Are You Elsewhere?

For our meeting, please read chapter 1 of Reason, Truth, and History by Hilary Putnam. The chapter is entitled Brains in a Vat and can be accessed here. We will discuss the chapter at our in-person meeting.

Hilary Putnam discusses the age-old problem of whether or not a person can prove he is living in a simulation – prove his brain is in a vat somewhere and all of his experiences are merely composed of impulses fed to his brain by a computer. Interestingly, he argues if we were brains in a vat we could never think we were, and the argument he makes is famous.