Why does neuroscience still have a zero understanding of mental illness, but claims to explain consciousness and claims that there is no free will?

Can you give an example? What drives a car? Highway or engine? It is clear that the answer is the engine is more suitable. In this case, the highway may not exist at all. What is the reason for the absence of the possibility of the existence of free will - processes in the brain or determinism? It is clear that the brain has nothing to do with it. There is a relationship of cause and effect. It applies to everything that is in the universe - any object, large or small, alive or so ... dead. And nowhere is it described or invented a reason why the human brain, with any of its design and principles of operation, could somehow wriggle out of this relationship. They just don't exist. Already at this stage, the answer is obvious. So why think about neuroscientists, robots, artificial intelligence in discussions about free will? It's like building a foundation on a roof. The principles of determinism are already at work - at the level of molecules they are! And everything that is built from these molecules cannot magically turn out to be free, just in order to maintain the interest of the discussion.

Another question is what is quantum physics and obscure elementary particles. But so far no one is digging in this direction. But in vain.

The question is a bit like an interview with Louis CK, where he describes people who are angry at the slow wifi on the plane. How quickly does the world owe you something? Thousands of scientists are working on these questions, and the fact that the answers have not yet been found indicates that the questions are very difficult.

There are three statements in the question, and all are not entirely correct.

1) The understanding of mental illness is non-zero. For example, a gene has recently been found that may be associated with schizophrenia. It is responsible for synaptic pruning (removal of synapses), and in people with schizophrenia, it can be overly active. This is just one of the possible reasons, and it is too early to say that an explanation has been found for schizophrenia. But this opens up possible ways of curing or preventing the disease, if a way is found to stop the process of excessive pruning.

2) Neurobiology is actively involved in the problem of consciousness, but there is still a long way to go before "claiming an explanation." There are different theories, ways of confirming or refuting them are being sought, articles contradicting each other are published - in a word, a normal scientific process is underway. Consciousness is understandably a rather slippery concept, and there is no consensus even on the definition. Not everyone agrees that the "complex problem of consciousness" (how exactly "qualia", thoughts and sensations emerge from nerve impulses) is correctly formulated or should be studied. Nevertheless, there is a lot of interesting research developing ways to determine the presence of consciousness in patients who are unable to communicate, as well as attempts to figure out for which tasks consciousness is necessary and for which it is not.

3) Neuroscience does not state, that there is no free will. Libet's famous experiment (indicating that information about a future decision is in the brain half a second before a decision is made consciously) opened the topic of free will for discussion and study, but over the past 30 years it has been criticized a lot, therefore, the ultimate truth it doesn't count. Quoting from a BBC article linked below: "Even Libetans are forced to admit that the situation used in his experiment is perhaps too artificial to reliably simulate the real-life situations of choice that we all face every day."

Links :

a gene linked to schizophrenia: https://slon.ru/posts/63150

free will and the Libet experiment: http: // www.bbc.com/russian/science/2015/08/150817_vert_fut_intuitions_about_the_brain_are_wrong