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
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…
More problems with knowing the 'fundamental nature' of X
Npg85 made a video in which he offered an alternative way of trying to distill the fundamental essence of the process. In his video, he used the example of a computer speaker to illustrate his thinking. So I’m going to use the same example to demonstrate …
Cao Dai's History in Vietnam | The Story of God
[music playing] MORGAN FREEMAN: The Cao Dai religion, an unusual blend of eastern and western faiths, appears to be flourishing in Vietnam. Across the country, there are almost 400 temples. Followers worship openly. But it wasn’t always that way. I’ve be…
Valence electrons and ionic compounds | AP Chemistry | Khan Academy
In this video, we’re going to get even more appreciation for why the periodic table of elements is so useful. In particular, we’re going to focus on groups of the periodic table of elements. When we talk about a group, we’re just talking about a column. A…
The Calm and Quiet Antarctic | Continent 7: Antarctica
[Music] The one thing that I really miss about being at home, honestly, is probably being able to move around and to exercise. Move in a straight line for a long time. Generally, my research is ship-based, so we’re on a two or 300-ton research boat for a …
Why are people mean on Twitter? - Smarter Every Day 214
You’ve probably heard a lot of talk lately about bots on Twitter or even foreign involvement in our political process. For example, the president of the United States publicly thanked a Twitter account which we now know was run by malicious actors located…