Brain complexity: learning new tasks (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 02, 2017, 15:07 (2548 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Saturday, December 02, 2017, 15:22

DAVID: 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: The hardware does not produce the concepts. Consciousness uses the brain to implement its concepts.

Agreed. Concepts are thought process, immaterial.

dhw: In sapiens, it has shrunk thanks to the efficiency of complexification. In pre-sapiens it kept reaching points at which it had to expand, and since it already had that ability, it did not need God to do the expanding. (But he may have designed the ability.)

Then you will not accept my theory that pre-sapiens brains had the expand/contract mechanism. One of us is correct. No evidence can be available.

DAVID: 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: In pre-sapiens the brain continued to expand because it kept reaching a point when complexification could not fulfil the demands. This would also have been the case in your own scenario, since your God would have expanded the brain for the same reason. But you have him doing it BEFORE new concepts made it necessary, whereas I have hominins doing it WHEN it was necessary, i.e. in response to new demands, as proven by modern science.

With pre-sapiens, once complexification had exhausted its abilities, the implementation of the new concept (artefact) would only appear when the brain had finished changing itself (i.e. expanding). And so of course the artefacts are only found alongside the hominin whose brain had finished changing itself.

This last paragraph of yours is very close to my view, except for the cause of expansion. If habilis has an idea for spears, the idea is immaterial. No brain change. Once he learns to knapp flint, attach the stone point to a wooden rod, and then practices throwing it with accuracy, there is no question his brain has enlarged with all the muscle movement and visual coordination involved. But then the brain complexified and shrank. Based on human athletic training their skulls stay the same size, as in the newly newly trained Italian readers. Small ezxpansion and contraction. You have thrown out one of the major tenets of the study of evolution. Improvements build on each other. Sapiens did not invent brain expansion/contraction. Don't you think Neanderthal brains worked the same as ours? Without question, it came from earlier homos' brains. Your first paragraph ignores the sequence of use of the brain: " But you have him doing it BEFORE new concepts made it necessary, whereas I have hominins doing it WHEN it was necessary." Concepts do not enlarge brains. Only functional use of new practices does.