Talk:Emergent materialism

I recall a witty quote I read somewhere long ago. "If human beings were so simple that we could understand them, we would be so simple that we couldn't". Anyone know who to attribute that to? --BradBeattie 22:41, 9 May 2005 (UTC)


 * "If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't." -Emerson M. Pugh. Oh google, we love you so. --BradBeattie 22:44, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Needs "translating" so that non-philosophers can understand it all
This page could do with some attention from someone with a good knowledge of philosophy and the ability to translate it into language an intelligent person without philosophical training can understand! I'm a psychologist with a reasonable but basic knowledge of philosophy and I'm really not sure what "an ontological simple" is, for example (although I am familiar with the concept of ontology). A quick google didn't enlighten me much, I found the phrase being used but only in contexts that were no clearer than this wikipedia entry. All I could establish was that it was not a grammatical error (which was my first thought, as I assumed the author meant "ontologically simple"); I can't find a definition at all (although I didn't spend too long looking as I'm supposed to be doing something else). missdipsy (talk) 17:31, 14 January 2010 (UTC)