If they are not identical to the mental states themselves, then what are they? And what are they doing? Are they merely allowing a preexisting mental signal to come through and be expressed? I think not. I personally think the existing neuroscience data allows us to reject the idea that the brain is a mere filtering or tuning device. Instead, there is something about the brain itself that makes the mental possible. We could not have mental life without it.

Mental life is inextricably bound up with brain function but in a manner that so far escapes the best conjectures of us neuroscientists. It’s as if we are already in a mentalized universe consisting of “truths” discoverable by the intellect. The brain in that case would be understood as suffused with, or made up of that truth-discovering mental stuff we call “matter” which is uniquely prepared to grasp or cognize those truths when we seek to understand and reverence them rather than to merely explain them away