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Are they any more than functions of our brains?
Listening to a favorite piece of music, with my eyes closed and without distractions or interruptions, I am struck by how almost totally engaging the experience is. Words are both unnecessary and inadequate to describe it.
Yet I can write about some observations from the experience afterward. This writing, itself, is a different kind of experience, but it is also a function of my brain.
If I listen to a recorded performance of music, one that I have heard many times, I can follow its sequence exactly. I have literally memorized that performance, and any deviation in the performance from my memorized version alerts me that the performance is not the recorded one that I learned from. My mind has made its own precise copy of the recording, and where could that copy be recorded other than in structures in the myriad networks of cells in my brain?
Even without playing the external recording, I can re-play parts of my internal recording, until I usually lose the sequence at some point. That shows that my internal recording, though precise, is incomplete or inadequately strong to be self-sustaining. (It’s the same with some poetry that I have memorized.)
