I am always intrigued as to how modern science tries to present its virtual omnipotent position with regards to its understanding of the world. An example is the fascinating “Corpus” museum in Oegstgeest in The Netherlands.
A large office block has been converted into a representation of the human body. This museum is for children and the general public and is an attempt to show how the human body works. It seems to do a great job when it comes to the chemical and mechanical processes that take place in the body. However at the top of the house the sheer hubris of moderns science is presented in a literal graphic format. In its attempt to show how the brain processes vision we have a room with a domed roof. Here images from the “outside” are projected onto the ceiling. apparently this is how vision works … Simply a projection of what is outside projected onto some form of “inner cinema” in which the images are presented to consciousness. Of course within this particular model the “observer” of this image is curiously absent. if there were no visitors to that part of the museum the images will still be projected … But who is actually interpreting them? This is again powerful evidence of the power of Gilbert Ryle’s “Ghost in the Machine”, technically described as the much-dismissed “homunculus theory of perception”. Read any mainstream book on perception and you will read arrogant and precise dismissals of this “crazy” notion …. That inside my head is a little version of me with a pair of eyes perceiving the “inner screen”. The problem is that the little man in my head (The Homunculus”) must have a little man in his head …. And so on … Which creates an infinite regress. Of course this makes no logical sense …. However the “experts” are happy to dismiss this ill-educated mistake that is made by most people when they try to visualise what vision really is while presenting us with no alternative explanation. They just know that they are right in dismissing Cartesian Dualism but they have no alternative … Well they have actually. It is called reductionist materialism and it solves the problem by suggesting that when the top room of the museum is empty then that is an accurate reflection of what is actually happening in the brain. there is no homunculus problem because there is nobody there to perceive the images on the ceiling. They are playing to an empty room. Of course that begs the question of why the body expends so much of its time and energy projecting information to an empty room …. But, as these guys are our intellectual superiors we just have to accept that they are right …. Mind you as “we” have no inner life then accepting or not accepting is a totally moot point.