Brain expansion (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 03, 2020, 11:06 (1423 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: First you agree that it’s autonomous, and then back you go to nebulous guidelines and instructions! You do the same again in the next response and also later in your post! Please explain what “instructions” you are talking about.

DAVID: I've never thought a complexification process was autonomous in your sense. It follows established instructions in brain genome.

So it’s not autonomous, and you obviously have no idea what “instructions” you are talking about.

DAVID: No need for dabbling. Complexification controls noted above. The neurons follow built-in rules.

dhw: There you go again. No need for dabbling, so what controls/guidelines/ instructions/built-in rules are these? They all turn out to be either a 3.8-billion-year old computer programme or dabbling. This time it’s the 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme for every brain response to every new requirement. Can’t you see how ridiculous that is? And how much simpler it all is once you accept the possibility that there is a mechanism enabling the cells of all organs (including the brain) and organisms to respond autonomously to the vast range of demands made on them?

DAVID: As before cells act automatically to demands and stimuli.

As before, you restate your convictions rather than face the absurd implications I have pointed out in your own theory.

dhw: […] So instead of repeating that he could only have designed such an “autonomous” mechanism if it had NOT been autonomous (but each change had been preprogrammed or dabbled), please explain why he could NOT have designed an autonomous mechanism. If your answer is that he wanted to control every response to every requirement, please acknowledge that such an answer is pure guesswork and has no more validity than a guess that he wanted to allow for a variety of responses – which is precisely what the mechanism achieved (varieties of hominins and homos).

DAVID: Home sapiens as the most different species with the largest cortex in the frontal and prefrontal areas had the largest complexification process which contained all the instructions it needed to competently do its shrinkage/reorganization of neurons. I believe we were given a very thoroughly instructed brain from its beginning. Much improved over earlier forms.

I’m sure we all agree that we have a special, much improved brain. You agreed that complexification must also have taken place in pre-sapiens brains. So we’re talking about larger size and increased complexification. I suggest that – theistic version – this development would have taken place as a result of an autonomous mechanism (cellular intelligence) which enabled the cellular communities of the brain to restructure themselves (enlarging or complexifying) in order to meet new requirements. Now please tell us once and for all what sort of “instructions” you think your God had to provide, if they were not in the form of a mechanism enabling the brain to restructure itself in order to meet new requirements.

DAVID: As for how God did it, my guesses are the same. As for the many hominin/homo varieties in different climates, as I stated before, as they interbred, they provided/ developed naturally different beneficial attributes to the final sapiens species.

How God did it, if I remember rightly, was by personally twiddling the genomes of all the hominins and homos. “Developed naturally”? Are you then saying that your God provided them with an autonomous mechanism that enabled them to develop different attributes? Or are you going to tell us that he twiddled every genome with “instructions” to develop the attributes which presumably he would then transfer to H. sapiens when he eventually got round to directly designing/twiddling the only species of homo he wanted to design/twiddle?