The Nature of Experience
Thoughts on the Reality of Consciousness
by
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Energies are detected and transduced to nerve impulse activity by receptors. The nerve impulse activity initiates behavior. Vocalization is a congenital behavior that has evolved as language by agreement. Language, by definition, is meaningful by virtue of the mutual conscious experience excited by the sound (or sight) of a word. Consciousness means the experience of energies. Meaning is an agreement on the mutual experience. Studies and theories of consciousness should be oriented toward the experience and not the meanings of the experience. Meanings are nothing more than agreements. Experience is the energies of reality. Energies are the reality of our being.
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About the Book
This study identifies the structures and processes that create consciousness and the conscious experience. The expression of perceptions, memories, dreams, and emotions develop and are enhanced in intrafusal muscle spindles. These expressions, in many cases, are common to us all. We experience the environment as reality in the form of sensations: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, to use the common and traditional identifications.
Consciousness is experienced in the intrafusal muscle spindles. The fundamental purpose of the spindles is to control the muscular system. The process of control is the detection of the energy by a second set of receptors, the spindle receptors. The second set of receptors is critical to an explanation of the theory and serves to explain what heretofore has been the unknown factor in conscious experience: the experience of consciousness.
The spindle receptor detection is analogous to the detection of the environment by sensory receptors. The difference, of course, is that we are the intrafusal spindles detected by the spindle receptors. It is the efferent impulse activity from the congenitally and experientially configured synaptic activity that enhances the energies developed in the spindles as experience. This process is necessary for the experience of consciousness and the effective control of behavior.
For centuries, man has reflected upon the conscious nature of the human species. The Nature of Experience offers a new perspective on this eternal question.
About the Author
W. H. Sparks graduated from the University of Colorado with a minor in philosophy. He maintained his interest in philosophy, particularly consciousness and conscious experience, until retiring in 2001. Language and Conscious Experience, his first book, was published in 2010. He and his wife now live in San Pedro, California.