An Examination of a Laboratory Variant of the BIV Scenario

Citation

Geller, Jaden Matthew (2014) An Examination of a Laboratory Variant of the BIV Scenario. Other, California Institute of Technology. doi:10.7907/Z9QC01HN. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechTHESIS:04062016-141319569

Abstract

[Introduction] In Meditation One, Descartes considers a scenario in which an "Evil Genius" manipulates his perceptions, rendering his senses unreliable. In essence, he asserts that he cannot know whether or not he is being deceived, so he cannot know that he accurately perceives reality. An extension of this sensory manipulation scenario is the "brains in a vat" (BIV) hypothesis, which proposes a world in which an individual's reality is a delusion. In this world, the individual is actually just a bodiless brain inside a vat of nutrients, and the brain is fed neural impulses by a supercomputer. The individual does not realize this peculiar reality, as it lives solely inside the construction of the computer, which receives and interprets neural outputs from the motor cortex and uses them to simulate a world that is fed back into the brain as artificial sensory stimuli.

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