Skip to main content

Against Brain-in-a-Vatism: On the Value of Virtual Reality

Philosophy & Technology volume 27, pages 561–579 (2014)Cite this article

Abstract

The term “virtual reality” was first coined by Antonin Artaud to describe a value-adding characteristic of certain types of theatrical performances. The expression has more recently come to refer to a broad range of incipient digital technologies that many current philosophers regard as a serious threat to human autonomy and well-being. Their concerns, which are formulated most succinctly in “brain in a vat”-type thought experiments and in Robert Nozick's famous “experience machine” argument, reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the way that such technologies would probably have to work. They also considerably underestimate the positive contributions that virtual reality (VR) technologies could make to the growth of human knowledge. Here, we examine and critique Nozick's claim that no reasonable person would want to plug into his hypothetical experience machine in light of a broadly enactivist understanding of how future VR technologies might be expected to function. We then sketch out a tentative theory of the phenomenon of truth in fiction, in order to characterize some of the distinct epistemic opportunities that VR technologies promise to provide.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price includes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Notes

  1. Note also that children with congenital strabismus, the inability to exert appropriate muscular control over an eye, do not see a moving landscape through the wandering eye. Instead, they develop amblyopia, which is standardly understood as the brain's being unable to process the information provided by the eye.

  2. A referee for this journal has called our attention to the way that optogenetics might eventually bring about such a transformation. Researchers in this field have already had some success at helping lab mice to better navigate mazes (see Zackaib 2013) and at modifying the behavior of nonhuman primates (see Berdyyeva and Reynolds 2009, p. 159) by introducing microbial rhodopsins directly into brain tissue and then activating the neurons there with pulses of laser light. We remain skeptical about whether future iterations of these technologies could be used to generate the types of virtual environments that would qualify as “interactive” in Heim's sense of the term, but to the extent that they could, what we have called “passive” VR would not end up being quite such a counter-intuitive prospect.

  3. Let us be clear: this is only meant to apply to (actual and virtual) agents who use language and is only meant to be a necessary condition for intelligence even then! Neither of us thinks the test is remotely plausible as a necessary or sufficient test for intelligence: not necessary because nonhumans such as crows and humans such as non-linguistic deaf adults and aphaisics are clearly intelligent and not sufficient for reasons to do with what we have already described as the “enactive” nature of much human thought and perception.

  4. This argument raises many broader issues about computationalism that would take us much too far afield. However, we have put forward the argument in detail and considered many of its surprising ramifications in three other publications: Silcox and Cogburn (2006), Cogburn and Silcox (2008), and Cogburn and Silcox (2011). See also Cogburn and Silcox (2005). For further discussion of Nozick's “experience machine” argument in a slightly different context, see Silcox and Cogburn (2009).

  5. For a useful survey of the debate, see Bruekner (2012).

  6. One important exception to this generalization is Gaut (2007). See especially chapters 7 and 8.

  7. Unfortunately the hogwash has affected Wikipedia. Rand’s Nathaniel Taggart is based on James J. Hill, creator of the Great Northern Railway. Both Hill’s Wikipedia page and the page for the Great Northern Railway (echoing misleading claims in the objectivist blogosphere) make much of the fact that the Great Northern was privately financed and didn’t receive land grants. But this is extraordinarily misleading, since the Great Northern was initially created by changing the name of the Saint Paul and Pacific Railway, which Hill purchased in a fire-sale. But the Saint Paul and Pacific was formed initially from the Minnesota and Pacific Railway, which (and it is to Wikipedia’s credit that they continue to admit this) was a public railroad formed out of massive land grants and a five million dollar bond in taxpayer money. Without “loans, bonds, subsidies, land grants” and “legislative favors” the Great Northern would never have existed.

  8. Their plausibility might depend upon the somewhat delicate question of whether Rand's work is better classified as realistic or fantasy fiction, since a crucial difference between these two genres might (or might not: the authors disagree) be the degree of flexibility in imagination that each demands from its readers.

  9. For detailed arguments to this effect, see Brown (2010) and Sorenson (2008).

References

  • Andersen, J. L., & Aagaard, P. (2000). Myosin heavy chain IIX overshoot in human skeletal muscle. Muscle and Nerve, 23(7), 1095–1104.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Artaud, A. (1958). The theater and its double. New York: Grove. Trans. Mary Caroline Richards.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aristotle. (2012). Poetics. Trans S.H. Butcher. Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1974/1974-h/1974-h.htm. Accessed 20 Oct 2012.

  • Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baudrillard, J. (2000). The vital illusion. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berdyyeva, T. K., & Reynolds, J. H. (2009). The dawning of primate optogenetics. Neuron, 62, 159–160.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, J. R. (2010). The laboratory of the mind: thought experiments in the natural sciences (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bruekner, T. (2012). Skepticism and content externalism. Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-content-externalism. Accessed 13 Sep 2012.

  • Cline, E. (2011). Ready player one. New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cogburn, J., & Silcox, M. (2005). Computing machinery and emergence: the aesthetics and metaphysics of video games. Minds and Machines, 15(1), 73–89.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cogburn, J., & Silcox, M. (2008). Philosophy through video games. New York: Taylor & Francis.

  • Cogburn, J., & Silcox, M. (2011). Computability theory and ontological emergence. American Philosophical Quarterly, 48(1), 63–74.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, D. (2012). The Chinese room argument. The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/chinese-room/. Accessed 23 Sep 2012.

  • Coyne, R. (1994). Heidegger and virtual reality: the implications of Heidegger's thinking for computer representations. Leonardo, 27(1), 65–73.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dadlez, E. (1997). What's Hecuba to Him?: Fictional events and actual emotions. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dick, P.K. (1966). We can remember it for you wholesale. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April, 4–23.

  • Doctorow, C. (2003). Down and out in the Magic Kingdom. New York: Tor Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gaut, B. (2007). Art, emotion, and ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gere, C. (2004). Brains in vats, giant brains, and world brains: the brain as metaphor in digital culture. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in the History of Biological and Biomedical Science, 35(2), 351–366.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Griswold, C. (2002). Happiness and Cypher's choice: is ignorance bliss? In W. Irvin (Ed.), The Matrix and philosophy: welcome to the desert of the real (pp. 126–137). Peru: Open Court.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heim, M. (1998). Virtual realism. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kohler, I. (1964). The formation and transformation of the perceptual world. Psychological Issues, 3(4), 1–173.

    Google Scholar 

  • Langan, T. (2000). Surviving the age of virtual reality. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mander, J. (1978). Four arguments against television. New York: HarperCollins.

    Google Scholar 

  • McMahon, J. (2002). Popping a bitter pill: existential authenticity in The Matrix and Nausea. In W. Irvin (Ed.), The Matrix and philosophy: welcome to the desert of the real (pp. 166–177). Peru: Open Court.

  • Nietzsche, F. (2012). On truth and lies in a nonmoral sense. http://faculty.uml.edu/enelson/truth&lies.htm. Accessed 20 Oct 2012.

  • Noë, A. (2006). Action in perception. Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, state, and utopia. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plato. (1992). Republic. Indianapolis: Hackett. Trans. G.M.A. Grube.

  • Rand, A. (1999). Atlas shrugged. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Searle, J. (1980). Minds, brains and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3(3), 417–457.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Silcox, M., & Cogburn, J. (2006). Computability theory and literary competence. British Journal of Aesthetics, 46(4), 369–386.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silcox, M., & Cogburn, J. (2009). Azeroth vs. The experience machine. In L. Cuddy, & J. Nordlinger, (Eds.), World of warcraft and philosophy (pp.55–66). Peru: Open Court.

  • Silverstein, M. (2000). In defense of happiness: a response to the experience machine. Social Theory and Practice, 26(2), 279–300.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sirridge, M. (1975). Truth from fiction? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 35(4), 453–471.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sorenson, R. A. (2008). Thought experiments. London: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turing, A. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59(236), 433–460.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Virilio, P. (1994). The vision machine. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Trans. Julie Rose.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zackaib, G.D. (2013). Let there be light for new and better mind control (in mice). http://www.alzforum.org/new/detail.asp?id=3462. Accessed 15 June 2013.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, Louisiana State University, 102 Coates Hall, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803, USA

    Jon Cogburn

  2. Department of Humanities and Philosophy, University of Central Oklahoma, 100 N. University Drive, Edmond, OK, 73034, USA

    Mark Silcox

Authors
  1. Jon Cogburn
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Mark Silcox
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mark Silcox.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Cogburn, J., Silcox, M. Against Brain-in-a-Vatism: On the Value of Virtual Reality. Philos. Technol. 27, 561–579 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-013-0137-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-013-0137-4

Keywords

  • Virtual reality
  • Brain in a vat
  • Nozick
  • Artaud
  • Enactivism
  • Truth in fiction