Big brain evolution: changes in sapiens skull shape (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, February 02, 2018, 13:46 (2275 days ago) @ David Turell

I’m juxtaposing parts of David’s post for the sake of continuity.

DAVID: I've simple said God uses evolution at his desired pace. My reasoning about God is from what I see in the history of evolution. […]

You asked why sapiens took 270,000 years to come up with new concepts, and I gave you a clear explanation. I asked why your God took millions of years to implement a concept you think he had from the very beginning. Your answer then was: he “has his own reasons”, and now this was what he “desired”. Maybe God desired what the history of evolution shows us: a higgledy-piggledy, ever-changing bush of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders, including humans.

DAVID: With a goalless endpoint and no apparent purpose has always been your approach, except create a spectacle for God's enjoyment. He appears to be much more serious than that from the evidence at hand. Evolution creating humans is why beyond an entertaining TV show!

We don’t have a clue how it will all end, so it is absurd to talk of an endpoint. Meanwhile, I’m quite willing to jettison the word “enjoyment”, and stick to your own proposal of “watch with interest”. That still makes it a spectacle, and a spectacle is a goal. In passing: TV is not just “entertainment”, unless you find the news reports of millions of starving refugees, of terrorist atrocities, of political oppression “entertaining”. The only evidence we have “at hand” is the ever-changing bush of life, which includes humans, and as above you still haven’t explained why this does not suggest that your God’s purpose was to produce an ever-changing bush of life, including humans.

dhw: According to you, the cortex does not do the thinking, because you are a dualist and you believe the soul/self/consciousness does the thinking. And so the s/s/c (software) uses the brain (computer) to IMPLEMENT its ideas, not to DEVELOP them.

DAVID: You are deliberately misinterpreting my theory. The s/s/c uses the cortex to think. The s/s/c (software) both develops concepts and implementation by using the brain (computer). As you sit at your computer and create a play, you come up with the concept for a play and then you create the dialogue (implement) all using your s/s/c. How can you separate concept and implementation as you attempted above.

Separating concept and implementation is the whole essence of dualism! You keep agreeing that the s/s/c does the thinking and the brain does the implementing, and you separate the two processes with your analogy of software (soul) and computer (brain). As for your attempt at a new analogy, the dialogue and stage directions ARE the concept of the play, conceived and developed entirely by my s/s/c. The computer (brain) does not contribute a single thought, and I do not “use it” or even need it to think! I use it to implement my thoughts by giving them the material form of material letters, and I use the printer to put the material letters on material paper.

dhw: As above: the software (s/s/c) does the thinking, and so it makes absolutely no sense to say that the computer (brain) had to expand before the software (s/s/c) could think of its new ideas.

DAVID: Makes perfect sense to me as I sit at my computer, coming up with answers to your statements (concepts) and typing responses (implementation).

According to your hypothesis, you have to have a computer (enlarged brain) BEFORE you can think up your answers! (And I must have a computer before I think up my play.) Are you really telling me you can’t think of your answers without the computer? Of course you aren’t. The very idea is absurd.