Grover
Grover
How does the brain(material) creat the mind (immaterial)?
It's a matter of comparisons. One must identify the self as opposed to others. The rest seems to be either an extension of the living impulse or a necessary complication thereof. Remember: happiness and security are mere electrochemical states in the brain. You can feel them as falsely in relation to circumstances as you can fear their lack.
You have never seen a tree, you have seen a recreation of that tree by your brain.
Which is part of the reason why many sages claim "reality" to be illusory. Beyond even paradigm and presumption is the fact you've pointed out. That's not the actual tree our brain is reading but an image cast on sensors.
An interesting consideration comes from Ibn Sina. Summarized by Armstrong, it goes approximately as follows:
Wherever we look in the world, we see composite beings that consist of a number of different elements. A tree, for example, consists of wood, bark, pith, sap, and leaves. When we try to understand something, we "analyze" it, breaking it up into its component parts until no further division is possible. The simple elements seem primary to us and the composite beings that they form secondary. We are continually looking for simplicity, therefore, for beings that are irreducibly themselves. (183)
In addition to viewing the reproduction, we are also operating according to a hidden criterion which compels us to view composites. There are a number of reasons for this, relevance being in no way the least.
So, how can you say that simply because visions can be shown to have a correlation in the brain that they aren't real when the exact same thing can be said about everything else you have ever perceived.
At such a level, reality is somewhat conventional. While there are proper metaphysical considerations about the illusory nature of reality, it is fair enough to say in a relevant and functional context that the tree can be agreed on to exist as stimulus for the brain event of perception. The localized brain event referred to in the article has no detectable real stimulus. It's not like the eye is seeing and defining a reproduction of God for the brain to process. The brain itself seems to be generating the signal. And the brain seems to be great at receiving and filtering information. When it generates from its own, though ... well ... the results aren't as bright. Many perceive something wrong in the world between humans. Every attempt to generate a solution from within has resulted in zero real progress at best. Sure, we're playing with nicer toys these days, but humanity hasn't changed much.
Put another way, seeing as everything we perceive is recreated by our brains how do we know that visions are not a recreation of an external reality the same way a tree is a recreation of an external reality?
In the metaphysical there is no way to
know. In the practical, it's fair enough to say that if Joe falls over, thinks he's talking to God on a sunny island in the south seas, and had a nice flight home on the back of a hoopoe bird ... well ... I'm pretty sure that I can correctly advise the paramedics as they come to check his condition that
he never left the room.
There are metaphysical possibilities to beat the band, but it depends on how metaphysical one wishes to be. Look at me .... people barely understand me most days in this forum, and even I generally concede the practical reality of the temporal Universe around me. What, where, when, or how is the reality seen in the brain? What makes it any different from the waking-sleep seizures I had that replaced the picture of Saturn on my wall with Orson the Pig from
US Acres while the buzzing in my skull left me looking for my friend Drill (see Bradbury's
Zero Hour for reference)? Or perhaps the morning that I took a shower, got dressed, and ate breakfast before shaking off the bizarre condition of thinking I'm a character in a book. Strangely, my mother didn't notice, even though I was talking about people who weren't real. However, I
promise that thirty-eyed, feathered, fire-shooting pseudo-dragons with the power to violate time-space
cannot, within my empirical Universe, be said to exist in reality.
- Armstrong, Karen. A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. New York: Knopf, 1994.
:m:,
Tiassa