SRF Kultur Sternstunden
SRF Kultur SternstundenImagine that your brain is floating in a tank and being stimulated by a computer to make you perceive an entire world around you. How do you know that this world really exists? Can you really be sure that your brain isn’t just floating in a chemical solution?
What is right? What is real? And who am I, after all? Philosophy asks life’s big questions. We present these questions as animated thought experiments, and thereby show how fascinating and entertaining it is to ponder life.
http://www.srf.ch/filosofix
Tought experiment: Hilary Putnam
Animation: Nino Christen
Speaker: Blake Worrell
Music: Martin Bezzola
SRF Kultur / SRG SSR
💬 Habt ihr Fragen, Anregungen oder Kritik? Dann schreibt uns an: kulturonline@srf.ch
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21 Comments
@S4g3Black
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMFor the brain in a vat idea, wouldn't your brain die when removed from your body and not receiving blood? Plus we know that we're real not just because we can doubt but because we know other's lives don't center around us. They have their own thoughts and feelings and can thus ignore us. If we were truly dreaming in a matrix, why would we dream of other's lives being so complicated to the point where it technically doesn't matter to us? Humans (in my experience) tend to bee quite self-centered so wouldn't that translate onto our brain's subconscious? On the other hand, if we can't trust our senses, how can we trust our own thoughts? Humans are easily manipulated so how do we know that we aren't right now? Philosophy is so useless. I will now have an existential crisis in the corner of my room. 👍🏽
@discoteque7768
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMWestern culture derives from rationalism: "I think, therefore I am." However, Eastern philosophies suggest that the self is merely a collection of thoughts stored in the brain. This brain has been conditioned to perceive itself as an individual, separate from others. Yet, in reality, there is only one consciousness.
@seth_k5977
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMI know because my brain in inside my head and there are billions of other brains that are in skulls and not vats
@davidmontoya6672
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMEven if we were brains in a vat on a quantum level, we are all one of the same. Even the mad scientist is a configuration of atoms and energy, and based on the first law of thermodynamics energy cannot be naturally created or destroyed only transferred everything is relative therefore this reality is real to me because it is the reality that I perceive everything from.
Quantum level we are both conscious
Therefore, if I say, Jesus is the truth, I am correct and vice versa. If I say, I am a brain in a jar and the scientist is watching us. He is also correct from his point of view. No matter what we all will die, we will both be the same and return as pure energy.
God bless you and don’t let things get to you, you are in control of your reality ❤
@robertodangio7234
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMPutnam's mind experiment Brain in a vat Is One of the most genial phylosophycal proof, in fact It Is tantamount of cartesian's cogito, an axiom of meaning theory. It Is often misinterpreted how a proof with sceptical outcome, but otherwise It Is a proof of the contraddiction of misgiving
@fwwryh7862
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMWay too much detail in the graphics lol.
@earth1710
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMThat's impossible
@_XY_
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMThats my Life
@theArtOFjon
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMMore like, too late….were already brains in jars….
@jellyface401
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMEvennif is not real councirnse it still is even if it ks nlt what we think it is.
@jellyface401
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMWho says we need brain cell? Have enough states in the universe and you can make a counciense.😊
@jellyface401
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMMother Brain Took me here
@ajmarr5671
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMBrain in a Vat
If there is one thing that mad scientists are attracted to for personal edification, the advancement of knowledge, and of course, taking over the world, is ‘brains’. The best way to study them, at least when you give credence to science fiction and horror genres, is to detach them from their bodies, put them in a nutrient filled vat, and connect them to all sorts of probes that measure the electrical to and fro of brain waves, or excite and depress brain cells to manipulate what the brain thinks and feels. By detaching brains from bodies, this sadly resulted in creations that were more akin to Frankenstein than Einstein, a problem that was remedied by the local gendarmes and lots of aroused peasants with pitchforks and torches. And that’s entertainment!
Now fast forward to real brains and the not so mad scientists that study them. For affective and cognitive neuroscientists, brain imaging (fmri) and ‘in vivo’ or direct stimulation of cellular arrays in the brain are the primary methods to understand how affect in instantiated in the brain, yet cannot account for how neuro-muscular stimuli modulate affect. In other words, the afferent or direct input from the musculature is ignored because the brain is practically if not literally detached from the body. The result does not quite make for Frankenstein, but models of the mind that are more akin to Frankenstein, who was not exactly a true model of a mind.
So what’s missing?
A trifling matter of proprioception.
So, what’s a proprioceptor?
Proprioceptors (sensory receptors) are located in our muscles and joints and respond to changes in the relative activity of the overt and covert musculature. They also induce changes in affective states in the brain. An example of this is how we experience pleasure. Unlike other functions in the brain, from perception to thinking, the neural source of our pleasures are localized in the brain as specialized groups of nerve cells or ‘nuclei’, or ‘hot spots’, located in the midbrain. These nuclei receive inputs from different sources in the nervous system, from proprioceptive stimuli (neuro-muscular activity) to interoceptive stimuli (satiation and deprivation) to cognitive stimuli (novel positive or negative means-end expectancies), and all modulate the activity of these nuclei which release or inhibit endogenous opioids that elicit the rainbow of pleasures which mark our day.
For example, relaxation induces opioid activity and is pleasurable, but tension inhibits it and is painful. Similarly, satiation inhibits our pleasure when we eat, and deprivation or hunger increases it. Finally, positive novel means-ends expectancies enhance our pleasures, and negative expectancies inhibit them. It is this interleaving of proprioception, interoception, and cognition makes our affective world go round. Thus, for our sensory pleasures (eating, drinking), watching an exciting movie makes popcorn taste better than when watching a dull or depressing movie. This also applies to when we are relaxed, as thinking or performing meaningful activity is reflected in ‘flow’ or ‘peak’ experiences when we are engaging in highly meaningful behavior while relaxed. (Meaning will be defined as anticipated or current behavior that has branching novel positive implications, such as creating art, doing good deeds or productive work). Thus if we are tense, we find our pleasures are reduced, and if we are relaxed, they are enhanced. Our pleasures are highly dependent upon of how our bodies overtly and covertly ‘move’, and by depriving a brain of a body, we cannot fully understand or maximize our pleasures, which can get one a bit grumpy and prone to overturn apple carts. You know, like Frankenstein.
References:
Rauwolf, P., et al. (2021) Reward uncertainty – as a 'psychological salt'- can alter the sensory experience and consumption of high-value rewards in young healthy adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33734772/
Embodied Cognition
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/a-brief-guide-to-embodied-cognition-why-you-are-not-your-brain/
A more formal explanation from a neurologically based learning theory of this technique is provided on pp. 44-51 in a little open-source book on the psychology of rest linked below. (The flow experience is discussed on pp. 81-86.)
https://www.scribd.com/doc/284056765/The-Book-of-Rest-The-Odd-Psychology-of-Doing-Nothing
@_XY_
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMWelcome to the machine
@_XY_
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMNice
@christianmarx3249
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMan now imagine you combine multible brains. there would be ONE consciousness. thath means yours "myself" is just an illusion – you don't actually exist – there are just multiple signals communicating in your brain and making this illusion.
@beatleme2
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMThe brain had to born in the body 1st and can degenerate with time even without a body, if not they figured anti-ageing therefore death would not be – therefore or hence fourth since I'm a different time and an error in this Matrix of the mind without a body, where is the soul the heat is needed to regulate the brains blood flow, and yes the brain can see without eyes the same way we see when we are dreaming, but science is not about this today, it's about creating a computer with memory that makes the brain outdated – but without the body so is the computer – without feeling empathy or love
…hence with God creates man …man denies god, man creates computer to imitate man – man destroys himself
god is like, well I promised I wouldn't do it this time = who wins ? God, computer or man ?
@Danny-ku3px
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMSo moral of the story?
@horstnasenblut8364
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMWell mein thats what psychonauts is about.
@joegeorge3889
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMSometimes I think I'm a brain in the vat but why was I programmed to be poor not rich screw the person running the program
@Xie_Huan
02/16/2025 - 3:05 PMmy existencial doubs are really showing right now