I can disagree however I want. To demonstrate, I will go backwards.
Animals can learn, but only some things (rats can't learn a prime number sequence, cats can't learn periodic phenomena like cars on a road or a revolving door).
People with some mental disabilities are incapable of a certain kind of thought (some people cannot learn to recognize faces).
Children go through well-documented developmental stages during which they acquire cognitive abilities. They are inhibited in learning certain skills by biochemical imbalances interfering with cognitive processes, and by underdeveloped portions of the brain, such as the prefrontal lobe (area responsible for planning future consequences), which inhibit the speed and concentration which they can apply to a problem.
Though the human brain may be in a technical sense a universal computer, it is not infinitely reconfigurable. Areas of the brain are specialized and adapted to certain tasks, such that if one is compromised in one area, a class of abilities may be compromised or destroyed.
I have disagreed with your argument not by showing that ideas don't follow logically, or by showing directly that the initial ideas you presented are false, but by making empirical claims which conflict with your conclusions, and inferring that your supporting premises are flawed.
For example, Newton's laws of physics are perfectly consistent (as far as I know, with the sole exception of the ultraviolet catastrophe), but when the data set is expanded, they fail to predict subtleties in astronomical-scale and high-speed motion, and quantum effects.
This is what I frequently find frustrating about your writing. It's not enough to posit a self-consistent theory, and draw conclusions about reality from it. The empirical test is the needle through which all theories must pass, and "actually this fact is not true, contrary to what everyone thinks ... " is not an acceptable way to do that. Animals, children, and the mentally disabled seem to have intellectual abilities which vary on a near-continuum from can't-learn-it to can.
Of course it is pure hubris to say "That means it's possible for them to learn anything." because we can only assess the ability to learn that which it is within our capability to understand. Food for thought.
What reason do you have to think that animals can learn?
There exist people who lack the face-recognition hardware but who have learnt how to recognise faces. So this would suggest that the people who haven't learnt still have the ability to (as hard as it may be), they just haven't yet.
If you give me any examples of empirical tests that contradict my claims, I will change my position and blog about it. (AFAIK all my claims are consistent with reality/observations/tests.)
One corrects errors in one's rendering of reality by conjecturing and refuting. If the rate at which one corrects errors in one's rendering (by conjecturing and refuting) is slower than the changes occurring in the environment that one is rendering, one's model of reality will deteriorate over time.
It is no argument to say that someone struggling with a decreased ability to rapidly conjecture and refute can simply be informed about a new theory which will serve him better, as perhaps you are assuming. From the perspective of the person who is unable to conjecture and refute fast enough, someone else's theories are just one more theory to conjecture and refute about; not a theory that is inherently better than any of a million other possibilities.
So how does a person figure out what to conjecture about to create new knowledge? The beginnings of the route to any truth is embedded in any knowledge. Therefore the beginnings of the route to all truth is embedded in any knowledge. One learns which theories should be considered plausible, by having accurate knowledge to begin with. One comes up with plausible conjectures because of good knowledge to begin with. But as one's rendering of reality deteriorates (because one's mental speed is slower than the changes in reality), one's relative knowledge about reality deteriorates, as well. Therefore, one's ability to determine one's "route" to new knowledge deteriorates, because the route to new knowledge is embedded in old knowledge. And the old knowledge is faulty and falling farther behind the changes in reality.. Hence, an inability to conjecture and refute rapidly about reality not only decreases one's knowledge about a changing environment, but also decreases one's ability to catch up to the changes (by finding routes to grow knowledge that are more efficient.) So not only does one not conjecture and refute rapidly enough, this slowing cause one to conjecture and refute *about the wrong things*.
This process is called becoming delusional or becoming psychotic. And certainly biological changes can slow down the process by which one conjectures and refutes, starting this malignant process. Those suffering strokes in particular parts of the brain, for example, often become delusional, and strokes can certainly slow down processing speed.
And there is similarly no reason to believe that genes cannot adversely affect processing speed, leading to rapidly deteriorating renderings of reality when the brain rapidly changes (for example in adolescence, just prior to the beginnings of schizophrenia).
Ironically, those who are becoming delusional are conjecturing and refuting, just not efficiently enough.Their brain is simply malfunctioning and not allowing them to conjecture and refute rapidly enough, and hence not allowing the needed growth of knowledge that would allow them to conjecture and refute about the right things.
The process is very similar to the aging process. The condition of our body deteriorates faster than our ability to model the changes. And so we die. When we similarly cannot model the deteriorations in our mental renderings of reality (fast enough), we become delusional (mental death). We lose beautiful minds.
Animals can learn, but only some things (rats can't learn a prime number sequence, cats can't learn periodic phenomena like cars on a road or a revolving door).
People with some mental disabilities are incapable of a certain kind of thought (some people cannot learn to recognize faces).
Children go through well-documented developmental stages during which they acquire cognitive abilities. They are inhibited in learning certain skills by biochemical imbalances interfering with cognitive processes, and by underdeveloped portions of the brain, such as the prefrontal lobe (area responsible for planning future consequences), which inhibit the speed and concentration which they can apply to a problem.
Though the human brain may be in a technical sense a universal computer, it is not infinitely reconfigurable. Areas of the brain are specialized and adapted to certain tasks, such that if one is compromised in one area, a class of abilities may be compromised or destroyed.
I have disagreed with your argument not by showing that ideas don't follow logically, or by showing directly that the initial ideas you presented are false, but by making empirical claims which conflict with your conclusions, and inferring that your supporting premises are flawed.
For example, Newton's laws of physics are perfectly consistent (as far as I know, with the sole exception of the ultraviolet catastrophe), but when the data set is expanded, they fail to predict subtleties in astronomical-scale and high-speed motion, and quantum effects.
This is what I frequently find frustrating about your writing. It's not enough to posit a self-consistent theory, and draw conclusions about reality from it. The empirical test is the needle through which all theories must pass, and "actually this fact is not true, contrary to what everyone thinks ... " is not an acceptable way to do that. Animals, children, and the mentally disabled seem to have intellectual abilities which vary on a near-continuum from can't-learn-it to can.
Of course it is pure hubris to say "That means it's possible for them to learn anything." because we can only assess the ability to learn that which it is within our capability to understand. Food for thought.
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There exist people who lack the face-recognition hardware but who have learnt how to recognise faces. So this would suggest that the people who haven't learnt still have the ability to (as hard as it may be), they just haven't yet.
If you give me any examples of empirical tests that contradict my claims, I will change my position and blog about it. (AFAIK all my claims are consistent with reality/observations/tests.)
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It is no argument to say that someone struggling with a decreased ability to rapidly conjecture and refute can simply be informed about a new theory which will serve him better, as perhaps you are assuming. From the perspective of the person who is unable to conjecture and refute fast enough, someone else's theories are just one more theory to conjecture and refute about; not a theory that is inherently better than any of a million other possibilities.
So how does a person figure out what to conjecture about to create new knowledge? The beginnings of the route to any truth is embedded in any knowledge. Therefore the beginnings of the route to all truth is embedded in any knowledge. One learns which theories should be considered plausible, by having accurate knowledge to begin with. One comes up with plausible conjectures because of good knowledge to begin with. But as one's rendering of reality deteriorates (because one's mental speed is slower than the changes in reality), one's relative knowledge about reality deteriorates, as well. Therefore, one's ability to determine one's "route" to new knowledge deteriorates, because the route to new knowledge is embedded in old knowledge. And the old knowledge is faulty and falling farther behind the changes in reality.. Hence, an inability to conjecture and refute rapidly about reality not only decreases one's knowledge about a changing environment, but also decreases one's ability to catch up to the changes (by finding routes to grow knowledge that are more efficient.) So not only does one not conjecture and refute rapidly enough, this slowing cause one to conjecture and refute *about the wrong things*.
This process is called becoming delusional or becoming psychotic. And certainly biological changes can slow down the process by which one conjectures and refutes, starting this malignant process. Those suffering strokes in particular parts of the brain, for example, often become delusional, and strokes can certainly slow down processing speed.
And there is similarly no reason to believe that genes cannot adversely affect processing speed, leading to rapidly deteriorating renderings of reality when the brain rapidly changes (for example in adolescence, just prior to the beginnings of schizophrenia).
Ironically, those who are becoming delusional are conjecturing and refuting, just not efficiently enough.Their brain is simply malfunctioning and not allowing them to conjecture and refute rapidly enough, and hence not allowing the needed growth of knowledge that would allow them to conjecture and refute about the right things.
The process is very similar to the aging process. The condition of our body deteriorates faster than our ability to model the changes. And so we die. When we similarly cannot model the deteriorations in our mental renderings of reality (fast enough), we become delusional (mental death). We lose beautiful minds.
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