Urstoff, check your inbox
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Urstoff, check your inbox
Cheers,
GrumpyMuppet
P.S. Has anyone here ever read Hilary Putnam's "Brains in a Vat"? I'm curious what your thoughts are on that essay, or on that subject in particular.
For those of you who haven't read the essay, Putnam is basically arguing that we can know that we are not Matrix-style organisms who are living in a sensory illusion, like brains in a vat, but rather that we are in reality.
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Very short and snappy explanation above.
I agree with Putman. We do this sort of thinking by labelling concepts and comparing and contrasting concepts through language which is social, but not ever solipsistic.
However, the brain in a vat idea goes beyond the scepticism of Descartes because the brain in a vat is fed experiences of embodied life through tubes directly into the brain in a vat.
I don't agree with this either, because the brain is in participatory relationship with the rest of the nervous system, with the hormonal messengers and with the body proper. Then, the body proper + the brain is in participatory relationship with a human society, and thence with other human societies, and thence with the rest of the universe.It would be impossible for tubes that artifically feed all these ideas into a brain to activate the brain's ability to conceptualise its actions, because this is internal to the brain and depends on the individual brain's internal memories.
The Libet experiments http://www.consciousentities.com/libet.htm
dont, I gather, take into consideration that individuals accrue predispositions to act in typical ways whether automatically or accompanied or followed by consciousness.
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Thanks for this. Thanks especially for the link. I went to the Stanford website and read a fair amount of the entry, but I find it difficult to understand.
Quote: "It would be impossible for tubes that artifically feed all these ideas into a brain to activate the brain's ability to conceptualise its actions, because this is internal to the brain and depends on the individual brain's internal memories."
Your explanation helped me a lot, though, especially this last sentence. I think I understand the idea more fully now.
Cheers,
GrumpyMuppet
2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
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