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> It seems to be an emergent phenomenon created by the brain apparently because it's useful in some way. People need to be more careful about that word "useful
by vintermann 3y ago
> It seems to be an emergent phenomenon created by the brain apparently because it's useful in some way.
People need to be more careful about that word "useful". Saying something is useful, is always implying a who it is useful for. Saying it's useful, but it's not useful for anyone, is as meaningless as saying something is useful, but it's not useful for anything.
(This was, as I recall, one of Kant's "categories of reason").
So by saying the brain creates something for a purpose, you're already assuming that the brain is a thing, and it's a thing that wants things. I'm not saying that's wrong, but given how hard it seems to not make circular arguments with it, maybe it isn't actually an empirical question.
- incompatible 3y agoUseful from the point of view of helping an animal satisfy its needs, so allowed to survive by natural selection? Perhaps it's just a inevitable by-product of certain types of thought.
- vintermann 3y agoThat's assuming an animal is a thing that wants things. Again, not unreasonable, but also not actually an empirical statement, when you look critically at it. You're just pushing the teleology up a level.
- incompatible 3y agoAt some level it's just trying to survive because trying to survive is what helped all its ancestors to actually survive. It doesn't even need to be expressed as a "want", since plants are doing the same thing without a nervous system, going through a sequence of actions programmed in DNA and expressed in a chain of extremely complex biochemical reactions.