Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, October 01, 2016, 12:07 (2976 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: For anatomic changes the saltations are results of larger jumps in phenotype. You are again suggesting slight changes in fossils; not found! -dhw:It is you who have said the changes were major, but it makes no difference to the argument. Bearing in mind the fact that we know organisms can respond very swiftly to need by changing their own structure (as in adaptation), it seems to me more likely that the changes resulted from the need for new sounds, to express the expanding range of subject-matter arising from enhanced consciousness, than from your God changing human anatomy tens of thousands of years in advance, and humans later on finding that they could make new sounds, and consequently inventing language.-DAVID: You are using a false narrative: Epigenetic alterations are minor, not major. I am discussing major jumps in phenotypes. The guppies took two years to change size. That is the brief adaptations you are offering, without phenotypic change of any importance. The changes we are discussing are gaps like H. Erectus to H. habilis to H. Sapiens.-The changes we are discussing are to lips, tongue, larynx, respiration - i.e. to organs that already existed and which would have worked together cooperatively to create the system enabling new sounds. According to your hypothesis, God dipped in and made precisely those changes, and then for some reason humans waited tens of thousands of years before finding out what to do with them. According to me, humans found they needed new sounds, and probably within a comparatively short period, the restructuring took place in much the same way as fins turned into legs. See the next revelation, which totally supports my hypothesis although for some reason you seem to think it supports your own: -DAVID: Look at this article on walking fish. Large skeletal changes. Again a gap.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/01/14/262464764/first-land-walking-fish-loo...
 
QUOTE: " 'It's what we've all been waiting for,' said Jennifer Clack, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Cambridge's Museum of Zoology in the United Kingdom. 'Until this discovery, we weren't able to see the changes by which the pelvic fins of the fish became much larger and more robust, and gradually turned into the tetrapod hind limb.' " (My bold)-So apparently your God did not provide fish with fully formed legs before they stepped onto dry land. As fish responded to the need for new movements, the anatomy changed: trying to walk first, anatomy second. As humans responded to the need for new sounds, the anatomy changed: trying to talk first, anatomy second.-dhw: It is indeed a great article, for which many thanks. The author clearly thinks that the origins of modern human culture go back much further than was previously thought. Probably no need to imagine that 200,000 years ago the great brain hung around doing nothing. Simple beginnings, growing complexity - just like language. -DAVID: The big brain arrived as a tabula rasa and then was developed to its current state by humans learning to use it. Speech is the same. Anatomy first!-For a dualist like yourself, this is a complete contradiction. The receiver would have to develop to meet the demands of the transmitter - enhanced consciousness. And enhanced consciousness requires enhanced expression: thought first, speech organs second.