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

by David Turell , Monday, December 19, 2016, 18:59 (2676 days ago) @ dhw

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

dhw: Although this is a side issue in the present context, it’s important in its own right. If nothing is added, i.e. no new information, there is no individual afterlife. That may well be true, but it goes against all the accounts of NDE patients, who remain themselves and undergo new experiences.

Your view is confused. If life is truly over no new information is added. NDE folks are not dead in the final sense. They can be given info that they will live and come back later. Afterlife is static, nothing changes, no new experiences other than greeting NDE's.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: The researchers say lots and lots of genes are involved, and each contributes “a piece”. I think that allows for any number of changes. As regards the brain, what I am trying to describe is a feedback process, as detailed below.

If there is a huge gap in species type, i.e., H. habilis vs. H. erectus, vs. H sapiens of course 'lots of genes' are involved. We don't see stepwise tiny steps so the gaps are huge, the gene changes very multiplied and must be presumed to occur all at once to fit the 'gap' evidence.

DAVID: You make it sound simple but the brain had to be given the ability of plasticity. What if the brain didn't have that? I think God supplied that attribute.

dhw: Plasticity had to be given to cells from the very beginning of life, or evolution could never have taken place. They only lose their plasticity when they are assigned a particular fixed role (though stem cells remain plastic). No, it’s not simple. It’s miraculously complex, and as I have made clear at the end, my hypothesis leaves plenty of room for your God!

Now you are agreeing with me. The original bacteria were loaded with multiple metabolic pathways in order to survive 3.6-8 billion years.

DAVID: I really doubt that thoughts create new physiology. I can think I want to exercise and enlarge muscles, increase heart strength, but noting more happens.

dhw: What I am proposing is not “new physiology” – it is development of existing physiology. The long line of our animal ancestors all had brains. The human brain was not new. It was enlarged. Vocal tracts and thumbs also existed. On this thread we are tracing the origin of humans, not of organs.

Please note the gaps in fossils in your thinking. Our ancestors could only develop what was onboard at the start of a new species.

DAVID: God lit the spark and guided the development. note, only one group of primates advanced in shotgun style, those that led to H. sapiens.

dhw: You yourself have drawn attention to the fact that there were several groups, and I don’t know what you mean by “shotgun style”.

Shotgun: Either we are being fooled by species variants or there were a large number of pre-homos that emerged from the apes according to all the types found currently. It resembles the 'bush of life' that all of evolution shows, but just at a specific point in evolution when the drive to complexity worked on producing us.

dhw: M[y point] is that once the spark of enhanced awareness was lit, it caused a chain reaction which can explain not only the expansion of the brain but also other physiological changes which in turn contributed to the enhancement of our intelligence. The more you can do, the more you learn, and the more you learn, the more you want to do. That means making more tools or adapting existing ones.

Thought cannot grow the complexity of brain beyond the size of the brain that exists. A newly sized larger brain must appear to do that. Did thought create a new species of brain? I strongly object to that idea. Brain first, new capacities for thought second.