Summary – Brains in a vat

In his text, Brains in a vat, Putnam posits the question, How is intentionality, reference possible? Analyzing examples such as the improbable possibility of an ant tracing a series of lines which end up looking like – to us– Winston Churchill, Putnam asks if such can be considered to be a representation. The conclusion is negative due to the lack of intentionality in the ant’s actions. Some philosophers (no names are given) draw from this the conclusion that intentionality is a characteristic that strictly applies to the powers of the mind and not in anyway way to physical beings themselves.

Putnam, however, questions this denying that mental representation – or words in general – have any more of a necessary connection with what they represent than physical representations do. After presenting a series of examples (the spilled-paint tree picture, or the monkey’s Hamlet), Putnam concludes that no matter how large and complex a system of representations may be, be it verbal or visual, it nevertheless does not have any intrinsic, built-in, magical connection with what it represents.

This conception of representation or referral plays a key role in Putnam’s repudiation of the brains in a vat argument. Against those who claim that it is possible that we are all simply brains in a vat participating in a collective hallucination in which all communication takes through stimulations of the nervous system, the following counter argument is made: «… although the people in that possible world can think and ‘say’ any words we can think and say, they cannot (I claim) refer to what we can refer to». The argument is, in fact, a self-refuting supposition.

Turing’s TestBrains in a vat (again)The premises of the argument

- Taking physical possibility too seriously- Unconsciously operating with a magical theory of reference, a theory on which

certain mental representations necessarily refer to certain external things and kinds of things.

o Take physics as our metaphysics.o Reasons for denying a necessary connection

Mental presentations Signs Concepts

Difference between what ‘elm’ refers to and what ‘beech’ refers to is not brought about by a difference in our concepts or a difference of his one’ psychological state (doppleganger in a Twin Earth).

Meanings are not just in the head. Possessing a concept is not a matter o possessing

images. o Image of a tree – “Point to a tree”

- The phenomenological investigation fails to what the difference between an inner expression of thought (an occurence), and the understanding of that expression (an ability)

o No set of mental events – images or more ‘abstract’ mental happenings and qualities – constitue understanding

o No set of mental events is necessary for understanding. Concepts cannot be identical with mental objects of any kind

(both in one who understands and one who doesn’t)