Brain complexity: learning new tasks (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, November 19, 2017, 14:39 (2561 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Are you agreeing that ancient homo brains had the same expansion/contraction mechanism we have now?

None of us were around to conduct experiments on the workings of their brains, but ancient brains inside their little skulls may well have contracted and expanded a little bit. However, as the new concepts and tasks multiplied, the brain would have required increased capacity. Any rewiring would have been inadequate to cope. Hence expansion of the brain, and expansion of the skull to accommodate the expanded brain.

At least you seem now to have accepted that the brain expands/rewires IN RESPONSE to new concepts and tasks, which does away with the whole idea that your God expanded it before hominins, hominids and homos came up with their new concepts.

dhw: […] Once more: if Habilis’s brain had been able to cope, it would not have expanded, and nor would the skull.
DAVID: Based on processes we see now your point makes no sense if habilis had the same brain process.

This is like saying that if habilis had the same sized brain as we have, it wouldn’t have needed to expand! The process would have been the same: brain expanding (and possibly contracting) but in habilis’s case the capacity was not large enough to fulfil his needs, so it had to expand, just as would have happened with his predecessors and with later homos in the line leading to us.

dhw: […] As you say, the mechanisms now are basically the same as in the past; new tasks lead to expansion, but now the expansion gives way to rewiring.
DAVID: I'm saying that rewiring occurred in habilis onward.

I don’t know when rewiring started to occur, and nor do you. What we do know is that habilis’s brain was about half the size of ours, and was presumably bigger than that of his ancestors: rewiring would only have worked so long as it could cope with the tasks required, but then there had to be more expansion, which we know occurs IN RESPONSE to need.

DAVID: Why do you not like God in control all the time? Does He need rest?
dhw: Why do you want your God controlling every evolutionary change, lifestyle and natural wonder? What is there for him to watch with interest if he does it all himself? And do you never question the likelihood of your God personally dabbling all these changes, or packing a programme for all of them into the first cells, to be passed on through billions of years to every organism that ever existed?
DAVID: why not?

Because I can’t believe that just a few first cells could encompass and pass on billions of programmes for billions of changes to take place in every different environment for the rest of life’s history (apart from the odd dabble). Why would God NOT want to invent a mechanism that would independently create the spectacle that even you think he watches with interest?