Brain Expansion (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, April 13, 2020, 21:21 (1473 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The bold is your lonely theory only.

dhw: The bold is proven! Learning to read, memorizing maps, playing musical instruments entail mental developments which are known to change the brain by complexification or minor expansions.

DAVID: Only in our very different specialized brain.

dhw: You have agreed with me that earlier homos “would also have used their brains to gather information and to implement their concepts.” Once again: if implementation of concepts changes our brains (a proven fact), why is it not possible that the same process applied to earlier brains?

I'm sure a habilis brain or an erectus brain had tiny areas of enlargement as our current brain plasticizes. We evolved from them so that is very logical to conclude.

DAVID: I don't ignore your answers. I find then totally unreasonable and unacceptable working with known facts.

dhw: The ONLY known facts are that our brains are changed by new activities. You have not offered a single reason why my explanations of time gaps and of FIRST artefacts should be deemed unreasonable. You can only come up with the fact that my theory is not proven!

You are hopefully extrapolating from tiny reasonable changes in our very advanced brain. To remind you, as you remind me, our debate is the possible reason for giant expansions. For habilis, activities of daily living were not very complex. Struggling to conceptualize some way to kill at a distance is not going to force a 200 cc enlargement. One can only think of what one is capable to thinking of in a brain/soul cooperation system.

dhw: You have not explained why it is “weird” to suggest that your God’s mechanism enabling the brain to complexify and expand (on a small scale) naturally, could also have been the unknown cause of major brain expansion.

DAVID: Just because our very special brain makes tiny enlargements, does not mean it relates at all to the very large previous enlargements. You have jumped to a wishful theory with no known support.

dhw: No theory has been proven. And you still won’t tell us why as a theist you regard it as unreasonable to suggest that your God’s mechanism to enable the brain to complexify and cause minor expansions could not also have caused major expansions at a time when the brain was able to expand. And what “known” support do you have for your theory that your God caused each brain expansion, and only then could homos’ souls come up with new ideas?

Logic based on artifacts associated with each new brain size, which facts you have twisted beyond all possible belief. The idea that the previous homo knew of a spear concept but had to grow a brain to then manufacture it, is such distorted reasoning when compared to what we know happens today in design and physical creation. You are still pursuing a way to avoid God's activities in evolution. Understandable as an agnostic, but it is much like like atheistic thinking.