Rishon Rishon

The human brain, considered as a computer, seems to be a classical computer - an approximation to the Universal Turing Machine. Theory suggests therefore that what one human mind can learn, another mind can learn also (given sufficient resources such as time, food and memory).

So I think Razib is mistaken, although it's true that future knowledge may enhance our perception in interesting new ways.

Animals can't create new knowledge (they never seek explanations), so the animal/human divide is fundamentally different from the parent/child divide (which is merely a matter of learning).

As for the man/G-d divide, well...

Tom: The parent/child divide isn't merely a matter of learning, at least when they are small. There are things small children are not capable of understanding no matter how much they know.

And as I said, there are things that we know, but not with the intellect. The intellect builds on these things much more than we appreciate.

Alan Turing himself believed in non-computable process.

Of course, that never stopped him from postulating the Turing Heresy.

David: can you give an example for either case?

Jinnderella: do you claim that our minds depend upon non-computable processes occurring in the host brain?

I, too, tripped over "speech is a constraint on insight".

But, I think that what he meant is that language constrains our understanding of our own insights. We form arguements with words, but sometimes -- when a new idea comes along -- words can't meet the task at hand.

We don't need to explain the taste of apple to ourselves because we're familiar with it and remember it abstractly. No words required. Insight, revelation, isn't so easy to deal with because it's new, not familiar. And, when language fails to give form to our insight, we tend to dismiss the idea as strange and, in (and without) a word, unformable. Frustrated by inadequate language to express it, we doubt our new insight.

And so, "Speech (language in the head) is a constraint on insight."

At least I think that's what he meant... :)

Ooopsie. Should read: Frustrated by inadequate language to express it, even to ourselves, we doubt our new insight.
But you get the drift...

Tom: Small children don't understand the concept of time, and won't understand it no matter how much you try to explain. Though they are completely capable of mastering the language of time, and so can fool you, e.g. they can say, "tomorrow it's my birthday" but they really have no idea what tomorrow is.

Adults have a little-realized sense of Proprioception - the knowledge of where all the parts of our body are at all times. We use this same sense to drive a car, plus many other activities. Without it we would understand much less of the world.

It's not hard to imagine senses which would make us aware of things now invisible to us: a 4th spatial dimension, the wave-packets of matter, and maybe others not part of our knowable universe.

Spork: I think you are agreeing with me. We tend to doubt that which we can't understand cognitively, i.e. put into words.

Tom, i don't know. I can't make that claim, as i am yet unsure if non-computable processes exist myself. I'm just parroting Turing.
Umm, "speech is a constraint on insight" only until we can get over the local hill we're working on in razib's topology. For example, Einstein originally thought entanglement too absurd to occur in nature, and that quantum theory had to be incomplete-- it is difficult for even geniuses to "think outside the box". We've had to derive a new language to think about quantum theory. But that's just one example, there are many other hills.