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
Even and odd functions: Tables | Transformations of functions | Algebra 2 | Khan Academy
We’re told this table defines function f. All right, for every x, they give us the corresponding f of x according to the table. Is f even, odd, or neither? So pause this video and see if you can figure that out on your own. All right, now let’s work on t…
BEST Images of the WEEK! ... IMG! #28
When your house breaks, fix it. And a private toilet! It’s episode 28 of IMG. Do you like cake? Do you like tacos? Well, get yourself a Taco Bell cake covered in say cheese, then say arson. Just don’t burn down the melting stairs. Wieners for kids! But z…
Welcome to high school biology | High school biology | Khan Academy
It’s very easy to take for granted some of the very amazing things that surround us. In particular, the notion of life on a day-to-day basis — we’re used to it. We are living things; we see living things all around us, and we get preoccupied with other th…
The Big Misconception About Electricity
This video was sponsored by Caséta by Lutron. Imagine you have a giant circuit consisting of a battery, a switch, a light bulb, and two wires, which are each 300,000 kilometers long. That is the distance light travels in one second. So, they would reach o…
Does Pressure Melt Ice?
I’m gonna try to demonstrate something called regelation. Which is where you provide a pressure onto ice and that turns it into water, but after that pressure is removed, it freezes again. So, in order to demonstrate this, I’ve taken apart the high E st…
Fisherman With No Fish | Years of Living Dangerously
Through frequent dive trips to Appo Island, Renee has befriended many of the locals. Come over here, John Zenan is a third-generation fisherman who has spent his entire life on the island, living off its resources. He and his son Jory make daily trips to …