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