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
15 Things Broke People Always Have Money For
You personally know that they don’t have any money yet. They’re still spending like they didn’t just ignore that third eviction notice. From a financial perspective, some people are just built different, but not in a good way. They spend their money on du…
Advice on Organizing and Running Growth Teams from Dan Hockenmaier and Gustaf Alströmer
Today we have Dan Hakan Meyer and Gustav All Strimer. So, Dan was the founder, advised investor, and advisor at Basis One, which is growth strategy consulting. Previous to that, you were a director of growth marketing at Thumbtack. Gustav’s a partner at Y…
The 10 BEST Side Hustles - How I Make $10,000 / Month
What’s up, Graham? It’s guys here. So, I’ll be honest; not only have I seen every single side hustle video imaginable on YouTube, but I’ve also tried nearly every single one of those options throughout the last 12 years. And let me tell you, even though …
Charlie Munger: The 5 Investing Tricks That Made Him a Billionaire
But what caused the financial success was not extreme ability. You know, I have a good mind, but I’m way short of prodigy. And I’ve had results in life that are prodigious, and that came from tricks I just learned a few basic tricks from people like my gr…
People Are a Force of Nature
What does the transforming is knowledge? We can take some raw material that had no particular use, and within that raw material, we might find uranium nuclei, which then can be used in a nuclear reactor to create energy or bombs. We can find within someth…
Slow Motion Raptor Strikes - Smarter Every Day 38
Raptor training? That sounds interesting. Hey, it’s me Destin. I’m at Auburn University today at the Southeastern Raptor Centre with Andrew, and Andrew’s a pretty unique guy. What do you do, Andrew? -I get to work with birds every day. Every single day.…