Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A brain in a vat that believes it is walking. In philosophy, the brain in a vat (BIV) is a scenario used in a variety of thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of human conceptions of knowledge, reality, truth, mind, consciousness, and meaning.
It is the biological counterpart of brain in a vat. A related concept, attaching the brain or head to the circulatory system of another organism, is called a brain transplant or a head transplant. An isolated brain, however, is more typically attached to an artificial perfusion device rather than a biological body.
Nor does her idea of a vat refer to a real vat. So if, as a brain in a vat, she says, "I'm a brain in a vat", she is actually saying, "I'm a brain-image in a vat-image", which is incoherent. On the other hand, if she is not a brain in a vat, then saying that she is a brain in a vat is still incoherent, because she actually means the opposite.
Where S is a subject, sk is a skeptical possibility, such as the evil demon hypothesis or the more recent brain in a vat hypothesis, and q is any fact that supposedly exists in the world (e.g. the fact that there are trees and mountains): If S knows that q, then S knows that not-sk. S doesn't know that not-sk. Therefore, S doesn't know that q.
Physicists use the Boltzmann brain thought experiment as a reductio ad absurdum argument for evaluating competing scientific theories. In contrast to brain in a vat thought experiments, which are about perception and thought, Boltzmann brains are used in cosmology to test our assumptions about thermodynamics and the
René Descartes' evil demon philosophically formalized these epistemic doubts, to be followed by a large literature with subsequent variations like brain in a vat. In 1969, Konrad Zuse published his book Calculating Space on automata theory , in which he proposes the idea that the universe is fundamentally computational, a concept which became ...
Victim of the Brain is a 1988 film by Dutch director Piet Hoenderdos, loosely based on The Mind's I (1981), a compilation of texts and stories on the philosophy of mind and self, co-edited by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett.
The brain in a vat scenario can deliver sensation to your brain, but could not cause internal brain states (such as being intoxicated) unless it was vastly more complex. If you were a brain in a vat, if you experienced a situation where you expected to die, you would simply find out that it hurt, but you would not die, unless the computer ...