Brain complexity: learning new tasks (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, December 15, 2017, 21:14 (2535 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: […] if, as you believe, consciousness is a separate entity, it cannot be the larger more complex brain that conceives of more complex concepts!
DAVID: Remember I conceive the brain as a computer. A larger more complex software in a more advanced computer allows more complex operations. […] My soul/consciousness operates the brain in life. […]

dhw: Your computer image has always been singularly unhelpful. Does your more advanced computer CONCEIVE of more complex software? Of course it doesn’t.

I view the more complex brain receiving a consciousness that can be be used more complexly. I explained this before.

dhw: So why do you maintain that “only the larger more complex brain [computer] can conceive of more complex concepts”? Now in your response you change this to: ”allows more complex operations”. In pre-sapiens the smaller brain had to expand in order to implement more complex concepts, but in sapiens the already enlarged brain did not “allow more complex operations", because having reached optimum size, it had to COMPLEXIFY in order to implement more complex concepts. It is the brain’s plasticity that ALLOWS more complex operations through expansion or complexification.

I don't accept your approach as explained above.

dhw: And I repeat, stop ignoring IMPROVEMENT. But since you insist, let me illustrate how the two driving forces can actually combine. Pre-sapiens man hungry. Him want eat (= SURVIVAL). Him want meat. Him fight animal and damned animal fight back. Him think: better way to kill animal (= IMPROVEMENT): me sharpen stone and attach it to stick and throw it at animal, then me no have to fight animal….Pre-sapiens man and his mates get together, and here I quote a dear friend of mine: “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” (David Turell, 2 December, 15:07). An improved concept of survival has required and caused expansion.

No way.

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.

You've simply reapeated my point.

DAVID: […] 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.

dhw: Yes, plasticity is complex, and yes new connections and “perhaps new neurons” enhance the complexity, even if earlier ones are no longer needed and disappear (shrinkage). What is it, then, that was hanging around waiting to be used? Not the large brain, as that had finished expanding; not the new complexities, or they wouldn’t have been new. The only things that were hanging around waiting to be used were the potential for greater complexity of thought (the source of which, according to you, is the soul) and the potential for the implementation of the thoughts, i.e. NOT the larger brain, NOT the more complex brain, but the plasticity of the brain which enabled expansion and complexification in response to new thoughts. And both of these (possibly God-given) potentials were there from the start, since the same potentials must have been present in the first cells if you believe in common descent.

I'm working in a library since our internet is out at home. Help may come next Wednesday. This computer is confusing, hard to work. And sitting here your above statement is confusing and the reasoning doesn't follow along. I view a big new sapiens brain as a gift from God, capable of much more than previous brains. I'll answer next week.