Bivs, Space and 'In'.
Erkenntnis January 1, 2022 Clare Mac Cumhaill
A novel anti-sceptical argument against the brain-in-a-vat (BIV) scenario is developed by examining the conditions under which the locative preposition 'in' is produced and used. Two uses of 'in' are distinguished: material and descriptive phenomenological. Movement is central to the concept that use of 'in' expresses. A functionalist semantics of the intelligible use of 'in' demands a materialist philosophy of action in the spirit of G.E.M. Anscombe, but the structure of space is not irrelevant; it unsettles the causal-empirical assumptions grounding the BIV narrative's picture of subjectivity and agency. Finally, functionalist semantics demands a Naïve Realist metaphysics of perception, consistent with some of Putnam's later writings.