Brain in a vat, thoughts from embodiment.

The philosophical example goes;

If you put a brain in a vat and connect all the inputs necessary, would the brain be fooled that it actually wasn't a brain in a vat, but a normal brain in a normal world?

All kinds of fun philosophical issues follow. Embodiment however, could firstly argue that since it is only a brain, it could not function at all because brain is body -there is no separating. The argument would then be that all the inputs is a misleading assumption behind the question. We would obviously not have all the inputs (bar for a moment that input/output type stuff is difficult to maintain under this perspective). However, for argument's sake, let's accept both the word input (and all its assumptions) as well as that a brain is connected in such a way that it may as well have been a part of a body and in a world. This does however take the fun out of the question since we are basically saying that it already is fooled to be a normal brain in a normal world. The curiosity however is that, from an embodied perspective, you are more or less forced to clarify the example to the extent where it isn't an exciting question.

Why?

It is only really exciting to begin with because growing up we are taught that the brain is separate from the body, we may even be taught the the mind is separate from the brain -so the example feeds off of common sensical, traditional, dualism -brain is something different from body, and/or -mind is different from brain. Embodiment doesn't allow this separation, which forces a restatement of the question -in a way that answers it implicitly. Neat, right!?

It's not really a coincidence that we exist...

"It is such a coincidence that we exist. It is such a coincidence... Accident... Chance... Random"

But the two most important things are that every second of every minute of the universe's existence these "coincidences" keep being created, and, if that "coincidence" can't be reproduced over and over, over the course of massive amounts of time, then it wouldn't exist now (as so many things don't). So we can call us being here "coincidental" or our universe being hospitable to life a "coincidence", but in reality, we are no more an anomaly than anything else. Additionally, very importantly, if we didn't reproduce the stable patterns of a body or even further back in time, cell division, then we wouldn't be here either. But. The vital aspects of environment-organism has been kept stable, in a way that has allowed reproduction of biochemical matter, for us to eventually have been evolved into.

So if you ask me. Yes, of course it is a coincidence that we exist and it depended on the stability of our environment. But we are as improbable as anything else that currently exist in our universe, and, considering the number of "coincidences" created (and the vast majority deconstructed) all the time, it is infinitely probable that 'that which can be reproduced' will continue to exist. So we are not a coincidence. (I don't subscribe to determinism or anthrocentrism, so, no, the universe didn't evolve to provide space for us. The universe has no intention, it just is. But that is the topic of another post. Or book.)