Page 152 - Darwin's Dilemma: The Soul

Darwin’s Dilemma: The Soul

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T The Concept of “Consciousness” That Materialists
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Who is it who observes and enjoys a brightly colored flower
garden in a darkened space with no need of the eye, retina, lens or
optical nerves?
Who is the entity that recognizes in electrical signals the voi-
ces of its friends without the need for an ear, who recognizes them
and rejoices to hear them?
Who is it who smells the scent of cake in the bakery, and takes
pleasure from this?
Who is it who delights in seeing a flower, who feels affection
when he sees a kitten, who strokes its fur with no need for any arm,
finger or muscle?
Can a piece of tissue consisting of nerve cells and weighing
just a few hundred grams be the cause of the lives we lead, our sor-
rows, joys, friendships, loyalty, honesty and excitement?
If the entity that perceives all these things is not the brain, then
who is it?
Is it a “little man” inside our brains who perceives the exter-
nal world?
Or the “observer” to which quantum physics refers?
Is this observer somewhere inside the brain?
If not, then where is it?
Fred Alan Wolf provides this answer:
We know what an observer does from a point of view of quantum
physics. But we don’t know who or what the observer actually is. It
doesn’t mean we haven’t tried to find an answer. We’ve looked.
We’ve gone inside of your head. We’ve gone into every orifice you
have to find something called an observer. And there’s nobody
home. There’s nobody in the brain. There’s nobody in the cortical re-
gions of the brain. There’s nobody in the subcortical regions or
the limbic regions of the brain. There’s nobody there called
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