In Hilary Putnam’s essay “Brains in a Vat”, he begins by mentioning an illustration of an ant making markings in the sand and how these markings depict Winston Churchill. He then goes on to mention whether or not one can consider that it is Churchill because the ant had no intention of replicating Churchill as it does not even know who he is (Putnam, 1981:1).”The argument is simple; what we said about the ant’s curve applies to any physical object. No physical object can, in itself, refer to one thing rather than to another; nevertheless, thoughts in the mind obviously do succeed in referring to one thing rather than another.” (ibid.:2) This shows that the significance of mentioning the ant in the sand is to show the relation between representations
