The Argument from Human Imagination (expanded)1 In the following paper, I argue that the power of the human

brainprincipally, the ability to imagine and make observationshas created everything that we see, we experience, etc. Everything proceeds from the implementation of the imagination: science, mathematics, and the rest are the result of the creative capabilities of the mind. I will argue that it is not clear that this is the case because we have no real understanding about how these creative processes have led to the development of these disciplines. Language, mythology, and the other disciplines have their roots in prehistory. We have no record of the first spoken word, or the first mythology; this reality makes it impossible for us to determine what drove their creation. It is only when we come to the realization that the development of our creative capabilities coincided with their emergence that we better understand their origins. As time has progressed, we have moved further and further from the beginning of human cognition. In the opposite sense, diseases, natural disasters, and other catastrophes are simply part of existence. Human endeavors do not follow the same path. The power of the human mind has created reality as we perceive it, but we are frequently wrong about how we interpret our surroundings. The inner dialog and the outer world are not actually the same thing. Our reality is a brain-driven interpretation of how we think things are outside of us. If the brain is severely damaged or impaired, the way in which we view the world also becomes damaged in some way. It is obvious that people suffering from a mental illness have a different sense of reality than 'normal' people. What is different about them? Their brains are not operating in the normal way. In essence, there exists only one realityit resides in the world outside of our minds. For example, we may have different notions of the definition of a chair, but we understand that certain things are not chairs. If a person sits on a tree stump, he is not sitting on a chair. It is only in the way that we perceive the world around us that creates the differences. The mind is merely the product of the brain's evolution. When the brain is injured in some way, the operation of the mind suffers also. The mind is utterly dependent on the brain; it is not a separate entity by any means.