Brain expansion (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, July 03, 2020, 13:53 (1392 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I've understood your fantasy. The brain expands with no stasis, makes its new idea and then goes to sleep for some time for a delayed stasis. The only problem for you is the history we know of sapiens. The Moroccan 315,000 yo fossils did not come with new artifacts. Then nothing for 250,000 years.

dhw: I really don’t know what you mean now by stasis. We agreed that it was a period in which there were no new developments. What on earth is a “delayed stasis”? Every expansion has been followed by a period in which there were no new developments. Why is that so difficult to understand? ... But artefacts are the only solid evidence of progress that we have.

DAVID: We both agree to a period of stasis with no new artifacts. Apply your theory to sapiens only and we have fossil sapiens at many stages of past history with no new artifacts evident, where is the implementation of the 'idea that made the sapiens brain italenlargement?

First we have nothing for 250,000 years (= stasis), and then we have many stages with nothing, as if there WAS something in between. Please make up your mind. You have left out my statement that nobody knows what requirements the pre-sapiens brain was responding to, and now you’re asking me to tell you! The 315,000-year-old Moroccan fossils were accompanied by their artefacts, but I can’t insist that it was their implementation that caused the expansion. Nor can you insist that expansion took place overnight, with your God stepping in to do a dabble with the brains, skulls and pelvises. What is your point?

dhw: The dualist’s brain does not do the thinking! The soul does the thinking, and uses the brain...

DAVID: I've said the same thing in different words. Brain 'thinking' is soul driven. Brain cannot think without the soul using it.

dhw: You have said the opposite using the same words. I say the dualist’s brain does not think, but the dualist’s soul cannot think without using the brain. (….)

DAVID: Same meaning, different way of describing.

“The brain cannot think without the soul using it” means that the brain CAN think if the soul uses it. The dualist’s brain does not think. It is the soul that thinks. Please stop messing around with words.

DAVID: You seem to have forgotten free will. I don't, as above, think God knows exactly what we will come up with as time passes.

dhw: […] I’m pleased at your conversion to the possibility of a God who doesn’t know it all. In my theory he deliberately created a life system that would be unpredictable. How boring it would all be if he knew exactly what was coming! You now have a choice: he didn’t know what was coming because he has limitations or he didn’t know what was coming because he didn’t WANT to know what was coming.

DAVID: More humanizing. God doesn't get bored. And I don't think He knows exactly what we will do in the future as individuals or groups. I'm sorry my view of God's perfection doesn't meet yours?

I simply asked you to make a choice between his not knowing and his not wanting to know. You now have a God who creates a system full of errors, tries in vain to stop some of them, and doesn’t know what is coming. Please drop the word “perfection”, which is far too vague. Your previously all-powerful, all-controlling, all-knowing God is now revealed to have limited powers, control and knowledge, but somehow this makes him LESS human than a God who knows exactly what he is doing (e.g. deliberate creation of error-strewn system) or who experiments in order to create what he wants to create!

dhw: […] you have agreed that in all my alternatives, he DOES think logically as we do, but according to you, that "humanizes him", and although according to you he probably has thought patterns similar to ours, we mustn't think he does.

DAVID: The bold is the usual distortion of my thoughts: we and He use the same logical methods. We cannot know His reasons for His choices, but can guess. We can guess if you wish, but what does it prove?

What “logical methods”? If I have a single goal to create one thing and the means of achieving it, I will use the means of achieving it. That is my logic. How is that the same logical method as having a single goal to create one thing and the means of achieving it, but not achieving it until after creating millions of other unrelated things?

dhw: …complexification replaced expansion in response to new uses and concepts. But according to you, 315,000 years ago your God gave us extra neural networks that were NOT needed, and so we autonomously got rid of them. What is your point?

DAVID: […] Obviously planning for our new uses with extra plasticity.

Why specially design unnecessary networks which can be discarded? Why not design the right amount of plasticity in the first place? Yet another example of the various weaknesses you are now finding in your previously all-powerful, all-controlling, all-knowing God?