why do we enjoy poetry From the perspective of neuroscience?

[Alan V]

Really?  You don't think that scientists have now proven, beyond a doubt, that brains generate consciousness?  You asked for specific scientific observations.  What about studies of how drugs affect consciousness, how brain injuries affect consciousness, how conscious states are correlated with brain states, and so on?  

I won't answer the rest of your very long post right now, because I don't want to provide too many distractions to a very simple question: how do you know that any physical system you are studying is conscious at all, without simply declaring it so by fiat?  What scientific observations can you make which demonstrate that such a thing as subjective experience exists at all, in any form, in the Universe?

Easy. We observe our conscious states in ourselves first of all. Then people tell us, all the time, what's going on inside their heads. We can even infer them in animals, by proxies. All of these things fall within the realm of scientific observations for certain sciences.

That robots can imitate humans and essentially lie about such states means nothing whatsoever to our evolved abilities.

You are putting the cart in front of the horse.  We first need to establish:
1)  That consciousness exists at all, in any form.
2)  That subjective experience actually DOES add any additional functionality to a complex processing mechanism without it.

I'm not going down your philosophical rabbit hole. We observe these things. Science is built on such observations. If you say such observations are illusory, you have the burden of proof for denying appearances.

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What indicates to me that you have a problem with scientific consciousness studies is that you seem to be taking a reductionistic approach.  This is indicated by the way you frame your questions, like "How do electrochemical activities present themselves to us as experiences?"  In other words, you seem to want some simple answer to this question, when the answer must necessarily be very complex and discussed a bit at a time. You guys therefore seem impatient with a point-at-a-time approach.

Why do you think a complex answer will present itself? What bits can be assembled in a chain to lead us from electrochemical events to experiences? What point-at-a-time approach offers an answer to the question? 

We can find out various things about brain activity. We can find out various things about experience. Nobody's denying that. But the study of the realm of mental phenomena is not the study of electrochemical events in the brain. 

Because consciousness is an emergent property of very complex arrangements of matter, if you want to understand how it arises you have to study the particulars and how they work together, in the end, to produce it.

Here is my wife's analogy: Music doesn't exist in particular notes or instruments, it exists at an emergent level in the relationships between different notes played by different instruments at different times. You will never understand music if you study only single notes, but you won't understand it without that either.