Different in degree or kind: Sapiens begin brain use (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 11, 2016, 15:00 (2754 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The author, a paleontologist, muses about when humans started to use their brains in partial and then toward full capacity using ornamental jewelry artifacts to judge when there were advances: -

http://nautil.us//issue/40/learning/the-modern-mind-may-be-100000-years-old -

dhw: - The great unsolved mystery here, though, is the source of consciousness. If the source is material (i.e. the brain or other material combinations), you can argue that the mechanisms are too complex to have arisen by chance, and so your God must have created them. And you can argue that human consciousness is so advanced that perhaps your God dabbled with existing brains in order to create new complexities that would enable consciousness to develop new degrees of self-awareness. But that is not your argument. You are a dualist. You claim that the brain is only a RECEIVER of consciousness. And so over and over again I point out to you that a receiver receives, it responds, it is not the generator.

DAVID: My concept is not clear to you. I believe the brain is a receiver of the ability to have consciousness from a universal consciousness, and mold that personal consciousness as one develops from an infant to adult. Since that consciousness can exist without a brain in NDE's it can rejoin the universal consciousness for short periods in clinical death or at real death in afterlife.

You can dress it up in as many ways as you like, but your dualism means that your God has given humans consciousness, and the brain to receive consciousness. Culture derives from thought, thought derives from consciousness, and the receiver of consciousness (the brain) is the material organ that translates thoughts into action. According to your dualism, it does not generate the thoughts, in which case it must develop materially in order to cope with the new demands – just as a weightlifter develops his muscles in order to increase his lifting capacity: first the need, then the development. (As in fins to legs.)

dhw: ...for some reason you refuse to recognize the dislocation between your two beliefs: 1) conscious thought is not produced by the brain, and 2) the brain had to change before conscious thought could evolve. That is why I suggested that materialism would give you a more logical case. -
DAVID: Explained above

Not explained above.

dhw: As for this fascinating article, it has nothing to do with how the modern brain came into being. Its speculations start when the brain is already there, and the subject is the evolution of human culture.
DAVID: My point exactly. We are given a large frontal lobe H. sapiens brain first and then learn how to use it, exactly as the article describes. Form first, use second.

The article does not say God gave us a large frontal lobe. It doesn’t give us any clue as to how the frontal lobe got there. It simply speculates on when and how cultures evolved, and the author seems to think the first signs occurred 180,000-200,000 years ago, i.e. at the time when it is believed that the brain changed.