Simon Conway Morris on animal intelligence (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, January 18, 2017, 18:06 (2658 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I don't get tangled up in all of your suppositions. My brain develops as I do in infancy. I control my brain, which it allows. In other words I use a part of my brain with my consciousness to make brain decisions. My consciousness is received by my brain for my use. All based on NDE research.

dhw: This is a head-in-the-sand approach. Firstly, we do not know the source of consciousness or what triggered the enhanced consciousness of humans. Secondly, you refuse to acknowledge that this has major bearings on the question of our identity – the “I” you keep talking about. You claim that humans “use” the enlarged brain to “develop new thoughts and concepts”. How can you have new concepts and thoughts without consciousness? NDEs imply that human consciousness exists independently of the brain, and the brain is only a receiver. Which comes first, then: the message or the receiver? If you really think the brain is the receiver, then it is consciousness and not the brain which develops new thoughts and concepts. That is dualism. It is materialists who argue that the consciousness which provides the new thoughts and concepts comes from the enlarged brain. It certainly is a tangle, simply because we don’t know the source of consciousness. However, it is a different tangle from your belief that consciousness comes from the brain and does not come from the brain.

Look at the biology of the brain as it develops in the newborn baby as it explains my view. The baby is born and knows how to breathe. It knows how to suckle. It feels the urge to pee and poop and does. Its organs work automatically and are run by lower centers in the hypothalamus controlling pulse rate, respirator rate, etc. The higher centers in the frontal and pre-frontal cortex slowly develop as the infant experiences the world and gradually becomes the receiver for consciousness. It learns to use its consciousness which becomes molded to its personality by the plasticity of the brain manipulating the consciousness. It is an active back and forth activity to develop personality and to learn thought processes. Your thinking in the above paragraph is totally confused as you compartmentalize the brain and consciousness as totally separate. They are in one sense but they are not. The brain and its received consciousness work as smoothly together as a well-oiled machine would. I control my consciousness completely, because I am allowed to under this arrangement. Yes, I am a dualist, but the brain and consciousness work as one!