Page 167 - Allah is Known through Reason

could be recorded. First, let us transmit all the data related to a setting
(including body image) to this instrument by transforming them into elec-
trical signals. Second, let us imagine that the brain could survive apart from
the body. Finally, let us connect the recording instrument to the brain with
electrodes that will function as nerves and send the pre-recorded data to
the brain. In this state, you would experience yourself living in this artifi-
cially created setting. For instance, you could easily believe that you are
driving fast on a highway. It might never become possible to understand
that you consist of nothing but your brain. This is because what is needed
to form a world within your brain is not the existence of a real world but

rather the stimuli. It is perfectly possible that these stimuli could be com-
ing from an artificial source, such as a tape-recorder.
In that connection, distinguished philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote:
As to the sense of touch when we press the table with our fingers, that is an
electric disturbance on the electrons and protons of our fingertips, produced,
according to modern physics, by the proximity of the electrons and protons
in the table. If the same disturbance in our finger-tips arose in any
other way, we should have the sensations, in spite of there being no
table. 31
It is indeed very easy for us to be deceived into believing perceptions,
without any material correlates, to be real. We often experience this feel-
ing in our dreams, in which we experience events, see people, objects and
settings that seem completely real. However, they are all nothing but mere
perceptions. There is no basic difference between the dream and the "real
world"; both of them are experienced in the brain.

WHO IS THE PERCEIVER?
As we have related so far, there is no doubt that the world we think we
inhabit and that we call the "external world" is perceived inside our brain.
However, here arises the question of primary importance. If all physical
events that we know are intrinsically perceptions, what about our brain?
Since our brains are a part of the physical world just like our arms, legs,

or any other objects, it also must be a perception just like all other objects.

A Very Different Approach to Matter 167