On the Relation between the Mind and the Brain: A Neuroscience Perspective
Philosophia Scientiæ January 19, 2026 DOI: 10.4000/philosophiascientiae.849 via DOAJ
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractComputational neuroscience offers a new approach to classic philosophical problems—the mind-body problem, determinism and free will, and phenomenal consciousness. The mind and brain are different levels of explanation for information processing, and their correspondence can be understood through neural computation. However, a gap remains in understanding how brain events produce subjective experience. The proposed explanation is that 'feeling like something' arises from a computational process involving higher-order thoughts grounded in the world.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Citations | 3 |
| Key finding | Computational neuroscience can clarify the mind-body problem by treating mind and brain as different explanatory levels of information processing, but phenomenal consciousness remains a gap that may be addressed by higher-order thought processes grounded in the world. |
Abstract
In this paper I show that computational neuroscience provides an important new approach to traditional problems in philosophy such as the relation between mental states and brain states (the mind-body or mind-brain problem), to determinism and free will, and helps one with the ‘hard’ problem, the phenomenal aspects of consciousness.One of the themes of the paper and of my book Neuroculture: on the Implications of Brain Science ([Rolls 2012c]) is that by understanding the computations performed by neurons and neuronal networks, and the effects of noise in the brain on these, we will gain a true understanding of the mechanisms that underlie brain function. Part of the solution proposed to the mind-body problem is that the mind and the brain are different levels of explanation of information processing, the correspondence between which can be understood by understanding the mechanisms involved using the approach of computational neuroscience.But this does leave some ‘hard’ problems, such as the problem of phenomenal consciousness, and while I have provided new suggestions about this in this paper, one must recognise that there is still somewhat of a gap in our understanding of events in the brain and the subjective experiences that may accompany them. The explanation I offer is that when it ‘feels like something’ this is just a property of a computational process that has thoughts about its own thoughts (higher order thoughts), and with the thoughts grounded in the world.