge only in a distributed fashion, in the form of a self-organizing network of humans, computers, and (...)
     
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  35. Brains in a Vat.Hilary Putnam - 1999 - In Sven Bernecker & Fred I. Dretske (eds.), Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Epistemology. Oxford University Press. pp. 1-21.
     
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  36. Direct realism and the brain-in-a-vat argument.Michael Huemer - 2000 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (2):397-413.
    The brain-in-a-vat argument for skepticism is best formulated, not using the closure principle, but using the “Preference Principle,” which states that in order to be justified in believing H on the basis of E, one must have grounds for preferring H over each alternative explanation of E. When the argument is formulated this way, Dretske’s and Klein’s responses to it fail. However, the strengthened argument can be refuted using a direct realist account of perception. For the direct realist, refuting the (...)
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  37.  11
    Re: Brains in a Vat.Stephen Hetherington - 2000 - Dialectica 54 (4):307-312.
    The hypothesis that we are brains in a vat is one which we believe to be false. Could it possibly be true, however? Metaphysical realists accept that our believing it to be false does not entail its falsity. They also accept that if –as brains in a vat –we were to say or think “We are brains in a vat”, then we would be correct. Ever the claimed foe of the metaphysical realist, though, Hilary Putnam argues that (...)
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  38. Brains in a VAT and memory: How (not) to respond to Putnam's argument.Tim Kraft - 2020 - Belgrade Philosophical Annual 1 (33):39-53.
    Putnam's argument that we are not brains in a VAT has recently seen a resurgence in interest. Although objections to it are legion, an emerging consensus seems to be that even if it successfully refutes one version of the brain in a VAT scenario, lifelong envatment, it is powerless against a different one, recent envatment. Although initially appealing, I argue in this paper that this response-merely replacing lifelong envatment by recent envatment-is a bad response to Putnam's argument. Yet there (...)
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  39.  54
    Direct Realism and the Brain-in-a-Vat Argument.Michael Huemer - 2000 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (2):397-413.
    The brain-in-a-vat argument for skepticism is best formulated, not using the closure principle, but using the “Preference Principle,” which states that in order to be justified in believing H on the basis of E, one must have grounds for preferring H over each alternative explanation of E. When the argument is formulated this way, Dretske’s and Klein’s responses to it fail. However, the strengthened argument can be refuted using a direct realist account of perception. For the direct realist, refuting the (...)
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  40. Brains in a Vat, Subjectivity, and the Causal Theory of Reference.Kirk Ludwig - 1992 - Journal of Philosophical Research 17:313-345.
    This paper evaluates Putnam’s argument in the first chapter of Reason, Truth and History, for the claim that we can know that we are not brains in a vat (of a certain sort). A widespread response to Putnam’s argument has been that if it were successful not only the world but the meanings of our words (and consequently our thoughts) would be beyond the pale of knowledge, because a causal theory of reference is not compatible with our having knowledge (...)
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  41. ‘This Is the Bad Case’: What Brains in Vats Can Know.Aidan McGlynn - 2018 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 92 (1):183-205.
    The orthodox position in epistemology, for both externalists and internalists, is that a subject in a ‘bad case’—a sceptical scenario—is so epistemically badly off that they cannot know how badly off they are. Ofra Magidor contends that externalists should break ranks on this question, and that doing so is liberating when it comes time to confront a number of central issues in epistemology, including scepticism and the new evil demon problem for process reliabilism. In this reply, I will question whether (...)
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  42. Brains in a Vat.Hilary Putnam - 1981 - In Keith DeRose & Ted A. Warfield (eds.), Skepticism: a contemporary reader. New York: Oxford University Press.
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  43.  30
    Brains in a Vat.Anthony L. Brueckner - 1986 - Journal of Philosophy 83 (3):148-167.
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  44.  9
    The brain in the vat and the question of metaphysical realism.J. Smart - 2003 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 35 (2):237-247.
    This article indicates some ways in which the fantasy of the brain in the vat has been used in thought experiments to discuss important philosophical problems. The first has to do with scepticism about the external world. The second has to do with Hilary Putnam’s arguments for the indeterminacy of reference and his rejection of metaphysical realism. The third issue to which the brain in the vat is relevant has to do with the difference between broad and narrow content of (...)
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  45.  50
    Re: Brains in a vat.Stephen Hetherington - 2000 - Dialectica 54 (4):307–312.
    The hypothesis that we are brains in a vat is one which we believe to be false. Could it possibly be true, however? Metaphysical realists accept that our believing it to be false does not entail its falsity. They also accept that if –as brains in a vat –we were to say or think “We are brains in a vat”, then we would be correct. Ever the claimed foe of the metaphysical realist, though, Hilary Putnam argues that (...)
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    The brain in the vat and the question of metaphysical realism.J. J. C. Smart - 2004 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 35 (2):237-247.
    This article indicates some ways in which the fantasy of the brain in the vat has been used in thought experiments to discuss important philosophical problems. The first has to do with scepticism about the external world. The second has to do with Hilary Putnam’s arguments for the indeterminacy of reference and his rejection of metaphysical realism. The third issue to which the brain in the vat is relevant has to do with the difference between broad and narrow content of (...)
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  47. Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, Brain in a Vat, Five-Minute Hypothesis, McTaggart’s Paradox, etc. Are Clarified in Quantum Language [Revised version].Shiro Ishikawa - 2018 - Open Journal of Philosophy 8 (5):466-480.
    Recently we proposed "quantum language" (or, the linguistic Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics"), which was not only characterized as the metaphysical and linguistic turn of quantum mechanics but also the linguistic turn of Descartes=Kant epistemology. We believe that quantum language is the language to describe science, which is the final goal of dualistic idealism. Hence there is a reason to want to clarify, from the quantum linguistic point of view, the following problems: "brain in a vat argument", "the Cogito proposition", (...)
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  48.  34
    Additional Reflections on Putnam, Wright and Brains in Vats.Harold W. Noonan - 2016 - Metaphysica 17 (2).
    Putnam’s argument against the sceptical Brain-in-a-Vat hypothesis continues to intrigue. I argue in what follows that the argument refutes a particular kind of sceptic and make a proposal about its more general significance. To appreciate the soundness of the argument, I explain, we need to appreciate that the sceptic’s contention is that I cannot know that I am not a brain in a vat even if I am not. This is why in response to the sceptic it is legitimate to (...)
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  49. How Can We Know that We're Not Brains in Vats?Keith DeRose - 2000 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 38 (S1):121-148.
    This should be fairly close to the text of this paper as it appears in The Southern Journal of Philosophy 38 (2000), Spindel Conference Supplement: 121-148.
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  50.  34
    The brain in a vat in cyberpunk: the persistence of the flesh.Dani Cavallaro - 2004 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 35 (2):287-305.
    This essay argues that the image of the brain in a vat metaphorically encapsulates articulations of the relationship between the corporeal and the technological dimensions found in cyberpunk fiction and cinema. Cyberpunk is concurrently concerned with actual and imaginary metamorphoses of biological organisms into machines, and of mechanical apparatuses into living entities. Its recurring representation of human beings hooked up to digital matrices vividly recalls the envatted brain activated by electric stimuli, which Hilary Putnam has theorized in the context of (...)
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