Introducing the brain (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, May 25, 2018, 20:03 (2155 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You have just described my theory. If God wants more advanced thought with more complex software, the hardware has to be enlarged to accommodate the larger more complex software.

dhw: Your theory is that you had to have a new computer before the new programmes could be designed. Which comes first: thought or implementation of thought?

Software and hardware are designed to work together as capacity is enlarged. Obviously thought must initiate implementation, as they work together.

dhw: Your theory demands an increase in frontal lobe size to enable the soul to think.
DAVID: Not to just think but to have more advanced thinking, as explained above.

dhw: What does this mean? If the bigger frontal lobe enables the soul to think bigger thoughts, then the smaller frontal lobe only enables it to think smaller thoughts. You still have the frontal lobe responsible for thought, which is the direct opposite of the dualistic belief that the soul does the thinking.

The frontal lobe capacity for working with the soul is the exact point. The soul is a non-material mechanism that is tied to the human brain networks to think. Since neither of us know what is real, my theory is just as likely as yours.

dhw: […] we know that in some cases (musicians, taxi drivers) thinking INCREASES the size of certain parts of the sapiens brain and INCREASES the complexity (the illiterate women learning to read and write). It is therefore perfectly logical that the existing cells of earlier brains should also have complexified and expanded through thought.[ …]

DAVID: And once again you have neatly skipped the related problems: bigger skull to accommodate the bigger brain, and change the mother's pelvis so she can dump the bigger-headed kid without dying in the process or killing the baby. There are three interval changes that must occur here, all coordinated by different DNA's in different organs and people.

dhw: Once again you resort to one of your digressions, to which I give the same answer every time: any major change in the body will require major changes elsewhere in the body.

Which changes require complex design changes in a speciation. It is still only chance or design, to which you have never offered anything substantive, since there is nothing else.

dhw: In the theistic version of my theory I have your God endowing cooperative cell communities with the ability to design all the changes themselves. In your post on my theory of intelligence, you wrote: “You are invoking God's unlimited powers to do anything He wants.” You have him drawing up a computer programme 3.8 billion years ago that will implement every single innovation leading from single cells to every new species, every lifestyle, every natural wonder, and the enlargement of the frontal lobe and the change in the mother’s pelvis. Whatever he didn’t preprogramme had to be personally dabbled on the spot, e.g. he personally taught the weaverbird to build its nest, or he personally expanded Adam and Eve’s skulls, and wiggled Eve’s pelvis, so that they would be able to think bigger thoughts, because thought depends on the brain – except when there isn’t a brain to depend on. One invention (my theory) is replaced by billions of inventions and interventions (your theory). But you have every right to invoke God’s unlimited powers to do anything you want.

Thank you.