Hi ozzz169. I spend many years reading many many academic journal articles, and outside of a couple classes in the history of science, I didn't encounter any talk about the brain in a vat problem.

I'm a fan of Descartes and Francis Bacon, and I like the idea of starting with a blank slate, but be careful of re-admitting ideas without careful scrutiny. I'll give you an example. When you talk about being "under the control" of another person, this is not something that you can determine by armchair philosophy. Psychologists, sociologists, and marketing researchers will tell you that you are subject to influence from society and events around you. If you say that a person is or is not under somebody's control (you could probably elaborate on what you mean by that), it is an empirical question. That means you are talking about things in the real world, and to test the validity of the claim, you would have to collect and carefully scrutinize data (or find studies where people did that).

If you keep heading in this direction, you might continue to learn more things that will help you achieve what you are seeking.