Is reasonably well understood from the overwhelming evidence of drug addiction, psychiatric therapies, exercise, diet, sex etc that dopamine Is the “feel good” neurotransmitter.
Endorphins and serotonin also play their role but for the sake of argument let’s focus our attention on dopamine.

What I don’t get is why? Why does dopamine - a chemical like any other represent a sensation?
Everything we do in life is arguably to elicit this substance from our nerves. As a general rule of thumb minus the exceptions of suicidal ideation etc we want to feel good.

There’s obviously more than one way to “skin the cat” as they say and you can feel good from just about any action that you can think of both healthy and unhealthy. Some people get their kick from exercise and others from lighting a cigarette or drinking.

What I don’t get is how chemicals can represent states of reward and punishment. It comes down to the hard problem of consciousness, connecting the physical - chemical structures with the mental sensations they represent.

It seems symbolism is at the basis of everything psychological. Language is a string of symbols that can evoke emotion. You can make someone feel good by simply speaking to them. You can also do it through virtually any other sensation: sound in the music we listen to, imagery in the art we appreciate, touch in the sexual pleasure between two partners.

And ultimately the ratio of neurochemcials in our brain at any given time are like symbols that represent our inner state of mind.

This would lend itself to a theory of mind based in panpsychism - that all material elements augment or influence meaning through their interactions. That consciousness is a sum of micro- representations offered by the material world. This is not unintuitive at all however. Nothing about dopamine or oxytocin or serotonin or any other chemical gives clues as to why it makes us feel the way we do and yet they do.

It goes further than neurotransmitters too. On a cellular level ATP represents energy and the capacity to survive as to be without it would mean certain cell death. However unlike dopamine and the rest, ATP has some physical sense to it. It’s not just a representation of energy - it is literally energy. The phosphate groups connected to Adenosine contain potential energy. Locked up in the chemical and a molecule of ATP can be directly correlated with a quantised amount of heat energy.

So perhaps if ATP = a physical quantity of energy then perhaps the best way to look at neurotransmitters is to see them as the units denoting “quality” of energy.

But why does energy have “qualities”? Physics doesn’t ascribe the terms “good” and “bad” to energy. Physics can only work in “positive” and “negative” energy status.