OK, so HAL and Data do not experience anything even though both I and the cat do. So what? When we open up someone’s head we still only find mush and electricity. There is simply no getting around that.
That is true, and it is an interesting point. But there are two other points that are far more interesting. The first is that when you open up a person’s head and look real close there is only mush and electricity. There is no sign what-so-ever of the X3 realm you undoubtedly experience. The second point is that when you stare into that X3 realm there is no sign of the B1 Brain that is producing it. Thus we seem to find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of having to acknowledge that we are both mush without experience and experience without mush. Either it is mush ado about nothing or this is not where we want to be.
If you are like most people at this point, you may have forgotten what we discussed way back around Figure 4 regarding the need to get a firm grasp on what is outside and what is inside. You are probably reading this on the monitor in front of you. You do SEE a monitor there, otherwise you probably would not be reading from it. Also, again, we are not going to argue about what is this thing we call a “monitor” anyway; What is the essence of “monitorness”? Granted, too, a fly through its eyes may see many monitors or a color blind person may see a brown monitor rather than a beige one. So rest assured that we are not trying to deconstruct reality at this level. All we are trying to establish is that you are at this moment experiencing a visual event. Further, until a couple of sections ago, you most likely assumed that this visual event was literally external to you.
Well, yeah. I don’t know about all this external stuff, but I do know that this thing I am looking at is out here where I can see it. I mean like this is a really cool idea even though I don’t understand any of it. And I really like the stuff with Data and Picard on Next Generation. Did you ever see the episode with the two alien lesbian chicks like doin it? Or maybe that was DS 9? Anyway, if the stuff isn’t outside or external, then how can I see it? Besides, the fact remains, it is outside because that is where I am looking at it.
This is why it is so important for you to firmly establish what is internal and what is external, what is material and what is representational, what event is the operation of your brain, and what is an external, objective, material thing. What you need to get into your head is that what you are experiencing as an external reality is really an internal representation (which you will recall, is on the other side of the wall you are experiencing in front of you).
The second thing we established was that the external material mush and electricity we call B1 Brain can not produce the event being experienced based on the properties of material reality that we are currently aware of. Again, we are placed in the awkward position of having to assert that events take place which are caused by material forces which cannot cause them. We are saying that A causes B and B can not be caused by A.
The situation is untenable. We can no longer pretend or will to be true that the objects of our experience are literally external. Further, we can no longer pretend or will to be true that experienced reality is solely the function of interactions between a B1 Brain and its electrical activity.
If this is indeed the case, then in order to make sense of its workings we are compelled to add other substances to reality. As much as many of us may dread to do so, we may have to accept that things like mind, consciousness, spirit or soul are objective rather than metaphoric substances.
How can we say this is possible when there is literally no evidence for such substances? Well there is no real evidence that B1 produces X2 or X3. We can not even empirically say that there are B1 or X1 objects. But it does not stop many people from insisting it is the case.
Let us try some more thought experiments. One way in which philosophers have looked at the mind/ body question is to establish a two substance dualism. There is an external extended or spatial material world that we experience as objective reality. Then there is an internal, non-extended substance which has usually been referred to as the mind, soul, spirit, consciousness, or ghost in the machine.
Philosophers such as Rene DesCarte had no doubt that they were thinking, and just a little less doubt that they existed in, experienced, and moved through an extended material world. Like the rest of us, they accepted the appearance of the external to be literally external. Even though it was unextended, the mind was nevertheless real. Since it was real, it presumably had to exist somewhere in the extended world or more precisely somewhere where it could have contact with the external world. The place of choice at the time was the Pineal Gland. The Pineal Gland is at the center of the brain. Its function at the time was pretty much unknown. Thus it was the perfect place to stick the mind and soul.
How was an unextended substance supposed to move this big extended machine of our bodies? At a time of primitive mechanics, the speculation ran to some system of levers and pulleys. The mere fact that such things did not emanate from the Pineal Gland did not seem to deter such thought any more than the lack of lasers, holograms, and quantum mechanical devices in the brain deters such thinking today.
The only thing we have ever found in the Pineal Gland are hormones. There is no more evidence for a mind or soul dwelling here than there is for them residing in neurons. Still, even though they were probably trying to fit the square peg of an unextended mind into the round hole of a mover of worldly bodies, there might have been some nucleus of an idea here. There is a fairly strong logical need to assume that there is an independent external, objective, X1 material reality. As we have just seen, there is also a powerful need for a substance like mind to explain the reality of X3 events. X1 cannot explain X3 and apparently we can not have X3 without X1. Presumably, then, there is a need for a bridge between these two incompatible substances. People in Descartes time thought the gap could be crossed with a mind using levers and pulleys. Today it is with holograms and quantum mechanics.
We have demonstrated that there is strong evidence to indicate that the search for the ghost in the machine has been in the wrong place. We have externalized the X2 representational Brain and found only mush and electricity. As we can now see, what needs to be done is to establish the contact or bridge between the realm of X2 representation and X3 experience on the one hand, and the X1 or B1 material world on the other. X1 consists of atoms and the particles they are made of, light, and perhaps things like energy, motion, time, force, space or extension. X2 is our only experienced reality. The “objects” of X2 representation are made of God knows what although it must be made of something although "probably" not real atoms, particles, light, gravitation etc. Yet there is a sort of “stuffness” about this place in which we exist - wouldn't you think? Even though we can not have too much confidence that we have stumbled onto any ultimate truth, we will think of X3 as mind, spirit, or soul. It is that substance which experiences reality, interacts with it, and moves the X1 body through its world.
Today most people would probably agree that as we currently understand X1 material reality, there is nothing about it which can produce the substance of mind or that it somehow connects to a stratum of reality which is constituted by the substance of mind. To cross this substantial abyss, we have to add other characteristics to material. To put it in a crude way, material particles have to be “coated” with or be embedded in either the substance of mind or something else which attracts it to the substance of mind. This “coating” has to translate what is happening in B1 into an X2 event which can be experienced by an X3 “mind”. Or perhaps it is the other way around. The substance of mind has to be in contact with enough material forces to connect itself to B1. Of course if material substance is attached to mind it then follows from the tiniest leap that mind is also attached to material and thus we would be speculating about distinctions without a difference.
