Brain complexity: learning new tasks (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, November 22, 2017, 15:54 (2558 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The fallacy in you thought is my point that the smaller brain does not have the ability to have the concept that causes expansion. Only the larger more complex brain can develop the concept.

dhw:In concrete terms: if the concept of learning to write CAUSED the brain to change in the course of implementation, it is illogical to assume that the brain had to change before habilis had the concept of making tools.

Using what we know about sapiens, a brain learns something new by slightly enlarging and then shrinks as it reorganizes. No permanent brain enlargement.

dhw: (Though in fact it would have been immediate pre-habilis that had the concept, and that is why habilis developed a bigger brain.)

Whew! Pre-habilis says I can envision throwing a spear but I need a bigger brain to figure it out. Poof! "My brain is exploding" and now I am a habilis!

DAVID: Survival concepts are limited, and each hominin advance in artifacts show minimal thought advancement until the last 10,000 years of H. Sapiens. A 300,000 year-old sapiens brain had the capacity to develop those thoughts, but took 290,000 years to do it. Your theory is inverted.

dhw: See above for your own inversion of the theory. What point are you trying to make with regard to each hominin advance in brain size? Are you saying there was no reason for them to expand, and there was no progress made? From no tools to flints to spears, to use of fire, to who knows what social advancements

Hunter-gatherers (as sapiens) have very simple survival skills and do not use their brains as we do. Hominins were little different. There was not much brain needed to be used. Social interaction is in small groups of 30-50 individuals more or less. Hardly any degree of complexity.

dhw: You keep harping on about 300,000 years and 290,000 years. The exact figures are not known, but bigger-brained Neanderthals are believed to been around 200,000 years ago, and interbred with sapiens. They are now considered to have been very sophisticated, so how “minimal” is minimal advancement up to 10,000 years go?

Neanderthal 'sophistication' compared to what? Made jewelry, buried dead, wore hides , lived in caves. Before the final Neanderthals died out, our sapiens were drawing pictures in caves (starting about 40,000 years ago), but no further advanced at that time. Neanderthal brains were bigger but obviously less complex.The 300,000 years is something you are meticulously avoiding. Our big brain appeared back then, but mostly unused until 10,000 years ago. Why so big if it is driven by concepts of pre-sapiens who can't implement them, but supposedly thought of them before the size appeared? It took 290,000 years to learn how to use our big brain.

dhw: In due course, yes, there was a leap in thought development, but you can hardly claim that it was due to brain expansion if the brain had been the same size for 290,000 years! So please give us your theory as to why, according to you, sapiens didn’t use his brain capacity for 290,000 years.

Had to learn how to use it.

dhw: And so if there was a sudden leap forward 10,000 years ago, it could only have been because certain individual souls or certain individual brain cell communities came up with new ideas.

Agreed. All thinking individuals contribute to our progress. We educate each other.

dhw: You seem to think concepts only began with sapiens. Of course all the concepts that appeared after the brain had stopped expanding appeared after the brain had stopped expanding! Instead of expanding the brain as in pre-sapiens time, they now make it rewire itself because it couldn't go on expanding indefinitely! The concept always precedes the implementation, and modern science has proved that the brain does not change until it starts to implement the concept. Why do you keep denying the findings you yourself have drawn our attention to?

Lucy had concepts. Very simple ones. Sapiens have very complex ones, using a much more complex brain. Concepts change the brain. But sapiens never enlarge their skull. In fact over 300,000 years it is slightly smaller. Therefore neither did habilis or erectus using the same enlargement/shrinkage technique. God enlarged it for them in 200cc jumps to reach the next stage of human evolution and thought capacity. Your convoluted inverted theory is to avoid God's agency.