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Acting Like Godot · 11-26-2006, 03:42 AM

Radical:

Just a little scenario for you to consider.

Suppose years ago, you took a holiday. You saw an interesting sight - eg a statue or a mountain or something. In other words, light reflected off the object, entered your eyes, and your brain perceived this as a statue and mountain, briefly creating a few electrical impulses in your brain (we call these thoughts). You also thought to yourself, "Oh what an awesome mountain. I'll always remember this scenery."

Now it's 2006. You think back on your holiday. You close your eyes and you can still visualise what that mountain looked like. You can even remember thinking back then: "Oh what an awesome mountain. I'll always remember this scenery."

Are you:

(1) recreating electrical impulses; or

(2) just reconnecting with old electrical impulses.

If (1), how are you recreating the impulse? Based on what? There is no mountain before you right now.

If (2), where are those old electrical impulses now? In other words, where do thoughts go, after you've thought them? Surely they must go somewhere? otherwise how could you "reconnect" with them?

Are they stored somewhere in your brain? If they are, then your brain must be storing more and more electrical impulses, as the years pass. Therefore we would expect to see much more electrochemical activity in a 50-year-old man's brain as opposed to a five-year-old child. In fact, the older man's brain must be almost akin to a live wire after storing an additional 45 years' of electrical impulses. But this isn't the case.

Further assume (2). Your thoughts have gone "somewhere". But of course. Thoughts are after all electrical impulses generated in the brain. And energy cannot be destroyed or created - high school physics tell you that - it merely changes from one form to another.

So you have managed to reconnect with your old thought impulses which have gone "somewhere". Those thoughts must still exist in some form or another, otherwise you would not be able to remember them, or reconnect with them.

Where did they go? Is it into some isolated corner of reality, where they cannot possibly affect any other part of reality?

Is that possible? Can you actually think of any other form of energy (heat, sound, light) which, when travelling freely, will not affect any other part of reality? Eg can light pass through a dark room and the room still remain dark?

If thoughts are electrical impulses, and electrical impulses are energy, and energy cannot ever be destroyed, and your old thoughts from years ago aren't still in your brain, and they have gone elsewhere, where is that? And what effect might they be having on their surrounding reality, wherever that might be?

11-26-2006, 03:42 AM	#13 (permalink)
Acting Like Godot Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 4,791	Radical: Just a little scenario for you to consider. Suppose years ago, you took a holiday. You saw an interesting sight - eg a statue or a mountain or something. In other words, light reflected off the object, entered your eyes, and your brain perceived this as a statue and mountain, briefly creating a few electrical impulses in your brain (we call these thoughts). You also thought to yourself, "Oh what an awesome mountain. I'll always remember this scenery." Now it's 2006. You think back on your holiday. You close your eyes and you can still visualise what that mountain looked like. You can even remember thinking back then: "Oh what an awesome mountain. I'll always remember this scenery." Are you: (1) recreating electrical impulses; or (2) just reconnecting with old electrical impulses. If (1), how are you recreating the impulse? Based on what? There is no mountain before you right now. If (2), where are those old electrical impulses now? In other words, where do thoughts go, after you've thought them? Surely they must go somewhere? otherwise how could you "reconnect" with them? Are they stored somewhere in your brain? If they are, then your brain must be storing more and more electrical impulses, as the years pass. Therefore we would expect to see much more electrochemical activity in a 50-year-old man's brain as opposed to a five-year-old child. In fact, the older man's brain must be almost akin to a live wire after storing an additional 45 years' of electrical impulses. But this isn't the case. Further assume (2). Your thoughts have gone "somewhere". But of course. Thoughts are after all electrical impulses generated in the brain. And energy cannot be destroyed or created - high school physics tell you that - it merely changes from one form to another. So you have managed to reconnect with your old thought impulses which have gone "somewhere". Those thoughts must still exist in some form or another, otherwise you would not be able to remember them, or reconnect with them. Where did they go? Is it into some isolated corner of reality, where they cannot possibly affect any other part of reality? Is that possible? Can you actually think of any other form of energy (heat, sound, light) which, when travelling freely, will not affect any other part of reality? Eg can light pass through a dark room and the room still remain dark? If thoughts are electrical impulses, and electrical impulses are energy, and energy cannot ever be destroyed, and your old thoughts from years ago aren't still in your brain, and they have gone elsewhere, where is that? And what effect might they be having on their surrounding reality, wherever that might be?