Brains In A Vat Argument Analysis

A challenge to Skepticism

Through Hilary Putnam's “Brains in a Vat” argument, he aims to refute the idea of philosophical skepticism introduced by René Descartes. At the conclusion of the first meditation in his First Meditations on Philosophy, Descartes argues that an evil demon may be artificially creating all of our life experiences. Through his hypothesis, Descartes exemplifies philosophical skepticism of the existence of an external world. Ideas, life events, experiences and beliefs that seem to be acquired from interactions with the external physical world are merely illusions created by a deceptive, evil demon. Although Descartes presents a compelling argument for his skepticism of our perceived ideas, it has been argued that his argument cannot stand because of its self-refutation. In this essay I will introduce Hilary Putnam's, a philosopher, mathematician and computer scientist, modern take on Descartes' evil demon hypothesis with his brains in vats example in effort to prove that such a situation, and therefore skepticism in general, is entirely self-refuting. Moreover, I will challenge Putnam's argument …show more content…
It seems that the skeptic can easily raise another skeptical argument to counter any non-skeptical conclusion. It would then be important to ask: is there any other substance or proof to the skeptic's argument besides more skepticism? The non-skeptic would argue against the substance of the skeptic's objection because it simply presents more skeptical assumptions without sound proof. At least Putnam presents his three-step logical proof and his theory of reference to substantiate his claims. Whereas the non-skeptic is working to provide both logical and sematic reasons for the existence of an external world, the skeptic must increase the scope of their argument to counter the non-skeptic's