why do we enjoy poetry From the perspective of neuroscience?

[Alan V]

To me the orchestra analogy doesn't work because a single note and a symphony are ontologically the same; the difference is complexity. But an electrochemical event and an experience are not, in my view, ontologically the same.

It's true that there are emergent properties in the world that come about due to complexity, but I haven't seen it demonstrated yet that consciousness is one of those things. Some people think it is. If you have some argument for this I will read it.

Not just complexity, but relationships. Single notes of an orchestra piece may be ontologically the same, but the timing and relationships between them over time are not. Those are new properties which only exist in the full piece. That's where the music exists, and that music is similar to the emergent property of consciousness in that sense. The music doesn't exist without the timing and relationships between the notes. I will describe this in more detail in my book report about the human brain.

Thanks for remaining reasonable and patient. I guess I'm having a hard time articulating my thoughts well enough to be understood. That's part of the reason I'm working on a longer presentation. I will add this much, however: another way to express one of my main points is that the hard problem of consciousness isn't really about how consciousness arose, but about how life arose. The latter is what created subjects from objects. Thus my comment that consciousness is necessarily an experience of bodies, and that it couldn't exist without them. That wasn't intended as a tautology.