Brain complexity: learning new tasks (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, November 16, 2017, 18:14 (2564 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Did you miss or ignore the point that the brain can expand without enlarging the skull! And can shrink back as it accommodates the new complexity of connections, and as we saw in learning to read, it always shrinks back. We have no evidence for continuing expansion (in small steps), only 200cc gaps in the fossils.

dhw: The brain shrinks back NOW! You have explained above how it is able to expand slightly, but way back in hominin days, you keep telling us the skull expanded, so it must have expanded when the brain couldn’t shrink back enough to be contained within the existing skull.

Why are you so surprised at the facts we have! We fully know that the brain can expand to accommodate new learned skills and then shrinks back as it consolidates its new neurons and wiring. All shown in studies I have presented. All in the same skull size! And note that H. sapiens appears to be 300,000 years old, and even though we have learned all sorts of skills and concepts in that time period, our skulls are now slightly smaller! Your concept about the brain forcing the skull to enlarge is totally untenable.

DAVID: Again, skipping the knowledge the brain always shrinks back.

dhw: Again, it always shrinks back NOW! The skull has reached its optimum size, and so the brain complexifies instead of expanding. But according to you, the brain and skull DID expand in the good old days of the hominins and hominids.

Not according to me re' brain and skull. I'm simply repeating the known history of hominin evolution. And how do you know the brain has reached its optimum size? Are you now agreeing with me that this size brain was a goal?

dhw: Meanwhile, you keep “skipping” the fact that all the evidence, including this new discovery, makes it clear that the expansion or complexification of the brain is the RESULT of trying to do something new, and THAT is the issue here.

That is my point. I've skipped nothing as you twist and turn trying to manufacture a theory of brain size growth out of nothing.

dhw:So are you now agreeing at last that the brain expands and contracts today as a RESULT of new concepts, and did the same in the old days,

I've always followed the facts presented. Small degrees of expansion and contraction are allowed by the cerebrospinal fluid layer around the brain, as I've explained before.

dhw: but that your God realized then that it was going to expand too much so he popped in and gave our hominid friends 200 cc extra skull to accommodate the expanding brain? In other words, He did NOT give us a bigger brain, but only gave us a bigger skull?

He expanded both skull container and brain to allow the brain to create more conceptualization as I firmly believe the brain cell communities cannot tell the skull cell communities to get bigger so the brain can expand. Both must happen at once as the 200cc gaps in skull size shown in the fossil record. The same problem involves the female pelvis change in birth canal size to accommodate the new skull size. We are discussing a triple size change, and you think somehow it can easily all happen at once by itself!

dhw: I’d have thought it would be simpler to have the different cell communities cooperating as the need arose, but at least this would harmonize with your dualism. (I’m still hoping to return to the compromise between dualism and materialism which may be the key to this issue.)

Do you want a whole legislative body of cell committees negotiating all the size changes? Much simpler with God in control, or haven't you noticed?