http://nautil.us/issue/51/limits/emotional-intelligence-needs-a-rewrite?utm_source=Naut..

QUOTE: A reasonable, science-backed way to define and practice emotional intelligence comes from a modern, neuroscientific view of brain function called construction: the observation that your brain creates all thoughts, emotions, and perceptions, automatically and on the fly, as needed. This process is completely unconscious.

DAVID’s comment: This is entirely a mechanistic, materialistic view of brain function. Where is consciousness in all of this description: totally created by the brain. [...]

While remaining neutral on the subject of dualism versus materialism (I’ll return to this eventually), I agree with you completely. If all our thoughts, emotions and perceptions are created unconsciously by the brain, what provides our consciousness of them?

http://nautil.us/issue/51/limits/emotional-intelligence-needs-a-rewrite?utm_source=Naut...

"A reasonable, science-backed way to define and practice emotional intelligence comes from a modern, neuroscientific view of brain function called construction: the observation that your brain creates all thoughts, emotions, and perceptions, automatically and on the fly, as needed. This process is completely unconscious. It may seem like you have reflex-like emotional reactions and effortlessly detect emotions in other people, but under the hood, your brain is doing something else entirely.

"Here’s the 20,000 foot summary: Your brain’s most important job is not thinking or feeling or even seeing, but keeping your body alive and well so that you survive and thrive (and eventually reproduce). How is your brain to do this? Like a sophisticated fortune-teller, your brain constantly predicts. Its predictions ultimately become the emotions you experience and the expressions you perceive in other people.

"Your brain spends its entire existence in a dark silent box, called your skull. It receives only the sensory effects of what is going on in the world—the sights, sounds, smells, touches, and tastes that come through the body’s sensors—and must guess what their causes are, because any sound or flash of light or aroma or pinch can have many different causes. To make these guesses, your brain relies on past experience: What caused these sensations before in similar contexts? What worked to keep you alive and well and might be needed again? Your brain has the amazing ability to combine bits of past experience to create the closest match to these sensations, given the specific situation that you are in. These past experiences are predictions. Your brain continually predicts every experience you have, and every action you take, to guess what is going on in the world and what you should do about it.

"From your brain’s perspective, your body is just another source of information to make sense of—the thumping of your heart, the tug of your lungs expanding, the warmth of inflammation, and so on. These changes in your body have no objective emotional meaning. A dull ache in your stomach, for example, might be disgust, anxiety, or merely hunger. So, your brain spends most of its time issuing thousands of microscopic predictions of what your body needs (water, glucose, salt) and attempts to meet those needs before they arise. In the process, your brain also predicts the sensations that those physical changes would cause, such as feeling your heart pound in your chest, as well as what actions you should take. This constant storm of predictions—which occur automatically and completely outside of your awareness—forms the basis for everything you think, feel, see, smell, or otherwise experience in any way. That’s how emotions, thoughts, and perceptions are made."

Comment: This is entirely a mechanistic, materialistic view of brain function. Where is consciousness in all of this description: totally created by the brain. It could not survive a near to death episode, but it is demonstrated that consciousness is active while clinically dead. This tells me there must be dualism. The essay is actually on the subject of handling emotions. those paragraphs set the stage for the author's discussion.

[...]

DAVID: Emotions Are not just 'feelings'. They also involve bodily reactions as we agree.

Bodily reactions are not emotions. They are the result of emotions, or they may cause emotions, as you indicate below. Perhaps we need to be careful with the word “feeling”. My body feels the cold. That is not an emotion. But when we say “You have hurt my feelings” we do not mean the body.

DAVID: If the soul uses the brain to create the feelings of emotion, the brain is more than a receiver, but a participant in the whole process inducing bodily reactions. For example, a startle response is a unexpected sensory reaction, which the soul did not initiate but recognizes. I think there can be some back and forth between brain and soul at these physical levels. This is not at the immaterial level of thinking and concepts.

Of course the brain is a participant in the “whole process”. In your dualistic world, it provides the information to the soul and it gives material expression to the immaterial thoughts of the soul. That is the “back and forth” that you keep agreeing on and then forgetting. The unexpected sensory experience is the information, but it’s not the body that feels the emotion of fear. After the body sends the information, it responds to the soul’s fear. All virtually instantaneous, and a materialist would argue that since there is no soul, it’s all material anyway. The soul (if it exists) is not confined to concepts: it must also be the seat of emotions and of all the immaterial attributes that makes us who we are. How else could you survive the death of the body and still be yourself? This is the great dichotomy in your whole concept of the relationship between brain and soul. You are a dualist who wants the brain to produce immaterial thought (e.g. the IDEA of the spear, which like a good materialist you insist is not possible without the larger brain).

DAVID: [...] Your concept of my theory that somehow the brain receives emotions is way off the mark.

[...]

dhw: If emotions start with immaterial thought from the soul which produces material results from the brain, and the self/soul instructs, how can you argue that the brain does not “receive” the emotions? That is precisely the process we have agreed is the essence of your dualism: immaterial thought first (soul/self), material manifestations (brain/body) second. The material brain is the receiver of the immaterial.

DAVID: I was simply adding the material effects the brain can induce with its control of hormones, Emotions are 'feelings' we have. Our self/soul is in charge, but thoughts or thoughtful reactions can have the brain create the feelings of emotions. Or more to the point, the adolescent male suddenly experiences an erection upon the visualization of a sexually arousing scene, as one obvious example.

dhw: What are “feelings of emotions”? Emotions are feelings. The visualization comes before the erection. In dualism, the source of thought is the soul not the brain, which you have agreed either provides information or materially implements thought. If your adolescent (don’t know why he has to be young, but still…) is simply daydreaming, it’s the daydreaming soul that sends its lustful instructions to the penis via the brain, which is the receiver of the emotion. If the visualization has a material cause (photograph of gorgeous female), the perception of it sends information via the brain to the soul, which thinks lustfully about the material image (dualism does not mean that thought is independent of the material perceptions it thinks about), and back goes the message to the penis via the brain. Both ways the brain is the receiver of the emotion (unless you are a materialist)

Emotions Are not just 'feelings'. They also involve bodily reactions as we agree. If the soul uses the brain to create the feelings of emotion, the brain is more than a receiver, but a participant in the whole process inducing bodily reactions. For example, a startle response is a unexpected sensory reaction, which the soul did not initiate but recognizes. I think there can be some back and forth between brain and soul at these physical levels. This is not at the immaterial level of thinking and concepts.

[...]

dhw: If emotions start with immaterial thought from the soul which produces material results from the brain, and the self/soul instructs, how can you argue that the brain does not “receive” the emotions? That is precisely the process we have agreed is the essence of your dualism: immaterial thought first (soul/self), material manifestations (brain/body) second. The material brain is the receiver of the immaterial.

DAVID: I was simply adding the material effects the brain can induce with its control of hormones, Emotions are 'feelings' we have. Our self/soul is in charge, but thoughts or thoughtful reactions can have the brain create the feelings of emotions. Or more to the point, the adolescent male suddenly experiences an erection upon the visualization of a sexually arousing scene, as one obvious example.

What are “feelings of emotions”? Emotions are feelings. The visualization comes before the erection. In dualism, the source of thought is the soul not the brain, which you have agreed either provides information or materially implements thought. If your adolescent (don’t know why he has to be young, but still…) is simply daydreaming, it’s the daydreaming soul that sends its lustful instructions to the penis via the brain, which is the receiver of the emotion. If the visualization has a material cause (photograph of gorgeous female), the perception of it sends information via the brain to the soul, which thinks lustfully about the material image (dualism does not mean that thought is independent of the material perceptions it thinks about), and back goes the message to the penis via the brain. Both ways the brain is the receiver of the emotion (unless you are a materialist).

DAVID: [...] Your concept of my theory that somehow the brain receives emotions is way off the mark.

dhw: [...] As far as emotion is concerned, is it your brain or your soul that feels joy, sadness, love, hate? Does your brain tell your soul that it wants to cheer, weep, embrace, throw a punch, or does your soul instruct your brain?

DAVID: Emotional feelings get involved with hormonal outrushes mediated from the brain. They start with thought (immaterial) to produce physical (material) results in the feelings of the body. The self/soul instructs.

dhw: “Get involved”? If emotions start with immaterial thought from the soul which produces material results from the brain, and the self/soul instructs, how can you argue that the brain does not “receive” the emotions? That is precisely the process we have agreed is the essence of your dualism: immaterial thought first (soul/self), material manifestations (brain/body) second. The material brain is the receiver of the immaterial.

I was simply adding the material effects the brain can induce with its control of hormones, Emotions are 'feelings' we have. Our self/soul is in charge, but thoughts or thoughtful reactions can have the brain create the feelings of emotions. Or more to the point, the adolescent male suddenly experiences an erection upon the visualization of a sexually arousing scene, as one obvious example.

dhw: [...] As far as emotion is concerned, is it your brain or your soul that feels joy, sadness, love, hate? Does your brain tell your soul that it wants to cheer, weep, embrace, throw a punch, or does your soul instruct your brain?

DAVID: Emotional feelings get involved with hormonal outrushes mediated from the brain. They start with thought (immaterial) to produce physical (material) results in the feelings of the body. The self/soul instructs.

“Get involved”? If emotions start with immaterial thought from the soul which produces material results from the brain, and the self/soul instructs, how can you argue that the brain does not “receive” the emotions? That is precisely the process we have agreed is the essence of your dualism: immaterial thought first (soul/self), material manifestations (brain/body) second. The material brain is the receiver of the immaterial.

DAVID: In my view the self/soul uses the received mechanism of consciousness through the brain to create emotions and store memories. But of course the brain can be damaged, distorted in function by strokes and also by drugs and give false results when used. Your concept of my theory that somehow the brain receives emotions is way off the mark.

dhw: What do you mean by the self/soul “uses the received mechanism of consciousness through the brain”? You have agreed that your dualism makes the brain the receiver of the consciousness which IS your self/soul, which in turn uses the brain for information and for the implementation of its thoughts, ideas etc. As far as emotion is concerned, is it your brain or your soul that feels joy, sadness, love, hate? Does your brain tell your soul that it wants to cheer, weep, embrace, throw a punch, or does your soul instruct your brain?

Emotional feelings get involved with hormonal outrushes mediated from the brain. They start with thought (immaterial) to produce physical (material) results in the feelings of the body. The self/soul instructs.

DAVID: In my view the self/soul uses the received mechanism of consciousness through the brain to create emotions and store memories. But of course the brain can be damaged, distorted in function by strokes and also by drugs and give false results when used. Your concept of my theory that somehow the brain receives emotions is way off the mark.

What do you mean by the self/soul “uses the received mechanism of consciousness through the brain”? You have agreed that your dualism makes the brain the receiver of the consciousness which IS your self/soul, which in turn uses the brain for information and for the implementation of its thoughts, ideas etc. As far as emotion is concerned, is it your brain or your soul that feels joy, sadness, love, hate? Does your brain tell your soul that it wants to cheer, weep, embrace, throw a punch, or does your soul instruct your brain?

dhw: In my view, memory and emotion are all part of consciousness. How you can find even the slightest hint of a “soul” in this post escapes me. The very fact that emotional disorders can be treated (and also caused) by drugs is evidence that the brain is the producer and not the receiver of emotion. So far we have only discussed the illogicalities of your dualist position, but I have been very careful to emphasize that I am not taking sides in the debate between materialism and dualism. I can’t find the post in which I attempted a compromise between the two, but I shall try again when I get time (very short at the moment).

In my view the self/soul uses the received mechanism of consciousness through the brain to create emotions and store memories. But of course the brain can be damaged, distorted in function by strokes and also by drugs and give false results when used. Your concept of my theory that somehow the brain receives emotions is way off the mark.

QUOTE: "A new cradle of brain cell formation has been discovered in the adult amygdala, a region that gives memories their emotional bite.
The discovery could lead to a deeper understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and phobias – and also to better treatments."

DAVID: But note: the human brain developed a specialized area for consciousness. Its enlargement mainly includes pre-frontal and frontal cortex which are its seat. Those neurons are especially developed and connected to support that function. I think the analogy of computer software fits. All of that neuron network complexity allows a received consciousness to be used by the self/soul.

In my view, memory and emotion are all part of consciousness. How you can find even the slightest hint of a “soul” in this post escapes me. The very fact that emotional disorders can be treated (and also caused) by drugs is evidence that the brain is the producer and not the receiver of emotion. So far we have only discussed the illogicalities of your dualist position, but I have been very careful to emphasize that I am not taking sides in the debate between materialism and dualism. I can’t find the post in which I attempted a compromise between the two, but I shall try again when I get time (very short at the moment).

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/adult-brain-s-fear-hq-can-grow-new-cells

"A new cradle of brain cell formation has been discovered in the adult amygdala, a region that gives memories their emotional bite.

"The discovery could lead to a deeper understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and phobias – and also to better treatments.
The formation of freshly minted neurons – the cells that send and receive signals in the brain – was long thought to be non-existent in adults. But that dogma was overturned in the early 1990s with the discovery of neuron-forming stem cells in the adult hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped region that acts as the brain’s memory hub. The smell-processing olfactory bulb – in rodents, at least – also churns out baby neurons throughout life.

Now, the almond-shaped amygdala can be added to this select club.

***

"The amygdala plays an important role in imbuing memories with emotion. This helps us to learn from our experiences, but the process can go awry in post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, or phobias. In these conditions, fear can overwhelm, thanks to an overzealous amygdala.

"Researchers have had inklings that the amygdala can make new neurons. But the new work, published in Molecular Psychiatry, is the first to clearly show that stem cells forming in the mouse amygdala grow into bona fide, fully functioning neurons, “which is actually pretty revolutionary,” says Jee Kim from the Florey Institute of Neuroscience & Mental Health at the University of Melbourne, who was not involved in the study.

"The discovery is likely to hold true for the similarly wired human amygdala, says Dhanisha Jhaveri of the Queensland Brain Institute, who co-led the study.

"The amygdala only contains a small number of these newborn cells – fewer than in the hippocampus. But “even small numbers could have a big impact," says Jhaveri.

"That’s because the newly formed cells are interneurons, cells that dampen down activity in neural circuits. In the amygdala, these cells help to keep emotions like fear in check.

"Now that the fledgling neurons have been discovered, the researchers are working to nut out the pulleys and levers that control their formation. In the hippocampus, exercise and antidepressant drugs can spur new cell formation, whereas stress and inflammation stymy the process.

"Similar triggers could affect neurogenesis in the amygdala, too, says Jhaveri. Understanding these triggers, and identifying drugs that specifically encourage new cell formation in the amygdala could ultimately lead to better treatments for anxiety-related disorders.

"The finding could also help to explain why exposure therapy, designed to gradually dampen a person’s response to a phobia or traumatic memory, works, according to Kim. “These neurons may be important in how we learn to reduce our fear,” she says."

Comment: These are parts of the brain common to all animals, but they round out what we are discussing in regard to consciousness as dualism or materialism. These parts of the brain are as important to our experiences of consciousness as the pre-frontal and frontal cortex where we develop concepts and self-awareness. But the cortex also has motor areas, speech areas, sight areas, auditory areas, etc., common to all animals, but remembering our speech area is much more complex with language development. But note: the human brain developed a specialized area for consciousness. Its enlargement mainly includes pre-frontal and frontal cortex which are its seat. Those neurons are especially developed and connected to support that function. I think the analogy of computer software fits. All of that neuron network complexity allows a received consciousness to be used by the self/soul.

I answered that point, as I have already done several times: “As for shrinkage, the human brain had clearly reached its optimum size, and so any new change had to be within the existing capacity. The solution: densification or complexification. And this process has proved so efficient that it no longer needs such a size. You like computer analogies. Well the first computers were colossal. Look at them now. As complexification becomes more efficient, size shrinks.”

DAVID: Which fits my point about the gaps in size and hominin brain development. Our brain growth in size through evolution is not following your concept of "I want a spear, so I'll grow a bigger brain to plan it". Our brain shrunk with advanced use.

Once more, the planning in your dualistic world is not done by the brain but by the “soul”. The brain expands by implementing the plan. To recap, a brief summary of the dualistic hypothesis: Small-brain hominin’s “soul” thinks of spear (illiterate woman thinks of reading). Spear-making requires new skills, and effort to make spear changes brain (effort to read changes brain). Small-brain hominin thus becomes larger-brain hominin. As “souls” come up with more ideas requiring more new skills, larger-brain hominin becomes even larger-brain hominin. Expansion of brain reaches point where further expansion would create problems for rest of body. Effort to implement new ideas now changes brain through complexification instead of expansion. Latter process demonstrated by illiterate women’s brains complexifying as result of effort to read. Complexification so efficient that brain shrinks. (Hypothesis based on Cartesian and Turellian dualism. Lots more hypotheses available if based on materialism.)

DAVID: Yes, when the brain is complex enough to allow that.
dhw: So now if the brain isn’t complex enough, the soul can’t think, imagine, ideate, and yet you believe that the soul does the thinking, imagining, ideating, and continues to think, imagine, ideate when it goes into the afterlife you believe in.
DAVID: Two separate circumstances. NDE's are evidence that experiences can occur without a brain present.

Not much use having an experience if you can’t think, remember, communicate, reason…You use NDEs as your evidence for your dualism - that there is a soul which can do all these things without a brain.

dhw: And goodbye to your dualism, since your hominin can only imagine a spear when his brain is big or complex enough to “allow” him to do so.
DAVID: The evidence is in the artifacts. As the brain size and complexity appears, the Artifacts become more advanced. And the computer analogy fits. More complex hardware can handle more complex software, allowing more advanced operations.

dhw: You the dualist don’t update your hardware (brain) until you need to implement the programmes provided by your software (“soul”). There the analogy ends. We have no way of knowing whether the brain size and complexity caused the concepts of the new artefacts, or implementation of the concepts caused the changes in the brain. Back to the illiterate women:

DAVID: The woman simply used their enlarged brain with increased complexity to learn to read, which modified their brain (which had the capacity to easily modify).

dhw:Exactly. The brain had the capacity to change, and the new activity changed it (modification means change). You can’t get round the fact that learning to read RESULTED in changes to the brain – you said so yourself.

You keep skipping the idea that the human brain, 300,000 years old shrank as we civilized and developed new uses of the brain. Of course it modified. It has the ability to plasticize new connections.

DAVID: What did reading and other more modern brain exercises do to the human brain? It shrunk! The human brain in size appeared 300,000 years ago and only recently has it shrunk a little under the plastic complexity changes driven by thought. And to forestall your materialism comments the self/soul is using the brain to have the thoughts and develop the concepts or learn to read, to do advanced maths, etc.

dhw: The dualistic self/soul uses the brain not to “have” the thoughts or “develop” the concepts (= mental activities), but to give the thoughts and concepts material form. As for shrinkage, the human brain had clearly reached its optimum size, and so any new change had to be within the existing capacity. The solution: densification or complexification. And this process has proved so efficient that it no longer needs such a size. You like computer analogies. Well the first computers were colossal. Look at them now. As complexification becomes more efficient, size shrinks.

Which fits my point about the gaps in size and hominin brain development. Our brain growth in size through evolution is not following your concept of "I want a spear, so I'll grow a bigger brain to plan it". Our brain shrunk with advanced use.

Not much use having an experience if you can’t think, remember, communicate, reason…You use NDEs as your evidence for your dualism - that there is a soul which can do all these things without a brain.

dhw: And goodbye to your dualism, since your hominin can only imagine a spear when his brain is big or complex enough to “allow” him to do so.
DAVID: The evidence is in the artifacts. As the brain size and complexity appears, the Artifacts become more advanced. And the computer analogy fits. More complex hardware can handle more complex software, allowing more advanced operations.

You the dualist don’t update your hardware (brain) until you need to implement the programmes provided by your software (“soul”). There the analogy ends. We have no way of knowing whether the brain size and complexity caused the concepts of the new artefacts, or implementation of the concepts caused the changes in the brain. Back to the illiterate women:

DAVID: The woman simply used their enlarged brain with increased complexity to learn to read, which modified their brain (which had the capacity to easily modify).

Exactly. The brain had the capacity to change, and the new activity changed it (modification means change). You can’t get round the fact that learning to read RESULTED in changes to the brain – you said so yourself.

DAVID: What did reading and other more modern brain exercises do to the human brain? It shrunk! The human brain in size appeared 300,000 years ago and only recently has it shrunk a little under the plastic complexity changes driven by thought. And to forestall your materialism comments the self/soul is using the brain to have the thoughts and develop the concepts or learn to read, to do advanced maths, etc.

The dualistic self/soul uses the brain not to “have” the thoughts or “develop” the concepts (= mental activities), but to give the thoughts and concepts material form. As for shrinkage, the human brain had clearly reached its optimum size, and so any new change had to be within the existing capacity. The solution: densification or complexification. And this process has proved so efficient that it no longer needs such a size. You like computer analogies. Well the first computers were colossal. Look at them now. As complexification becomes more efficient, size shrinks.

DAVID: Yes, when the brain is complex enough to allow that.

dhw: So now if the brain isn’t complex enough, the soul can’t think, imagine, ideate, and yet you believe that the soul does the thinking, imagining, ideating, and continues to think, imagine, ideate when it goes into the afterlife you believe in.

Two separate circumstances. NDE's are evidence that experiences can occur without a brain present.

dhw: And goodbye to your dualism, since your hominin can only imagine a spear when his brain is big or complex enough to “allow” him to do so.

The evidence is in the artifacts. As the brain size and complexity appears, the Artifacts become more advanced. And the computer analogy fits. More complex hardware can handle more complex software, allowing more advanced operations.

DAVID (quoting dhw): “The effort to do something new would have RESULTED in expansion” is against all the evidence we have in science. […]
We know the brains jumped in size and presumable complexity as cortex was added. I say God did it with a drive in cortical size.

dhw: I know you say that. I note that you have ignored the fact that the illiterate women’s brains underwent complexification as a RESULT of their learning to read, which provides scientific evidence that the effort to perform new tasks RESULTS in changes to the brain (as opposed to the brain being changed beforehand).

I've ignored nothing. The woman simply used their enlarged brain with increased complexity to learn to read, which modified their brain (which had the capacity to easily modify). What did reading and other more modern brain exercises do to the human brain? It shrunk! The human brain in size appeared 300,000 years ago and only recently has it shrunk a little under the plastic complexity changes driven by thought. And to forestall your materialism comments the self/soul is using the brain to have the thoughts and develop the concepts or learn to read, to do advanced maths, etc.

So now if the brain isn’t complex enough, the soul can’t think, imagine, ideate, and yet you believe that the soul does the thinking, imagining, ideating, and continues to think, imagine, ideate when it goes into the afterlife you believe in.

DAVID: I view each earlier hominin stage as being unable to envision anything beyond the stage of brain complexity they possess for their self/soul to employ.
dhw: And so your hominin is unable to conceive of a spear until your God has increased the size or complexity of his brain to allow him to make a spear. And then hominin says to himself: “I have the capacity to make a spear. This gives me a new idea. I can make a spear.”
Presumably the same process as your God equipping the pre-whale with fins before it enters the water, or fiddling with hominin legs before they descend to the ground.
DAVID: Not legs, but spine and pelvis. Generally correct.

Thank you for the correction. And goodbye to your dualism, since your hominin can only imagine a spear when his brain is big or complex enough to “allow” him to do so.

DAVID: Each stage indicates its limits by its artifacts, as paleontologists show.
dhw: Paleontologists can only show the material implementation of ideas. They cannot show which came first: the idea or the means of implementing the idea. However, this does not present a problem for materialists, since they will argue that ideas are engendered by the brain and there is no such thing as a “soul”. Hence random mutations, upright posture, cooked food etc. explain the expansion/complexification of the brain which gives rise to more and more new ideas. So welcome once again to materialism. And it may well be right. But not if there’s a “soul” that engenders new ideas and even survives the death of the brain.[...]
DAVID: [...] you are again twisting or ignoring my statements. The analogy is the self/soul running a bigger more complex brain it has been given in each stage of enlargement, like a new better hardware/software just as when you buy an upgraded computer. And the soul leaves a dead brain to go to an afterlife. I am a dualist. Why are you so obsessed with materialism with their false random mutation approach?

No obsession. There is a stark choice: either you have an immaterial soul which does all your thinking, or your material brain does all the thinking. I remain neutral. I am notoriously ignorant about computers, but as far as I know, an upgrading may be necessary if the computer is incapable of dealing with new software. Do you upgrade your computer before the new software has been invented? Software first, upgrading second. But I really don’t find this analogy very helpful, since nothing is analogous to consciousness, which is the mystery at the heart of this debate, and I happen to know that both hardware and software are material.

DAVID (quoting dhw): “The effort to do something new would have RESULTED in expansion” is against all the evidence we have in science. […]
We know the brains jumped in size and presumable complexity as cortex was added. I say God did it with a drive in cortical size.

I know you say that. I note that you have ignored the fact that the illiterate women’s brains underwent complexification as a RESULT of their learning to read, which provides scientific evidence that the effort to perform new tasks RESULTS in changes to the brain (as opposed to the brain being changed beforehand).

DAVID: How can there be new demands if the soul/brain cannot imagine them?

dhw: In your dualistic world it is NOT the brain that imagines them. You keep agreeing that the “soul” does the imagining and so makes the demands, which the brain implements.

Yes, when the brain is complex enough to allow that.

DAVID: I view each earlier hominin stage as being unable to envision anything beyond the stage of brain complexity they possess for their self/soul to employ.

dhw: And so your hominin is unable to conceive of a spear until your God has increased the size or complexity of his brain to allow him to make a spear. And then hominin says to himself: “I have the capacity to make a spear. This gives me a new idea. I can make a spear.”
Presumably the same process as your God equipping the pre-whale with fins before it enters the water, or fiddling with hominin legs before they descend to the ground.

Not legs, but spine and pelvis. Generally correct.

DAVID: Each stage indicates its limits by its artifacts, as paleontologists show.

dhw: Paleontologists can only show the material implementation of ideas. They cannot show which came first: the idea or the means of implementing the idea. However, this does not present a problem for materialists, since they will argue that ideas are engendered by the brain and there is no such thing as a “soul”. Hence random mutations, upright posture, cooked food etc. explain the expansion/complexification of the brain which gives rise to more and more new ideas. So welcome once again to materialism. And it may well be right. But not if there’s a “soul” that engenders new ideas and even survives the death of the brain (a hypothesis which you now seem reluctant to include in your arguments).

Not reluctant. And you are again twisting or ignoring my statements. The analogy is the self/soul running a bigger more complex brain it has been given in each stage of enlargement, like a new better hardware/software just as when you buy an upgraded computer.. And the soul leaves a dead brain to go to an afterlife. I am a dualist. Why are you so obsessed with materialism with their false random mutation approach?

DAVID: The “effort to do something new – would have RESULTED in expansion” is against all the evidence we have from science.

dhw: Can you please tell me what evidence science has supplied that your God intervened at various times (or preprogrammed all the stages 3.8 billion years ago) to increase the size of the material brain, and only then was the immaterial “soul” able to come up with its new ideas?

The analogy as above. We know the brains jumped in size and presumable complexity as cortex was added. I say God did it with a drive in cortical size.

I have repeated this summary, as it contains all the salient points. I will therefore only select salient points from your responses to the rest of yesterday’s post.

DAVID: How can there be new demands if the soul/brain cannot imagine them?

In your dualistic world it is NOT the brain that imagines them. You keep agreeing that the “soul” does the imagining and so makes the demands, which the brain implements.

DAVID: I view each earlier hominin stage as being unable to envision anything beyond the stage of brain complexity they possess for their self/soul to employ.

And so your hominin is unable to conceive of a spear until your God has increased the size or complexity of his brain to allow him to make a spear. And then hominin says to himself: “I have the capacity to make a spear. This gives me a new idea. I can make a spear.”
Presumably the same process as your God equipping the pre-whale with fins before it enters the water, or fiddling with hominin legs before they descend to the ground. (But see below.)

DAVID: Each stage indicates its limits by its artifacts, as paleontologists show.

Paleontologists can only show the material implementation of ideas. They cannot show which came first: the idea or the means of implementing the idea. However, this does not present a problem for materialists, since they will argue that ideas are engendered by the brain and there is no such thing as a “soul”. Hence random mutations, upright posture, cooked food etc. explain the expansion/complexification of the brain which gives rise to more and more new ideas. So welcome once again to materialism. And it may well be right. But not if there’s a “soul” that engenders new ideas and even survives the death of the brain (a hypothesis which you now seem reluctant to include in your arguments).

dhw: Yes, the women had an existing brain of specific size and complexity, but the desire to read, as you so rightly say, RESULTED in increased complexity.
DAVID: But all the ladies did was use an existing brain to learn to read, a brain that had the built-in capacity/ complexity to allow that event.

Their brain CHANGED as a result of the effort to read. Why do you ignore your own statement? You wrote: They learn to read which results in known shrinkage in size and increase in complexity of an already existing brain… (My bold) It did NOT have the built-in complexity (size is no longer an issue). Why would the process have been different in earlier times, with the brain changing (= expanding or complexifying) BEFORE the new activity?

DAVID: The “effort to do something new – would have RESULTED in expansion” is against all the evidence we have from science.

Can you please tell me what evidence science has supplied that your God intervened at various times (or preprogrammed all the stages 3.8 billion years ago) to increase the size of the material brain, and only then was the immaterial “soul” able to come up with its new ideas?

DAVID: There are no knots. We settled this. It is obvious the soul uses the brain as an instrument. I am discussing the attributes of the instrument and what can be done with it by the soul.

dhw: Good. So why do you say the brain was the CAUSE of our wanderings, and the Neanderthals didn’t wander because their brains were less complex? Was it the brain that inspired Sapiens to wander, or did the soul instruct the brain to move the body?

Why do you constantly forget that when I say the larger complex brain allows for these advances, the soul is always understood as using the more advanced brain in size and complexity?

DAVID: You are forgetting gaps. You are using Darwinian thinking again. The hominin fossil evidence shows each time a new species appears its brain size is 200 cc bigger, and more than likely has a higher complexity of its neurons and connections. That larger brain allows for more advanced ideation and more advanced artifacts to prove the point.

dhw: How can the brain “allow for more advanced ideation” if it is the soul that produces ideas? In your dualism, the brain implements the ideas provided by the soul, and the more advanced artifacts are the material realization of the ideas. Which comes first: ideas or implementation of ideas? If an idea requires something new from the brain, the brain must make changes to itself. Each expansion or complexification will therefore be the result of new demands.

Soul use of brain explained once again ad nauseum. How can there be new demands if the soul/brain cannot imagine them? I view each earlier hominin stage as being unable to envision anything beyond the stage of brain complexity they possess for their self/soul to employ. Each stage indicates its limits by its artifacts, as paleontologists show.

DAVID: Stop beating a dead horse. Sapiens brains appeared 300,000 years ago, no larger than Neanderthal, in fact smaller, implying more complexity on board, as shown by sapiens accomplishments compared to Neanderthal all living in competition. The woman you refer to are using an existing brain of specific size and complexity. They learn to read which results in known shrinkage in size and increase in complexity of an already existing brain size and advanced connectivity of more neurons. Your example is a total nonsequitor to our discussion of what causes 200 cc jumps in brain size. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: It is you who have (in my view rightly) combined the factors of size and complexity. Yes, the women had an existing brain of specific size and complexity, but the desire to read, as you so rightly say, RESULTED in increased complexity. The same process – the effort to do something new – would have RESULTED in expansion and/or increased complexity in earlier species of hominin/homo.

But all the ladies did was use an existing brain to learn to read, a brain that had the built-in capacity/ complexity to allow that event. As sapiens, over 300,000 years, learned to use heir new instrument much like learning to play the piano or use a computer, the instrument got smaller, not bigger! That is a fact, expansion not a result. Neanderthals had a bigger brain, which is presumed to be less complex. They did not invent the ability to read or write as sapiens did with a better brain. I presume the Neanderthal watched the sapiens in action, but did not know how to keep up. The "effort to do something new – would have RESULTED in expansion" is against all the evidence we have from science.