the brain is just an a pattern of color in the mind

look and see

but dont look with your eyes. look with consciousness — hope

What does this mean? It means look with your understanding, and here, where ideas convince, structures of consciousness change, that is, if the ideas in question are not trivial, but momentous, like realizing you actually are a brain in a vat: suddenly you look around and realize that all along all there was was a laboratory fabrication. Imagine if voices issued from the sky one day announcing the news.
But then, and this is the rub, if you will, this is exactly the way reality is, for our brains are in vats of blood in skulls.
Now, you can't say the brain is just a pattern of color for our affairs are organized and consistent as we "see" them in daily life. But the real question is, what does your understanding tell? I claim it tells you that your finitude is the foundational condition of neuronal representation, and the reality is infinity. As I lift my cup from the table, such an event is eternal.

It's easy to say something is a waste of time when apparently you don't understand that something. — 180 Proof

Glib, but confrontational. Not a good combination. You need more than this. Don't be shy, spell it out: what is it I don't get?

I do. In this view, how would you account for what happens when the brain is unplugged, housed in a new body, and "wakes up"? — hypericin

I don't see how that is relevant to what we're discussing.

Not sure what you're getting at? — hypericin

Sad to say, I can't remember what my point was.

What does this mean? It means look with your understanding — Constance

No it doesn't.

Consciousness and mind are two very different things.

I don't see how that is relevant to what we're discussing. — T Clark

The argument that the simulation is the reality for the brain in the vat cannot accommodate the situation where the brain is housd in a body again

I like this. This is a far more satisfactory answer than "It's just silly lets not think about it." It takes the problem seriously and suggests a genuine solution. And this analysis seems right to me. It seems like @Cuthbert has correctly articulated a niggling feeling of 'there's something wrong with the thought experiment, but I'm not quite sure what'. — bert1

See also:

To study physiology with a clear conscience, one must insist on the fact that the sense-organs are not phenomena in the sense of the idealistic philosophy; as such they certainly could not be causes! Sensualism, therefore, at least as regulative hypothesis, if not as heuristic principle. What? And others say even that the external world is the work of our organs? But then our body, as a part of this external world, would be the work of our organs! But then our organs themselves would be the work of our organs! It seems to me that this is a complete REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM, if the conception CAUSA SUI is something fundamentally absurd. Consequently, the external world is NOT the work of our organs — ? — Nietzsche

But then every night I dream and the external world is, in fact, the work of my nervous system (if I take as true that brains are the source of dreams) and global skepticism holds. The world we occupy while dreaming is essentially that of a brain in a vat, or in Nietzsche's words - the external world IS the work of my organs (but, the work of those organs/brain of the body that I occupy as a dream homunculus). If I doubt the external world while dreaming, I can (occasionally) become lucid and have some sort of control over the dreamscape (flying, moving objects at will, etc). Dream characters have even directly told me I'm dreaming. It seems to me there is no fundamental difference between waking life and dream life (see Thomas Metzingers: The Ego Tunnel), other than the stability of waking life and the inability to become lucid and control the world around me at will. We live in an ideal world every night, as a body in what seems an external world.

But in waking life people have only told me I'm dreaming in jest, and their true externality appears incoherent to doubt. After all, jumping off dreams cliffs shocks you awake, but kills you in waking (real?) life.

“Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.” — Zhuangzi

Glib, but confrontational. Not a good combination. You need more than this. Don't be shy, spell it out: what is it I don't get? — Constance

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/576434

The argument that the simulation is the reality for the brain in the vat cannot accommodate the situation where the brain is housd in a body again — hypericin

I don't understand why it would matter.

Physicists' language has no place in genuine philosophy. — Constance

I read this quickly while passing through, but didn't stop. Now I keep thinking about it. Do I believe this? Let's see.

First off, I get annoyed when people claim that each new discovery calls for a reevaluation of our understanding of reality. Does quantum mechanics require us to rethink metaphysics? My first reaction is to say no. I want to keep my metaphysics separate from physics. But on the other hand, I'm wonder if I'm being rigid.

I went back to your previous comment in this exchange.

But then, what is it to test? This is a philosophical question. Consider that one tests what stands before one, some thing of event. What are these at the level of basic assumptions? This is not a scientist's question, but one of science's presuppositions. Neil Degrasse Tyson has no insights to offer as a physicist, and the standard scientist's assumptions are out the window. they don't (typically) step outside their world to discuss questions like, What does it mean to call an object real at all? The ones that do end up speaking nonsense. (Keep in mind that someone like Daniel Dennett is not a naive realist. He simply doesn't read phenomenology, and in this he IS naive). — Constance

Doesn't this point to a weakness of understanding in the scientists? Shouldn't they be interested in the metaphysical underpinnings of what they study? Can you effectively study something without being aware of your presuppositions? How can you apply the scientific method unless you understand it? Doesn't that mean that physicist's language does have a place in philosophy?

Am I talking about the same things you are?

if the vat world is reality, what do we call the would outside of it?

If BiV, then BiV is imaginary.

If BiS, then BiV is imaginary.

BiV is imaginary.

BiS.

if the vat world is reality, what do we call the would outside of it? — hypericin

The noumena. The same issue rises for the simulation argument. If reality as we experience it is a simulation, then what sort of world is the simulation running in? Bostrom assumes the likelihood of an ancestor simulation by future civilizations with the technology to run such simulations, but his calculations are based on the reality he experiences now. Same with the argument for envatted brains. It's based on the reality we experience, not some envatted scenario.

A more realistic concern might be Boltzman brains, since current physics allows for the likelihood of such beings coming into existence as a statistical fluctuation in the distant future. And if we steal from Bostrom's simulation argument, then we could calculate that Boltzman brains will far outnumber biological ones which evolved like ours, allowing for enough time. So therefore, we're more likelihood to be having a Boltzman experience in which it only appears that the universe is still in a relatively low entropy state and only 13.7 billion years old.

In which case we, or more likely just I, are calculating a probability based on a false appearance.

if the vat world is reality, what do we call the would outside of it? — hypericin

If Boston is all of a person's reality, what do you call the world outside it?

It's Putnam's argument informally expressed. But there is an answer:

"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)

So perhaps we are back where we started.

https://iep.utm.edu/brainvat/

If Boston is all of a person's reality, what do you call the world outside it? — Isaac

Great point, except for the fact that Boston is not a computer simulation for the benefit of a brain in a vat.

But if my brain is a brain in a vat it would not be a brain as I understand brains because what I now understand to be a brain is (I'm imagining) an illusory brain. — Cuthbert

I'm not sure I buy this. Since we are making up the vat scenario anyway, why not make it up such that vat world concepts correspond with trans vat concepts?

Boston is not a computer simulation — hypericin

So? Computer simulations are real things, you can buy them in the shops. Why would they present some problem for what to call them?

First off, I get annoyed when people claim that each new discovery calls for a reevaluation of our understanding of reality. Does quantum mechanics require us to rethink metaphysics? My first reaction is to say no. I want to keep my metaphysics separate from physics. But on the other hand, I'm wonder if I'm being rigid. — T Clark

I know how you feel, of course, but there is the an essential element missing from the objection, inevitably: the question, what IS philosophy? It's not love of wisdom, because that begs the same question. What is wisdom? What sets philosophy apart from other disciplines is its desire to know the truth at the level of basic questions, which is why all categories of thought are inherently philosophical regardless of way they differ in content. Going through your mail and doing quantum mechanics share that same foundation of structured thought and experience taking up the world. What does it mean at all to think, to solve problems, to experience pain and pleasure or art and music. Not this art or that love affair, but At ALL, how does one analytically approach those truly basic questions that are presupposed by all the things we say and do?
Metaphysics? There is bad and good metaphysics. The former asks about, say, God's angels, actions, responses to sin, his kingdom, accessibility through prayer, God's omniscience, omnipotence, and so on, and so on. This kind of thing is usually accepted on faith and dogma. Good metaphysics is found in phenomenology's analyses of time, metavalue, metaethics (what is the nature of suffering? A non-natural property??), analyses of the concept of presence, the possibility of pure phenomenological understanding of the world, and so on.
Empirical science? This is the naturalistic attitude. Philosophy is about what is presupposed by this, what assumptions are in place for this that make it possible to think and experience at all. Otherwise, you just doing scientific speculation, not philosophy.

Doesn't this point to a weakness of understanding in the scientists? Shouldn't they be interested in the metaphysical underpinnings of what they study? Can you effectively study something without being aware of your presuppositions? How can you apply the scientific method unless you understand it? Doesn't that mean that physicist's language does have a place in philosophy?

Am I talking about the same things you are? — T Clark

Physics is already, and has for some time (such that I've read, which is little, except for my college course) understood that an object is a synthesis of overt, observable, features, and the contributions of the observer, and ponders the question as to whether there is any epistemic connection at all between out there and in here.

What they usually do is take the naturalistic world, assume there is a connection, and simply move forward with that, putting aside any presuppositional objections. They are usually qualified materialists or physical reductionists and know nothing of Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger and others.
Yes, you can effectively study something and not be aware of is presuppositions; in fact, there is no though without ignoring presuppositions. As I type, I am not aware of the analysis ot typing, the language and its execution and many things. Were I to become aware of these, I couldn't type. Doing philosophy is not doing science, or, when a scientist does science, if she starts wondering about underlying philosophical issues, to that extent, she breaks away from her discipline.

No it doesn't.

Consciousness and mind are two very different things. — hope

That would be a problem to demonstrate. Most would say impossible to demonstrate, as well as undesirable. Consciousness without thought and understanding reduces consciousness to a kind of thing, like a tree or a table. A different kind of thing, no doubt, but a thing that is just there.
But then, I would need your account of how it is that consciousness and mind are different. Where is the line drawn such that being conscious and knowing (cognitively) are different?

Not really. I am discussing two models of the relation between myself and the world: the common sense brain in a skull, and far fetched but technically possible brain in a vat. In the first, it is just a given that there is a perception independent real world. — hypericin

I claim there is no real difference. The brain in a vat, as a descriptive scenario for a counterexample to naive realism, is descriptively incidental. Brain in vats, mechanical brains, electronic brains, virtual brains in vats, shoe boxes, I mean, this kind of thing has no bearing and the difference is really only one: in the conditions set up for the brain in a vat, there is the aspect of there "actually" being such things as brains, scientists and their vats. In the philosophical counterpart, any claim at all about such things would be what I call bad metaphysics. Positing, if you will, beyond the inner conditions of the "brain", is nonsense. this doesn't by any means, I further claim, deny the validity of metaphysics, but the good kind always prevails, the kind that sees an exhaustive examination of the world must include, as Putman put it, the existential affair where the words run out, and interpretation stunningly falls on its face, and yet, there we are in the midst of what utterly denies language's hold on things, for it is not a thing, but....thingness, or Being in the world, of the world.
This brings philosophy to its only recourse, which is phenomenology.

Is the mystery here the hard problem? Because otherwise I don't really understand what's not to understand. — hypericin

I suspect philosophy rather gets in the way of the simplicity of the issue. Is it a causal process that delivers an object to conscious recognition? There is my cat, and I know it, but how does, and this is the question of all questions, this opaque brain thing internalize epistemically that over there that is not a brain thing or any of its interior manifestations?

when you try to answer that question, you will see why claims about any exteriority of objects are impossible to justify. It is not a denial of naive realism in play here, but its most basic assumption that objects are all there, in some space and time that is beyond the margins of thought and experience (regardless of how modern science wants to construe this) that leads to the conclusion that such extra-experiential positing is impossible. That over there, my cat, is certainly NOT synapses firing into axonal fibers of physical brain connectivity. They are, of course, not simply different. they are radically OTHER.

how it is that consciousness and mind are different — Constance

Mind = thoughts and beliefs

Consciousness = awareness, being, presence.

consciousness to a kind of thing — Constance

Ya, the most amazing thing, and the only thing, in existence.

akin to God.

Mind = thoughts and beliefs

Consciousness = awareness, being, presence. — hope

But then, how can one be aware without having beliefs? The trouble lies here: if there is an utter vacancy of thought and belief, there is no you, even if you take the self to be a kind of existence that thought cannot comprehend, if thought is not conceived to be in any way a part of it, then all terms of identity become lost. How is this so? Try to imagine such an independent existence and you will find thought to be an integral of affirming it. What remains is nothingness, that is, a thoughtless transcendental ego. You would have to invent something to make consciousness conscious that is not understanding, and this would be nonsense; that is to be conscious yet not to "know" this things in any way. Perhaps in the way a rabbit knows there is a carrot somewhere: non cognitive, or better, proto cognitive, yet the concept of agency is radically reduced, and there would be non cognitive, instinctual knowing, but this kind of thing is hardly where you want to go. You want to affirm something sublime and profound, so one imagines a disembodied soul without thought but endowed with something else, like unthinking divinity, beyond thought. A kind of agency that is intuitively "aware". The question here is, can you make sense of this withou going over the deep end of metaphysics? I mean, to think philosophically is to take what the world presents to us, and establish a basis for understanding it at the most basic level. Where is the justification for positing something that cannot be even made sense of: this thoughtless consciousness?

Consciousness = soul, god, self, identity, presence, here, now, experience, evidence, omniscience, eternity, infinity, etc...

All those things are intrinsic to it. So self is not a problem. Self and consciousness are the same thing. You don't need to think to exist. Read/Watch some Eckhart Tolle.

Consciousness = soul, god, self, identity, presence, here, now, experience, evidence, omniscience, eternity, infinity, etc...

All those things are intrinsic to it. So self is not a problem. Self and consciousness are the same thing. You don't need to think to exist. Read/Watch some Eckhart Tolle. — hope

My objection is that this is free of analysis. All of what you mention are extremely problematic, each one; and each one has to be gone into. It is certainly NOT that what Tolle says is wrong, but you can't accept what someone says and call it truth. Consciousness is eternal? Of course, what else. But the matter simply begs for analysis. This requires reading people who analyze experience in competent ways. Kant is a good start.
Btw, I have listened to Tolle and found him an inspiration, but certainly not a substitute for research into phenomenology.

So? Computer simulations are real things, you can buy them in the shops. Why would they present some problem for what to call them? — Isaac

Yes but there is a distinction between the world they present and the real world. This distinction is what the word "reality" delineates, without it the word has no meaning.

So? Computer simulations are real things, you can buy them in the shops. Why would they present some problem for what to call them? — Isaac

Are simulations observer dependent? That is to say, is it possible for a simulation to exist in a universe with no minds?

I'm not sure I buy this. Since we are making up the vat scenario anyway, why not make it up such that vat world concepts correspond with trans vat concepts? — hypericin

That is interesting. If vat-world concepts correspond with trans-vat concepts, then the name 'Paris' in both vat-world and trans-world refers to Paris. [True? or not?] If I can successfully refer to Paris even in a scenario in which I'm a brain in a vat then we seem to have a way out of scepticism. [But have I just played a trick with sense and reference?] I think this is Putnam territory.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/577242

If vat-world concepts correspond with trans-vat concepts, then the name 'Paris' in both vat-world and trans-world refers to Paris. [True? or not?] — Cuthbert

But 'Paris' is a proper noun, and here there are two of them.

If I can successfully refer to Paris even in a scenario in which I'm a brain in a vat then we seem to have a way out of scepticism. — Cuthbert

How? We can just as readily imagine a scenario where no vat-concept corresponds in any way with a trans-concept.