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External Objects Are Known to Consciousness Only Through Sensation

Sensory properties like color, resistance, and extension form the entirety of what physics calls matter. Physical theories attempt to reduce the external world to motion and mechanical force, yet force itself remains an abstraction derived from muscular effort. Matter cannot exist for human knowledge outside the sensations that construct it. The physical world is therefore known not as a secret substance, but as a structure built of sensory experience.

Consciousness Requires Both an Act of Cognition and an Object

Mind cannot be reduced to a shadowy substance or an invisible fluid. Mental activity consists of a subject apprehending an object, where the act of knowing is linked to a sensation or image. Consciousness appears whenever an impression is perceived and interpreted rather than merely received as a passive impression. Without an object to reveal, mental activity has no content, making cognition the defining feature of mind.

Mind and Brain Reflect Two Aspects of a Single Reality

Physical nervous processes and mental states run parallel without one simply dissolving into the other. Neural activity provides the physiological substrate, but subjective awareness adds the element of apprehension that physics cannot measure. Materialism fails by ignoring the subjective perspective, while idealism fails by ignoring the physical organism. The relationship between brain and mind is best understood as two distinct modes of apprehending the same underlying events.

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The Mind and the Brain

An investigation into sensory experience, mental phenomena, and the relationship between consciousness and brain activity.

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