Representations

An organism evolves only to have perceptions that represent the objective world in order to keep it alive. The same physical world that you reside in is precisely what built you and your brain. And through the process of evolution, the physical world has come to represent itself in billions and billions of different ways through the many brains of various species.The survival of the organism which is representing the physical world is the guiding principle that determines how the representations will look. Your brain is how the physical world has come to represent itself subject to the condition that such representations kept you and your ancestors alive within it. If your ancestors were to fail to represent air vibrations caused by flowing water as the sound of a stream, they might have die of dehydration long before you were born. But without your brain there to turn those vibrations into the sensation of sound, they are nothing more than vibrations. 

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As brains and representations evolved to become more complex, the physical world eventually learned how to represent its representations of itself. Your self awareness and consciousness is how the physical world represents you as a vessel of sensation. If a visual perception is a simulation of light particles, then a concept of self is a simulation of that which simulates the light particles. We can think of the 'mind' as a meta representation of the physical world, and cortical brain structures as the physical basis for the mind. If unconscious perception is once removed from the material world via representation, then the conscious mind is twice removed from the material world via representation.

The believe that your mind is something independent of the physical world is fallacious, but so too is the belief that the physical world exists the way we see it. The fact that different perceptions of the same stimuli exist among different species means that there is no one true objective world that can be perceived. This is a difficult idea to grapple with considering the fact that scientific data is founded in our perceptions. We prove a theory by conducting tests that predict how something will behave under certain conditions. But we gather results using our senses, which we know are only mere representations of what is actually taking place. 

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We know now that sound is caused by the neurological representation of vibrations because of science. Science relies on data that holds up under a certain set of standards, interpreted through a standardized 'language' of perceptual representation. The accurate prediction of future stimuli given certain conditions is the guiding principle that determines how we understand the objective physical world. Though we understand these models through the lens of our perceptual umwelt, the models are not constrained by what we are able perceive. Science fundamentally excludes subjectivity, it is the mind's attempt to go beyond itself and access the physical world that it otherwise cannot. 

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Throughout the course of the project I have  tried to use science in contrast with subjectivity to better understand the interaction relationship between mind and matter. My method of doing this was to isolate the mind by looking at dreams, which are mental experiences not derived from external material processes. This revealed the astounding capabilities of the brain to form simulated versions of the external world. Which in turn served to introduce the concept of reality being generated by the mind, and the mind building itself using reality.

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Looking at abnormal dreaming phenomena yielded two important conclusions. The first being the necessity of cortical activity to generate the mind. Investigating lucid dreaming as well as sleep paralysis established that only once a certain cortical region becomes active during the REM state does any subjective experience emerge. The second conclusion is the apparent fragment quality of the 'mind'. Our mind and consciousness is a combination of parts that all account for one aspect of it. The activation of one cortical region and not another during the REM state results in a partial conscious experience.

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A subjective experience requires the triad of electromagnetic forces acting across a complex biological apparatus over a given unit of time. This fact seems to support the physicalist solution to the mind-body problem; the solution that asserts that the mind arises strictly out of matter, and that the mind existing as a separate substance is an illusion. Considering this view is odd having established the elusiveness of the objective material world. Somehow there is an objective physical world out there, yet we are trapped within our own subjective realities unable to conceive of anything outside of it. And subjectivity is somehow an illusion? An illusion that accounts for one hundred percept each and every one of us know, how we feel, how we live our day to day lives. 

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This is why, despite my best efforts, it is impossible to answer the mind body problem using neuroscience. Science fundamentally forgoes subjectivity in search of objective truth. It isn't designed to be able to answer the mind-body problem because it cannot establish the mind as a measurable variable independent of the brain (or human cerebral cortex). 

So what do we do with questions that science cannot answer? Some would say turn to religion. Some would say disregard the question as invalid. Some would say we can never know, and some would say it doesn't matter. If you ask me the best course of action is to investigate the question as far as science will take you, and through the scientific process, uncover more questions. Questions that reflect a more comprehensive understanding of both the fallacies of the initial question and the limits of science. The answers to these questions may be worth a hundred times more than simply adopting one of four rigid proposed solutions to a fundamental human question. 

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Thank you for reading.

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