This is a great point and one that cognitive scientists have a successful and productive way to think about. What you are after, and rightfully so, is an algori

This is a great point and one that cognitive scientists have a successful and productive way to think about. What you are after, and rightfully so, is an algorithmic account of the mind. You'd like to know what steps our minds are actually taking to compute whatever it is computing. However, with something as mysterious and complex as the mind, even knowing what it is we're computing is far from trivial. That's where the account I sketched above comes in, usually referred to as a computational level explanation. It defines what the actual problem is that the mind is solving and gives mathematical constraints (and predictions) about behavior. The distinction between the two levels is subtle -- even published papers conflate or ignore it. However it's extremely important. Reverse-engineering the algorithm we use to perform that listnening/interpretation task is already extremely difficult, but it would be even harder without having any of the above formalization. The computational account sets up the goalposts, so to speak. Now, there's actually a third level as well. Even once you've written down your algorithmic-level account, that says nothing about how the brain implements that algorithm. That further explanation is referred to as the physical level, the level of implementation by neurons. If you want to read more, this paradigm is known as Marr's levels of analysis. https://www.google.com/search?q=marr's+levels https://www.google.com/search?q=marr's+levels