Brain complexity: learning new tasks (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, November 23, 2017, 16:07 (2557 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Thursday, November 23, 2017, 16:21

DAVID: 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: Round we go. There is no permanent enlargement in sapiens because further enlargement would be impractical. That is why reorganization/complexification took over from pre-sapiens enlargement.

I proposed that enlargement/shrinkage exists in all pre-homos. You agreed. Remember?

DAVID: 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!

dhw: Not to figure it out! To implement it! Once again: If the brain changes now (complexification) through implementation of new concepts (e.g. learning to write), it would also have changed then (enlargement) through implementation of new concepts (learning how to make the spear figured out beforehand.)

What if pre-habilis couldn't envision a spear? Only habilis had the concept and implemented it, all with the same brain. That is the only way to interpret artifacts.

dhw: Why would your God bother to expand pre-sapiens brains if there was no progress?

Each brain enlargement allowed progress beyond the last stage.

dhw So please give us your theory as to why, according to you, sapiens didn’t use his brain capacity for 290,000 years.

DAVID: Had to learn how to use it.

I suggest he was using it all the time, and I have offered you an explanation of the leap:
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.

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

dhw: So that’s settled! Slow progress until a few specially clever individuals caused the leap. Except that you still can’t bear the thought that this is a perfectly natural progression.

Of course a perfectly natural progression with no permanent brain enlargement.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: You agree that sapiens brain and skull could not enlarge any further without serious physical problems. That is why sapiens complexification (with resultant shrinkage) took over from pre-sapiens enlargement.

All pre-homos had a degree of complexification! This is why the progression of hominins had a 200cc increase with each new stage of evolutionary development. We must presume what our brain does now reflects its abilities in its smaller past. We have no evidence of any other process.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: You agree that the brain does not change until it starts to IMPLEMENT new concepts (proven by modern science: learning to write), but now you say your God had to change the brain BEFORE pre-sapiens could think up the concepts whose implementation was what changed the brain! And you offer this contradictory inversion just because you want your God to dabble every branch and stage of the evolutionary bush, and you can’t bear the thought that he might have set up a mechanism whereby organisms work out their own ways of surviving and improving.

I'm sorry you cannot accept God at work. But your substitute theistic approach is also God at work.