Brain complexity: learning new tasks (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, December 13, 2017, 14:46 (2537 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: This seems reasonable if you accept that consciousness/soul run the brain.

dhw: I do accept that consciousness runs the brain, no matter whether consciousness is a separate entity (dualism) or is itself engendered by the brain (materialism). But if, as you believe, consciousness is a separate entity, it cannot be the larger more complex brain that conceives of more complex concepts!

Remember I conceive the brain as a computer. A larger more complex software in a more advanced computer allows more complex operations. You and I do simple things, writing, receiving news and emails. But think of 3-D printing objects! My soul/consciousness operates the brain in life. The infant brain receives consciousness as a fetus. The separation occurs only after true death. You know this point in my thinking.

dhw: You are repeating my own hypothesis in different words. Yes, our brain is different because instead of expanding, it complexifies. And yes, increased efficiency of complexification may have resulted in shrinkage. And yes, complexification could not cope with pre-sapiens’ demands, and so the brain had to expand.

DAVID: What demands in a survival type life? Minimal compared to what our brain does now. I don't see the explosion pressures you are looking for.

dhw: And now you changing the subject! You know perfectly well that I regard survival and IMPROVEMENT as the driving forces, and you have accepted improvement as a “major tenet” of evolution.

Not changing. Read your own sentence taken from the last comment: " And yes, complexification could not cope with pre-sapiens’ demands, and so the brain had to expand." I repeat, what conceptual demands in a survival mode life require the expansion? My anwser, not one.

DAVID: Not inadequate, but enlarged with many more neurons and branching axons and synapses. Then it could easily handle the exploding knowledge and thought over the past 10,000 years.

dhw: Over the past 10,000 years the brain has COMPLEXIFIED, not enlarged (as pre-sapiens brains were able to do). In fact, as you keep telling us, it has shrunk. And so the optimum-sized sapiens brain was not hanging around waiting to be made full use of. It had to respond to new concepts by COMPLEXIFYING, as proven by modern science.

The 200cc of highly complex hardware of the human pre-frontal cortex is what arrived 300,000 years ago. The fact that it could shrink a bit as new uses caused modifications of further complexity is simply an evidence of the computer power we received initially before complex use even began.

DAVID: I believe it was highly complex to begin with, waiting for us to use it, but we had to learn to use it.

dhw: So instead of claiming it was the large brain hanging around waiting to be used, you now say it was the complex brain that was hanging around to be used. Of course it was highly complex to begin with, but now it is even more complex.

Explained above. The complexity you describe involves new connectivity, perhaps new neurons, but a degree of pruning to create the smaller size. This onboard plasticity ability attests to the initial complexity. In the past 10,000 years we have opened up its full ability for use.

DAVID: I don't know why each jump in size took so long. Ask God. We have to accept what we see.

dhw: Then instead of asking why it took sapiens 290,000 years (no big deal in the grand scheme of evolution) to come up with his new “civilizing” concepts, why don’t you just accept what you see?

We have discussed a history of becoming civilized and finding the brain was ready for us to use it.