How Does the Nervous System Work?

I know what the brain does, I just don’t know how it does it. Why is it not enough to know what the brain does- namely generates behavior and determines experience? Why do we have to know how it does it? I don’t have to know how my car or computer works to know what they can or will do based on my controlling inputs; this because they are not agents. I know or can determine all behaviors, capacities, performance limits, modes of operation… based on experience, and a few fundamental realizations. I don’t really have to know how they work. I know that my car can’t fly, and probably won’t float well, and I don’t have to be an expert to know this. The ”fly in the bottle” problem for philosophy is that we haven’t applied this simple observation to human beings.

The fact that people are agents reduces predictability and allows for novelty, but it doesn’t introduce transcendent possibility. You will never fly by flapping your arms, swim like the dolphins naked or jump into outer space. We simple haven’t realized that same biologically based limits apply to cognitive activities also. Nor do we understand what these limits are.