Human evolution; sticks and stones (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, January 13, 2018, 14:32 (2294 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I don't know why the website published it three times. Perhaps impressed by it? You skipped over the argument between us: push or pull? I prefer pull. Bigger to allow for concepts to develop, as shown by artifacts that appear after growth in size.

dhw: I don’t know how you can say I skipped the argument. I have listed ALL the arguments! However, as I keep repeating, the artefacts could not appear until the brain had expanded sufficiently to produce them. “Allow…to develop” is another of your obfuscations. According to your dualistic beliefs (see “Consciousness and brain damage”) the “soul” produces the concepts, and the brain implements them.

Of course the brain in an expanded form then produced more complex artifacts. That is my point in push pull which you just wiggled around. You want the desire to have new ideas push the brain to grow larger. I view it as a very wishful theory supported by no evidence. I prefer to start with evidence. It is an obvious time table that more advanced artifacts are the result of a larger brain. We had a larger brain 300,000 years ago, but the advanced artifacts only started to appear in the past 30,000 years in cave art. Your desire/push theory should have logically seen the brain produce when it appeared. Why the gap? And don't admonish me about using the word brain only. We have sorted out the brain/soul relationship in my theory of dualism.

As for obfuscations,' allow to develop' is exactly what my pull concept means. A soul can only go so far creating concepts operating in a much less complex, smaller, brain. Habilis could not have possibly conceived of what erectus developed, but erectus appeared because habilis desired it, is your aeryfairy idea.