Bill

In my view, you've pretty-much grasped the essence. It takes an epistemic trick of some sort to get around skepticism of this sort (solipsism), and obviously Putnam's standards for "warranted belief" must vary somewhat from those of the usual skeptic.

By the way, I can't speak for England, but here in the States, its spelled warranted. If you intend to use that word in an exam answer, you might wish to check the spelling first.

== Bill

gumb

lol, i will mention your name along with descates and kant

gumb

cheers bill, I have been reading a paper today which puts putnam's argument in the context of berkeley's kind of solipsism (perhaps more of a 'usual skeptic). putnam's arguement seems to fall flat on it's face when you take some of his assumptions about justified beleif away.

I have checked, and my spelling of warranted is wrong on both sides of the atlantic, so I may just stick to the more traditional 'justified'.

monkey mind

I had this same problem. The way I understand it (and I could be going wrong somewhere) is that you can think of abstract ideas that you don't have any causal relation with but you can't know them. Like with dragons, no one has any cause to know what they actually look like, so there's an infinate number of ways of portraying them. However, you can't know something without cause.

If we were a brain in a vat, we wouldn't be able to think about exactly the vat we were in, because we wouldn't be aware of it. We could think about general brains in general vats, but not our brain in the specific vat that it's in.

If we can't know what kind of vat our brain is in, then we really don't know anything at all, which leaves a lot in the world that is unexplained. (actually, everything) which is where ockham's razor comes in.

Pyrrho

I suppose that is acceptable, as long as I am mentioned first!

gumb

this is the key I think. I have my exam now so I hope I do okey.

phyrro, do you mind if I refer to you as 'bishop berkley'


thank you all. now I will go back to lurking until I have something worthwhile to say.

Calzaer

I have a question... maybe this is a dumb question...

Perhaps "I am a brain in a vat" cannot be true because even if it WERE true, it would have no relevance or impact on anything we percieve? In short, something that doesn't matter can't possibly be capital-T-true?

I mean, assume I am a brain in a vat in a computer program. I'm never getting out of the computer program; I'm just a brain in a vat. It's not like I can wake up one day and hop squishily away from my captors. Further, my investment in this computer program, primarily emotional, is such that even if I could be sure I was a brain in a vat I'd still have to continue "living" this life. The only time "brain in a vat" knowledge becomes relevant is if they yank me out of the vat and I die (an event I couldn't prevent anyway) or if they manage to take me out of the vat and put me in a real body (an event I couldn't affect or predict anyway). Thus, sitting around getting sick and fat and poor while waiting for my brain to be released from the vat is not a viable option because my personal suffering is certainly "real" to my senses, or at least "real enough" that it's unplesant.

So, since even an absolute certainty that you are a brain in a vat can't affect your BiV status, or how you "live" your "life" here in the computer program, it seems like such knowledge would be meaningless. Sort of like believing in a non-interventionist God: if it doesn't intervene, it's not relevant to the world, so why bother going out of your way to believe in it or take it into account when making decisions?

Although I suppose if I was the ONLY BiV, and not hooked up to a giant network of BiVs, then other people don't actually exist and the ethical prohibition on stealing from them and hurting them would be moot. Sort of like how you play a video game and walk into random peoples' houses, interrogate them, and take their stuff without any ethical qualms. A single-player BiV system would make those morals nearly pointless. Of course, an MMORPG BiV system has no effect on those morals since the other people are actually other people, rather than constructs created on a computer. But once again, there are consquences in this fake world for lacking interpersonal ethics; just because the police and guns and bullets and electric chairs are constructs of a computer doesn't mean they cause me to percieve pain in a more plesant context. So even that becomes almost totally immaterial.

Question being: Is "I am a brain in a vat" a cognitively meaningless statement on par with "God exists" (to the noncognitivists)?

Pyrrho

No, it is not acceptable that you refer to me as "Bishop Berkeley". (Additionally, if he were alive, he would probably be displeased that you misspelled his name.)

It is acceptable if you refer to me as "someone who posts with the name Pyrrho at Internet Infidels".

Here I explain it to you, and then you don't even want to honestly acknowledge the source of your information!


Let us know how your exam goes, and what your teacher thinks of my response to Putnam. (This will tell us whether your teacher is intelligent or not! You may decide that you need to enroll in Pyrrho's school of philosophy, and drop out of the school you currently attend!)

By the way, Berkeley is a very underrated philosopher. His arguments are generally ignored rather than refuted. Hume seems to have appreciated Berkeley in a more just manner than most have. So, of course, many ignore Hume, or generate a 'straw man' to refute instead of honestly dealing with the issues he raises.

Pyrrho

How did your exam go?

gumb

ok I think. I had one about this and another about whether all apriori knowledge is analytic.

i made the whole 'causal theory assumes external objects' >> 'not being a brain a vat supposedly proves external objects are not a deception' circularity question begging point.

wrote a bit about non-epistemic accounts of truth, and the whole semantic game thing.

gonna have to wait until july to know the marks though