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
Understand Where YOU are in the Life Cycle
There’s a life cycle of an individual, so I want to just touch on that for a bit. To me, the life cycle of a typical individual looks like this: In the first phase, you learn, and you’re dependent on others who guide you, most importantly your parents an…
We Tracked Every Visitor to Epstein Island | WIRED
Even in death, the secrets of Jeffrey Epstein remain tightly guarded. But earlier this year, I spearheaded a Wired investigation that uncovered the data of almost 200 mobile phones belonging to visitors to his infamous pedophile island. The data was so pr…
Who God is in Different Cultures | The Story of God
Who God is, is almost universally a great unknown. There are different manifestations of God: different statues, different icons, different sounds, smells, looks of God across cultures. God has a sound. To Navajo, God is a light, bright light to many peop…
Stop Caring What People Think | The Stoic Way
It never ceases to amaze me. We all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. People spend so much energy on worrying about what other people think about them. The thing is: it’s a huge waste of time; especiall…
Adventure Photography: 4 Tips to Get an Epic Shot | Get Out: A Guide to Adventure
Hi, my name is Keith Linski. I’m an adventure photographer and filmmaker. Today, I’m going to talk a little bit about essential things I bring in the field for every shoot. There are so many great apps that make photography so much easier out in the fiel…
How I Borrow FREE Money
What’s up you guys! It’s Graham here. So let’s cover something that continues to get brought up here on the channel, especially recently after some of my income breakdown videos. That is the fact that I actively try to borrow as much money as I possibly c…