Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 250.
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        Date: 2025-12-04 11:03:33+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: disembodied?

Those here with philosophical interests and a sense of humour 
will know the long history of writings on the theme of 
"brain in a vat" -- and of course early movies such as 
Donovan's Brain". My collection on this theme goes back to 
Hilary Putnam's "Brains in a vat", In Reasons, Truth and 
History" (CUP, 1981), Thomas Nagel's The View from 
Nowhere (Oxford, 1986), Dan Dennett's Consciousness 
Explained (Little, Brown & Co., 1991) and even Peter 
Galison's Image and Logic (1997). Here's a related item, 
rather more disturbing, I think:

Murray Shanahan, "Palatable Conceptions of Disembodied Being", 
at <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.16348>.


WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts,
   Sciences and Humanities (Berghahn); Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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