Brain Expansion: basic knowledge (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, April 23, 2020, 13:32 (1457 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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: Your invention is pure invention. The articles all assume the fossils with the artifacts made them with their bigger brains, and you agree to that much. There is no attempt to explain expansion….

So stop pretending that the articles discredit my theory about the cause of expansion!

DAVID:…as you well recognize, as you push your unsupported creation that thinking of a new concept expands brains; to wit: profound immaterial thinking forces a small brain to gain a much larger size.

You keep changing my terminology to suit your scepticism. It is not “thinking of” a new concept but IMPLEMENTING a new concept (i.e. designing, working out details, learning to rectify mistakes, and making the new concept into a material artefact) that demands brain changes. Just as in the modern brain what you previously called “hard thinking” forces complexification. The change to the brain is a response to thought.

DAVID: From habilis to erectus is from 600 cc to 1,200 cc, in roughly 200 cc advances. If habilis goes from 600 to 800, that is an increase of one-third in size for habilis. That is huge to me to answer one of your many complaints as I criticize your idea.

You say how huge it is, and then you swallow the theory that our brains could easily double in size without any effect on our anatomy, because “2000 cc are only seventy ounces. You think our muscles can’t handle that?” 200 cc is huge, but 2000 cc is nothing.

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

dhw: 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: You love to forget my soul/ brain complex concept. There are lots of reasons to criticize the idea. Our brain is so advanced, it can not be compared to much earlier brains in Lucy or habilis. it obviously has capacities the earlier brains did not have.

I never forget your concept. You are the one who forgets it when you talk of enlargement allowing the brain to think, as bolded above. Nobody in his right mind would deny that our brains have capacities that earlier brains do not have. Each brain is an advance on its predecessor. How does that invalidate the proposal that just as the modern brain RESPONDS to hard thought, the earlier brain might have done the same?

dhw: 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.

DAVID: You can tout spontaneous evolution. No need for God then. That is your whole point. Find a way to keep God out of the picture. Your agnostic picket fence tilts atheistically much of the time Time to run back to God might have done this or that, which always gives up tight design control.

The subject of how evolution works tells us nothing about the origin of life and the mechanisms. You are getting really desperate if the only argument you can find is to pretend that my theory excludes God. It doesn’t. What it does do is question your personal belief that your God wishes to control everything (see “Seabirds etc.” to show how you already have to concede that he doesn’t always do so.) And your rigidity in your attempts to read his mind have resulted in a theory of evolution which is so illogical that it forces you to protest that we can’t know God’s reasons and we mustn’t think of him in human terms even though he probably/possibly has thought patterns similar to ours. My agnosticism does not lend credence to your theory, and it does not detract from ANY of the different explanations of evolution which you yourself acknowledge to be perfectly logical.