I see what you're saying, but I think the comparison to a falling ball is not fair.
The brain is doing purposeful data processing. Yes it's just signals doing their thing following the laws of physics but that's also what computers do.
Arithmetics in a CPU are just electrical signals passing through wires. If you were to look at these signals without any awareness of why they are flowing this way here and there, you wouldn't be able to tell that these signals are an encoding of some arithmetic operations.
If processing audio and visual signals does not involve doing arithmetics, then what does it involve?
The brain is doing purposeful data processing. Yes it's just signals doing their thing following the laws of physics but that's also what computers do.
Arithmetics in a CPU are just electrical signals passing through wires. If you were to look at these signals without any awareness of why they are flowing this way here and there, you wouldn't be able to tell that these signals are an encoding of some arithmetic operations.
If processing audio and visual signals does not involve doing arithmetics, then what does it involve?