envatted

Suppose a mad scientist abducted and "envatted" Tim* by removing his brain from his skull and putting it in a vat in which his brain is kept alive.

Epistemology Steup, Matthias 2005

Imagine that you are a brain in a vat in a world in which the only objects are brains, a vat, and a laboratory containing supercomputers that stimulate the envatted brains.

Dr. Nishad 2009

Imagine further that this situation has arisen completely randomly, and that the brains have always been envatted.

Dr. Nishad 2009

Grant that Lilian and the envatted brain entertain intrinsically indiscernible thoughts with utterly different representational contents.

Mental Causation Robb, David 2008

Of course the burden of proof is then placed on the realist to show how, compatibly with Externalism, the Brains can become aware of the possibility that they are envatted.

Semantic Challenges to Realism Khlentzos, Drew 2004

Yet it is difficult to shake the doubt that we can know any such thing a priori - isn't it merely a better explanation of the actual course of our experience that we are not envatted?

Semantic Challenges to Realism Khlentzos, Drew 2004

For, if we were so envatted, we could not possibly mean by

Semantic Challenges to Realism Khlentzos, Drew 2004

The view of conscious content as intrinsically determined and internally self-evident is sometimes supported by appeals to brain in the vat intuitions, which make it seem that the envatted brain's conscious mental states would keep all their normal intentional contents despite the loss of all their normal causal and informational links to the world (Horgan and Tienson 2002).

Consciousness Van Gulick, Robert 2004