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This is a model of what?

‘How exquisitely the individual Mind to the external World is fitted -
and how exquisitely too The external World is fitted to the mind;
And the creation (by no lower name can it be called), which they with blended might Accomplish’

William Wordsworth - The Recluse

Brain, Mind and the Structure of Reality. By Paul Nunez

Our conscious perception of the world, though relatively stable, is not static. We are incapable of being fully objective, even in our most mundane observations and impressions. Our awareness of the objects around us is informed and fine-tuned by any number of transient factors—our strength and energy levels, our sense of confidence, our fears and desires. Being human means seeing the world through your own, constantly shifting, lens.

Who am I? Where have I come from? What is my purpose on Earth? These are questions that have troubled people, both high and low, for millennia, and you certainly won’t find answers to them here. However, If scientific thinking and good old common sense have any bearing on these matters, then here is where we make our start.

The science fiction writer, philosopher and part time mystic  Philip K. Dick wrote “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” (I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon, 1980). That is also a pretty good place to start.

It is fruitless to argue that there is no such thing as reality. But on the other hand reality may be very different from what we understand it to be and beyond our senses to capture. It is now generally accepted, because it can be proven, that only 10% of what we experience comes from the outside world. The other 90% we create within our brains. There is a very simple reason for this, amazing though our brains are, and better at many tasks than the fastest supercomputer we do not have time to process 100% of the information available. Thus the brain fills in blank spots, indeed 90% blank spots, by using past experience and predicting what should be present.

There is stuff that doesn't go away when you stop believing in it but we don't have direct access to it. Consider colour for a minute. There is no colour in the 'real' world. Yes there are electromagnetic waves and yes there are photons which enter the eye but they do not contain the colours that we see in the world. The colours start when different chemicals in the retina of the eye react to different wavelengths of electromagnetism in the bandwidth that we call light. Ultimately the colours only exist when nerve impulses from the retina travel to the back of the brain and are processed in the occipital lobe. This then leads to a visual model of our environment which enters our awareness. We hope that this model is accurate, but all we can ever know is this model. The same applies to models of size and shape as to colour or to our recreations of sound or touch.

This website attempts to tease out what these models are and to build a model of these models, in other words a model which accounts for all human experiences, not just from the physical senses but emotions, thoughts, intuitions and beyond up to the experience of God. This says nothing about the existence of God but only the awareness that many people have had which they can only call God.