Brain expansion: different theories about rapid expansion (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, October 02, 2020, 12:36 (1299 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My view of God's personality precludes His inventing independent mechanism for major advances. I am giving you my view. you have yours. We will not meet in the middle, as I do not see middle ground.

dhw: I know you have a fixed belief. But you have not yet given me a single reason why the alternative is not feasible! All you can offer is that you refuse to consider it!

DAVID: Your approach of 'anything is possible' does include feasibility but again your do not view a God with the personality I think He has, purposeful and in full control. In all of your proposals He must relinquish some control.

According to you, he has already relinquished some control, because you agree that the modern brain complexifies and has added cells to the hippocampus without his intervention. I am simply taking his non-intervention back to pre-sapiens days, when the SAME mechanism – which God, if he exists, would have designed – would have performed the SAME functions: complexification and adding cells. Now instead of repeating your own beliefs, please tell me why that is not feasible.

DAVID: You want artifacts to appear before enlargement or to cause enlargement. My view, just opposite, is the enlarged brain is the one capable of creating the new artifacts and comes first as shown by the H. sapiens Moroccans, big brains, no new artifacts.

dhw: New artefacts are one possible driving force for enlargement. Please stop pretending you don’t know that there may be others, as emphasized by the Britannica article.

DAVID: Why should I follow a Britannica article written from a pure Darwin point of view?

I'll refrain from the implications of that question! This has nothing to do with Darwin. Why do you insist on restricting MY theory (that the brain expanded by meeting new requirements/implementing new ideas) to the production of artefacts when I keep repeating that those are only an example, and there could be many different requirements, as I myself have listed previously?

dhw: ….please tell me whether you think the soul is capable of thinking new thoughts, using the information provided by the existing brain.

DAVID: Same twisted question. My view is the level of complexity of the brain allows the level of the complexity of thought by the soul. Which means, and you keep avoiding an answer to it, the brain's complexity defines and limits or allows the complexity of the soul's thoughts!!!

I am not avoiding an answer. I am proposing the opposite! The brain’s EXISTING complexity limits the information available to the thinker as well as his ability to implement thoughts/ideas, but it does NOT limit his capacity to come up with new thoughts/ideas (they needn’t be “complex”) relating to the existing information. I have given you a concrete example, in the hope of getting a direct answer, but you still won’t give me one.

dhw: Do you think a homo who wants to kill a bison, and who knows that the closer he gets, the more dangerous his task will be, is capable of thinking to himself: perhaps I could invent a weapon that will enable me to kill it from a distance? Or do you believe your God must operate on him to give him more cells BEFORE he can have such an idea?

DAVID: If he is a sapiens he had no problem to think of it. The erectus used group kills according to findings. Stone age American Indians (sapiens) had spears and bows and arrows. My discussion is above. The example adds nothing to the concepts of brain size and complexity.

Sapiens already has his maximum brain size, and you know I’m not talking about him. We know who had what. Now would you please answer the bolded question.