First published: January 7, 2023
Last revised: January 27, 2025

The world external to the brain couples with the brain through electromagnetic interactions. Some of the effects of the interactions are result in a semi-permanent modification of the brain (memory, learning, etc..). Others are only transitory and they eventually dissipate as heat. While all this happens, a mind experiences the qualia produced by the brain as a consequence of the EM interactions. This suggests two interesting facts.

The first fact is that there must be a point in the causal chain of events starting from the detection of physical phenomena and ending with their dissipation, where qualia get instantiated. Somewhere in the middle some physical process is our subjective feeling.

The second fact is that the phenomena that a mind experiences are not properties of the real world, but rather they are consequences of what's out there that are only experienced subjectively. Reality is a frenzy of particles and fields scattering and interacting, and nothing is "coloured" or "smelly" or "noisy". Those attributes are part of the story created by the brain, our interface into reality.

The tree in the forest that falls does not make a sound if nobody is there to hear it, if by sound we mean the qualia produced by detecting the variations in air pressure. As long as no conscious being is present, that's all that there is.