Different in degree or kind: big brain evolution (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, December 18, 2016, 22:02 (2678 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Thank you again for this fascinating article. ... The “serendipitous confluence of adaptations” is an important phrase. You, David, will assume that all these adaptations were engineered by your God, so I’m surprised you didn’t pounce on the word “serendipitous”! My own focus, though, is on the question to what extent these adaptations (including the brain) were the cause of intelligence or the result of intelligence

I was fascinated by the total essay, not the use of 'luck' in discussing coordinated applications. The author is not taking a theistic approach, but no matter, he is supplying fascinating information which we can interpret in alternate ways.

dhw: For dualists who claim that the brain is the receiver of consciousness and not the producer, the increase in the size of the brain would come from the need to process more and more information. For materialists, the increase would produce a corresponding increase in consciousness and intelligence. Dualism puts intelligence first and receiver (brain) second; materialism reverses the process. In my attempt to reconcile the two approaches (Human consciousness: Penrose: soul survives! 8 November at 12.16), I suggested that – along the lines of Sheldrake’s morphic resonance – the energy, and hence the information, produced by the brain could last indefinitely, but this did not settle the issue whether that energy and information could be added to once its producer had ceased to function (i.e. whether there might be such a thing as the soul that allows us to live on as an individual identity after death).

I think the soul is added to universal consciousness, but I think its information is fixed, nothing added.

dhw: The related question raised by this article is how and why the brain and our consciousness and intelligence increased on such a massive scale, and it really comes back to how evolution works. Does intelligence change the body, or do changes in the body engender intelligence? The following quote may offer us a clue:

“It’s a mistake to think we can explain brain size with just one or two mutations. I think that is dead wrong. We have probably acquired many little changes that are in some ways coopting the developmental rules.”
Wray concurs: “It wasn’t just a couple mutations and — bam! — you get a bigger brain. As we learn more about the changes between human and chimp brains, we realize there will be lots and lots of genes involved, each contributing a piece to that. The door is now open to get in there and really start understanding. The brain is modified in so many subtle and nonobvious ways.”

This does not accept the gaps that imply an enormous number of genetic changes between H. habilis and H. erectus and H. sapiens. First big brain ,second more intelligence as that brain is used.