Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

There are “cognitive skills” that contribute to “intelligence”. So then the question is: are those skills a certain kind of knowledge that can be learned?

AFAICT some can be, and many probably cannot be *yet,* and others possibly can't be unless you alter the brain. But it's early days and hard to know. Can aphantasiacs learn to create mental imagery? Not yet, maybe in the future (many have visual dreams!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia 

Some things some people can do, in principle others cannot...on that view. So the human mind is *not* universal, then.

Brett, everything you see around you is a hallucination in your mind. Try using your “universal” mind to alter it. Can you do it? Most can’t normally do this, but can if they consume hallucinogens. How do you explain that?

How do I explain how hallucinogens cause hallucinations or the fact people are not normally hallucinating? (I'm not following, I'm afraid). My position is: the mind is universal explainer - not that all minds know how to do everything minds in principle are capable of doing.

i'm not sure how we disagree, then. If this is your position, I feel like your first reply was extremely misleading.

My fault for not expressing things more clearly. Given we agree minds are universal, it cannot be the case that there are "some things some people can do, in principle others cannot" nor that some skills can't be acquired unless we "alter the brain" as you said. :)