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Well, I would have picked a set on wheels to facilitate the movement. And, no, I'm not still beating my wife.
If there were no intelligence, then the stick would always be just a stick. It is intelligence which is required to imagine that stick being something else, a lever, a probe, a backscratcher etc.
A tool is a tool, regardless of complexity or simplicity. There is no such thing as a tool which did not first require some intelligence to figure out how to make it useful.
And things may become more than what they are. A baseball bat is just a baseball bat, but if it is used as a club, then it is a weapon. It doesn't cease to be a baseball bat, but it has become more.
Did you ever beat your wife? That seems like a weird thing to just blurt out but OK. So did you move the goalposts when you went from human intelligence to just intelligence when I pointed out animals could use tools as well?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Grandstander
That isn't moving the goalposts. I made a statement. When it was called into question, I elaborated on what I meant. I refined the parameters, clearly included those parameters in my question to Mircea, and received a response that suggested there had been no such refinement.
And a stick used as a tool certainly is an invention, without the human invention aspect, it is just a stick. With the human brain involved, it becomes a tool.
My point was that you stated we couldn't use our minds to invent something to measure our minds. No one invented a stick so that should be OK right?
Grandstander wouldn't do that. He's a nice person, generally...well I assume. I suppose both he and me could have fourteen people in our basements that we're about to do unspeakable things to involving scorpions and barbed wire and nobody would know...but that's probably not the case and he's a good guy.
Grandstander wouldn't do that. He's a nice person, generally...well I assume. I suppose both he and me could have fourteen people in our basements that we're about to do unspeakable things to involving scorpions and barbed wire and nobody would know...but that's probably not the case and he's a good guy.
I do know what that means thanks to this forum. I was just messing with him. I was setting him up for "have you stopped beating your wife with a stick?" He does change his wording whenever someone counters back at him though. The person he did it to the first time hasn't even responded but he felt the need to mention that they didn't object like that should mean something.
Hey Grandstander...you're a good guy. It's just that you're wrong about the word "spiritual" and I am correct, and I will continue to argue this, making longer and longer posts, for the next forty years, or until one of us dies or is unable to type, if necessary.
My point was that you stated we couldn't use our minds to invent something to measure our minds. No one invented a stick so that should be OK right?
I didn't state that, I wrote that the problem was that the mind was what we were using and that it was all we had. Has your disagreement been based on this misunderstanding?
I didn't state that, I wrote that the problem was that the mind was what we were using and that it was all we had. Has your disagreement been based on this misunderstanding?
Your exact statement was this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Grandstander
What makes figuring out how our brains work so difficult, is that the tool we use for this exploration is also the subject of the study.
Mircea then mentioned that hasn't been true in decades. Then Mircea mentioned various electronic instruments used to study the brain.
All of those instruments were more or less extensions of the brain. There are no sentient-machines, like you mentioned in another post. The brain interprets all data from those machines. Therefore, the brain is still trying to study itself.
Regarding this trivial matter that probably shouldn't have lasted beyond one post...Referee Clintone announces Grandstander as the winner!
Congradulations! Your prize is: lost time.
Or, you could look at it like Mircea is the more correct because we haven't been relying on introspection, but rather on harder sorts of data, to study the brain, and therefore us studying our own brains is probably a lot less likely to cause problems...but that depends on what kind of studying we're doing.
Mircea gets a prize too: Also, lost time.
I get the best prize though. I get the dumb prize because I browsed through this whole thread looking for your posts.
Mircea then mentioned that hasn't been true in decades. Then Mircea mentioned various electronic instruments used to study the brain.
All of those instruments were more or less extensions of the brain. There are no sentient-machines, like you mentioned in another post. The brain interprets all data from those machines. Therefore, the brain is still trying to study itself.
Regarding this trivial matter that probably shouldn't have lasted beyond one post...Referee Clintone announces Grandstander as the winner!
Congradulations! Your prize is: lost time.
Or, you could look at it like Mircea is the more correct because we haven't been relying on introspection, but rather on harder sorts of data, to study the brain...but that depends on what kind of studying we're doing.
So now the tool has be sentient? I really don't understand why you are calling those instruments "extensions of the brain."
So now the tool has be sentient? I really don't understand why you are calling those instruments "extensions of the brain."
They were designed by the brain. Their data is useless unless deciphered by the brain. I don't know how they wouldn't be.
The important thing is, this is a silly discussion...because you can mean different things by "study the brain." Some of those things will be made harder by the fact that the brain is trying to study itself. Some of those things will not...and I don't want to dive too far into this dumpster fire.
If I'm the one trying to figure out why I have a sense of awareness, for example, there could very well be no acceptable explanation for that to me...and that's how I'd see Grandstander as correct. Also, we're still going to use a lot of introspection in our daily lives to try to study our own minds...and we can be pretty biased in that way and nobody else can really do it.
If we're talking about neurology though, and probably most of the hard, modern knowledge we have about the brain that came from modern machines...obviously Mircea will be the more correct. The fact that the mind invented and is reading the data from machines about itself will not usually be a problem.
Grandstander wouldn't do that. He's a nice person, generally...well I assume. I suppose both he and me could have fourteen people in our basements that we're about to do unspeakable things to involving scorpions and barbed wire and nobody would know...but that's probably not the case and he's a good guy.
I make it a rule never to have more than six basement victims at a time.
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