Brain complexity: learning new tasks (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, December 01, 2017, 15:30 (2549 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: That is exactly the point. You have introduced the nebulous concept of 'demands'. What demands could a people with smaller brains have if as I maintain they could not think of them as possibilities.

dhw:. I "maintain" that they can think of the possibility, and the effort to implement the concept causes the expansion. I offered the concrete, non-nebulous example of tool-making. According to you, God expanded the brain and then bigger-brained hominin thought of tool-making. But also according to you, conceptualization has nothing to do with the size of the brain, because it is the “soul” that conceptualizes,

This is where we are very apart. The soul uses the brain to create concepts. Consciousness thinks using the hardware of the brain, and consciousness is the software. I've brought up this analogy many times, but you skip over it. As new uses of the existing brain are attempted, the brain has the capacity to change itself plastically, enlarges and then as it completes its transformation it shrinks with new complexity.

dhw: and according to modern science, the brain changes when it tries to IMPLEMENT the concept and not before. Put the two together, and you have small-brained hominin conceptualizing the tool, and the brain expanding as a result of his efforts to make the tool.

All we have as evidence is in our brains with the process I describe above only occurring in the same size brain and skull. Our very civilized concept filled brains and skulls are smaller than 300,000 years ago. All because we received an extra 200cc 300,000 years ago, long before any of our current concepts were envisioned. Your view is so contorted.

dhw: How does the fact that some sapiens make fewer demands than others prove that your God expanded the pre-sapiens brain before new demands were made on it?

Explained above.

DAVID: You agree with me that most probably pre-sapiens brains expanded and contracted. Then you keep trying to skip the contraction part in explaining why brains/skulls enlarged by 200cc. I will stick with God providing the change.

dhw: There are two different sorts of contractions. We know that sapiens’ brain has contracted in the sense of shrunk, but when implementing concepts it also does a mini-expansion and then contracts back to its normal size. Shrinkage has happened because complexification is so efficient that it doesn’t need as many cells as it once did. We know that pre-sapiens brain expanded permanently. We are discussing why. It may also have mini-expanded and contracted back again as it complexified, but even if it did, quite clearly the complexification was not efficient enough to cope with the demands being made on the brain by new concepts, and so it required more capacity. Why else would it have enlarged? According to you, your God expanded it, leaving all these additional cells hanging around with nothing to do until the soul came up with new concepts they could implement. This sequence runs contrary to what modern science (and common sense) has shown quite clearly: the brain changes (whether expanding or complexifying or mini-expanding and contracting) when it tries to implement new concepts, and not beforehand. You keep trying to ignore this proven process, which is not invalidated by a possible mini-expansion/contraction process within pre-sapiens brains prior to their permanent enlargements.

I've explained expansion/contraction within a given size and have not ignored the known science. That I view God as having gifted each stage of hominin with a new brain size for subsequent use, is something you cannot accept. And that view is obviously supported by the artifacts produced after that size appears. Your hunt for a conceptualizing force that creates 200cc jumps in size of course brings up the issue of how speciation occurs. Since my view is that it is with God's help or intervention we remain far apart. Your common sense is not my common sense.