The relation between mental states and brain states is important in psychiatry, in which interventions with medication are made on brain states to alter mental states. The relation between the brain and the mind has puzzled philosophers for centuries. Here a neuroscience approach is proposed in which events at the sub-neuronal, neuronal, and neuronal network levels take place simultaneously to perform a computation that can be described at a high level as a mental state, with content about the world. It is argued that as the processes at the different levels of explanation take place at the same time, they are linked by a non-causal supervenient relationship: causality can best be described in brains as operating within but not between levels. This allows the supervenient (e.g. mental) properties to be emergent, though once understood at the mechanistic levels they may seem less emergent, and expected. This mind-brain theory allows mental events to be different in kind from the mechanistic events that underlie them; but does not lead one to argue that mental events cause brain events, or vice versa: they are different levels of explanation of the operation of the computational system. This approach may provide a way of thinking about brains and minds that is different from dualism and from reductive physicalism, and which is rooted in the computational processes that are fundamental to understanding brain and mental events, and that mean that the mental and mechanistic levels are linked by the computational process being performed. Explanations at the different levels of operation may be useful in different ways. For example, if we wish to understand how arithmetic is performed in the brain, description at the mental level of the algorithm being computed will be useful. But if the brain operates to result in mental disorders, then understanding the mechanism at the neural processing level may be more useful, in for example the treatment of psychiatric disorders.

中文翻译：

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解释大脑和大脑的神经科学水平

精神状态与大脑状态之间的关系在精神病学中很重要，在精神病学中，对大脑状态进行药物干预以改变精神状态。几个世纪以来，大脑与思想之间的关系一直困扰着哲学家。在这里，提出了一种神经科学方法，其中同时发生在神经元以下，神经元和神经元网络级别的事件，以执行一种可以描述为精神状态，并具有关于世界的内容的高级计算。有人认为，由于在不同层次的解释过程是同时发生的，它们之间是由非因果关系联系在一起的：因果关系最好在大脑中描述为在两个层次之间而不是在两个层次之间起作用。这样可以显示出超凡的（例如精神上的）特性，尽管曾经从机械的角度理解过它们，但它们似乎不那么突如其来了，而且是人们所期望的。这种脑智理论使精神事件与构成其背后的机械事件有所不同。但是并不会导致人们认为精神事件会导致大脑事件，反之亦然：它们是对计算系统操作的不同解释级别。这种方法可以提供一种关于大脑和思维的思维方式，该思维方式不同于二元论和还原性的物理主义，并且植根于对理解大脑和心理事件至关重要的计算过程中，这意味着心理和机制水平是由正在执行的计算过程链接。不同操作级别的解释可能以不同的方式有用。例如，如果我们希望了解如何在大脑中执行算术运算，则在所计算算法的心理层面进行描述将非常有用。但是，如果大脑操作导致精神障碍，那么在神经加工水平上了解这种机制可能会更有用，例如在治疗精神障碍方面。