Brain in a Vat

Overthink

Ellie Anderson, Ph.D. and David Peña-Guzmán, Ph.D.

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Education

4.7 • 549 Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2021

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Have you considered that you might be a brain in a vat of liquid floating in a laboratory somewhere? How can you know that the world around you is real, not just a simulation being piped directly to your brain? In episode 30, Ellie and David unpack one of philosophy's favorite thought experiments: the brain in a vat. They also analyze our cultural obsession with the brain, common criticisms of this thought experiment from consciousness studies, and precursors in Descartes and science fiction. Also--what's with the Italian neuroscientist who keeps trying to do head transplants?

Works discussed:
Daniel Dennett, "Where Am I?"
Gilbert Harman, Thought
Alva Noë, Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain
Evan Thompson and Diego Cosmelli, "Brain in a Vat or Body in a World? Brainbound Versus Enactive Views of Experience"
Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, The Phenomenological Mind
Bronwyn Parry, "Technologies of Immortality: The Brain on Ice"
John Desmond Bernal, The World, the Flesh and the Devil
Raymond Roussel, Locus Solus
John Tresch, "In a solitary place: Raymond Roussel’s brain and the French cult of unreason"
Harry Smit and Peter M. S. Hacker, "Seven Misconceptions About the Mereological Fallacy: A Compilation for the Perplexed"
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, we're so excited to share today's episode with you.
0:04.0	Before we get started, we just wanted to share with you that David was traveling while we recorded this episode, so you may find his audio a little funkier than usual.
0:11.9	All the same, we love this episode, and can't wait to overthink with you.
0:24.1	Hi, I'm David Pena Guzman.
0:25.5	And I'm Ellie Anderson.
0:27.3	Welcome to Overthink.
0:30.7	The podcast for two friends, who are also professors,
0:33.7	Put philosophy in dialogue with the everyday.
0:37.0	Because big ideas are within everyone's reach.
0:50.5	Ellie, have you heard about the infamous Italian head transplant doctor?
0:51.4	What?
0:52.9	No, tell me more.
0:58.1	So it's this neurosurgeon by the name of Sergio Canavero who became... So a real person.
0:58.9	Yes, it's a real person.
1:00.6	Living today?
1:01.5	Yeah, he's still alive, a real Italian who exists in the world.
1:07.4	And he became famous in 2015 when he claimed that it was his plan to perform the world's
1:15.7	first ever head transplant, like literally cut the head of somebody's body and then attach it to
1:22.4	somebody else's body.
1:24.3	And this, of course, ruffled a lot of feathers, not only in the scientific community,
1:29.0	but in the bioethics community.
1:31.1	And sent a lot of heads spinning.
	...

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