IT IS A SCIENTIFIC FACT THAT THE WORLD COMES INTO EXISTENCE IN O
IT IS A SCIENTIFIC FACT
THAT THE
WORLD COMES INTO EXISTENCE IN OUR BRAINS -2-
What a human being would refer to as "my life"
is a collection of all perceptions being put together in a
meaningful
way and watched from a screen in the brain, and one can never
come out
of one's brain.
When you look out of the window, you think that you see an
image with
your eyes, as this is the way that you have been taught to
think. However,
in reality this is not how it works, because you do not see
the world
with your eyes. You see the image created in your brains. This
is not
a prediction, nor a philosophical speculation, but the
scientific truth.
Everything we perceive takes place in our brains, and that we
have no
need for the outside world or material beings to experience
these perceptions.
We Hear All Types Of Sound In Our Brains
 |
| Despite the volume of the sounds you hear, the interior of your brain is actually very quiet. However, you hear noise, such as voices, very clearly in your brain. |
The hearing process also operates in a similar manner to the visual process. In other words, we hear sounds in our brains in the same way that we see the view of the outside world in our brains. The ear captures the sounds around us and delivers them to the middle ear. The middle ear amplifies the sound vibrations and delivers them to the inner ear. The inner ear transforms these sound vibrations into electric signals, on the basis of their frequency and intensity, and then transmits them to the brain. These messages in the brain are then sent to the hearing center where the sounds are interpreted. Therefore, the hearing process takes place in the hearing center in essentially the same way that the seeing process takes place in the seeing center.
Therefore, actual sounds do not exist outside our brains, even though there are physical vibrations we call sound waves. These sound waves are not transformed into sounds outside or inside our ears, but rather inside our brains. As the visual process is not performed by our eyes, neither do our ears perform the hearing process. For example, when you are having a chat with a friend, you observe the sight of your friend in your brain, and hear his or her voice in your brain. As the view in your brain is formed, you will have a deep feeling of three dimensions, and your friend's voice is also heard with a similar feeling of depth. For example, you could see your friend as being a long way from you, or sitting behind you; accordingly you feel his voice as if it is coming from him, from near you or from your back. However, your friend's voice is not far away or behind you. It is in your brain.
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| The smell molecules never actually reach the brain. In our sense of smell, it is only electrical signals which reach the brain, as happens with sound and sight. |
The extraordinariness about the real nature of the sound you hear is not limited to this. The brain is actually both lightproof and soundproof. Sound never in fact reaches the brain. Therefore, despite the volume of the sounds you hear, the interior of your brain is actually very quiet. However, you hear noise, such as voices, very clearly in your brain. This is an extraordinary fact. The electrical signals that reach the brain are heard in your brain as sound, for example the sound of a concert in a stadium filled with people.
All Smells Occur In The
Brain
If someone is asked how he senses the smells around him, he
would
probably say "with my nose". However, this answer is not
the right one, even though most people would instantly
conclude that
it was the truth. Gordon Shepherd, a professor of neurology
from Yale
University, explains why this is incorrect:
We think that we smell with our noses, [but] this is a little like saying that we hear with our ear lobes.1
Our sense of smell works in a similar
mechanism to our
other sense organs. In fact, the only function of the nose
is its
ability to act as an intake channel for smell molecules.
Volatile
molecules such as vanilla, or the scent of a rose, come to
receptors
located on hairs in a part of the nose called the epithelium
and interact
with them. The result of the interaction of the smell
molecules with
the epithelium reaches the brain as an electric signal.
These electric
signals are then perceived as a scent by the brain. Thus,
all smells
which we interpret as good or bad are merely perceptions
generated
in the brain after the interaction with volatile molecules
has been
transduced into electric signals. The fragrance of perfume,
of a flower,
of a food which you like, of the sea-in short all smells you
may or
may not like-are perceived in the brain. However, the smell
molecules
never actually reach the brain. In our
sense
of smell, it is only electrical signals which reach the
brain, as
happens with sound and sight.
George Berkeley, a philosopher who has
realized the
importance of this truth, says "At the beginning, it was
believed
that colors, odors, etc., 'really exist,' but subsequently
such views
were renounced, and it was seen that they only exist in
dependence
on our sensations."2
Michael Posner, a psychologist and Marcus Raichle, a neurologist from Washington University comment on the issue of how sight and other senses occur, even in the absence of an external stimulus:
Open your eyes, and a scene fills your view effortlessly; close your eyes and think of that scene, and you can summon an image of it, certainly not as vivid, solid, or complete as a scene you see with your eyes, but still one that captures the scene's essential characteristics. In both cases, an image of the scene is formed in the mind. The image formed from actual visual experiences is called a "percept" to distinguish it from an imagined image. The percept is formed as the result of light hitting the retina and sending signals that are further processed in the brain. But how are we able to create an image when no light is hitting the retina to send such signals?3
 |
| If the taste nerves in your brain were cut off, it would be impossible for the taste of anything you eat to reach your brain, and you would entirely lose your sense of taste. |
There is no need for an external source to form an image in your mind. This same situation holds true for the sense of smell. In the same way as you are aware of a smell which does not really exist in your dreams or imagination, you cannot be sure whether or not those objects, which you smell in real life, exist outside you. Even if you assume that these objects exist outside of you, you can never deal with the original objects.
All Tastes Occur In The
Brain
The sense of taste can be explained in a manner similar to
those of
the other sense organs. Tasting is caused by little buds in
the tongue
and throat. The tongue can detect four different tastes,
bitter, sour,
sweet and salty. Taste buds, after a chain of processes,
transform sensory
information into electrical signals and then transfer them to
the brain.
Subsequently, those signals are perceived by the brain as
tastes. The
taste that you experience when you eat a cake, yogurt, a lemon
or a
fruit is, in reality, a process that interprets electrical
signals in
the brain.
An image of a cake will be linked with the taste of the sugar,
all of
which occurs in the brain and everything sensed is related to
the cake
which you like so much. The taste that you are conscious of
after you
have eaten your cake, with a full appetite, is nothing other
than an
effect generated in your brain caused by electrical signals.
You are
only aware of what your brain interprets from the external
stimuli.
You can never reach the original object; for example you
cannot see,
smell or taste the actual chocolate itself. If the taste
nerves in your
brain were cut off, it would be impossible for the taste of
anything
you eat to reach your brain, and you would entirely lose your
sense
of taste. The fact that the tastes of which you are aware seem
extraordinarily
real should certainly not deceive you. This is the scientific
explanation
of the matter.
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| If our fingertips are given a stimulus in a different manner, we can sense entirely different feelings. Today this can be done by mechanical simulators. With the help of a special glove, a person can feel the sensation of stroking a cat, shaking hands with someone, washing his hands, or touching a hard material, even though none of these things may be present. |
The Sense Of Touch Also Occurs In The Brain
The sense of touch is one of the factors which prevents people from being convinced of the aforementioned truth that the senses of sight, hearing and taste occur within the brain. For example, if you told someone that he sees a book within his brain, he would, if he didn't think carefully, reply "I can't be seeing the book in my brain-look, I'm touching it with my hand". Or, if we said "we cannot know whether the original of this book exists as a material object outside or not", again the same superficially minded person might answer "no, look, I'm holding it with my hand and I feel the hardness of it-that isn't a perception but an existence which has material reality".
 |
| When you touch a material object, you sense whether it is hard, soft, wet, sticky or silky in the brain. The effects that come from your fingertips are transmitted to the brain as an electrical signal and these signals are perceived in the brain as the sense of touch. |
However, there is a fact that such people cannot understand, or perhaps just ignore. The sense of touch also occurs in the brain as much as do all the other senses. That is to say, when you touch a material object, you sense whether it is hard, soft, wet, sticky or silky in the brain. The effects that come from your fingertips are transmitted to the brain as an electrical signal and these signals are perceived in the brain as the sense of touch. For instance, if you touch a rough surface, you can never know whether the surface is, in reality, indeed a rough surface, or how a rough surface actually feels. That is because you can never touch the original of a rough surface. The knowledge that you have about touching a surface is your brain's interpretation of certain stimuli. This important truth, which needs careful consideration, is expressed by twentieth century philosopher Bertrand Russell:
As to the sense of touch when we press the table with our fingers, that is an electric disturbance on the electrons and protons of our fingertips, produced, according to modern physics, by the proximity of the electrons and protons in the table. If the same disturbance in our finger-tips arose in any other way, we should have the sensations, in spite of there being no table.4
1 www.hhmi.org/senses/a/a110.htm
2 V.I.Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-criticism,
Progress Publishers,
Moscow, 1970, p.14
3 Michael I. Posner, Marcus E. Raichle, Images of
Mind, Scientific
American Library, New York, 1999, p. 88
4 Bertrand Russell, ABC of Relativity, George Allen
and Unwin,
London, 1964, pp. 161-162
