Brain Expansion (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, May 03, 2020, 12:40 (1453 days ago) @ David Turell

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”.

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

So you ignore the logic of the above, and also ignore the fact that I have always allowed for the mechanism to be “God-given”. I do not have a fixed agenda but am merely trying to find a logical solution to a mystery.

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?

DAVID: Ridiculous extension of thought.

So stop telling us that hard thought shrinks the brain. It doesn’t. Hard thought complexifies the brain, and as a result of the efficiency of complexification, 150 cc disappeared. You asked where it went. Tell us your theory.

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

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

I learned to use my first computer bit by bit. What do you think early sapiens learned bit by bit for 280,000 years? What are the little bits and pieces that show gradual improvement over 280,000 years? You keep telling us that it was only in the last 35,000 years that we came up with the “current discoveries”! So there was a period of comparative stasis until along came the new “big ideas” – the same process I keep proposing for all the different stages of brain expansion. But in sapiens these ideas would have led to complexification.

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! – the process repeats itself.

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

I know your own “totally unsupported theory”. And I am waiting for some logical reason why you should reject the possibility that earlier brains might have changed (by expanding) in response to new ideas, tasks, demands, just as modern brains do (by complexifying and mini-expanding).

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 [your theory]…see below].

DAVID: 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.

None of these articles give a reason – that is not their concern. So you can’t use them as an argument against my theory. You say nobody supports my theory. I know ID-ers support the argument for design, but I asked you who supported 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. Even if somebody did, it still wouldn’t alter the fact that you have so far been
unable to produce a single argument against the logic of my theory.