Crossing the divide: A website about Literature, Art & Philosophy by Venkat Ramanan

This was originally posted as a "viewpoint" at  Aeon Conversations One day science will identify the neural correlates of joy. But, I do hope that the rainbow will not be unwoven so completely. Until then - or even after that - the delicious mystery of how we relate to music will never fade away. Salvador Dali, Dream of Venus (1939), Hiroshima Prefectural Art Gallery. Photo by Author ystery will remain in this world for the simple reason that our understanding of reality is limited - below are some reasons for it - and may forever remain so. And we will continue to be curious about this world around us because that is what made us human in the first place. The nature of reality : Angles in Science, Credit: IGIT (Own work)/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0 Reality is much more than physical objects. We have abstract objects and structures that we cannot touch and feel directly. These include mathematics (which Colin McGinn felt formed a “third ...

We use the brain as an adjunct to our life, as a highly sophisticated tool to facilitate our actions. However, do the functions of the brain alone amply explain the whole of the human condition? W hen I throw a ball to someone else, I show the unfailing workings of a natural law. That however does not mean that I represent that law of physics, let alone become an embodiment of that law. Similarly, when a particular set of neurons in my brain gave rise to my intention to throw that ball, those neurons were merely involved in a physiological activity underlying that intention. That does not mean that this particular of set of neurons is the intention itself. My MP3 player tells me that exceeding a certain volume level may harm my hearing in the long term. By indicating that this man-made device is “telling me” something, I use here language that anthropomorphises an artefact. I could have said instead that a warning message is displayed on the music player's screen. But I use ...