The neurons activated in the observing monkey are in the same brain area as in the observed monkey when it reaches for a piece of fruit, thus assumed to "mirror" the thought processes of the observed monkey. In humans, philosophers of mind describe the observer as having a "theory of mind" about or "mind reading" the observed person. The correlation between mirror neurons is said to explain human empathy.

However, there is no obvious causal physical connection between neurons in the two brains, let alone between the specific brain areas (although many speculative articles suggest that quantum entanglement may be connecting them). So what activates the observer's neurons, causing them to fire in the same brain areas?

In our Experience Recorder and Reproducer model of the mind, neurons that have been wired together by earlier experiences will fire together when presented with a new experience that is similar in some way. Like a tape recorder, our "Experience Recorder" simply "plays back" related experiences.

Donald Hebb famously argued that when a particular experience fires a network of neurons, these neurons get "wired together." Our ERR model simply extends the Hebbian hypothesis to include the idea that when a future experience resembles the original in some way, those neurons "wired together" will again fire together, reproducing (re-presenting?) that original experience.

The ERR model postulates that our conscious thoughts consist of past experiences that resemble the content of current thoughts, providing alternative possibilities for new thoughts and actions. Similar related past experiences, perhaps with different outcomes, can provide the context needed for decisions about what to do next.

Being "aware" of those past related experiences, including our past feelings, is the essence of consciousness. This is a version of William James' "stream of consciousness" and the alternative possibilities of his "two-stage model" of free will.

We can understand the "mirroring" of neurons as caused by the observer thinking about what the observed person is doing!

Importantly, what the observed person is doing includes their facial expressions and bodily motions, which can reveal how the observed person is feeling. Ever since Charles Darwin's epic 1872 study The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, it is well known that facial expressions and bodily positions display a range of emotions in humans and animals. He wrote "the young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements." The actions of the observed person allow the observer to understand what that person is thinking.

Darwin thought these expressions are innate (i.e., genetic). He wrote "Whenever the same movements of the features or body express the same emotions in several distinct races of man, we may infer with much probability, that such expressions are true ones, —that is, are innate or instinctive."

Where Noam Chomsky's "universal grammar" of human languages may not be innate, observing another's feelings seems to be built-in to all animals, but can be refined in the observer by their learned experiences.

Consider the lowly rat. Christian Keysers, a member of Rizzolati's original team at Parma, moved to Groningen in the Netherlands, where he and his team published "Experience Modulates Vicarious Freezing in Rats: A Model for Empathy," (PLoS One. 2011; 6(7): e21855) They wrote "By comparing the reaction of witnesses with or without previous footshock experience, we examine the role of prior experience as a modulator of empathy." They concluded that their research provides "a paradigm to study empathy as a social loop."

Now our Experience Recorder and Reproducer model of the mind shows how information about feelings (aka "qualia") can "come to mind" without the "central" or "parallel distributed" processing of "computational neuroscience." Man is not a machine and the brain is not a computer. The ERR is a purely neurobiological model. Neuronal synapses are not AND and OR gates doing symbolic or propositional logic (pace McCulloch and Pitts in 1943, who first thought the brain might be doing calculations, solving problems in propositional logic).

Information philosophy sees the mind as the immaterial information that is embodied in the material brain. That information is not "processed" in the sense of computers and "artificially intelligent" machines. A computer retrieves data from storage and processes it to prepare a representation of the data. When the wired-together neurons fire together again, they simply re-present the information in the original version of the experience.

The survival value of recalling, reproducing, and re-presenting related past experiences is obvious. Critically important is the recall of any emotions felt in the original experiences. If the wired together neurons include thalamo-cortical connections to basil ganglia, then the amygdala and hippocampus nuclei can re-produce the original pleasure or pain, or the unique feelings that psychologists and philosophers of mind call the "qualia."

As William James realized, recalling multiple related experiences may produce a "blooming, buzzing, confusion." But knowledge of the consequences of past similar situations, and focusing on or giving attention to the one with the most positive outcome, is the basis of the Jamesian two-stage model for making free choices that are morally responsible and practically valuable, consistent with the agent's beliefs, motives, and desires.