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

by David Turell , Monday, October 03, 2016, 15:35 (2973 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: And so I don't know exactly what it is that you consider to be strong evidence of divine pre-planning, other than your own assumption that God dabbled changes to the vocal organs as opposed to changes to the vocal organs resulting from human need, which would be like God giving fish legs before they stepped onto dry land, as opposed to fish fins changing to limbs when conditions demanded the change.-We know that need results in epigenetic changes. At this level need drives alterations, some of which are carried over but without much dynamic change in species phenotype. Vocal anatomy changes are all major alterations of anatomy in new species. Your theory requires an explanation of how new species appear, which we don't have. You accept it is not gradual, but jumps. I accept saltation from God. How does your 'need' approach make the jumps? There is no answer, just your desire that it can happen.
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> dhw: How itty bitty are itty bitty changes? We know that the cell communities cooperate very quickly to enable organisms to cope with new conditions (adaptation). If they don't, they perish. And the adaptations then become the norm. That's all we have to go by. (Even a human weed can transform himself into a muscle man with the “effort” of a few exercises.) In the case of the vocal organs, they already existed, and the fossil record suggests much the same process (saltation, not itty-bitty).-Please re-read this contorted paragraph. That is my argument.
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> dhw: Stop there! If the brain received consciousness, which came first: consciousness or the brain? And are you now saying that it was the enlarged brain that engendered self-consciousness, or that the brain had to grow in order to receive self-consciousness?-It is my theory that apes are conscious, but not really self-aware as we are. Our consciousness appeared as the brain grew larger frontal lobes and received it.