Brain Expansion (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, May 02, 2020, 21:02 (1447 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I don’t know why you continually ignore everything I write on this subject

Why do you complain? I don't ignore anything you state about expanding brains. I just accept none of it in my explanations.

dhw: The earlier brain did expand. It is therefore perfectly logical to propose that changes in the earlier brain were also IN RESPONSE TO NEW IDEAS, TASKS, DEMANDS, but the change then was expansion. It is not the tiny expansions but the process that I have “seized on”.

Your problem is your need for a natural reason for expansion, but not a God-given one.

dhw: 3)Hard thinking does not shrink brains (see above and about ten earlier posts). What we know is that the brain responds to new tasks, ideas, demands by making changes to itself. Why do keep denying or ignoring this known fact?

DAVID: Absurd!!! Where did 150 cc go? Once we sapiens learned to use our new bigger brain, that happened in the past 35,000 years, while we appeared about 315,000 years ago with the current discoveries. 'Learning' is implied by 280,000 years of a persistent larger size and if hard thinking blew it up to larger size, why the gap in time for learning to use?

dhw: I have no idea where the 150 cc went. Tell me. And while you’re at it, if hard thinking causes the brain to shrink, do you expect it eventually to be a dot?

Ridiculous extension of thought.

dhw: If our new brain did not produce anything special for 280,000 years, what was it “learning”?

How to use it bit by bit. How did you learn your first computer?

dhw: my theory is that the status quo was broken by what I call the “big idea”, which demanded an increase in capacity. After sapiens acquired the larger brain - we don't know what was the "big idea", but the same applies equally to your own theory!

My theory is God did it beforehand. I'm debating the possibility of your totally unsupported natural theory

dhw: 4)All phases of expansions have been followed by long periods of stasis (= nothing much happens). How does a long period of stasis prove that God dabbled with each smaller brain before it could come up with any new ideas?

DAVID: The obvious learning periods you call 'stasis' implying nothing was happening in those neurons is totally illogical. At some point in each new stage they invented new artifacts, after an active learning period.

dhw: No doubt something was happening in those neurons all the time, unless you think every homo was a robot. But what was happening during those periods of comparative stasis was not major enough to require expansion. That is why I keep suggesting that each expansion would have resulted from some idea, task, demand which required greater capacity. (We took the first spear as a possible example to illustrate the process.)

DAVID: The real stasis is your thought in concrete that hard thought blows up brains to new size. Does anyone support your theory?

dhw: It is only a theory, but you have not yet produced a single argument to counter its logic. I have no idea if the theory is original. Now please tell us who supports the theory that the soul was incapable of producing new ideas until God directly expanded the brains of all the different homos who preceded H. sapiens, although the only brain he actually wanted to produce was that of H. sapiens.

All of ID supports the theory that a designer made each advance. Each major advance needs a new sized complex brain. See the next entry re erectus and language. Note the author assumes the new enlargement just appeared, no reason for the enlargement a given.