Question

Hello Rabbi, you said in your book that it is preferable to view the connection between the mental and the physical as cause and effect. For that to hold, the physical event has to occur before the mental event that we experience. Take, for example, the experience of joy, which physically is characterized by the release of dopamine in the brain. Do we know for certain that the release occurs even a little before the mental experience of joy? If so, it works out very well that this is cause and effect (and maybe even proof, because it sounds strange that that very same event itself—the release of dopamine and mental joy—would occur not at the same time).
If not, and it is at the same time, that is difficult for me because the temporal element is missing. (And if I remember correctly, you said in your book that physical and mental processes occur at the same time.)