Dualism versus materialism; addendum (Identity)

by David Turell , Monday, August 14, 2017, 17:37 (2437 days ago) @ dhw

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.