Brain complexity: learning new tasks (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, November 21, 2017, 15:33 (2341 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: […] Each successive group of pre-homos and homos had gaps of larger brain/skull size adding an average 200cc with each more advanced species. […] Also each larger brain is found with more advanced artifacts. It is an unavoidable conclusion that a larger brain allowed the development of more advanced artifacts. Timing cannot be inverted, as you do.

dhw: There is no inversion, but yes, "the larger brain allowed the development of more advanced artifacts" in the sense that it enabled the initial concept to be implemented. As you have acknowledged, the latest research proves that the brain changes to handle new activities, and so pre-sapiens brains must have expanded when rewiring couldn’t cope. First came the concept of more advanced artefacts, and then the brain expanded through effort to implement the concept -

The fallacy in you thought is my point that the smaller brain does not have the ability to have the concept that causes expansion. Only the larger more complex brain can develop the concept. Survival concepts are limited, and each hominin advance in artifacts show minimal thought advancement until the last 10,000 years of H. Sapiens. A 300,000 year-old sapiens brain had the capacity to develop those thoughts, but took 290,000 years to do it. Your theory is inverted.

dhw: Once again: we know that the brain expands and rewires itself (you call it an “enlarge/shrink mechanism”) AFTER the task is set, so why do you think that your God would have reversed the process and expanded the pre-sapiens brains (and skulls) BEFORE the task was set?

Answered above.

DAVID: This is a non-answer to my paragraph above about the 300,000 year old sapiens brain size. Our large pre-frontal and frontal lobes allowed all the development of civilized knowledge I offered as evidence, very little of which existed 10,000 years ago. The new brain had an advanced ability for thought and subsequent shrinkage, an advanced evolutionary gift from prior homos under God's guidance.

dhw: Welcome to materialism. You keep telling us that the brain is NOT the source of thought, but now the brain has an advanced ability for thought.

Remember my shorthand in what I write. It is understood the brain is an instrument for the soul.

dhw: The large pre-frontal and frontal lobes mark the optimal size (you agree later: “it seems as if this current brain has reached an ideal level of development”). All our concepts from then on are implemented by rewiring/complexification.

Exactly. All the concepts appear after the size enlargement. That is the history of our development. Pre-sapiens could not have envisioned what we know now.

dhw Expansion beyond current size would have proved impractical for the body. No more expansion now (beyond the mini-scale which soon shrinks back), but only complexification. All in a perfectly logical sequence.

DAVID: This sounds almost like me, but isn't. Ancient brains could only think of what they were shown to produce, no more.

dhw: Once again: Ancient brains expanded when the ancient homos thought of things their brains could no longer instruct their bodies to produce and use without expanding. Concept first, brain changes second, as proved by modern science.

What is proven is expansion/contraction of the brain with no skull size change. This doesn't answer how sapiens brains work over 300,000 years, which obviously can be applied to pre-sapiens brains.