The Motherboard of Our Minds

It seems like we are always trying to figure out what's really going on or how things work. In point of fact, there are so many things we hardly understand, questions that we have no answers to. Often we can't understand our immediate relationships, let alone the events taking place in the other parts of the world.

While reading about the future of artificial intelligence (AI) I was thinking about how we don't entirely understand how our own bodies work, or that something we call the "mind." What is a mind? Is the mind like the motherboard in a computer with all its various components? Are our brains hardwired for certain behaviors, but requiring programming to learn other things? How does a memory chip work?

Thinking about all these things got me asking myself other questions.

Why does reality correspond to our senses? That is, why does the outside world have tactile and visual and aural aspects? What if we had our sense of smell but there were no smells to smell in this world of ours? What if we have a sixth sense that doesn't correspond to anything in this world so that it remains dormant?

How does imagination work? When a poet creates a poem does he build it or discover it the way an archaeologist discovers the legbone of a dinosaur?

Which has more value, the art we've created or the work we are about to create?

How do our emotions work? How does our subconscience influence our conscious feelings and behavior? How much do we control and how much is defined by our programming?

Why do we respond to some things and remain unmoved by others? It's interesting that magnetic attraction is not visible to the five senses, yet we recognize the effects of magnets and agnetic attraction.

And then there are all the questions about time. What is time? Why does it sometimes seem to fly by so swiftly and other times drag ever so slow. Is time a fundamental part of the universe or only something perceived by our minds? In religion, God is sometimes referred to as the Alpha and the Omega, and it is posited that God is at the beginning and the end of time simultaneously? How does that work?

When it comes to computers and robots, is it possible as some believe that we will create robots that  are smarter than we are and thus take over the world and turn the human race into slaves?

What about music. What causes us to be so responsive to music? Why are certain combinations of sounds so comforting, uplifting, energizing or agitating?

Well... that's enough for now. It's time to move along.