What about this guys:
If our retinas convert incident photons to some (coded somehow) electrical signals which traverse the optic nerve into the brain.....then what? I mean is there one true signal per photon or milisecond, and is that signal then just routed around various parts of the brain until 'consciousness' becomes aware of it? Or is the signal copied somehow, possibly even amplified, and these copies all travel simultaneously to various places, whereupon the collective effect of them all on their respective destinations adds up to whatever is vision with respect to the conscious mind?
Add to this the similar but ultimately very different phenomena that is sound. Sound waves (longitudinal) move the eardrum like a microphone transducer, and again we have some kind of electrical signal that travels to the brain. But does it do this on it's own, or is it copied and these copies need to reach several destinations so the sum total of their effect becomes the experience of 'sound'.
Inside the brain, bearing in mind that electrical signals are electrical signals but there may be a big difference in amplitude, frequency, phase or indeed if the signals are encoded somehow - what is the difference to the brain of signals from the ear, or from the eye?
I assume it comes down to destination but isn't it weird how the end results are totally different. Vision is so different from hearing, although there are many similarites in that within sight or sound you have colours or sound frequencies and all the other details that make up the nuances of these senses.
I have experienced synesthesia to a degree before, I imagine most people, when pushed can allocate a colour that feels right for a certain sound etc I even seemed to go through a stage as an adolescent that was assigning real objects' shapes to certain names! Although this felt at the time there was some rule or sense to this, was that just an illusion because a certain electrical signal was routed to the wrong sense?
If you think of the brain as a hugely complex (big understatement!) analog electrical circuit, then the mushy biological aspect must make it very easy for there to be mistakes and current drops etc that are unintended but surely at the end of the line, the conscious brain only knows the end signal it receives, and transforms it to the relevant sense. It is easy to see how something can be heard wrong or differently than a time before, even if the original incident light or sound was identical to previous examples.
I find it impossible to not start really questioning how subjective reality is and how really, all of us might have vastly different interpretations of the universe around us?
Here is one that sends me mad: what is to say that what I call 'green' is even remotely similar to what you experience for light of that wavelength? Confusion cannot arise for two reasons, first, because we will always see 'our' colour every time we experience that wavelength and also because we will never experience another person's experience of that colour. It may be possible that my 'green' is your 'red' and always has been. Each time you or I see that wavelength, we see our interpretation of it and we are satisfied we are seeing the same colour, even though we are not?
Mind boggling, truly a headf**k!
