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Brain in a Vat






    Have you heard the saying,
“You are a brain in a vat, and I am not”?



   This saying comes from thought experiments to draw out certain features of our ideas of knowledge, reality, truth, mind, and meaning. In the story a machine or mad scientist removes a brain and puts it in a life-sustaining vat. The brain's neurons would be connected to a supercomputer. Through impulses the computer could simulate reality, the brain would have perfectly normal experiences independent of real world events.

         Since the brain gets the same impulses as in a skull, it could not tell the difference.



   Since, the argument says, one cannot know whether they are a brain in a vat, then he or she cannot know whether most of his or her beliefs might be completely false. Since, in principle, it is impossible to rule out oneself being a brain in a vat, there cannot be good grounds for believing any of the things one believes; one certainly cannot know.



This brings to mind the Tao story,


    Once upon a time, I, Chang Tzu dreamt I was a butterfly flitting around and enjoying myself. I had no idea I was Chang-Tzu. Then suddenly I woke up and was Chang-Tzu again. But I could not tell, had I been Chang-Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly, or was I a butterfly dreaming I was Chang-Tzu? However there must be some sort of difference between Chang-Tzu and the butterfly. We call this the transformation of things.



Similarly,



     Continuity, and not content, is the difference between dream and waking experiences.



   Imagine, every morning Smith gets up, gets dressed, has bacon and eggs, goes to work at the factory, works all day, goes home, eats supper, watches TV and, at midnight goes to sleep. At that point, he really wakes up, gets dressed, has bacon and eggs, goes to work, etc. until, at midnight, he goes to sleep and dreams that he wakes up, gets dressed, eats breakfast… In other words Smith has two streams of experience. One is ‘real’ in waking life, the other his illusory ‘dream’ life. But imagine both lives have continuity, the experiences of each dream day have continuity with all those other dream days, unlike ordinary dreams.



   Would Smith be able to tell the dream from real experiences? Continuity or regularity is the essential difference between dream and waking experiences. The experiences must be of the same sort of things. And so, see no difference in the two worlds.





Now to quote Aerosmith,



                                                    Dream until your dreams come true!



Wikipedia