Brain complexity: learning new tasks (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, November 29, 2017, 19:14 (2551 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The soul/consciousness mechanism uses the cortex, and the cortex remakes its connections and neurons in order to implement the demands made by the soul. It stays the same size until it can’t cope with the new demands, and then it adds more cells and expands accordingly.

DAVID: My position stated well, but as the cortex remakes its connections it shrinks as in sapiens.

dhw: We don’t know if it actually shrank in pre-sapiens, but it makes no difference to the argument that expansion occurred when the existing brain couldn’t cope with new demands. Thank you for at long last accepting MY position. Having accepted it, I don’t know why you keep repeating the objections below.

DAVID: I have not accepted your position. It is not a stretch to assume the expansion/shrinkage as a brain learns to perform different tasks began in the earlier hominin types. Earlier brains had the same,cerebrospinal fluid layer I'm sure.

No problem. Whether it shrank or not in pre-sapiens doesn't change the position above: i.e. that expansion occurred when the existing brain couldn’t cope with the demands made on it by new concepts.

dhw: The more the soul thinks, the more the brain has to expand to “receive” it. The thought precedes the reception, which precedes the expansion!

DAVID: Again you leave out the contraction caused by complexification. Skull size never changes until the next iteration of hominin arrives!

As above, it would have complexified (and contracted, if you insist) until it could no longer cope with new demands, and then it expanded – as opposed to your previous claim that it expanded BEFORE the new demands. Of course it doesn't change until it changes! And then we have our new hominin.

dhw: If the brain is the receiver of the soul’s thoughts, it is the soul that does the thinking and the brain that does the receiving. The computer (brain) obeys the instructions of the software (soul). And in pre-sapiens times the brain had to expand in order to implement the instructions of the soul, whereas now it complexifies. What are you objecting to?

DAVID: No. The brain, having received consciousness is used by the soul for thought, just as you use your computer to reply to me. As for pre-sapiens, expansion/contraction was undoubtedly an existing mechanism passed down to us so skull size remained unchanged. Our brain now complexities and shrinks. Remember, our skulls are slightly smaller than earlier!

The soul (if it exists) does the thinking and uses the brain to implement its thought. (The Indian women want to write, and the brain changes as they learn to implement the concept of writing.) I have explained the shrinkage umpteen times, and am perfectly happy to accept that the whole system was passed down to us, though I don’t understand “so skull size remained unchanged”. It would have remained unchanged until the existing capacity could no longer cope, and then it expanded. But it reached a stage with sapiens at which brain and skull could not expand any further. None of this alters the fact that changes to the brain, whether by expansion or by complexification, with or without pre-sapiens shrinkage, are the RESULT of the effort to implement new concepts and do not take place BEFORE those concepts exist. You have agreed above that this is so, as proven by modern science, but then you keep raising objections as if somehow they showed that this is not so! None of them do.