Brain complexity: more important than size (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 28, 2017, 14:13 (2334 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Do you or do you not accept the findings of modern science that the brain changes in response to concepts, and not in anticipation of them?

Your response is a repetition of all the points already covered. I can only repeat the explanations I have already offered.

DAVID: You have not explained why each stage of hominin starts 200cc larger, composed primarily of frontal and prefrontal cortical growth, more neurons, more connections, and then subsequent to that growth the artifacts improve and are more complex. It is that part of the brain, used by the soul, which thinks. Size first, use second by evidence in history. (dhw’s bold)

Once again you have the brain thinking (bolded), whereas you keep telling us it is the soul that thinks. Your usual contradiction (though I am not taking sides.) There is no way of telling that the artefacts arrived SUBSEQUENT to the growth. The implement is only there when the brain has done its work and expanded, just as it finishes rewiring when the Indian women can write.

DAVID: You insist that an urgency for implementation forces the size jump (evolutionary mechanism unknown). But history tells us the sapiens brain arrived 300,000 years ago, with most implementation in the past 10,000 years. If it was required by necessity, what took so long (290,000 years)?

You have already agreed that progress is made through individuals. I do not accept that there was no progress for 290,000 years, but 10,000 years ago there were some particularly bright individuals who came up with concepts that would have caused rapid change (complexification).

DAVID: My answer, sapiens had to learn to use the new capacity. And with complexification the brain and skull shrunk a little.

The new, optimum capacity was reached 300,000 years ago. Complexification had to take over, and was so efficient that the brain no longer needs quite as many cells as it had before.

DAVID: This tells us it was an early development in evolution in early hominins, because we see no tiny enlargements, but 200 cc jumps in size, with each stage not gradually enlarging, but complexifying at the same size achieved when the new hominin stage appeared.

200 cc, you have told us, was the average, but I am quite happy to accept that there would have been a process of complexifying until the capacity was no longer adequate to cope with new demands. Then there would have had to be a jump. Then complexification within the new capacity would have sufficed until new concepts required another jump. 300,000 years ago complexification took over from jumps. What’s the problem?

DAVID: Since I believe God speciates, He caused the necessary enlargements to occur.

Or he may have created the mechanism which enabled the necessary enlargements to occur. And in all this welter of repeated objections, you still haven’t answered my question: Do you or do you not accept the findings of modern science that the brain changes in response to concepts, and not in anticipation of them?