A core bit of this episode that didn’t make it into Vervaeke’s summary is the idea of ‘structural functional organization’. The core example is a bird; if you tried to define a bird as the ‘sum’ of its parts, you would be missing out on the difference between a bird (where all the parts are carefully integrated together into a particular structure) and a bloody pile of parts (if they’re cluelessly jumbled together). The intricate relationships between things that make up its structure determine its function, which determines its identity in an important way.
This, of course, ties into the whole project. You need to not just have a list of facts about the mind, but a structural functional organizational account of the mind.
A core bit of this episode that didn’t make it into Vervaeke’s summary is the idea of ‘structural functional organization’. The core example is a bird; if you tried to define a bird as the ‘sum’ of its parts, you would be missing out on the difference between a bird (where all the parts are carefully integrated together into a particular structure) and a bloody pile of parts (if they’re cluelessly jumbled together). The intricate relationships between things that make up its structure determine its function, which determines its identity in an important way.
This, of course, ties into the whole project. You need to not just have a list of facts about the mind, but a structural functional organizational account of the mind.