Brains

It's been a while since I last blogged. It seems this morning my mind is consumed with an idea that it simply does not wish to relinquish. I thought perhaps blogging about the subject would give it sufficient outlet and allow me to resume my "regularly scheduled program". I would like to submit a simplified explanation / definition for the brain. Among its possible other functions the brain is an input processor. We have identified five distinct inputs used in processing: touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. I find it interesting that the brain itself has no known means of obtaining inputs, instead relying on inputs from separate sources such as the eyes and ears etc. Suppose for the moment it were possible for your brain to continue to live once removed from the body. Your brain is now disconnected from all input. I would submit that input processing is not the brains ONLY function so thought continues. The line between conscious and unconscious thought would of course blur without any stimuli or observation on which to mark the change. Thought would continue much as it does now drawing from the memories of experiences. Consider now the same experiment done at the moment or just before birth. Now what does the brain think about having no experience to draw from and no inputs. At that moment what is the brain? Can it, will it, create without a basis for extrapolation? To suggest not is to suggest that we truly are nothing more than the sum of our experiences. I have often wondered, do those people who were born unable to see or hear truly comprehend those inputs? When a blind man dreams do those dreams take shape or are merely thoughts with attached sounds and smells. Do the deaf laugh in their dreams, do they understand sound? If so is that understanding a learned interpretation based on knowledge acquired about sound? If you cannot perceive a thing does it exist for you? Animals can hear different frequencies than humans because the methods in which they are able to receive and send that data to the brain has evolved differently. Many animals see the world differently, some without certain colors and others through hundreds of tiny eyes all sending an input of some type at once. I am unsure whether I would suggest that the entire solution is simply contained in the receiver. For example were it possible to connect a canine's auditory systems to a human brain does not infer that the person would then be able to process the input received. Consider for a moment our eyes. Some people our born unable to see certain colors. Imagine for the moment someone who was born eyes ever so slightly different so as to allow them to see something we can not, or perhaps see something we see differently. We could be surrounded with countless realities, dimensions, even "beings" that we simply lack the ability to perceive. It is conversely and equally true that all these "realities" are a single reality and the only infinite involved is the variations of our perceptions. The saying: "I think therefor I am" defines thought as self or existence. I believe it should be extended to following: "I think therefor I am, I perceive therefor are you.