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-This is my page where I intend to share my thoughts and ideas. Some of what I post is like the paintings of René Magritte (there is no meaning intended in them). Some things I post will hopefully spark a thought in you that will lead to something good. I have stories, essays, poems, et cetera. I hope you enjoy what I've written.
-More important than that though, is what you think. Please, I encourage you to share your thoughts. Leave comments after each post to tell what's going on in your head. (click on the word "comments" below the post to do this) Don't worry too much about making sense or sounding sane, just share whatever thoughts are passing through your brain. You can go ahead and be completely random if you like. You don't even have to agree with everything you say. This is a place where your thoughts are welcome.
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---S.Z.Q.Salway

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Physicalism's Flaw

> How does the physical world work? What is it? What does it mean? Some of the answers to these questions are more widely accepted than others. The conclusion that is accepted by more people, which is more popular, may sometimes also be the more accurate conclusion, but not always.
> I remember visiting O.M.S.I. as a child, and looking at certain machines contained in glass boxes. These machines consisted of an electricity driven motor that lifted metal balls from a trap in the bottom to a spot on the top. These balls would then roll down tracks taking turns at forks and influencing which forks would be taken by each other. There were levers, swings, latches, and many other little mechanisms that made the machines fascinating to watch.
> One might describe one of these machines with Boolean logic. When a ball arrives at this fork, if three balls weighed down this pressure plate, and this lever had not been switched by another ball, then the ball took the left fork. As Boolean logic could be used to describe the physical workings of this machine, so could Boolean logic be used to describe all physical processes. If the force applied to an object is greater than the friction on that object...
> Our brains are physical. Just masses of matter. Electrons orbiting nuclei determine the bonding of one atom to another, these atoms bond into chemicals, these chemicals make up cells. When a certain frequency of light, a particle and a wave, collides with an object, it bounces according to an exact formula. When the light enters the cone of someone's eye, it stimulates a chain reaction much like those machines in O.M.S.I., and electrochemical waves are sent down the axons of those neurons, down the optic nerve, through the brain, jumping from one cell to the next, into the occipital lobe at the back of the head. Billions upon billions of chain reactions occur, branching off, coming back together, processing, comparing things in the circuitry of other parts of the brain, being influenced by the "ifs" of the molding of our mind that is our "memory." These chains lead into the prefrontal cortex where, according to current understanding, we analyze all this data and make a decision accordingly. This then triggers more chain reactions that result in our muscle movements and our speaking and whatever other response we may have.
> Naturally, this is all a simplification, for it would be impractical, and even impossible to communicate these things without simplifying them. Yet, even in this simplification, we can see a hole. There's something missing. Would billions of those machines from O.M.S.I. chained together into a giant loop be sentient, aware, like we are? Some may say yes, and some may say no. One way or the other, the fact remains that this current explanation of the physical world only tells how light particles could catalyze chain reactions, how vibrations in our eardrums could catalyze chain reactions, or how any other physical input into any machine could catalyze chain reactions resulting in physical output. It does not however, explain our experience of colour. It explains vibrations, but not the experience of sound. It explains how our senses work, and how our brain processes just like a computer does, but it does not explain how our awareness works, or how our minds think.
> Our brains are just computers, and our bodies are just machines. We however, are more. We have awareness that is independent of matter, energy, and the spaces in between. There is output leaving the physical world, like the output leaving a television or computer screen for someone's viewing. That someone is our self.
> Now, the physical world operates according to exact formulae, and everything is just a chain reaction of matter and energy, occurring on it's own. What can these "selves" be but observers? Well, the fact that I am discussing this concept is proof that these selves can send input into the physical world, otherwise my physical brain could not process the "concept" of awareness, and I could not discuss the concept, nor write about it in the physical world.
> So, to put this conclusion into simplified metaphorical terms, the physical world is like the internet, our brains are like computers, and our aware selves, our minds, are the operators of these computers, outside of the internet.

3 comments:

  1. Aren't we the most amazing machines ever created! Just to be able to think and ponder such things is more than a computer does. It is every bit as confusing to me to figure out the hows as it is to figure out how my computer works...or doesn't work. I'm glad for your ability to ponder these things and put them into context for less thinking minds like my own. --gammmaruth

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  2. That was fascinating and brilliant.

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  3. (I got an e-mail saying a spammer left something here, but I don't see it, so I guess that's good.)

    It's interesting to look back on these old thoughts. These old ways of trying to explain things.

    Nowadays, to explain this idea, I would simply say: "Think of a purple winged elephant." Then I would point out that what is in your head is physical storage of information which represents the image in your mind, just like words in a book. But the elephant itself, this image you have conjured, is it tucked in there among the folds of your brain? Then how tall is it? What is it's mass?
    The image is not in your head, but in your mind.
    The images in your mind, your thoughts, they are real, you perceive them, but they are not the same as the associated physical storages in your brain. They do not have mass, length, hardness, velocity, location... they are not physical.

    And so I explain that physicalism is false. Though, at the time I wrote this essay, "Physicalism's Flaw" I thought this meant that non-physical things are immaterial. I was wrong. I now know that all matters are material, even non-physical matters. My essay, "Foundational" explains matter in general, as opposed to just physical matter.

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What's going through your mind after reading that? Write it here, along with anything else that maybe almost at least vaguely relevant.