Big brain evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, January 21, 2018, 15:16 (2279 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Of course it had to be increased. That can't occur from chance evolution. It is a purposeful enlargement provided by God.

dhw: You are once more dodging the issue. I have never said that the expansion resulted from chance! If a new concept requires expansion, and the cell communities of the brain respond to that requirement, there is no chance involved. And at all times I have acknowledged the possibility that the cellular intelligence or inventive mechanism required for all such changes may have been supplied by your God from the very beginning.

Cell communities are your invention by which you propose evolution shows a purposeful way of creating advances in life's new forms. I see no science behind it, and find it totally unacceptable for that reason.

dhw: We don’t need computer analogies. You just need to respond to the contradiction (“discontinuity”) I have pointed out above.

DAVID: I see no discontinuity. You want push: concepts exceed capacity, and I want pull. An existing small brain cannot have the new concepts until a larger size brain appears for use by the s/s/c.

dhw: I’m sorry that you cannot see the contradiction between your belief that the SOUL is responsible for ideas, but pre-sapiens souls could not have had new ideas until the brain had already expanded enough to implement them.

You cannot see my point that more complex ideas require a more complex cortex for the soul to use and develop. Ideas/concepts must appear first, then the implementation. You refuse to recognize brains only needed to be in a survival mode of implementation until 30,00 years ago. And we know recent implementation caused the brain to complexify more and shrink. The only point we scientifically know about implementation is shrinkage, despite how you try to twist that point. Note the backwards thought below:

dhw: […] a brain can only produce what its complexity or (pre-sapiens) its capacity allows, and so if the capacity does not allow production of the new concept (the artefact), it must expand, and if existing complexity (sapiens) does not allow implementation of the concept (reading and writing) it must add to its complexity. Expansion/ complexification does not precede artefacts/reading & writing but is caused by the process of implementation. The reading and writing example has been confirmed by modern science.

DAVID: Of course the brain had to expand to allow sapiens to evolve. We are far apart on how that happened. Otherwise your summary is correct.

dhw: My summary explains the process whereby expansion/complexification is caused by the implementation of the concept, as opposed to preceding the concept. If the "soul" is the source of the concept, I can’t see any “otherwise” - either my summary is correct or it is not.

As I've shown implementation causes shrinkage.