Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

216 Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion
point, like a stretched rope when it snaps. And with the theory of
space-time as a structure of events . . . there is no sort of reason for not
regarding a percept as being in the head of the percipient. . . .
It follows from this that what the physiologist sees when he examines
a brain is in the physiologist, not in the brain he is examining.
What is in the brain by the time the physiologist examines it if it is
dead, I do not profess to know; but while its owner was alive, part, at
least, of the contents of his brain consisted of his percepts, thoughts,
and feelings. (Analysis of Matter 319–20)
This leads us to an astounding conclusion: one of the most important initial
observations about the nature of mind is that, at least in our waking
states, the bulk of it consists of a model of the world outside our brains.
Our senses collect data that are transported to our brain, an organ that uses
that data to construct a model of the world about us. The material from
which the model is fabricated is the stuff of consciousness. Naive realism is
the confounding of that model with reality. The model is actually all we
know, and the irony is that we know nothing about the stuff from which it
is constructed. Literally, nothing.
This is strong stuff for people who want certainty, because it seems to
throw everything we have come to regard as most real and certain into
hopeless doubt. The initial reaction of many is to reject it as a horrible
doctrine. It is not so horrible if you can accept doubt and be satisfied with
probability—which is supposed to be the way of science. A consideration
of the careful, reasoned objections to this theory show why this is so.
Those objections are essentially of two types: that it leads to the hopeless
absurdity of solipsism and that it demands the existence of a homunculus,
which leads to an infinite regress. These are important arguments and will
be addressed shortly. First, we should try to clarify, in more prosaic terms,
just what Russell is saying.
Imagine yourself the pilot of a strange science fiction vehicle which for
some reason—say, because the terrain you must traverse is highly radioactive—has
a cockpit deep inside a windowless chamber. You are able to control
this conveyance because you are surrounded by television screens and
speakers that provide you with a panoramic view of the outside of the craft.
The accuracy is so great that you appear to be looking directly out windows.
The television cameras that provide these views are even controlled
by the movements of your head so that as you move your view changes,
just as with a real window. Suppose further that some necessity of design