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I don't think it will be, unfortunately. I think it's important to distinguish between explaining "how the brain works" and "understanding the brain, the mind,

I don't think it will be, unfortunately. I think it's important to distinguish between explaining "how the brain works" and "understanding the brain, the mind, and their relationship". There are hundreds of studies every year elucidating correlations between certain kinds of brain activity and certain states of conscious experience. There are also many valiant attempts at modeling various aspects of human cognition and brain function. Unfortunately, none of this research says anything at all about the nature of the actual feelings and experiences we have. People are taught in school that a sufficient response to the question "how do we hear things?" is to talk about sound waves, the shape of the outer ear, the tympanic membrane, malleus, incus, stapes, cochlea, etc. At some point you arrive at: "and then the brain processes the signal in the auditory cortex and stuff." We have become accustomed to this sort of answer, but it really doesn't even begin to answer the real (and interesting) question: why does all that processing result in the felt experience of hearing, rather than the nervous system just bubbling up and causing a behavior with no feelings? Why does it "feel" that way and not some other way? Is there a different kind of hearing that "feels" fundamentally different from our experience? My point is that, we are closer to explaining some functional aspects of the brain, but when it comes to explaining the nature and character of our qualitative experience, we are at the same place as the ancient Eastern philosophers - we've really gotten nowhere.

jamesb93 8y ago
Musicologists have been asking this question from a phenomenological angle for some time. It's quite interesting how listening and perception in the English language have almost no distinction from each other. Our ears listen always, but our brain perceives is about as far as we get. In French musicology and music psychology, there is much more desperation between modes of listening and they all have their own definitions.
red75prime 8y ago
> why does all that processing result in the felt experience of hearing Fortunately, it is a question, which can stay unanswered with no practical consequences. It is a subjective counterpart of "Why is there something rather than nothing?", and we aren't answering either anytime soon. > Is there a different kind of hearing that "feels" fundamentally different from our experience? Even if there is, we will need different brain hardware to experience it first-hand, otherwise we'd have to do with analogies or, for more precision, with functional descriptions of perceptual processing.
- TaupeRanger 8y ago
  Fortunately, it is a question, which can stay unanswered with no practical consequences. It is a subjective counterpart of "Why is there something rather than nothing?", and we aren't answering either anytime soon. Utterly absurd and completely false. An explanation for the question of why pain feels the why it does, for example, has enormous practical implications and consequences. The current neurological and medical approaches to pain management are poorly understood and often dangerous in extreme cases. We literally don't know why or how Tylenol works. That is a huge problem. The current best-case scenario, absent an explanation of the nature of the character of pain experiences, is that we find some neural activities that we can alter with advanced medical techniques which reliably suppress pain experiences. But it's not clear that 1) we will ever find such techniques, 2) that such techniques would exhaustively alter all the kinds of physical pain a human might experience, 3) that such techniques wouldn't negatively alter other aspects of a person's mind. If we had a fuller explanation of the nature of the character of the experience itself (rather than just treating consciousness like a black box), we might be able to alter the experiences more precisely and appropriately.
  - red75prime 8y ago
    For all those ends you'll need observables: patient reports, behaviors associated with pain and so on. You probably have in mind the question "why this pain processing results in the observed effects?" I was talking about the question "why does all that processing result in the felt experience [...]?"
    - TaupeRanger 8y ago
      No, I have in mind the exact question I outlined at the beginning of my response.
      - red75prime 8y ago
        Then I don't understand you. What is important to address the problems you outlined is the question of "How brain activity corresponds to the felt experiences (as reported by subjects)?", not "Why there are felt experiences corresponding to brain activity?" Even if we had the answer for the second question (say, "There is immaterial soul which is responsible for our felt experiences and that's why we feel"), it will not help with pain treatment.

jamesb93 8y ago

Musicologists have been asking this question from a phenomenological angle for some time. It's quite interesting how listening and perception in the English language have almost no distinction from each other. Our ears listen always, but our brain perceives is about as far as we get. In French musicology and music psychology, there is much more desperation between modes of listening and they all have their own definitions.

red75prime 8y ago

> why does all that processing result in the felt experience of hearing Fortunately, it is a question, which can stay unanswered with no practical consequences. It is a subjective counterpart of "Why is there something rather than nothing?", and we aren't answering either anytime soon. > Is there a different kind of hearing that "feels" fundamentally different from our experience? Even if there is, we will need different brain hardware to experience it first-hand, otherwise we'd have to do with analogies or, for more precision, with functional descriptions of perceptual processing.

TaupeRanger 8y ago
Fortunately, it is a question, which can stay unanswered with no practical consequences. It is a subjective counterpart of "Why is there something rather than nothing?", and we aren't answering either anytime soon. Utterly absurd and completely false. An explanation for the question of why pain feels the why it does, for example, has enormous practical implications and consequences. The current neurological and medical approaches to pain management are poorly understood and often dangerous in extreme cases. We literally don't know why or how Tylenol works. That is a huge problem. The current best-case scenario, absent an explanation of the nature of the character of pain experiences, is that we find some neural activities that we can alter with advanced medical techniques which reliably suppress pain experiences. But it's not clear that 1) we will ever find such techniques, 2) that such techniques would exhaustively alter all the kinds of physical pain a human might experience, 3) that such techniques wouldn't negatively alter other aspects of a person's mind. If we had a fuller explanation of the nature of the character of the experience itself (rather than just treating consciousness like a black box), we might be able to alter the experiences more precisely and appropriately.
- red75prime 8y ago
  For all those ends you'll need observables: patient reports, behaviors associated with pain and so on. You probably have in mind the question "why this pain processing results in the observed effects?" I was talking about the question "why does all that processing result in the felt experience [...]?"
  - TaupeRanger 8y ago
    No, I have in mind the exact question I outlined at the beginning of my response.
    - red75prime 8y ago
      Then I don't understand you. What is important to address the problems you outlined is the question of "How brain activity corresponds to the felt experiences (as reported by subjects)?", not "Why there are felt experiences corresponding to brain activity?" Even if we had the answer for the second question (say, "There is immaterial soul which is responsible for our felt experiences and that's why we feel"), it will not help with pain treatment.