Your brain is blind

i think

therefore i am or the more accurate

translation of rene descartes french

quote

i am thinking therefore i do exist

my topic today has a lot to do with this

quote and truly understanding its

meaning

it’s easy looking out at the world

around us and assuming that every inch

of it is real

but this quote says that only ourselves

only our consciousness can be guaranteed

as true

but what about the rest of the world

does it truly exist

to answer this question i want to start

simply

how do we experience the world around us

the answer is very simple and is often

taught in primary schools

our five senses sight smell

sound taste and touch through these

senses we experience the world around us

if we were to remove one of these senses

our experience would be vastly different

no sight would mean no color no sound

would mean no timbre and no

music no smell would mean no fragrance

a blind person’s experience of the world

is vastly incomplete

with just their four senses but is

five the maximum senses that can exist

is it so hard to believe that if we were

to add a sense there would be

whole new experience that we could not

even imagine there could be so many more

senses each with their own unique

experiences

which begs the question how little of

the world around us

do we seriously experience with just

our five senses

but even these five senses are

complicated beyond the highest degree on

a biological level

for example your eyes use rod and cone

and many other types of cells

to convert light into electrical signals

but i don’t think you understand how

complex that really is

color which is impossible to describe

to those who are blind and don’t

experience it our eyes describe

perfectly

in binary signal this is the same for

all

other sensors they take this complex

qualitative experience

and convert it into simple electrical

signals

that is the purpose of our sensory

organs

and if i were to remove your eyes

theoretically of course

and replace them with circuits that

clicked at the same speed as your retina

you would not be able to tell the

difference you would experience

vision just like every single one of us

but you wouldn’t

see because vision is experienced not as

light hits the eye

but as the electrical signals reach our

brain

it is only when it reaches the brain is

this information

understood experienced and processed

if you were to stop just before this

moment

all our senses have been converted into

electrical signals

but they’re traveling yet to reach their

intended location in the brain

the thing is our brain is not only blind

but it’s senseless it cannot see hear

touch taste or smell yet from these

signals

it creates a vast world both beautiful

and scary this is a really important

point that i needed to understand

because it means

our brain is making a lot of guesses in

fact

all of what we experience is our brains

generated guesswork

based on secondary impure signals about

the world around us

which means it can make mistakes and it

could tell

lies for example you’ve been in a bad

accident

and you’ve lost your leg it’s have to

been amputated

all the signals including touch of your

left leg are suddenly silent

but your brain doesn’t stop guessing a

phenomenon known as the phantom

limb develops the vast majority of

people who’ve lost the limb can still

feel it in complete lifelike detail

and in most cases these phantom limbs

are also extremely painful

we all assume pain to be a reaction to

an injury

so why is there not only touch

but pain in the part of a body that

cannot be hurt because it doesn’t

exist

the answer is that despite your leg

being lost

the somatosensory strip in your brain

still remains

essentially your brain still assumes

that you your leg exists

so whether or not it really does doesn’t

matter because according to your brain

you should feel touch

and so you do feel touch this really

shows the control our brain has over our

realities

and this isn’t exclusive to touch either

tinnitus is the phantom hearing

sensation and has many parallels to

phantom limb

for vision you could argue

hallucinations are the same

the anton babinski syndrome describes

a blind person who to put it simply

imagines vision if you ask them about

the room they were in

asking questions about the room there

and they would begin

to confabulate they would lie to your

face

their brains have them tricked believing

in a

boundless world created purely by the

design of their own brains

imagine a brain blind and imagining a

world to see based on sounds

smells feelings and guesses

imagine if the same patient had phantom

limb and phantom hearing

imagine if the brain had no sensory

information at all

if we were to blockade the brain so that

no senses could ever enter

could you begin to imagine your brain

alone creating a world around itself

the warm smell of pine the sound of

birds

the vast green of a forest all created

by a brain in a cold dark empty

cell but remember

i think therefore i am this means not

all of you

is gone we can be guaranteed that there

is

a part of us a tiny thinking thing in

our brain that

still does exist

no matter if everything we see

is a dream or if everything we see is

nothing more

and nothing less than reality we can be

guaranteed that

there is at least a part of us that does

exist

and does truly experience that

is what rene descartes meant and i know

that sounds bad

but if you think about it it shows the

power you have

as the controller of your own senses

you’re the creator of your own reality

and the author

of your own story thank you