Philosophy Lexicon of Arguments
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Brains in a vat, philosophy: thought experiment of Hilary Putnam (in Reason, truth and history, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1981) in which brains are floating in a nutrient solution while the reality is simulated through electrical impulses. It is about the question whether we can be sure not to be in such a situation. See also skepticism, reference, knowledge, causal theory of knowledge. _____________ Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments.
Author	Item	Excerpt	Meta data
Poundstone, W.   Books on Amazon	Brains in a Vat	I 318 Brains in the Vat/Poundstone: each object then means electrical pulses (only different sequence), then also "brain" - then the reference of "I'm a brain in a vat" also electrical pulse sequence and not the brain - so the sentence is wrong, because we are not pulses - Poundstone/Solution: "I am what they call a "GIT" in lab speak" - Problem: "Lab speak" is metaphysical - f.o.th. - I 340 the theory of brains in a vat has no predictive power - as little as the cipher "iii..." - because everything depends on electrical pulses - the next apple may fall upwards - because it is moved by an electrical pulse and not by gravity. _____________ Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution.	W. Poundstone I W. Poundstone Im Labyrinth des Denkens, Reinbek 1995

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Ed. Martin Schulz, access date 2017-07-24