why do we enjoy poetry From the perspective of neuroscience?

[bennyboy]

Of course we can observe our own minds directly.  

What's this "we" stuff, figment-of-my-imagination?

All sorts of things can't be observed directly by science, yet scientists can assemble excellent guesses by means of their careful detective work on available evidence, including proxies.  That's how scientists reconstructed ancient climates for instance.

The process is reversed, I think. In one case, you have data, and try to speculate on what might have generated it.

In the case of mind, we start with a gnostic position on the existence of mind, and try to map data to fit what believe we already know.

This is perhaps my main objection to philosophical approaches to knowledge, and this problem seems to go all the way back to the Greeks: philosophers think knowledge must be certain, while in fact our best knowledge always seems to come with probabilities.  Quantum mechanics is accurate to how many decimal places?  Yet it states explicitly exactly where you have to draw a line between what you can know and what you can't.

Probabilities are okay so long as they are numerical. "I think this physical system which talks probably has a mind like mine" isn't really talking about probability. It's a stand-in for something like, "I have a strong sense that this physical system has a mind like mine." In other words, strength of impression substitutes for chance.

The problem with seems-so-is is that it goes from "I sense something watching me sometimes. It seems possible to me that there's some intangible entity that I can't see which is influencing my luck" to "God said don't be a fag, and if you break God's inviolate command, I'm going to burn you."

In the case of discussions of mind, we are about to enter an era where seems-so-is could have real consequences. What if android robots are so convincing that our instincts say, "Yeah. . . I'll accept that as a person"? Then we can have android rights, androids competing for jobs, and so on. The left will start talking about androidophobia. And all the while-- they may just be p-zombies.