Brain complexity: baby brains under study (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, January 21, 2018, 14:01 (2277 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Please see my entry from Cosmos today. It covers all of this.

dhw: Please see my reply. The experiment is with six-month old and not new born babies and tells us that babies learn in bursts, which vary from one individual to another (confirming my observations of my twin grandsons from birth). It does not tell us that newborn babies start from zero, or that the brain learns to use the soul, and it does not even discuss what dictates the individuality of the responses.

DAVID: Despite your comments, the newborn is on autmatic pilot at birth. The cortex is very underdeveloped and only finishes its developmentc at +/- 25 years 0f age. From birth:
http://www.urbanchildinstitute.org/why-0-3/baby-and-brain

I shan’t reproduce the whole article, as there is nothing that I would disagree with in principle. Two quotes I’d like to comment on, though:
"At birth, a baby knows her mother’s voice and may be able to recognize the sounds of stories her mother read to her while she was still in the womb.”
There are different theories about how much information a baby absorbs while still in the womb, but it is widely recognized that as well as positive information (the voice, music, smell) there is negative input – e.g. stress: if it can hear soothing sounds, it can also hear disturbing sounds – which will affect the baby even before it is born. Both contradict your claim that the newborn self starts from zero, but both need to be linked to the second quote:

“Therefore, a child’s experiences not only determine what information enters her brain, but also influence how her brain processes information.”
The article makes no reference to your dualistic concept of a “soul”, or even the mind, or the murky realm of the subconscious mind, which we ourselves have not yet ventured into. The focus (understandably) is entirely on the brain. And indeed the brain may well be the source of the self (materialism), but you prefer to forget your own dualism when it suits you to do so (as when you tell us the brain is the source of ideas, mental activity is biochemical, and as below:)

DAVID’S comment: The newborn has to learn to use what it is given. It's self is a blank slate as it starts out in life.

Yes to your first comment, which applies to babies, teenagers, and even octogenarians (when confronted by information/experiences that are new to us). Your second comment is a non sequitur, though nobody knows exactly how much of the new born’s “self” is already present. You continue to ignore the ever contentious issue of how much is nature and how much is nurture. Nature is what decides how even a baby’s self will react to nurture. It may be material, as in this article, or immaterial, as in the dualism you espouse, but the claim that the newborn self is a blank slate receives no support whatsoever from any of the articles you have quoted.