Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Further Reading 474who wants to deceive me into believing in the existence of the external world (and myown body)?" Perhaps, Descartes supposes, the only thing that exists aside from thedemon is his own immaterial mind-the minimal victim of the demon's deceit. In thesemore materialistic times the same question is often updated: How do I know that evilscientists haven't removed my brain from my head while I slept and put it in a lifesupportvat, where they are tricking it-me-with phony stimulation? Literally hundreds ofarticles and books have been written about Descartes's thought experiment with the evildemon. Two good recent books are Anthony Kenny's Descartes: A Study of hisPhilosophy (Random House,1968), and Harry Frankfurt's Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen: The Defense ofReason in Descartes' Meditations (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970). A fine anthologyis Willis Doney, ed., Descartes: a Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Macmillan,1968). A particularly memorable and amusing discussion is O. K. Bouwsma's "Descartes'Evil Genius," in the Philosophical Review (vol. 58, 1949, pp. 141-151).The "brain in the vat" literature, of which ZubotTs strange tale is a previouslyunpublished instance, has recently been rejuvenated with some new critical slants. SeeLawrence Davis's "Disembodied Brains," in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy (vol.52, 1974, pp. 121-132), and Sydney Shoemaker's "Embodiment and Behavior," in Rorty'sThe Identities of Persons. Hilary Putnam discusses the case at length in his new book,Reason, Truth and History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), and arguesthat the supposition is not just technically outrageous but deeply, conceptuallyincoherent.Part IV. Mind as ProgramThe theme of duplicate people-atom-for-atom replicas-has been picked up from fiction byphilosophers, most notably by Hilary Putnam, who imagines a planet he calls Twin Earth,where each of us has an exact duplicate or Doppelganger, to use the German term Putnamfavors. Putnam first presented this literally outlandish thought experiment in "TheMeaning of `Meaning'," in Keith Gunderson, ed., Language, Mind and Knowledge(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975, pp. 131193), where he uses it toestablish a surprising new theory of meaning. It is reprinted in the second volume ofPutnam's collected papers, Mind, Language and Reality (New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1975). While it seems that almost no philosopher takes Putnam'sargument