Asa, language is too imprecise to really express correctly or solve the problem you pose about being and the mind's existance. There is a point at which science has to solve the problem.
Language and philosophy are not terribly good problem solvers. At least not for problems better directed at Science. The big problem is the imprecision of language. Words themselves are built upon a foundation that intertwine our life experiences which are intertwined with our cultural experience. Words themselves have diferent meanings to different people. Ultimate translation even within the same language of ideas is well... next to impossible. MEANING: For someone to hear the same sentence or read the same sentence as another person, both would take it to mean the EXACT same thing if their were perfect translation. Even with set defined terms... Terms are defined by other terms... which are defined by other terms... And eventually a full circle in term definition happens. Try defining the term 'is'. Clinton sure had fun with it, heh heh. We all think we have command of our native tongue, but most people sadly are mistaken. Many people do not really realize that for every term we think we know, our idea of that term is encompassed by that term and ITS OPPOSITE. This critical concept of know a thing and its opposite at the same time gives us the amazing ability to close our eyes and envision our reality differently. Knowing what the term 'is' means is knowing what being & not being is at the exact same time.
Aristotle seperated the physical from the metaphysical in his lectures of the Physics and the Metaphysics. He seperated the two because there is something that distinctly seperates a live person/animal from a dead person/animal. When something dies there seems to be a transition of the Metaphysical. Physics does not really enter the picture. What drove man for Aristotle was the desire to partake in the devine as much as possible.
Now progressing to more modern philosophy (Nietzsche), thought that all we could be sure of was our will to power. Thus, when it really got down to it, our metaphysical aspects for Nietzsche was a simple will to influece the world.
What does this all this Philosophy mumbo jumbo have to do with Audio?
Well, the world we live in is both subjective and objective for us at precisely the same time. Our mind through our senses translates our subjective view of the world, but at the same time it holds the idea that this is a translation of some sort of objective perspective. The rational mind knows that when you close your eyes the entire world does not disappear even though it does for us on the subjective level. Hearing music projected by an audio system is working to understand the the music sonic representation and the performance on a subjective level as well as realizeing that there is an objective perspective to what is being heard. We may never truely realize this objective perspective, but we can at least try to realize it to the best of our abilities. Why? Because we have the will to do it. For us this task seems to have meaning. We want to take part in the devine to our greatest extent, and music for us seems like part of the devine. We try to realize music through experience through our senses. Just as a scientist tries to realize the nature of the universe through experience with scientific methodology and experiments.
This gets us back to the question of the mind seemingly being and not being at the same time in existence. This is a question that cannot be answered by the crude language we posess. It is for science to come up with a likely story to explain the mind.
A personal answer to the question would be that the minds can be compared to a computer. From a physics standpoint a computer has form and exists. However, inside a computer there exists perfect ones and zeroes that the computer interprets. These ones and zeroes are part of a whole that has some sort of meaning or purpose. What happens when we unplug a computer? What happens when we die? There is a level of existance or being that seemingly transcends simple physics. Because simple physics cannot describe why humans really do anything that is not just to sustain a person's life. Is it simply will to power? Or do we want to take part in some sort of divine? When we open our minds, we find perfect ideas we never see in reality. Where did we ever come up with the idea of equality or the unit? We gave computers seemingly perfect ones and zeros and now they can beat most humans at Chess. Science one day I think is going to figure this out and answer your question Asa. Philosphers have tried and have not been too successful.
KF
