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Comments on Possibility of Knowledge 81 outer one, rather merely an outer imagination”. 101 Put another way, we concede that we perceive outer things and deal with our perceptions according to the analogies of experience, and ask whether or not we could nevertheless be brains in a vat. 102 The answer is that, obviously, we can. At first sight, this seems to be a counter example for the conclusion of the Refutation-argument. But, according to the view supported here, the conclusion is a conditional, and being a brain in a vat renders the antecedent just as false as the consequent. It precludes perceptions of external objects as well as self-consciousness as a substance in time. This first becomes evident when allowing for the possibility of massive deviation between time as it is experienced by the person whose brain is captured and the time the brain really is in a vat. It could be just as is the case when dreaming: a dreamed course of events is experienced as being much longer than the corresponding time of rapid eye movement sleep. Second, to be a brain in a vat undercuts the immediate consciousness of one’s body and its parts. If such a person’s brain was reconnected with real sense organs, she could learn for example that “her” brain is really the brain of a person who is very similar to somebody she believed to be her father, whereas the person she believed herself to be, was never born. What is Kant’s reaction to the problem of an imaginary outer sense? His answer in the footnote is generally considered to be insufficient. 103 The sketch of a more cogent (and modest) rejoinder can be found in a passage from the Fourth Paralogism of the Aedition: “[I]f [the perceived objects] were not real in space, i.e., immediately given through empirical intuition, then it could not also be invented, because one cannot just think up the real in intuition a priori.” (A 375) The thought is that empirical content cannot be made up without involving our receptivity. This is true even in the case of dreams and in brains-in-a-vat scenarios. The difference here is that our receptivity is involved in a way that makes it impossible to engender empirical knowledge. But, this is not a strict impossibility, since empirical content can in principle always be retraced 101 B 276. 102 The locus classicus reads: “The person’s brain … has been removed from the body and placed in a vat of nutrients which keeps the brain alive. The nerve endings have been connected to a super-scientific computer which causes the person whose brain it is to have the illusion that everything is perfectly normal. There seem to be people, objects, the sky, etc.” (Putnam 1981: 5f.) 103 Cf. Allison 2004: 294f.
Bernhard Ritter 82 to its origin, the real. Here, it is important to note a fundamental difference between the debates. From the start, Putnam concedes the central issue between Kant and Descartes, namely our bodily existence. Consequently, for the person being a brain-in-a-vat, reality is transcendent (empirically inaccessible) only for reasons of physical arrangement. It is in principle accessible if the brain is reconnected with functioning sense-organs. For a subject caught in such an arrangement, the empirical method is the best method for finding out whether the perceived world is real or not, because there could be programming errors causing breaks in the virtual reality so that the subject could begin to suspect that ‘reality’ is not what it seems to be. In contrast, Descartes’s genius malignus at least suggests that the delusion could be realised by means of supernatural and consequently undetectable influence. 104 The subject is fooled either causally as in Putnam’s thought experiment or by supernatural powers. In the first case, empirical methods would in principle be able to discover the delusion; in the second case, it would remain inscrutable, but without affecting the immanent truth of the assertions that are justified according to our standards. Where everybody is fooled, the unity of nature collapses; the fooling lies beyond possible experience, it is a “transcendent fooling” and therefore inconsequential. As a result, only Putnam’s sceptical scenario remains in the field. The Refutation of Idealism is inappropriate for proving that we are not in fact brains-in-a-vat or in similar distress. That question can only be resolved by means of empirical methods. It does not lie within the scope of a transcendental approach. 105 Bernhard Ritter Zürich University ritter@philos.uzh.ch 104 Descartes’s genius malignus is not to be seen as a hypothesis governing the methodical doubt of every stage (consequently not analogous to Putnam’s super-scientifc computer); instead the genius malignus is the epistemologist’s heuristic model whose function is to block propositions from being allowed prematurely due to habit (cf. A.T. VII: 22f.). This is wholly disregarded here. 105 I would like to thank Vanessa Morlock for her patience and Reinhard Heckmann for discussions on Kant’s philosophy and some ideas of this paper.
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ABSTRACTA Linguagem, Mente e Ação
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Editorial We proudly present the fo
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Precis 3 is an obstacle-dissipating
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Precis 5 priori knowledge, the key
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Abstracta SPECIAL ISSUE IV, pp. 7-
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Denis Bühler 9 A similar ambiguity
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Denis Bühler 11 successful reasoni
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Denis Bühler 13 More generally, ap
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Denis Bühler 15 And he succeeds in
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Denis Bühler 17 His answer goes as
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Denis Bühler 19 thus threaten both
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Abstracta SPECIAL ISSUE IV, pp. 21
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Daniel Dohrn 23 which can be remove
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Daniel Dohrn 25 there is to be expe
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Daniel Dohrn 27 3. Problems of the
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Daniel Dohrn 29 Firstly, a means is
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Page 46 and 47: Daniel Dohrn 43 trivial but they ca
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Page 50 and 51: David Lüthi 47 the very existence
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Page 56 and 57: David Lüthi 53 general schema; and
Page 58 and 59: David Lüthi 55 We’ve seen that h
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Page 90 and 91: Simon Sauter 87 2. Consider the ope
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Page 94 and 95: Simon Sauter 91 or that there is so
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Page 98 and 99: Simon Sauter 95 response are more c
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