I try to find illuminating connections between things. However it all keeps coming back to how the brain works.

that's because it's really hard to have higher cognitive functions with no brain.  (Interestingly, there have been babies born with only one hemisphere.  They normally die round about 2 years old.)  But it is possible to draw lines, and thank heavens, otherwise nobody would get anything done.  It's when those arbitrary lines, draw for convenience, become fixed borders problems arise.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre