Introducing the brain: half a brain is just fine (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, February 24, 2020, 18:45 (1522 days ago) @ David Turell

Title edited back to what it was. Is that why there was no response given?

by David Turell @, Sunday, February 23, 2020, 18:19 (1 day, 0 hours, 21 min. ago) @ dhw

DAVID: A conclusion: more advanced artifacts appear only after a new-sized brain is present.

dhw: The artefact cannot appear until the concept has been IMPLEMENTED! ... First the idea, then the complexification or expansion as a RESULT of implementing the idea.

Throwing out a big term like 'implementation' is not an explanation unless implementation is described and shows how it enlarges the brain. My version: an early Homo knows he can kill with a thrown stone or with a sharpened stout stick. He already uses sharpened stone tools to skin animals and scrape bark off wood. His present brain realizes if he put a sharpened stone on the end of a long stick, he could throw this new invention and kill at a distance. Making the new concept is easy hand work. Why does this enlarge the existing brain that thought up the new tool? It obviously does not. A simple advance from known concepts combined.

dhw: Once more, here is the sequence: Species A has new idea which requires expansion for its implementation. This leads to Species B with bigger brain. Species B goes on for thousands of years with its bigger brain coping with all its new ideas until bigger brain can no longer cope with The Next Big Thing and once again requires expansion for implementation. Even bigger brain leads to Species C. Process repeated until finally brain can expand no more and complexification takes over. Now you have H. sapiens.

Same lame example. Advances are based on past concepts. The 'Next Big Thing' is what? Whose brain recognizes the new need? The old species or the new species with the bigger brain? Not nebulous but concrete thought is required in this discussion to be logical.

DAVID: If a prior species does not have the brain complexity which allows the self/consciousness to know of new concepts/inventions, how can there bean pressure for enlargement? You can't wish for that of which you have no conception.

dhw: What do you mean by the brain “allowing the self to know of new concepts”? We do not know the source of ideas, but regardless of whether it is the dualist’s soul or the materialist’s brain, I keep repeating my proposal that it is the IMPLEMENTATION of ideas that changes the brain. The pressure for enlargement therefore came when the existing brain did not have the capacity to IMPLEMENT the new idea.

Same nebulous appeal to implementation. In your example the old smaller brain gets the idea for something important and new but can't do it until it explodes itself. To clarify my thinking, 'bigger' brain always implies a more complex brain for the soul/consciousness to use..

Taken from “Can science prove God?”

DAVID: A need for a spear can be solved only by a brain ready to conceive of the need and design it. If the earlier form cannot conceive of it, there is no perceived need. The bold is not possible until the brain is actually enlarged.

dhw: Answered above, but you have focused on my own example, so here yet again is the process: regardless of whether ideas come from the dualist’s soul or the materialist’s brain, small-brained hunters are sick of being mauled by their prey. Someone has an idea: instead of trying to bash the deer with a sharp stone, attach the stone to a shaft and throw it. But this idea has to be implemented, and the work of converting an abstract idea into a concrete reality requires changes to the brain. The small brain of our hunters cannot cope, and so the very effort of IMPLEMENTING the idea causes the expansion, just as nowadays the IMPLEMENTATION of certain skills results in the complexification or EXPANSION of certain areas of the brain in the illiterate women, taxi-drivers and musicians. The idea occurs within the original brain; the implementation of the idea causes changes to the brain.

You explanation is not in reality. See my example above. Conceiving of the spear and making it from past known concepts is how it all works. Bigger brain, more advanced artifacts every time. Brain first, artifacts second. With Einstein's advanced theories, his brain should have exploded. Instead his brain was 150 cc smaller than 30,000 years ago. Our more thoughtful brains have shrunk, the only example of your theory we have! We do see local enlargements. but that is an attribute of our advanced brain, no basis for applying it to previous lesser brains. Please use logic from the evidence we have.