Big brain evolution: learning new tasks (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, May 02, 2018, 14:48 (2179 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Neat sidestep. The Mother's body has to accommodate a bigger bay head. Two separate bodies are involved. No way around it!
dhw: Why did you leave out my next sentence? “That is why I emphasize that the body is a community of cell communities which cooperate.”
DAVID: Still sidestepping. The baby is one body, the mother is another body. How did they ( cell committees) communicate the differing needs?

I realize that you are much happier changing the subject from brain evolution to the pelvis of the mother, and I could ask you a host of questions about HOW your God dabbled or preprogrammed every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder 3.8 billion years ago. Ah well..."Two bodies"? So long as the baby is in the womb, it is physically joined to and totally dependent on the mother. What difference does all this make? Whatever you think your God did to ensure that the cell communities cooperated successfully to accommodate the bigger head, could also have been achieved by your God giving the cell communities the ability to work out the necessary changes for themselves. Or do you think your God was incapable of such a design?

DAVID: The only material needed is the brain and its level of function. The s/s/c has to use something material. No way around it. Material brain, immaterial thought is recognized dualism, before trying to explain the mechanism. I am not your dualist theory; I am my dualist theory. Don't squeeze me into your mental box!
dhw: There is no disagreement on any of this! In dualism the immaterial s/s/c uses the material brain. The disagreement lies in your insistence that the immaterial s/s/c cannot think new thoughts until the material brain has already changed, together with statements to the effect that a sick brain will produce sick thoughts and that only a more complex brain can “give” more complex concepts, all of which are materialist arguments that contradict the dualism you believe in.

DAVID: You just contradicted yourself. Yes, the s/s/c must use a material brain which will express its thoughts, which if sick will be garbled, if simple can only produce simple thought, and if complex can produce complex thought, each initially expressed by the s/s/c to the brain.

I have pointed out your materialist arguments which contradict your belief in dualism. I’m afraid I can make no sense of your sentence, apart from the s/s/c using the brain to express its thoughts, which is fine. Please clarify: what is sick, what is garbled, and is it the simple brain or the simple s/s/c that produces simple thought?

dhw: But I have always accepted your first objection: we know that the cell communities can achieve smaller changes (adaptations), but we don’t know the extent of their talents, which is why my hypothesis is a hypothesis and not a fact.
DAVID: Nothing is fact except the new species exist, and each of us has a favorite theory in which mine includes God.
dhw: Mine can also include God.
DAVID: But it really doesn't. You are an Agnostic.

An agnostic neither believes nor disbelieves, and so any hypothesis will inevitably include the possibility of a God. My agnosticism is totally irrelevant to the logic of the two theistic hypotheses.