MOZGOVI U BAČVI
BRAINS IN A BARREL

Summary/Abstract: There is a “possible world” in which all sentient beings are brains in a barrel. The humans in that possible world have exactly the same experiences that we do. Yet, the author is claiming that there is an argument we can put forward that proves we are not brains in a barrel. The argument is basically this: although the people in that possible world can think and “say” any words we can think and say, they cannot refer to what we can refer to. In particular, they cannot think or say that they are brains in a barrel (even by thinking “we are brains in a barrel”). Brains in a barrel are like a machine in the Turing Test: they cannot refer to anything external at all. What we actually have in the test is a device for producing sentences in response to sentences. But none of these sentences is at all connected to the real world. Even if everything around it ceased to exist, the machine would still keep chattering away just as happily. In reflecting on an ant tracing a picture of Winston Churchill, with machines happily talking and brains whose nerve endings are connected to a super-scientific computer, Putnam considers the preconditions for thinking about, representing, referring to, etc. The hypothetical conclusion is that there are no mental phenomena, inner presentations, which necessarily refer to external things. This is an illusion typical of a magical theory of reference. Philosophers like Brentano, who have ascribed to the mind a power of “intentionality” which enables it to refer, have actually cherished the illusion.

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