I AM

I'm bike riding with an mp3 player these days which I put loosely in my pocket. I'm often finding myself thinking whether it has fallen out, only the realise that if I'm still listening to music it must still be connected.

Yesterday this thought was a bit deeper. Exactly the same is true of our eyes, and is the basis of the arguments in this blog against brain science. We may factually wonder whether our eyes are still working, only to be reminded that if we are seeing then they must be (and everything else in the process of seeing also).

Now, the question is this: What is the extra information that I have as a result of hearing the music, that I don't have by doing an examination of my pockets to find the mp3 player? It is clearly very significant knowledge because it tells me not only that the mp3 player is there, but also that the headphones are still in my ears, and that the cables are not damaged, and that the battery is still active--all deduced from the simple observation that I hear music! Imagine how hard it would be to determine all this otherwise.

Even if I did take the mp3 player down to a laboratory for testing to ensure that it was working, the data by itself locked in a cupboard would not be sufficient: I would need to see that data and understand it. In other words the critical feature of "hearing" the sound would have just become "seeing" the data.

So this key feature is what is called "subjectivity". It is what is missing from the scientific view. It is also the underpinning of the scientific world: raw data is not in itself meaningful (altho some like Hofstadter have argued for data having some intrinsic entropic existence).

Now the idea that I can tell I have eyes in tact by virtue of being able to see, and that I have a brain in tact by virtue of being able to think that (which the close to the most recent progress on the SRH), and that I have the ability to reason and be cognisant by virtue of recognising that very fact is basically Descartes. And one can extend this to realisation that the fact that there are things at all, and a universe (a Brahman) shows me instantly that I AM (Atman or Yahweh). Thus the creation of the universe is done so by the I AM and they are sides of the same coin. The Tat Tvam Asi.

What we can't argue and where the problems occur is that as seeing proves I have eyes, and cognisance is proof I have a brain, the presence of a universe is proof that there is some thing called "me". The presence of the "I AM" is not thus proof of a thing called "I AM".