Brain complexity: learning new tasks (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, December 23, 2017, 12:56 (2527 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You know how I love precision, so indulge me: two straight questions that simply require a yes or a no. Do you, as a dualist, believe that consciousness/the soul conceives concepts before using the brain to implement them? And do you accept that the implementation of concepts causes changes to the brain?

DAVID: I thought I was clear above. The adolescent brain research tells the story. A poorly developed frontal lobe does not permit full assessment of danger until age 25. Therefore the concept cannot be developed until the brain is ready. The brain is required for the soul/self/consciousness to develop concepts and implement. Brain is hardware, s/s/c is software that I can run. New coordinated physical and mental functions can cause the brain to rewire. Answer to question one is more complex than yes or no. Two is yes.

I don’t know how you can measure “full assessment” of anything - no brain is capable of acquiring all the information available. But I agree that no concept is possible without the information provided by the brain. The less developed the brain, the less “full” the information will be. The dualist’s brain is required to provide information to the dualist’s soul/self/consciousness, (HOMINID: Me hungry. Animal over there. Him bigger than me),which will then use the information to form concepts (HOMINID: Me put sharp stone on stick and throw it) before instructing the brain to implement them (HOMINID: Ugh, big effort. Something changing in brain). There is nothing so complex in this as to warrant anything other than a yes to the first question.

Dhw (under “selective hearing”): Your survival mode camper and your so-called primitive tribesman have the same sized brain, and no individual can possibly exhaust the full potential of the human mind, but that potential does not depend on the SIZE of the brain, which has stopped expanding!

DAVID: You have not commented on the size of cortex. The pre-frontal cortex of the modern human is a highly complex network of neurons and branched axons and it is that additiion that added 200cc to the skull size to contain this enlargement. To contain all of its complexity it is highly convoluted. That predicessors did not have this type of brain is shown by existing fossil skulls. Neanderthal skulls make the point. Their brains were bigger but their pre-frontal cortex was not as large. That advanced area arrived 290,000 years before we really began to have advanded concepts as we civilized. Obviously size came first and then use which didn't have to expand the brain b ecasue the cortex was so advanced and had the ability of neuroplasticity as you point out. The time table tells the story, no matter how much you twist and turn the logic.

Are you now saying that pre-sapiens and our ape cousins did not/do not have a pre-frontal cortex??? Otherwise, all this amounts to is that instead of saying the brain expanded, you are saying the pre-frontal cortex expanded; instead of the brain complexifying, the pre-frontal cortex complexified; but then since the brain stopped expanding, of course the size preceded any new concepts, and so instead of saying that the complex brain complexified still further, you say the complex pre-frontal cortex complexified still further. It changes nothing in the argument.

And since you are a self-proclaimed dualist, the pre-frontal cortex for you is NOT the source of thought/conceptualization/decision-making: it can therefore only be a provider of information and an implementing tool of the soul/self/consciousness. The only evidence we have relating to rewiring is that it takes place in response to the implementation of new concepts, and so it is not unreasonable to assume that both expansion and complexification have always followed the same procedure.

DAVID: As far as I am concerned your entire approach is backward as shown by the time line of expansions befoe new artifacts appear.

New artefacts only appear together with the fossils of the pre-sapiens who made them, and their brains have already expanded through implementation of the concept. Changes are CAUSED by implementation and do not occur before it.