yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Supervenience


2m read
·Nov 8, 2024

One of the questions was, "Um, how is it that logic supervenes on our brains?"

And I think it's a good question.

Um, I think it's a question that we're not currently in a position to give a full answer to.

Um, for that, our understanding of how the brain and the mind are interrelated needs to be, uh, much more advanced than it currently is.

Um, but I think by way of analogy, I can give you an idea of how, uh, a materialist conception of the mind—how it, how it can, how it approaches this question.

Anyway, so to take the example of a computer, um, we know exactly, uh, the parts that make up a computer, and we know exactly what happens in those parts in order for the computer to do the things it's expected to do.

Ultimately, what happens inside a computer is electrons move around.

That's all it is at a basic level, and yet we're happy to say things like the computer calculates, uh, a sum, an equation, or the computer displays a web page.

And yet we don't feel the need to posit some kind of immaterial entity or immaterial knowledge or symbol or something from another realm that somehow is injected into the computer that enables it to do these things.

We know exactly what's in a computer, what happens in a computer, and we also know that in a manner of speaking, the result is greater than the sum of its parts.

The ability to calculate or to display a web page supervenes on the fundamental activity of electrons in a computer.

And what the materialist worldview says, or at least the version that I'm familiar with, is that in a similar way, the electrical and chemical activity inside the brain gives rise to Consciousness, thought, abstract Concepts, etc.

So logic, as in our internal representation of the most general features of the reality in which we find ourselves, logic in that sense supervenes on the physical.

I hope that makes it a bit clearer.

More Articles

View All
The Jet Business BBC World News Feature
I wish I were sharing. Do you want to hand me a billion dollars? I’ll help you out. Okay, watch this, watch this. Hey, you know how it is: you’ve got a billion dollars in the bank and you don’t know what to do with it. It is a problem many people face. I …
TAOISM | The Art of Not Trying
Those who stand on tiptoes do not stand firmly. Those who rush ahead don’t get very far. Those who try to outshine others dim their own light. — Lao Tzu How can we improve when we stop trying to improve? Many people waste their efforts trying to better …
Antarctic Wind Beneath My Wings | Continent 7: Antarctica
[music playing] Oh, what’s it doing? It’s still pointing in the right direction? It’s drifting towards us. NARRATOR: Paul is flying the climate team’s $80,000 drone system. And it’s fighting so much wind, it just can’t handle it. NARRATOR: And the winds…
Kevin Hale - Startup Pricing 101
This was a highly requested talk from last year, or lots of people had questions about pricing or were really confused. It’s actually was well requested both at YC itself—that’s a very, very popular workshop that we run. We’re gonna go over a lot of basi…
Charlie Munger: We Are In A Stock Market Bubble
Do you agree that there is a close parallel to the late 90s and this therefore quote must end badly? Yes, I think it must end badly, but I don’t know when. [Music] All right guys, welcome back to the channel. In this video, we are doing yet another Char…
A Mexican Wolf Pup’s Journey into the Wild | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic
Foreign [Music] This is what it sounds like to explore New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness on horseback. On a recent assignment for National Geographic, I got to venture deep into the Gila with a photographer, podcast producer, and a backcountry guide. The Gila …