Brain Expansion: basic knowledge (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 22, 2020, 11:31 (1459 days ago) @ David Turell

My apologies. I wrote a reply, but there are now so many threads that I overlooked it when copying and pasting! However, most of it is a repetition of answers already given umpteen times and ignored by you.

QUOTE: Tools, art, and other artifacts found in association with hominin remains provide direct evidence of the capacity of a species for specific behaviors, something that fossils cannot reveal.[..]."

DAVID: We agree the article makes no attempt to tell us how the larger brain arrived. That is never the point of the article or any article like it. Evolution is assumed as the underlying process.

So please stop quoting this and other articles as if they contradicted my theory!

DAVID: What the quote says is in the bold: the existing brain created the concepts that made those artifacts. There can be no other interpretation. Nowhere in any article like it is an attempt made to equate any of these artifacts with a previous earlier form of hominins.

And there you go again! Of course the products of the expanded brain provide evidence of what the new hominin/homo could do! But that does not tell us why the brain expanded in the first place! As usual you ignore the point that nobody can know if the FIRST artefacts were the product of an already expanded brain or of a brain that expanded because of their making.

DAVID: Anyone can invent a theory from wishful thinking with some slight degree of reference to a logical thought or a tangential fact. dhw's proposal, plain and simple, is a preceding form with a smaller brain uses current info to finally conclude a new concept.

Why have you inserted the word “finally”? There is nothing “final” about the idea of killing from a distance. Please stop twisting my terminology. I always quote your own words, and you should do the same. It is the implementation of the initial concept that causes the expansion.

DAVID: This forces a brain enlargement from hard thought, and that enlargement allows the brain to think of how to build the new artifact.

Yes, hard thought of different kinds is known to cause complexification/enlargement in the human brain (and this may well extend to theoretical thought, as with Einstein). It doesn’t “allow” the brain to think (you claim to be a dualist, which means the brain doesn’t do the thinking anyway) – it is the result of thinking. Nobody knows how it all works, but if the modern brain changes AS A RESULT OF HARD THINKING, there is no reason to suppose that the ancient brain did not do the same.

DAVID: It is a totally discontinuous process, in contract to what we all experience with our brains if we have designed and made anything we thought of. If I can think of it I can create it. If our brain carries any attributes as evolved from previous brains, why shouldn't it work in similar fashion. Yes it is different: much more complex, and doesn't need to expand. With dhw theory previous brains recognized a need to expand. Really? I'm still with God did it.

The process is continuous, but you are not aware that your brain is complexifying or mini-expanding as you do your hard thinking! In my theory, of course the brain didn’t “recognize a need to expand”. It would have happened as spontaneously as your modern brain complexifies.