Brain in a vat

Years ago, in an often evocative feeling, my sis and i used to come up with seemingly funny questions and scenarios that we ourselves couldn't quite comprehend, let alone solving them. One in particular was a common solipsistic dilemma; that we can't imagine how we seem to exist.

I'll look at my hands and fingers wriggling, then ponder hard how is my body "alive" as an entity on its own. True, the brain does control our body and its movement. But from a reductionist perspective, doesn't it all boils down to electrical impulses and chemical reactions? And those aren't in itself "living" entities, are they? As a result, we often come to a shuddering halt in our thoughts when we finally look at each other in puzzlement, furthering our thoughts by which would cause us to freak out.

Relieving those thoughts lately by philosophical Q&As, i came to agree with certain degrees of Descarte's work and the skeptical hypothesis. That my mind is the only think which exists even in this unproven reality. That everything else is just a figmentary creation of our mind, including the corporeal, material world. Which all seem to stem from the fact that only i can be certain that my mind is in existence and everything else isn't absolutely certain.

I used to go on later, furthering my inquisitive thoughts into what appeared to be another valid philosophical controversy; the dream argument. That might be possible for empirical reality to be our so called "dream state". And our awaken state might possibly be a slumbering reality of "dream". More than just an imagination, the context of which i'm pondering is that of an empirical reality (i.e "for real", objective and absolute reality). As superficial as it may seem at the begining that this mere imagination does not hold water (and that it is just yet another fictitious creation that we all use to have and may choose to believe out of astonishing curiosity), i went on to realise that there were real philosophical reasons-at least-to believe it. Descarte mentioned that our sensory perceptions should not be taken for granted as reliable but merely assumptions that we can never quite prove. And because our perceptions are convincingly "reliable" in dreams, we can never tell which state we are in. That false awakening could be our reality. As such, i could be dreaming that i'm typing now and when i've decided to slumber into a sleep and dream, i could be waking up from my dream of me typing. It could be objectively correct, since there's really no way within the boundaries of the laws of physics in "our" world to prove otherwise-because our perceptions are assumed to be reliable. On the other hand, if our perceptions are assumed unreliable, then this skeptic is equally questionable. But if our perceptions are deemed reliable somehow, then there shouldn't exist such a skeptic in the first place, since we are living the empirical reality. We wouldn't know with absolute certainty, would we?

Another common yet peculiar question i've always discussed with my dad about, is the reality of existence and the box-in-a-box argument. It sounded very possible to me that i do not exist for real in the sense of the word "real" in that i could very well be a brain in a vat, plugged up to some simulator that controls brain impulses and ultimately, the life of the brain. That my existence is solely a mental creation of the mind that inhabits the brain. Thus, my body and the material world are merely a byproduct of my mind. A form of virtual reality like the Matrix. In other words, i'm living in someone else's reality, who in turn lives in someone else's reality who created such a simulator and it goes on and on until it reaches the Omega Point. Then i would think. What if it's possible that the existent "minds" in a simulator manage to technologically evolve to escape the simulator? Then would it all depends on which simulated reality would achieve such advances first? That the "mind" could escape multiple simulators (multiple versions of reality) to reach the Omega Point! Haha. Or couldn't it? Because all perceptions are assumed reliable. That it may be its presumeably reliable perceptions that are telling it that it is doing so may just be another falsely assumed reliability. But i would not seem to acknowledge the Omega Point to be such an end. Because there has to be something outside 'the end', shouldn't it? That even nothingness has some sort of end or begining. Then i often came to a conclusion myself that there will be the existence of non-existence which would not need a begining or an end; something that even within the physical capacity of the brain in the vat could not comprehend.

After all the after-effects from various conspiracious metanarrative yesterday, the material world not surprisingly still remain real to me. Or at least, it could be my assumed reliability of perceptions telling me so. The fact that philosophers and most of us are aware of this fact could just be yet another conspiracy of my perceptions. If it isn't logically possible for such a conspiracy, then the skeptic would not exist in the first place. Maybe it doesn't. It does now!Because it's a 'maybe' , which means that there is a logical possiblity for it to exist.

Anyway, as i was on the brink of my still-far-from-near slumber on bed yesterday night, i thought to myself. What is the last number right before infinity?