Brains in Vats
Edited by Tim Button (University College London)
About this topic
Summary | Putnam's brain-in-vat argument is an attempted transcendental argument against the sceptical hypothesis that we are brains in vats (BIVs). A simple construction of the argument runs as follows: My word "brain" refers to brains; A BIV's word "brain" does not refer to brains; So I am not a BIV. An alternative reconstruction ends with the (perhaps weaker) conclusion that my sentence "I am not a BIV" is true. On either reconstruction, however, the argument seeks to use semantic means to refute some kind of radical, global, scepticism. |
Key works | Chapter 1 of Putnam 1981 contains the fullest statement of Putnam's argument, and helps to set the dialectical context of Putnam's interest in the BIV scenario. Putnam then clarified the argument in response to criticisms, particularly his 1992 reply to Anderson, and his 1994 reply to Wright. Here, Putnam makes clear that the argument involved only two premises (disquotation and some kind of causally constrained theory of reference), thereby favouring the first of the reconstructions suggested above. (The second reconstruction seems better suited to Davidson's 1986 anti-sceptical argument, which is closely connected with Putnam's.) Wright 1992 is one of the fullest and strongest defences of Putnam's argument; however, Wright ends by suggesting that Putnam has failed to refute certain ineffable sceptical concerns (similar worries were voiced by Nagel and van Inwagen). Button 2013 devotes several chapters to the BIV argument, seeking to defend it in its own terms, address Wright's ineffable concerns, and assess the overall limits of BIV-style argumentation. Brueckner & Ebbs 2012 collects a three-decade exchange which begins with Putnam's BIV argument and connects with the wider question of how scepticism and content externalism should interact. Goldberg 2015 offers new essays on the BIV argument |
Introductions | Putnam 1981 (ch. 1). Wright 1992. Button 2013 (chs. 12-16). |
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Related categories
Siblings:
- Simulation Hypothesis (68)
- Cartesian Skepticism (326)
- Dreams and Skepticism (90)
- Inductive Skepticism (496)
- Metaphilosophical Skepticism (197)
- Modal Skepticism (65)
- Moral Skepticism (393)
- Perception and Skepticism (239)
- Pyrrhonian Skepticism (310)
- Religious Skepticism (404)
- Varieties of Skepticism, Misc (554)
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