“The matrix presents a version of an old philosophical fable: the brain in a vat. a disembodied brain is floating in a vat, inside a scientist’s laboratory. the scientist has arranged that the brain will be stimulated with the same sort of inputs that a normal embodied brain receives. to do this, the brain is connected to a giant computer simulation of a world. the simulation determines which inputs the brain receives. when the brain produces outputs, these are fed back into the simulation. the internal state of the brain is just like that of a normal brain, despite the fact that it lacks a body. from the brain’s point of view, things seem very much as they seem to you and me.”

“The scenario of the brain in a vat, first aired thirty-five years ago in hilary putnam’s classic paper, has been deeply influential in philosophy of mind and language, epistemology, and metaphysics. this collection of new essays examines the scenario and its philosophical ramifications and applications, as well as the challenges which it has faced. the essays review historical applications of the brain-in-a-vat scenario and consider its impact on contemporary debates. they explore a diverse range of philosophical issues, from intentionality, external-world scepticism, and the nature of truth, to the extended mind hypothesis, reference magnetism, and new versions of realism. the volume will be a rich and valuable resource for advanced students in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind and language, as well as for anyone interested in the relations between language, thought and the world. (psycinfo database record (c) 2017 apa, all rights reserved)”

“This essay argues that the image of the brain in a vat metaphorically encapsulates articulations of the relationship between the corporeal and the technological dimensions found in cyberpunk fiction and cinema. cyberpunk is concurrently concerned with actual and imaginary metamorphoses of biological organisms into machines, and of mechanical apparatuses into living entities. its recurring representation of human beings hooked up to digital matrices vividly recalls the envatted brain activated by electric stimuli, which hilary putnam has theorized in the context of contemporary epistemology. at the same time, cyberpunk imaginatively raises the same epistemological questions instigated by putnam. these concern the cognitive processes associated with the collusion of human and mechanical creatures, and related metaphysical and ethical issues spawned by such processes. as a philosophical trope, the brain in a vat would appear to pivot on the notion of a disembodied subject consisting of sheer mentation. however, literary and cinematic interpretations of the image in cyberpunk persistently foreground the obdurate materiality of the flesh-often in its most grisly and grotesque incarnations. © 2004 elsevier ltd. all rights reserved.”

“M dell’utri (in ‘choosing conceptions of realism’, ‘mind’ 99, 79-90) presents a reconstruction of putnam’s argument to show that the hypothesis that we are brains in a vat is self-refuting. i explain why the argument is problematic and offer a resolution of the difficulty.”

“Suppose that a team of neurosurgeons and bioengineers were able to remove your brain from your body, suspend it in a life-sustaining vat of liquid nutrients, and connect its neurons and nerve terminals by wires to a supercomputer that would stimulate it with electrical impulses exactly like those it normally receives when embodied. according to this brain-in-a-vat thought experiment, your envatted brain and your embodied brain would have subjectively indistinguishable mental lives. for all you know—so one argument goes—you could be such a brain in a vat right now.”

“In virtual worlds, benjamin woolley examines the reality of virtual reality. he looks at the dramatic intellectual and cultural upheavals that gave birth to it, the hype that surrounds it, the people who have promoted it, and the dramatic implications of its development. virtual reality is not simply a technology, it is a way of thinking created and promoted by a group of technologists and thinkers that sees itself as creating our future. virtual worlds reveals the politics and culture of these virtual realists, and examines whether they are creating reality, or losing their grasp of it. 12 photographs.”

“Fortress of solitude; hyperreality; reconstruction; satan’s creche; enchanted castles; monastaries of salvation; city of robots; ecology 1984; immitation; disney”

“To describe the virtual worlds of digital games as hyperreal and simulacra has become almost a cliché. the perfect copy without an original, complete and even flowing over with signs adding to its real appearance but simultaneously disguising a basic loss of referentialsmany of the games can be looked on as substitutes for the real world (if there is such a thing). in this article, i use world war ii digital games as examples of hyperrealities, using some of baudrillards thoughts on hyperreality and simulacra, on our relation to history and on what he considers to be a fundamental longing for reality that has been lost to us in (post)modern western society.”

“This is a brief essay, we call ‘think-pieces’, designed to stimulate a discussion on a particular topic. for this series of essays we propose the following question: ‘consumer behavior in virtual worlds, is it really any different to the real world, or is it simply a case of “old wine in a new bottle”?’”