Externalist epistemological arguments refute the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment
the verdict
CONTESTED
contested - evenly split
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
2 sources for · 1 against
Philosophical literature shows that externalist arguments regarding the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment remain heavily contested, with ongoing debate over their viability against skepticism.
content externalists are committed to epistemological absurdities.[citation needed] Suppose that a speaker can have the concept of water we do only if the speaker
Internalism and externalism are two opposite ways of integrating and explaining various subjects in several areas of philosophy. These include human motivation, knowledge, justification, meaning, and truth. The distinction arises in many areas of debate with similar but distinct meanings. Internal–external distinction is a distinction used in philosophy to divide an ontology into two parts: an int
Either I am a BIV, or I am not a BIV.
If I am not a BIV, then when I say "I am not a BIV", it is true.
If I am a BIV, then, when I say "I am not a BIV", it is true (because "brain" and "vat" would only pick out the brains and vats being simulated, not real brains and real vats).
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My utterance of "I am not a BIV" is true.
To clarify how this argument is supposed to work: Imagine that there is brain in a vat, and a whole world is being simulated for it. Call the individual who is being deceived "Steve." When Steve is given an experience of walking through a park, semantic externalism allows for his thought, "I am walking through a park" to be true so long as the simulated reality is one in which he is walking through a park. Similarly, what it takes for his thought, "I am a brain in a vat," to be true is for the simulated reality to be one where he is a brain in a vat. But in the simulated reality, he is not a brain in a vat.
Apart from disputes over the success of the argument or the plausibility of the specific type of semantic externalism required for it to work, there is question as to what is gained by defeating the skeptical worry with this strategy. Skeptics can give new skeptical cases that wouldn't be subject to the same response (e.g., one where the person was very recently turned into a brain in a vat, so that their words "brain" and "vat" still pick out real brains and vats, rather than simulated ones). Further, if even brains in vats can correctly believe "I am not a brain in a vat," then the skeptic can still press us on how we know we are not in that situation (though the externalist will point out that it may be difficult for the skeptic to describe that situation).
Another attempt to use externalism to refute skepticism is done by Brueckner and Warfield. It involves the claim that our thoughts are about things, unlike a BIV's thoughts, which cannot be about things (DeRose, 1999).
Linguistic turn for more about the two construals of meaning
Swamp man thought experiment
Twin Earth thought experiment
This paper discusses various answers to the problem of skepticism offered by some advocates of semantic externalism: Putnam’s argument against the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis and its reconstructions presented by Brueckner and Warfield. I argue that all these responses fall short of being successful. Brueckner’s disjunctive argument needs to be supplemented by a disquotational principle that assumes a specific interpretation of the other premises (the vat-English interpretation is excluded). Warfield’s argument rests on the principle of privileged access to the content of one’s own mental states. This additional premise is highly controversial given the externalist theory of meaning. I discuss two kinds of argument against combining semantic externalism with privileged self-knowledge: the reductio argument and the “slow-switching” arguments. The last part of the paper critically examines McKinsey’s attempt to construct a successful anti-skeptical argument.
Abstract
It has been argued that since we cannot rule out that we are eternal brains in vats (BIVs) whose sensory impressions are generated by a supercomputer and who can thus be assumed to exist in a world where (almost) nothing is as it seems, most (or almost all) of our empirical beliefs are such that we cannot rule out that they are false. Since fallible knowledge seems to be a contradiction in terms, it has been concluded that we have much less empirical knowledge than we would normally assume and that sound empirical knowledge might even be impossible. This is the skeptical argument. Starting from semantic externalism, various arguments have been proposed to rule out the possibility that we are BIVs. In this paper, I will argue that trying to rule out the possibility of being a BIV is a very weak response to the skeptical argument, as it accepts the challenge raised by the skeptic, i.e. that in order to have empirical knowledge, we have to exclude the possibility that we are BIVs. In fact, we will see that starting from semantic externalism, a much stronger response is possible. Accordingly, we do not have to rule out that we are BIVs in order for the skeptical argument to contain a false premise.
Everything we examined (3)
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