The Explanatory Gap

The Explanatory Gap refers to the challenge of fully understanding how subjective experiences, like feelings or consciousness, relate to physical processes in the brain. While science can describe brain activity and behavior, it struggles to explain how these physical mechanisms produce personal experiences—why certain brain states feel like something from the inside. Essentially, it highlights a gap in our knowledge about how objective brain functions translate into subjective awareness, leaving us with an incomplete understanding of the connection between the physical and experiential aspects of mind.