Is the final answer for understanding behavior in physical terms BRAIN ACTIVITY? Perhaps, eventually, this will indeed be part of a good understanding.
BUT, brain activity DOES NOT (as seen) point clearly, i.e. POINT AT ALL WELL, TOWARDS IMPORTANT BEHAVIORAL PATTERNING (the MOST important) -- that which we want to understand and really need to understand. Yet over and over, people cite neuroscience as not only associated with understanding "behavior", but as the WAY to do so -- and to get to the ultimate physical terms. It is not. In fact, it is MUCH, MUCH more arguable that we must discover the patterning OF the most important sorts of responses we have before we can have any decent clue about what these behavior patternS must have correspondences with in terms of brain activity (what related "brain activities" "look like").
Behavior is parallel in ways (many, and very likely different with development) AND the several various faculties which operate (even when sequential) need to be SORTED OUT IN DIRECT OBSERVATIONAL STUDIES OF BEHAVIOR PATTERNS -- not only are they fast, but they are SYSTEMATICALLY VARIABLE. It should be clear that anything significant seen in brain activity related to major (but real, and species-typical or species-specific) behavior patterns IS PRESENTLY necessarily confounded, and the "answer" cannot come from brain science itself -- for that is the very confounded activity I just noted. To argue against this is to essentially argue against any like an experimental-type of investigation, where just one or a few variables are what is being explored.
So, in fact: The real, ultimate, physical understanding IS IN TERMS OF DIRECTLY OBSERVABLE --> OVERT
Surely not... Or at least not the sorts of brain activity that are detectable with current methods of imaging and measurement... But biosignaling systems that are relevant to your question are coming into view...
Dear John Oller
I do not know what " biosignaling systems " are, but I am confident that it is possible (at least with modern technology) to actually SEE at least the inception IN OVERT BEHAVIOR (thus, grounding and foundation) OF central, major developing behavior patterns -- related to ALL LEVELS OF REPRESENTATION/ABSTRACTION.
If what I submit is clearly arguable (not only in terms of its necessity, but in terms of its possibility) , then the testable hypotheses should damn well be tested.
Too bad our universities, students and their professors, are unthinking, ignorant, essentially arrogantly-biased and superstitious cowards.
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