Why a phenomenal world?

Abstract

The auditory cortex is not a particularly noisy place. Perhaps being quite near to the ear holes it is a trifle more so than most, but the real work of an auditory cortex is silent. The transducers in the inner ears turns that intense sound of Louis Armstrong’s trumpet into silent, complicated nerve-impulse patterns to be silently sent on to the brain stem, thalamus, and cortex. Much the same can be said of parts of the brain concerned with the sense of smell: They do not exude the odours, the sensations of which they are creating within them—at least I don’t think so.