Examples Of The Brain-In-A-Vat Hypothesis

The Brain-in-a-Vat hypothesis is a notion that originates from epistemology: a branch of philosophy that investigates the nature and limitations of human knowledge. More specifically, the hypothesis comes from a subset of epistemology called, skepticism. Skepticism questions the possibility of certainty in knowledge. It has become a well-accepted theory in the mind of the skeptic that knowledge consists of one’s beliefs that are both true and infallibly justified. Throughout this essay you will find that the justification and truth aspects of this definition get a bit hazy when we consider the possibility that we are not experiencing a true reality. The Brain-in-a-Vat hypothesis has proven to be entertaining in today’s media, but it may also
Descartes recognized, like most people do, that many of the beliefs he held onto throughout his life were discovered to be false later on. He also understood that it was very likely many of his current beliefs were false as well, and he just hadn’t realized it yet. Descartes came to the conclusion that the only way to rid of these suspected false beliefs was to first disbelieve everything. His strategy was to first remove all existing beliefs, examine each belief carefully, and only reaccept those beliefs which he could not doubt. Upon completing this task, he would only believe in infallibly true things. The act of identifying all of one’s beliefs isn’t very feasible. So, instead of visiting each individual belief, he attempts to tear down the foundation of all his beliefs, the senses. All beliefs we’ve manifested throughout our lives have come directly or indirectly through our sensory inputs. Descartes points out that it may not be the case that we can trust our sensory inputs. In fact, most would admit that our senses fail us quite often. It isn’t out of the ordinary for our eyes to trick us into seeing things that aren’t real or to hear something that no one else in the room heard. In most cases similar to these we can use other sensory inputs to correct the false senses we’ve experienced. Descartes took this idea even further and
The purpose of the hypothesis is simply to show that we cannot rule the possibility out. There is no way of proving that this hypothesis is impossible. To further elaborate on why it cannot be ruled out, let’s assume that every human is just a brain in a vat being fed false sensory inputs from the outside world. We, as the brains in vats, could never actually know that this was occurring. The only information we have is the information that is provided to our brains through our sensory input which is being falsified to some degree. So, all the beliefs we could ever acquire are being developed upon untrue information being fed to us from the outside world. Thus, we could not be aware of our true form in the outside world. The realization that we cannot rule out the Brain-in-a-Vat hypothesis has some interesting implications for human knowledge. If we continue to stand by the idea that knowledge consists of those beliefs that are true and infallibly justified, then one must say that we don’t know anything. The root of all our beliefs comes from a source that isn’t necessarily giving us true information. Thus, it follows that we don’t infallibly know anything about the outside