Sunday 10 October 2010

Morning Scepticism: Complex

There's inevitably going to be someone who brings up complexity as a means to talk about contentious phenomena. Sometimes it is to refrain from the responsibility of needing to provide an explanation, such as to wave away criticism of psychic powers because the mind is too complex to understand why psychic powers aren't a good explanation. But there's also a warning, that to take a phenomenon as reducing it to simple explanations could misrepresent it. To highlight the complexity of the brain in order to stop the reduction of "how can matter think?" is not to say that complexity causes consciousness, but a reminder that it's not going to be understood through a simplistic understanding.

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