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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.
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.
The "brain in a vat" hypothesis is cast in contemporary scientific terms. It supposes that one might be a disembodied brain kept alive in a vat and fed false sensory signals by a mad scientist. Further, it asserts that since a brain in a vat would have no way of knowing that it was a brain in a vat, you cannot prove that you are not a brain in ...
Epistemic closure [1] is a property of some belief systems.It is the principle that if a subject knows , and knows that entails, then can thereby come to know .Most epistemological theories involve a closure principle and many skeptical arguments assume a closure principle.
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.
Solipsism (/ ˈ s ɒ l ɪ p s ɪ z əm / ⓘ SOLL-ip-siz-əm; from Latin solus 'alone' and ipse 'self') [1] is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind.
A self-refuting idea or self-defeating idea is an idea or statement whose falsehood is a logical consequence of the act or situation of holding them to be true. Many ideas are called self-refuting by their detractors, and such accusations are therefore almost always controversial, with defenders stating that the idea is being misunderstood or that the argument is invalid.
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