Page 180 - Allah is Known through Reason

THE EXAMPLE OF CONNECTING
THE NERVES IN PARALLEL

Let us consider the car crash example given by Politzer in which he
talked of someone crushed by a car. If the crushed person's nerves travel-
ling from his five senses to his brain, were connected to another person's,
take Politzer's brain, with a parallel connection, at the moment the bus hit
that person, it would also hit Politzer sitting at home at the same time. All
the feelings experienced by that person having the accident would be
experienced by Politzer, just like the same song listened to from two dif-
ferent loudspeakers connected to the same tape recorder. Politzer would
feel, see, and experience the braking of the bus, the touch of the bus on
his body, the images of a broken arm and blood, fractures, images of his
entering the operation room, the hardness of the plaster cast, and the fee-
bleness of his arm.
Every other person connected to the man's nerves in parallel would
experience the accident from beginning to end just like Politzer. If the man
in the accident fell into a coma, they would all fall into a coma. Moreover,
if all the perceptions pertaining to the car accident were recorded in a
device and if all these perceptions were transmitted to a person repeated-
ly, the bus would knock this person down many times.
So, which one of the buses hitting those people is real? The materialist

philosophy has no consistent answer to this question. The right answer is
that they all experience the car accident in all its details in their own minds.
The same principle applies to the cake and stone examples. If the
nerves of the sense organs of Engels, who felt the satiety and fullness of
the cake in his stomach after eating a cake, were connected to a second
person's brain in parallel, that person would also feel full when Engels ate
the cake and was satiated. If the nerves of Johnson, who felt pain in his
foot when he delivered a sound kick to a stone, were connected to a sec-
ond person in parallel, that person would feel the same pain.
So, which cake or which stone is the real one? The materialist philoso-
phy again falls short of giving a consistent answer to this question. The cor-
rect and consistent answer is this: both Engels and the second person have

180 Allah is Known Through Reason