On Existence And Paintings ----- by Philip Haggard Berry

Consciousness is a Painting
by Philip Haggard Berry

"The Sistine Chapel" 
Painted by Michelangelo (1508 to 1512)

"Mona Lisa"

Leonardo Davinci (1508 to?)

The Girl with a Pearl Earring

Johannes Vermeer (1665)

Jacques-Louis David

"Napoleon Crossing The Alps" (1800)

"Starry Night"

Vincent van Gogh (1889)

Salvador Dali

The Persistence of Memory (1931)

"Nighthawks"

Edward Hopper (1942)

Campbell's Soup Can

Andy Warhol (1962)

"Star Wars"

Tom Chantrell (1977)

Patrick Nagal

"Duran Duran : Rio" (1983)

[more art to come: 1990's, 2000's, 2010's, 2020's. Maybe pre- 1500's, 1400's, Greece, Rome, Egypt]

On Existence And Paintings ----- by Philip Haggard Berry

If we were unaware that painters painted works of art, and then suddenly found out that those paintings didn't just spring out of nowhere, there were these humans, called "painters," who actually created these paintings, seemingly out of nowhere onto a white canvas stretched out on a wooden frame. Using this substance called "paint" ground from powders and mixed with chemicals, all which had different colors. All used to create an image. Then, suddenly, the painting takes on new meaning. 

We assumed the painting just happened. But then we find out it took "painters" days, weeks, months, to complete these things using a very complex method of mixing different colored paints to create a visual recording of a person, place or thing, or the impression thereof.

So, the painting rose out of a complex and chaotic combination of factors.

Does this mean that we no longer call it a painting because it really was created by thousands of computations and guesses and physical tools.

If the painting is only the sum total of all these things. The question arises: is it inconsequential that "paintings" exist, or does it become inconsequential that "humans and a thousand factors" were involved in its creation.

What we discover is that you can't call it one way, or the other. Both incidents had to happen to create it, it had to be created by a human, AND it had to reach a point, through methods; genius or madness, where it was a "finished painting." And then, once this point of completion is reached; the painter (or painters) themselves were no longer a part of it. It became something on its own, independent of a creator, that people experienced. They liked or disliked or were neutral the independent object.

Does this mean that the painting isn't real? Is it just an illusion of reality because of the complications involved in its creation. Was the painting an unintended accident of all these factors. Or were the factors involved in its creation more important than the painting itself.

Bottom line, we have consciousness, no matter how many machines you hook up to a brain to figure out how one of the most complex things in the universe functions. No matter how many discoveries you make about how it acts or was created, how many tiny synapses fire to create a virtual concept of the brain's external world, never to actually experience it firsthand, only through the physical impressions and the mental decisions and feelings about these things which they perceive through sight sound touch and so on.

Any way one attempts to count; atoms, molecules, elements, chemicals, complex organic structures, organs, systems, bodies, the human brain, actions, reactions, inherited traits, evolution, does the sum of the parts make the whole? Or does the whole make the sum of the parts? Chicken or egg? 

None of this matters, we have a complex "mental" life, accidental or otherwise. You cannot disprove, (putting aside absurd philosophical arguments) you cannot disprove my existence. And the fact that I exist is all the proof one needs. 

The painting may have come into existence through numerous complexities. But the painting is still "the painting."

I exist simply because I know that I exist.

When I no longer know that I exist, then I no longer exist.

An argument for Atheism is that once the brain, when some of whose parts are the person, no longer functions. Then that person no longer exists.

An argument for Spiritualism is that our brains become "recorded" and "stored" in an unknown aspect of this world, or the next, and since the systems exist, then the person continues to exist.

An argument for other dimensions, two of which some would call Heaven and Hell, are simply locations which contain this recording of the self, and so the self exists there.

And if you believe as I do, these two extremes have very little to do with the human creation, construct, concept of "good" and "evil" but rather "intensity of self-awareness."

"I think, therefore I am." ----- René Descartes

cogito, ergo sum

I thought; therefore, I was. My thoughts, and every tiny part of my mind, were recorded in some dimension, and therefore this recording is the continuation of me, and if I still think (though in a new form) then I still exist.

The painter and the painting endure.

(Later on I'll write out my theory of the "brain radio.")