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
Writing equilibrium constant and reaction quotient expressions | AP Chemistry | Khan Academy
The equilibrium constant is symbolized by the letter K, and the equilibrium constant tells us about the relative concentrations of reactants and products at equilibrium. Let’s say we have a hypothetical reaction where reactants A and B turn into products…
Graphing a shifted and stretched absolute value function
So we’re asked to graph ( f(x) = 2 \times |x + 3| + 2 ). And what they’ve already graphed for us, this right over here, is the graph of ( y = |x| ). Let’s do this through a series of transformations. So the next thing I want to graph, let’s see if we ca…
My Sister Got Malaria ....(And I Didn't) - Smarter Every Day 167
Video about global health issues. Now, here’s the deal: when you think about—let’s make a video about global health issues—you think about statistics and numbers and like money, or you think about your sister who served in the Peace Corps in Sub-Saharan A…
Overstimulation is Ruining Your Life
The year is 1665, and Isaac Newton is looking out his window at an apple tree standing tall in his orchard in Lincolnshire, England. All of a sudden, a ripe and lonely apple falls from the tree and makes its way to the ground. While most people would cons…
Slope and y intercept from equation
What I’d like to do in this video is a few more examples recognizing the slope and y-intercept given an equation. So let’s start with something that we might already recognize: let’s say we have something of the form (y = 5x + 3). What is the slope and …
Binomial variables | Random variables | AP Statistics | Khan Academy
What we’re going to do in this video is talk about a special class of random variables known as binomial variables. As we will see as we build up our understanding of them, not only are they interesting in their own right, but there’s a lot of very powerf…