Talk:Brain in a vat

message: is the brain in the simulated world the same as the one in the scientist's lab?
previous comment unsigned
I think the answer is ........ maybe! 68.144.80.168 (talk) 15:38, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Simulated world the same as in scientist's lab?

message: There is also a pretty old story on the same theme by Stanislaw Lem. It belongs to his Ijon Tichy cycle, but unfortunately I don't have it in hand to check the exact name. Another, though not so close reference was used in the French movie City of Lost Children (Cite des enfants perdue), where one of the characters actually was a brain in an aquarium, using its ears to swim around. --Oop 17:13, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)
:Roald Dahl has also written a short story dealing with the brain in a vat. I forget what it is called though. 86.20.233.151 17:43, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The story is from 1961, called in Polish "Skrzynie Profesora Corcorana", in English published in 1982 in "Star Diaries", in "Memoirs of a space traveler: further reminiscences of Ijon Tichy" as "Professor Corcoran" or "Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy I". It does not contain brains, actually; rather, it seems that his "boxes" contain AIs. But other than that, everything fits: AIs think they are living persons living in a real world, while all of their sensory stimuli is fed from a machines. Corcoran at the end states (somewhat ambiguously) that he believes he is also inside inside a box in someone's laboratory. Not sure whether it belongs here (after all, it's not about a real brain in a vat) -- szopen  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.1.195.123 (talk) 21:56, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Lem story

message: I've seen several cartoons -- Futurama and Krang and RoboCop come to mind --
that depict living brains floating in a (clear glass) jar.
(Was one in a scene in Ghost in the Shell, or am I mis-remembering?)
Since they can see outside, it's not the total sensory deprivation/replacement that the main brain-in-a-vat article discusses.
Is it a common enough cultural icon to warrant a paragraph or two?
--DavidCary 01:13, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Cartoon example

message: Having read some of the primary works in philosophy on this topic, I would like to point out that this page needs work.  The terminology is confused and the arguments lack precision.  -Collingsworth 02:05, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. This page kind of caught me off guard; I was looking for an article about Hilary Putnam's essay about intentionality Brains in a Vat. Neither she nor her essay are mentioned in this article, although her husband is. I'll try to add something if I can, but it looks as though this piece may be in need of some general cleanup first. Shaggorama 11:03, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

text: -->Wait, I think I had putnam confused with churchland. Are there even two Putnams or is this article poorly referencing Hilary, because it does sound kind of like her work.Shaggorama 11:06, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

text: wow, scratch that whole bit. It's 3am, and I totally forgot that Putnam was a man. I'm just going to go to sleep now and stop bothering you nice people.Shaggorama 11:10, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Needs work

message: If someone could upload the picture of people in a vat in the film The matrix, that'd would be good. Also, there needs to be a short summary up top, instead of one huge section. 165.230.46.138 17:41, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Picture 

message: Many of the examples given refer to disembodied heads or brains which experience their external reality by artificial means. This is quite different from the concept discussed, wherin the brain experiences an artificial reality. -Ahruman 09:48, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Maybe they should all be edited out, or moved to a separate article? Luvcraft 21:49, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Done. Split off irrelevant examples to Media featuring brains in jars. Luvcraft 21:59, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irrelevant examples 

message: Just a speculation, but if the "brian in a vat" had an experience of death, would the brain actually die in the vat, because it believes it has died?  Or would the brain come to no physical harm in the "real" world because it is only experiencing death in a false virtual reality?  Stovetopcookies 06:47, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We need not take such dangerous methods to test whether we are living in a vat. Take a drink of alcohol. If you feel the effects of the alcohol, then you are either not a brain in a vat, or the system is capable of delivering alcohol to your brain. The brain in a vat scenario can deliver sensation to your brain, but could not cause internal brain states (such as being intoxicated) unless it was vastly more complex. If you were a brain in a vat, if you experienced a situation where you expected to die, you would simply find out that it hurt, but you would not die, unless the computer killed your brain.--RLent (talk) 17:51, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The problems you put forward, alcohol, death, several more, including chemical based emotions, could all be solved by simulating the brain and the vat inside another computer.  In such a case, the vat could be equipped with any imaginable technology.  Another possibility, what if our *real* brain was an entirely different technology than a human brain.  In that case, we cannot be sure that alcohol, death, cannot be triggered through stimulus. 68.144.80.168 (talk) 16:02, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If the brain is simulated, it's not a brain in a vat. While similar, the idea that we are a computer program is distinct from being a brain connected to the computer. It does seem that the more we look into the scenario, the more fantastic it has to be to be plausible.--RLent (talk) 19:05, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Death speculation 

message: In the movie Saturn 3, there was a large vat of blank brain tissue that was used as memory storage for the robot. Stovetopcookies 06:50, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Movie occurance(s) 

message: A very small detail: The article says "After Dolittle attempts to reason the bomb to drop from the bomb bay and destroy the nearby planet". If I rember the film correctly, this is wrong. The bomb is malfunctioning due to some energy surge, and it wrongfully believes it recieved ordes to detonate. The crew tries to explain this to the bomb to make it go *back into* the bomb bay and *not* detonate. When this fails they use a Descartes type of reasoning (that it cannot be certain about anything in the real world) which sends Bomb #20 into a filosophical mode which ends in "delusions of grandeur". :)
Kricke 19:25, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dark Star 

message: "Putnam claims that the thought experiment is inconsistent on the grounds that a brain in a vat could not have the sort of history and interaction with the world that would allow its thoughts or words to be about the vat that it is in. In other words, if a brain in a vat stated "I am a brain in a vat," it would always be stating a falsehood."
Bullshit. All the mad scientist has to do is disengage the supercomputer, duh. 
I mean this is an integral component of the experiment, right?
That there IS , in fact, a "real" HUMAN and UNAMPUTATED mad scientist in a "real" world WITH a "real" super computer?
right?
and that this "real" person grabbed another "real" full grown person with "real" experiences in the "real" world, sedated this person and then tricked him or her into  believing that reality was never interrupted? meanwhile, as this person's brain is minding its own business in the "super computer" world, the person's body is being amputated...
THEN! the mad scientist (proving his madness) lifts the veil of the super computer sending the brain into a downward spiral of fuzzy logic. viola! the impotent brain is horrified at being stricken powerless and doesn't know what to think leading to immense entertainment on a scale comparable to that of monster truck rallies.
What a fucking retard. 
OF COURSE A brain is capable of knowing it has been reduced to merely a brain in a vat.
--
Of course Hillary is placing arbitrary limitations on the caqpabilities of the evil supercomputer.   Why can't an evil supercomputer cause the brain to believe that it is in a vat, and even believe it is stating that it is in a vat ?   Worse, the sentence, "In other words, if a brain in a vat stated "I am a brain in a vat," it would always be stating a falsehood.", is clearly wrong.  When an object of category A states "I am an A", it is a tautalogically true statement.
---
I'm not sure that you understood Putnam correctly.
What Putnam was trying to get at, I believe, is that if all we know are virtual things and virtual logic, then we pretty much have no intellectual right to make any assumptions about real world's own things and logic.  All that we can logically gather from a virtual existence are other virtual things.  For all we know, brains and vats are contructs of the computer, as well as the concept of 'in'.  The purpose that I get out of the BIV thought experiment is that is lets one try to figure out what things must be true even if we are a brain in a vat, being controlled by an evil demon, dreaming, or being tested by a deity.
:Right. Imagine that in the virtual world of the brain there is a kind of thing that it calls "vap". The word "vap" refers to, when used by the brain, that sort of object in the virtual world. That's a natural assumption, since it's the coming across them and needing to talk or think about them that is the reason for the term "vap"'s existence. Now imagine that that object is by pure coincidence identical to our vats. The word "vap" still however refers to vaps in the virtual world, it's just a coincidence that vaps happen to look like vats. Now imagine that they were actually called "vats" by the brain instead of "vaps." Same word as our word "vat," referring to objects that look the same to the brain as vats look to us. But even so, the brain's vat-word does not refer to the vats in our world. It can't and it's incoherent to think so. If the brain has a word "vat" referring to objects that look like our vats, then that is just a weird coincidence. So if it claims to be a brain in a vat, we can be sure that it's not talking about the brain that we are seeing or the vat that we see it submersed in. Nevertheless, if the moral here is that it makes no in principle perceivable difference whether we are brains in vats or not, why should we care? A difference that makes no difference is no difference. Kronocide 20:29, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hilary Putnam is inconsistent: 

message: By Putnam's reasoning, if a brain in a vat stated "I am a brain in a vat," it would always be stating a falsehood. If the brain making this statement lives in the "real" world, then it is not a brain in a vat. On the other hand, if the brain making this statement is really just a brain in a vat, then by stating "I am a brain in a vat" what the brain is really stating is "I am what nerve stimuli have convinced me is a 'brain,' and I reside in an image that I have been convinced is called a 'vat'."
But if this is true, then the converse is also true:  If a brain in the "real" world stated "I am a brain in the real world," it too would always be stating a falsehood.  If the brain making this statement lives in a vat, then it is not a brain in the "real" world.  On the other hand, if the brain making this statement is in the "real" world, then by stating "I am a brain in the 'real' world" what the brain is really stating is "I am what nerve stimuli have convinced me is a 'brain,' and I reside in an image that I have been convinced is called a 'real world'."  
This means neither brain "lives" in the real world.  It also means that neither brain "lives" in a vat.  Both brains "live" in their own world-models, based on the data they're given.  Eyes, for example, do not detect color.  Color does not exist in the "real" world.  Color exists only as an idea in a brain.  
Organic machines such as our eyes and ears can lie to our brains just as a computer could, affecting what our model of the real world looks, sounds, smells, feels, and tastes like.  
The real world ends at the optical nerve.
ChiaHerbGarden 06:53, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Artical disproves real world? 

message: Um...why does no one bring proposed deletions to the attention of the relevant WikiProject?  That seems like an appropriate courtesy. KSchutte 00:17, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: WikiProject

message: Who provided the vat? And who programmed the 'computer' providing the input to the brain in the vat?
Apart from that, doesn't The Matrix (movie) borrow from this -as it borrowed from Hindu theology?
--76.174.222.187 08:47, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting. Except that brain in a vat is derived/contemporary rethinking of the evil genius concept. Descartes talked about evil genius or demeon, and brain in a vat derives from that as a phylosophical concempt. --RossF18 01:33, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: ?

message: Note that these are all references to the "brain in a vat" thought experiment, as described above.
Simon Wright in Captain Future.
The movie They Saved Hitler's Brain (1966).
It appears in The Man With Two Brains, a Warner Brothers movie starring Steve Martin.
The use of similar ideas in movies is not infrequent, as in Vanilla Sky, and The Matrix (a clear reference to both Plato's Allegory of the Cave and the brain-in-a-vat theory, though in that case entire bodies were preserved, rather than just brains). A similar sense of indistintion between virtual reality and reality appears in eXistenZ, a David Cronenberg film.
The Tom the Dancing Bug comic strip by Ruben Bolling has a recurring Brain in a Beaker story, detailing the influence of minor events in the real world on the virtual inhabitants of a disembodied brain.
The cartoon series Codename: Kids Next Door features an episode in which Numbuh One is trapped in a body-vat a la The Matrix and is made to believe he is on a dream island. He breaks out by tapping his heels together, which in the "real world" activates his jet boots.
The game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri involves the base facility "Bioenhancement Center", the construction of which, plays the quote:
:"We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled. But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism?" This is then ironically revealed to be the thought of an individual in a literal brain in a vat project and is followed by the statement "termination of specimen advised."
This vocal sample has been also included in the Prometheus track "O.K. Computer".
In the film Dark Star by John Carpenter, a planet-destroyer bomb has repeatedly been activated and deactivated due to various malfunctions. Dolittle reasons with the bomb's computer, inducing it to question whether its activation signal was real, and Bomb #20 takes up the philosophy of Descartes (I think, therefore I am) and returns to the bomb bay, commenting, "I must think on this further." Later, Pinback attempts to command the bomb to drop from the bomb bay and destroy the nearby planet (as per the mission) but Bomb #20 responds "You are false data." Then, reasoning that all stimuli Bomb #20 is experiencing are not true, the bomb assumes itself to be God, declares, "Let there be light", and explodes.
In a short story by Julio Cortazar titled "La noche boca arriba" ("The night, face-up"), the reader follows the story of a motorcyclist who has just been involved in an accident and a young native "Moteca" man who is fleeing his own sacrifice. The imagery parallels in the story lead us to question who is dreaming of whom. The reader initially believes that the motorcyclist is dreaming of an Aztec boy following his traffic accident. In the end, it is revealed that the Aztec boy has been dreaming of the motorcyclist in his state of fear and delusion.
The computer game The Infinite Ocean by Jonas Kyratzes deals with a sentient computer that ponders the same issue. Here the question is rephrased to "how can you know whether you are a human being or just a sentient computer dreaming it is one?"  The game A Mind Forever Voyaging by Steve Meretzky of Infocom involves a similar theme, but the sentient computer is informed of his/its nature a short time before the start of play.
The idea of a person's brain or even more abstractly, consciousness, being removed from the body appears in some of Stanisław Lem's novels. A related topic, an artificial mind being fed artificial stimuli by its mad-scientist creator, also appears there.
The cartoon show Batman: The Animated Series featured an episode, Perchance to Dream,  where Batman was incapacitated by the Mad Hatter, and connected to a machine that simulated reality based on existing brain functions (dreams).  He realizes the situation, and to escape, throws himself out of a bell tower; the logic being that when dreaming of falling, one always wakes up before hitting the ground.
The comic Green Lantern's Infinite Crisis crossover featured Green Lantern and Green Arrow being attached to the 'Black Mercy', a fictional symbiotic plant that creates an artificial 'perfect world' for the host, who will have no memory of his previous life.  The 'Black Mercy' first appeared in Alan Moore's Superman story, For the Man Who Has Everything.
In an episode of Stargate SG-1 (The Gamekeeper) the team visits an alien planet where they are imprisoned inside capsules that cause them to experience a simulated world controlled by a "gamekeeper".  When they discover what has happened, the gamekeeper causes them to experience leaving the capsules again so that they will think that they have left the artificial world.  They then experience an artificial version of their own world nearly indistinguishable from reality, but are eventually able to determine that they are still inside the machines and escape.
: PLEASE NOTE. I was unable to verify the bulk of this material, much of which is dubious and all of which lacks any sort of reliable sources.  As a compromise measure I have moved it to the talk page so that it is not "lost" in the edit history shuffle.  Please do not re-insert this material without providing the reliable sources deemed necessary by WP:V policy.  Thank you for your understanding.  Burntsauce 16:59, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * I don't see these as vandalism. Instead these are possibly a product (or perhaps an unrelated coincidence) of a just-closed discussion in WP:AfD. There was a suggestion that some of the non-notable fiction concerning disembodied brains should be merged here or at Isolated brain. These seem to be more "brain in a vat" than "isolated brain", so they may well be independent, but I'm inclined to spin them off into "Disembodied Brains in Fiction" or something along those lines, with a reference to the new article from here. Still, consensus should dominate. - Bilby (talk) 02:12, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

text: * My mistake - I thought the issue was the above being posted, not the above being removed from a talk page. As such, it did constitute vandalism. - Bilby (talk) 06:24, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: References in popular culture

message: I can verify that Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri does produce the quote you removed upon the player's creation of the facility "Bioenhancement Center."  I can produce the audio if necessary.
I listened to the quote about five minutes ago.  Let me know if more is needed.
I cannot verify the statement about OK Computer.
 - Shumake 13:07, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Brain in a Vat - verification of Alpha Centauri's quote 

message: Is there any reference in the relevant literature linking the Brain in a Vat scenario to George Berkeley's idealism, whereby all we can know of reality is our perceptions?  It seems that both have similar implications, even if they are presented in a different form.--Pariah (talk) 23:17, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Berkeleyan Idealism and the Brain in a Vat 

message: With particular relevance to solipsism, it is not the case that the brain in the vat cannot know anything, it can still know everything about math with certainty.  This is not just a theory, it's a strong, well developped theory. 68.144.80.168 (talk) 16:18, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  extra detail 

message: http://technology.newscientist.com/article/mg19926696.100
It seems a brain in a vat has been constructed. Granted, it's not very clever. But still...  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.33.119.96 (talk) 22:05, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Brain in a vat? 

message: Too much of the article discusses Putnam's objections over a brain that has ALWAYS been in a vat.  I see no reason why this special case should be canonical. More effort should be made to find earliest published references to the "brain in a vat," and arguments presented there. The "brain in vat" obviously could apply to adult brains transferred into a vat, and the quotes of Putnam don't address this situation at all.Tumacama (talk) 15:38, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Too much Hillary Putnam

message: As long as the super computer can only interact with the brain by impulses, it cannot control the brain's inner physical structure.
What if the brain try to for example 'beat' his/her own brain, and expecting some 'physical' unconscious.
Yes, you may say that the computer can cheat the brain's feeling, or control brain's life-sustaining supply.
But what if the brain tries to do some more subtle self research. E.g., kill some nerve cells and see if he/she forgets something...
In summary, any brain can do some self research, and believe some self action may result in some internal changes, which is not come from impulses. By this, the brain can tell if it is in a vat!  
except that the computer has full control on the brain.
Pond918 (talk) 06:52, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Even if the BiV has complete "freedom of decision", it has effectively no "freedom of action" (since all the activities and consequences that it initiates are played out as a simulation supplied to it by the computer). Therefore all perceived consequences of "actions" by the brain - including experiments - are up to the computer to allocate. Similarly, the origin of the computer is irrelevant: it might be a product of evolution, the creation of a supernatural being, or the product of some other unknown process. What matters for verification is the predicament of the brain: it might construct abstract models of its situation - including eg the origin of the computer - based on the concepts it forms in the simulation, but it can never test or verify them, because the consequences of all tests are governed by the computer. Therefore it can have no access to verification. And, as noted above, whether we like it or not, this predicament is essentially ours.Orbitalforam (talk) 08:41, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Interestingly, verification would also seem to be a problem for any kind of intelligence, even an infinitely intelligent, apparently omniscient one. It could never be sure that it was not a simulation run by another intelligence. This would be a "Deity in a Vat" (DiV) problem.131.111.41.167 (talk) 10:21, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  What about the brain try to do some self examination? 

message: After I spend almost a month tortured by these hypothesis, I finally found a rebuttal to this:
Every person has their good memories. These memories can be triggered if the individual see something, hear something, hear some music, see some film and so on. If you , for example, hear a song not heard in a long time, you have searched for this song. Note: YOU have searched for it, and not any stimulus designed by a supercomputer. No mad scientist could make you search for it, hear it and feel happy about it. The scientist could materialize all around, but you will never be able to get by their own incentives and find them. That would be impossible. Think about it.
Thank you very much -
Eduardo Sellan III (talk) 02:14, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Refutation for it: 

message: In a 1978 interview with The Aquarian (reprinted on page 9 of PKD Otaku 4), Philip K Dick had the following to say about brains in vats:
  -- noosphere 09:10, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  PKD on brains in vats 

message: "Though the world does not appear wholly logical or consistent, enough of it is logical and consistent to suggest that there is a substantial probability that I am (or the reader, assuming he exists, is) part of a real universe. So, the cost-benefit analysis favors belief in the external world's existence."
Since there is no way to know the power and/or limits of such a "computer", saying the probability of reality being true is high just because reality seems "consistent" (whatever a consistent reality means to us, brains in vats) is simply nonsense.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.121.107.141 (talk) 16:13, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arguable 

message: It's all very well mentioning similar or antecedent ideas, but who was the first person to write about a brain in a vat? Who has elaborated on the idea? Which books mention it? Saint91 (talk) 23:36, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article seems devoid of key information 

message: "However, if one behaves as though the world is not real and it is, one's selfish decisions can cause serious harm to the happiness of large numbers of people. This claim is logically flawed, just like Pascal's wager. E.g. it might turn out that harming others in the imaginary world actually makes people happier in the real world and vice versa.
TheWanderer1357 (talk) 12:34, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pascal's wager 

message: Imagine a mad scientist has taken your brain from your body, put in a life sustaining liquid. The brain is inserted with the electrode, electrode is connected to a machine that will produce images and sensations on the computer.  Because all the information about the world you get are handled through your brain, the computer has the ability to simulate your daily experience.If this is indeed possible, how do you want to prove to the world around you is true, rather than a generated environment by a computer simulation?
Personally, I believe that there is this mysterious connection, but not because I'm a skeptic. Just think, if a person A is in the vat, at this time, the evil scientist let another person B into the cylinder of the brain in the world. Clearly, then, after entering, the human B is there to talk about the semantics of the reality of the cylinder and the brain, then as long as B and A had conversation for a while, then between A and B will begin to exist some contact. This means that A can also correct the talk about the reality of cylinder and the brain. If this is the case, if in the beginning B has not entered the brain in a vat, but we only need  computer to adjust the parameters, so as to meet the requirements of B into the brain in a vat and chat with a the electronic signal, then A can be correctly talk about the reality of cylinder and the brain.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:5B14:3E00:45D2:9A83:AC73:D5E4 (talk) 03:57, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Brain in a Vat hypnosis