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
Classifying shapes by lines and angles | Math | 4th grade | Khan Academy
Which shape matches all three clues? So here we have three clues, and we want to see which shape down below matches all three of these statements. So let’s start with the first clue. The first clue says the shape is a quadrilateral; “quad” meaning four-s…
Real Estate Agent Live Call: Step by Step Listing Presentation 101
It’s not so much about even the marketing, but also the agent and how motivated they are to sell it. You can explain to her, if she says how many other homes would be sold, how long have you been doing this, stuff like that. You could just be honest there…
1984 Tried To Warn You
Thank you. This is a YouTube video from the future. It’s 2030. Privacy is dead, and we’re happier than ever. Security cameras, dash cams, monitors, laptops, smartphones, even glasses—there are telescreens, sorry, cameras everywhere and we love them. We ca…
How to be miserable for the rest of your life
Here’s a quick tutorial on how to be miserable for the rest of your life. Step one: Wake up whenever you want to. Don’t wake up at a reasonable hour, an hour that makes you feel good about yourself. Make sure you wake up when everyone has had a head star…
How Much Money Would It Take? | Brain Games
To find out what it would take to get someone to change their beliefs, we’ve asked several people of various backgrounds to take part in a little experiment. “Hey, hi, welcome to bringing, as my friend.” “Thank you!” “So I’m gonna ask you a series of q…
With Grace | Short Film Showcase | National Geographic
[Music] [Music] Thank you, thank you. [Music] Come on, I’ve been happening. Okay, okay. [Music] You can even take overnight. Sometimes a day can pass or two. Okay. Foreign [Music] Grace, so I went home to catch up some rest. Around 23 hours, I had a knock…