Do Chairs Exist?

Sabine's lecture pairs nicely, I think, with a recent Vsauce episode asking "Do Chairs Exist". Both, to my mind, explore elements of empiricism and pragmatism, and unearth subtleties of epistemology that most discussion seem to miss. this video

This sounds like you might be able to gain something from the “Do chairs exist?” video by vsauce.[1] Basically, he goes through the different philosophical reasonings of the past and then explores where each one of those fall apart. He goes explicitly into how small things can create something larger but why philosophers have struggled to make the leaps to change definition. He ends on the latest philosophical reasoning, which I think thoroughly explains your conundrum. I’ll try to explain even if it seems less profound here than in the video. Basically, all concepts are emergent behavior of “stuff.” There really isn’t a chair, but “stuff” arranged chair-wise. And humans decide what that boundary is for both chairs and consciousness as they are concepts we apply to stuff that is “chairing” or “being conscious.” A collection of neurons may or may not be conscious by defining how they behave. And the details on where we draw the line for consciousness is no different than where we draw the line for how many atoms we can scrape away from a chair and it still be a chair. [1] this video

"Do chairs exist?" this video Perhaps the desk is "chairing" in those moments. [EDIT] A little more context for those who might not click on a rando youtube link: it's basically an entertaining, whirlwind tour of the philosophy of categorizing and labeling things, explaining various points of view on the topic, then poking holes in them or demonstrating their limitations.

Love this vsauce video for some examples this video There’s still a lot of value in philosophy when we use it to think about how we structure and rationalize the world. Even if science gives us ever better models of the underlying reality of the universe, there’s still the understanding of how we conceptualize that reality and what it means to us. Specifically in ways that don’t require religion or supernatural beings, nor in purely psychological means of perception or physiology. I think of it as the study of the emergent properties of complex information processing. It can do things like help us talk about the minds of others, for example future AI, potential extraterrestrial intelligences, or even other terrestrial intelligences (dolphins, octopus, etc)

Given the title, as good an excuse as any to point people to the Vsauce video "Do Chairs Exist?": * this video (Can't believe a half-hour video on ontology has >13M views.)