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

by dhw, Saturday, February 17, 2018, 12:13 (2259 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: And you are not following my concept. only an advanced hardware brain allows advanced thought. Erectus s/s/c is not sapiens s/s/c.

dhw: No, I don’t follow your concept, and I keep pointing out that you use NDEs as evidence for your dualistic belief that the s/s/c is responsible for thought. That is why dualists believe that in earthly life there are TWO separate entities that work together: 1) mind, 2) body. Forget about “advanced”. Thought is thought, whether it’s advanced or not. The brain does not “allow” thought because, as you keep agreeing, the s/s/c does the thinking and the brain gives material expression to the s/s/c’s thoughts, just as the hardware gives material expression to the software.

DAVID: I'll accept your comment, but not the point about 'allow'. You've not answered the juxtaposition in history of complex brain and complex artifacts, as current humans show, and is obvious in past history. A complex s/s/c requires a complex cortex to function at an advanced level of thought.
And: .. enlargement always proceeds improved artifacts, and I believe God provided the advance since He arranges for speciation.

I have answered the question every time you have raised it. The artefacts can only appear when the brain has finished making the changes needed for implementation. You say your God changed the brain BEFORE implementation. I suggest implementation caused the changes. The outcome is the same for both hypotheses: the artefacts appear alongside the enlarged brain (pre-sapiens). Of course you won’t find the artefacts preceding the enlargement, and of course you will find artefacts made after the enlargement once the new concept has been implemented. Later generations may continue to produce the same artefacts for thousands of years. But the question is what CAUSED the enlargement in the first place. The implementation of modern artefacts CAUSES brain change, so it is logical to assume that there was a similar process in the past.

DAVID (later in the post): The only size modification we know is shrinkage, no matter how you twist it!

This is not “twisting”. Nobody knows why the brain enlarged, and so we propose hypotheses. We DO know that implementation causes modifications now, and so once again it is not unreasonable to propose that implementation caused modifications in the past. You yourself used that argument in relation to complexity and shrinkage, and you now acknowledge that enlargement is a modification.

dhw: …a million years ago brains must have been plastic enough to allow for lots of new neurons.
DAVID: We don't know the brain and skull won't expand again, and ancient brains jumped in size by 200 cc with each enlargement. Adding the need for increased skull size means brain plasticity alone is only part of a complex process in advancement. Not by chance. God in action.

How does all this mean that the pre-sapiens brain was not plastic enough to add more than a few neurons? If it was plastic enough for your God to add lots of neurons before the implementation of new concepts, it was plastic enough to add lots of neurons during the process of implementation.

xxxxx

DAVID: As a living physical person I can only sense my s/s/c through my functioning brain.

Same as before. “You” ARE your self/soul/consciousness. In the living physical dualist, the self/soul/consciousness is aware of itself. The functioning brain is not the source of its awareness or indeed of any thought, as you have agreed at the top of this thread and elsewhere - over and over again.

DAVID: Currently my s/s/c is in my skull doing my immaterial thinking.

Exactly.

DAVID: I believe my s/s/c is a quantum mechanism totally intimately interfaced with the physical brain (Penrose). As I think I am in control of my s/s/c which I formed from childhood. My concept of dualism differs from yours. The s/s/c mechanism is an organized quantum arrangement, yet to be discovered. It can separate and go into an afterlife. Only its thought capacity is immaterial.

None of this means that the self depends on the functioning brain to do its THINKING! Interface yes, but your immaterial s/s/c, your “I” – which has developed since childhood and does the thinking – is in control of your material brain, which provides information and does the material expressing and implementing.