Sure, in that case he can refer to light and shapes and colours just as we can. But he can’t refer to trees and brains or truthfully claim that the things he sees are fabrications.
If BiV is phenomenally the same as not-BiV, then I don't see how semantic externalism can do any work. Even someone who is not-BiV would not know what they meant by real and not real. — NotAristotle
Given that if metaphysical realism is true then something like us living in the Matrix is possible, Putnam's argument is that metaphysical realism and semantic externalism are incompatible, and because he believes that semantic externalism is true he concludes that metaphysical realism is false. — Michael
To be the same principle the body would in some way need to be silenced, or asleep, or unconscious, as in the movie Matrix. Of course, in these states he wouldn't be seeing or hallucinating anything, but dreaming. If the rest of the body is included, awake, and in full working order it would notice that it is in a vat, that it cannot move, is suspended in some sort of liquid, and so on, and his words could directly refer to the environment. — NOS4A2
2. If semantic externalism is true then we cannot be brains in a vat — Michael
I am curious, do you all believe that a "BiV" is possible? If so, why do you believe it is possible? Just because you can imagine it? — Richard B
Should this be, "If semantic externalism is true then we cannot claim to be brains in a vat"? — hypericin
I think the fact that both Putnam and Descartes remove the senses and the rest of the body from their thought experiment is telling, as if experience could occur without blood and bones and lungs.
Other more fundamental perceptual and sensual cues would be absent, for instance the perception of up and down, the effects of gravity, wether one is standing or sitting, or the fact that he forever has to see his own nose in his periphery, not to mention that such a being could never be alive in the first place. — NOS4A2
Given this, it must be that the sentence "I am a brain in a vat" in my language is false, and so I am not a brain in a vat (this is simply Tarski's T-schema). — Michael
I'm not following this. If you accept semantic externalism, the object language "I am a brain in a vat" does not and cannot speak to the meta language assertion that the speaker is a brain in a vat. — hypericin
When I shake someone’s hand I believe I experience the situation with my entire body, since the entire thing is being used to perform the act. My trouble is with the biology of it. My question is: How can one take every experience of a handshake, from standing to grasping someone’s hand to leaning forward etc, and put all that as an experience in the brain? — NOS4A2
Stimulating the visual cortex with electrodes in the blind is a far cry from mimicking reality. — NOS4A2
I do not believe BiV is possible. I believe semantic externalism doesn't prove that BiV is impossible; I think BiV is impossible for other reasons. — NotAristotle
It seems to me that having an experience of eating pizza cannot be simulated. That is because my experience of reality requires more than BiV, it requires sensory organs that can experience the reality. The proof is in the pudding, or in this case, the pizza. I think that if you remove the sensory abilities of the organism, you remove phenomenal consciousness too, or at least you remove the phenomenal consciousness of what is sensed. Experience is a more integrated process than just brain processing, in my opinion. — NotAristotle
I think it is fair to say that human beings are more than brains, and that any brain is so interconnected to the rest of the body that to separate one from the other is to end the human being. — NOS4A2
think it may even be physically possible. It is in principle much like a Boltzmann brain, and physicists seem to accept that they are physically possible.
But of course if we are brains in a vat then it may be that “real” physics isn’t exactly like the fabricated physics that we are being programmed to experience, and so one cannot really use physics to disprove the physical possibility of brains in a vat without begging the question. — Michael
However, as you put it, this does not refute the possibility that this experience of “scientists demonstrating the BIV cannot function” was not fabricated in some BIV. But why should we say logical possibility trumps physical impossibility? — Richard B
This is where this type of metaphysical reasoning fails, it starts out trying to say something about the world in which we live in, but quickly degrades into phantasm where it logically excluded any verification, falsification, confirmation gathered by our experiences. — Richard B
Sure.
However. people who think seriously about the subject recognize that different parts of the human body do different things. What the brain does seems to be of particular interest. Do you disagree?
Obviously it is of more interest than the foot, and people spend a great deal on it, but should that be the case? I’m not so sure. For instance, the question of where the brain ends and the rest of the body begins is in my mind insoluble. The carotid arteries, the spine, the endocrine system—all are intimately connected, and are therefor one thing. Removing the rest of the body from a theory of mind is a huge but fairly common mistake. — NOS4A2
To use the world we experience as empirical evidence that brains in a vat are physically impossible is to beg the question and assume that we are not brains in a vat. — Michael
But of course if we are brains in a vat then it may be that “real” physics isn’t exactly like the fabricated physics that we are being programmed to experience, and so one cannot really use physics to disprove the physical possibility of brains in a vat without begging the question. — Michael
If a neuroscientist gave you evidence that a brain could not be stimulated in such a way so as to produce simulated percepts, would you be convinced that the brain in a vat hypothesis is impossible? — NotAristotle
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