Brain complexity: learning new tasks (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, November 30, 2017, 13:20 (2550 days ago) @ David Turell

I am combining the two “brain complexity threads” to avoid undue repetition, and will edit accordingly. “Learning new tasks” is the more relevant heading.

DAVID: The reason I brought up indigenous folks is that despite their having a huge brain, they choose not to use it. If they received it because of your nebulous demands, why did they get it?

What do you mean “they choose not to use it”? Are they zombies? Different people use their brains in different ways – and that also applies within our western society. I gave you a partial answer to this earlier: “I don’t suppose any human would claim to have used ALL of its potential, unless you think we’ve finished learning, inventing, discovering etc.” Do you think “indigenous” people have no language, culture, social life, tools, housing? Some even believe in gods. (And in many cases, they have a far healthier attitude towards Nature than we do.) And so they received their sapiens brain in the same way as the rest of us (brain expansion until, with sapiens, it could not expand any more and complexification took over). But new concepts led some sapiens to develop the “sophistication” of western civilization - no doubt with massive complexifications of the brain (which could no longer expand) – while others stayed closer to Nature. You might say that they have not developed as much of the brain’s potential for complexity as you have. However, that doesn’t alter the fact that if the brain changes as a RESPONSE to new demands, its pre-sapiens expansions and current sapiens complexifications would not have taken place BEFORE the demands were made! And THAT is the issue we are discussing.

DAVID: I still insist that the mechanism of enlargement/shrinkage was undoubtedly present in hominin brains, and not, as you imply, invented just for sapiens. I'm sure Neanderthals had the mechanism. Since evolution builds on past developments, I am very sure my interpretation is correct.

I keep repeating that this is not the issue. I have no objection to your belief that hominin brains may have enlarged/shrunk as ours do. The question is why they expanded permanently. And you dodge that with every answer except the next one. I’ll skip some of your non-answers to avoid repetition.

DAVID: We disagree of how the next expansion happened. God did it either directly or by pre-programming.

dhw: If you agree that the brain changes in RESPONSE to concepts and efforts to implement them, as proven by modern science, and not beforehand, then it makes no sense to claim that in the past the brain changed BEFORE hominins had the concepts and tried to implement them. That would be like saying that today the Indian women’s brains rewired before they learned to write.

DAVID: And here you backtrack and twist the concept that early brains could expand/contract with new uses. Of course they did.

And here you continue to focus on what may have happened before brains expanded permanently, whereas we are trying to find out why they expanded permanently. Your only answer is “God did it either directly or by pre-programming”, and you insist that he did so BEFORE hominins came up with their new concepts. And yet you agreed when I wrote that 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.”

dhw: 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.

DAVID: My objection is your use of the sapiens brain expansion concept to declare that all hominins exploded their brains/ skulls by 200cc out of conceptual need.

What “sapiens brain expansion concept”? The sapiens brain has stopped expanding. The argument is that all permanent pre-sapiens expansions occurred as a result of the proven process whereby brains change in RESPONSE to new demands and not beforehand. You have agreed, and yet you still insist that pre-sapiens brains underwent their permanent expansions BEFORE the demands were made!