Moreover, we can visually monitor the operation of a computer's operating system using special programs that tell us which program is active at a given moment and what part of the hard drive is being accessed. The workings of our brain, of course, are not so transparent. However, the idea is that consciousness, like an operating system, uses the brain (without delving into specifics for now) as the material substrate for its activity.
Just as Windows requires the material foundation of a computer – a specific physical substrate – for its operation, so does consciousness. Outside the computer, Windows, as a dynamic system, can only exist as a static "installation package." Once installed, it is embodied and brings the hardware to life. Similarly, human consciousness – or at least a significant portion of it (including most of self-awareness) – requires a specific material substrate: the brain.
Without the brain, there is no human consciousness. Just as there is no life outside the cell, there is no consciousness outside the activity of the brain.
How meanings exist and what connects them
In my view, thinking is the process of the life activity of meanings, emotional activity is their reactive capability, and will is the measure of the organization of meanings. Love, however, is the organizing force. Thinking, through love, organizes emotional activity – specific psychic reactivity. Previously, my formula did not include love. I believed the following: emotional activity is specific psychic reactivity, thinking is the organizing force, and will is the measure of this organization. But meanings also exist in computational machines, and yet no one would dare call the functioning of a computer a life activity or psychic activity. It is love that imbues meanings with vitality. Love provides their affinity, reactive capability, reproduction, and, overall, their ability to sustain themselves. Love is the anti-entropy in the world of meanings. I will elaborate below on the role of love in the life activity of meanings.
So, what are meanings?
Since I consider the psyche to be an organism similar to a multicellular biological organism, I have identified its elementary "cell" – a compartment of the psyche: the meaning. Initially, I understood the life of meanings to be analogous to the life of cells in a multicellular organism: they divide, reproduce, differentiate, replicate, age, are eliminated, and undergo processes similar to apoptosis, necrosis, and so on. In short, they live according to their own laws.