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 Physics Of Basketball | StarTalk
We’re exploring the physics of basketball, featuring my interview with NBA All-Star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Check it out. A rebound—in basketball, you have to get a sense of how the thing is going to bounce before the thing makes that bounce so that you can…
Representing systems of any number of equations with matrices | Precalculus | Khan Academy
In a previous video, we saw that if you have a system of three equations with three unknowns, like this, you can represent it as a matrix vector equation. Where this matrix, right over here, is a three by three matrix that is essentially a coefficient mat…
Anthony Mackie Descends a Cliff Face | Running Wild with Bear Grylls
[dramatic music] BEAR GRYLLS: Anthony Mackie and I are high in the Dolomite Mountains of Italy. Doing a great job, Anthony, well done. We’re using an old hemp rope, just like soldiers would use in World War I, to descend the sheer rock face. It’s about no…
8 Habits keeping you Poor - Marcus Aurelius | STOICISM INSIGHTS
Every morning, millions of us wake up, grab our phones, and immediately start scrolling through a sea of notifications, messages, and updates. It’s the first thing we do, almost instinctively, as if our smartphones hold the secret to starting the day righ…
Evolution | Middle school biology | Khan Academy
[Speaker] How many different species or kinds of birds are there? Take a guess. 100, 1,000, more? Well, biologists have estimated that there are at least 10,000 different species of birds all around the world, and some biologists think that there are ev…
How To Make Friends
Friends make life good. They provide the scaffolding that makes it not just bearable, but fun. They give us a sense of meaning and purpose and are a source of security, self-esteem, and happiness. Almost nothing predicts how happy you will be as how conne…