why do we enjoy poetry From the perspective of neuroscience?

[zainab]

I think we have to say they have realistic existence. 

Consider the alternative: suppose you say "I had an idea." And somebody who thinks that ideas don't have existence would say, "No, you didn't." But if you can describe the idea and convey it to others, then the objection that it was just an illusion and didn't exist is silly. 

This is a big problem for materialists, I think. Because the idea itself (or the perceived sensation, or the mind-only speech act, or whatever) does have real existence, but it is not identical with the electrochemical brain event. So what kind of existence it has is difficult to define. 


OMT !!!!!

Is there a Third kind of Existence?

Is there a Third kind of Existence?

At this point I don't think anybody can say. 

Currently there are no scientific theories as to how brain cell activity can present to a self as a phenomenal experience. Some people (e.g. Noam Chomsky) think that there are just limits to what people can understand, and this may be one of those limits. As you point out elsewhere, we evolved for survival, not understanding, and there is no reason to think that everything in the world will be understandable to us. 

It's also possible that science will undergo another paradigm shift, of the type that Descartes and Isaac Newton brought about before, and new ways of thinking will allow a unification of currently unexplainable unreconcilable phenomena. Ideas like panpsychism attempt to unify matter with thought, but this is speculative.


So far it's a mystery, and there are not even suggestions as to how to start solving it in a testable scientific way.

I wish i have a long life just to see if there is ahope.. that we could solve this