Brain complexity: fine-tuned for selective hearing (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, December 13, 2017, 13:38 (2537 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID’s comment: The research shows how specific areas can be utilized for specific functions. Since a natural unguided evolutionary is supposed to produce our brain, how did the natural process know what future functions might be needed in the future brain? (dhw’s bold)

dhw: It didn’t. You keep emphasizing the plasticity of the brain, and that works in RESPONSE to new demands, not in anticipation of them. The Indian women learned to write, and their brains complexified. Someone invented the violin, and the brain complexified. We learn to listen to an orchestra, and the brain complexifies. I do not believe for one second that the first living cells were preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago with instructions for the making of brains and for the adjustments of brains to enable them to distinguish the sound of a violin. But I fully accept the possibility that the astonishingly complex mechanisms of the brain evolved from the astonishingly complex mechanisms of the cell/cell communities, and that these mechanisms may have been the invention of your God.

DAVID: But you are not recognizing that all animal brains that resemble ours have the same uses in the same areas. We can study mouse brains to learn how ours work. Looks like a pattern of design to me.

Of course brains work in the same way, and of course the pattern has been passed down from our predecessors. That’s evolution for you. But you asked how a natural process could know what future functions might be needed in a future brain (as if your God must have anticipated and preprogrammed them all). My response explains why I do not think they were all preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago. No clairvoyance needed, because the brain complexifies in RESPONSE to and not in anticipation of new concepts.