A friend of a friend’s nine year old has been worrying about the brain in a vat theory.
You might be a brain in a vat
There’s not much you can do about that:
Every thing that you feel
May not even be real
You might not be wearing a hat.
Because you might not have a head:
Your body, by now, might be dead
And cold on a slab
While your brain’s in a lab
In a life-giving fluid, instead
All the things that you see and you hear
All you love and you dream and you fear
That could all be a code
That a scientist wrote
So the world only seems to appear
And the people you’ve known along
Could be no more substantial than song
But then how can you lose?
You can do what you choose
And nothing can ever be wrong.
But the problem is, what if you’re NOT?
When your hand’s in a fire, it feels hot:
This assumption is sane:
Other people feel pain
Just like you: empathy’s your best shot.
Yes, you might be a brain in a jar
Because none of us know what we are.
But if you’re just a mind
Well, you still can be kind:
And if all this is real, you’re a star!
Tom Juniper Poetry 