Of course, macdougdoug, ‘mechanical’ is used also to mean like a machine, and that is because a machine operates always the same way. My objection has to do with considering the brain and thought of the same nature as the machines man has made. ‘Mechanics’ and ‘machinery’ are trying to categorize thought and brain at a dimension where they don’t belong. I’m not going to get into the discussion you’re suggesting, what is nature, what is not nature. We generally understand what is living and what is, say, inert or lifeless, I think it’s quite obvious.
How does your worldview address the idea of a machine that is more intelligent than a human?
How do you react to this version of the evolutionary timeline : big bang > physics > chemistry > biology > technology (placing technology - including bio-tech - as the most advanced state of being)?
Looked at simply, nature is very much like a perpetual motion machine. A machine constantly regenerating and refining itself. The human brain may be the first to pose the question ‘why’. Why all this? Why here? Why me?…Not being able to definitively answer that has led it to much speculation. And belief. And insanity.
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I don’t trust these studies comparing levels of intelligence. A well-balanced person is not a genius and a genius may be very clumsy in dealing with daily chores. Anyway, behind any sort of machine there must be the human brain, first to conceive it, then to look for its proficiency and to fix it when needed. I think it’s not an issue, machines being more intelligent than human beings. Man has been inventing machines to do what human beings can’t do, like the plane in order to fly, the calculator for complex mathematical operations, the computer to store information, etc. The human brain is always there, behind and in control.
I’m guessing that the human brain has evolved to the point that it can under the right conditions be sensitive to, receive, reflect a ‘dimension’ beyond this one of teeth, blood and bones. But as Jess has pointed out, the condition for this to occur demands that the brain be ‘in order’. The words ‘silent’ and ‘empty’ have also been used to describe the necessary state of the brain to fulfill its potential. This other dimension has been described variously as awareness, attention, intelligence and love…I think that this is what K was pointing out regarding the necessary state of the brain to ‘blossom’: “Where the self is, love is not”.
“So, you will not find truth through effort, it does not matter who says it, whether the ancient books, the ancient saints, or the modern ones. Effort is the very denial of understanding; and it is only the quiet mind, the simple mind, the mind that is still, that is not overtaxed by its own efforts - only such a mind shall understand, shall see truth.”
– Krishnamurti, Bombay, 1950
Fear and distrust cannot be the basis for honest inquiry - it is so limited that it misses the point, so focussed on its narrow beliefs and motivations.
Fear has always been in control of biological existence - we are asking whether the human brain is capable of some significative cognitive leap - whether it can be free of what it knows.
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If you hadn’t reacted to what I said, you’d know I never said or implied that the brain is a machine, but that thought is a mechanism the brain uses to solve problems.
Our problem is that thought cannot solve the problem of the illusion of I, me, mine, the thinker, because the brain never stops thinking, is never silent, still, empty, and therefore not communing with intelligence. Except, that is, when it has an insight, a flash of illumination enabling it to see the error of what its doing, and stops.
Well, Inquiry, I only posted after I read what I commented on, so there’s nothing to add, or rather, I read earlier today an exchange between Bohm and Krishnamurti where they agreed together that thought may run parallel to intelligence and when this happens thought is a pointer of intelligence. I read it on internet, I didn’t see the name of the book because the text was quite long and I stopped reading, but I think this way of putting it - which isn’t insight -is quite interesting.
I don’t quite see that this follows from what I said, but of course I agree that fear and distrust don’t suit serious inquiry… when one is inquiring. As to knowing one cannot pretend one doesn’t know when one knows, one simply questions what one knows.
Me neither, Mac. Fear and distrust?
Yes, the human brain has answered a lot of its questions, but what happens to the standing answers when the latest answers don’t support them?