RE: could you be a brain in a vat?

["David Saitch" <philosophy@saitch.net>]

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Patrick, my attack on Jackson's epiphenominal qualia will be up here as soon
as I have given it a bit more though, probably next week, so we can have a
jolly discussion then.

I'd have no problem about papers being available up here, but that's over to
Rab really.

I agree that Putnam shows a lot about external content. In fact, having
moved from reading the BiV chapter in an epistemology anthology to reading
it in the book, it shows his big mistake - trying to use it as a case
against being a BiV rather than sticking to what the book was really about.

His problem with anti BiV argument is clearly that he does not show that we
cannot be BiV, only that if we were and we said it, we would not know it.

He has definitely, perhaps subconsciously, smuggled in the undisclosed
supposition that we are speaking English rather than Vatlish, when really
the question his paper raises is "How can I tell whether I am speaking
English or Vatlish".





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