Big brain evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, January 17, 2018, 17:24 (2500 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Soul thinks of new concepts; brain provides information and is used by soul to implement concepts. Soul of small-brained hominin has idea. Implementation of idea requires new abilities/greater capacity, and brain expands.

As miraculous as my God doing it. I don't believe the small brain has an idea before expansion. The bigger brain has the new idea and implements it, per artifacts appearing with it. DHW's idea is discontinuous with the earlier brain having the idea which then can't happen until he new brain appears.

dhw: Soul of new larger-brained hominin may come up with new concepts which can be implemented by complexification, but eventually once again new concepts require new abilities/greater capacity, and once again brain expands in order to implement them. Repeat until new concepts require "final" expansion, i.e. now that new concepts of sapiens' immediate predecessor have been implemented, we have sapiens’ brain which can no longer expand without nasty anatomical consequences.

There is no reason why the brain could not expand more. It was 150 cc bigger earlier in sapiens existence. If there is no reason for it to expand it supports my contention that this is God's goal/endpoint for evolution.

For 270,000 years (David’s figure) soul of sapiens does not come up with major new concepts, but whatever it does come up with is dealt with by complexification.

If the erectus brain forced the appearance of the sapiens brain size, why did it take 270,000 years for the implementations to start? Each stage of brain size is disconnected by time.

dhw: There is no “‘logically' the new brain should have had the ideas right away.” The new brain came about because of ideas produced by the pre-sapiens soul and implemented by expansion to sapiens brain. Once each enlarged brain exists, including sapiens, it can hang around for hundreds of thousands of years without any major innovations.

Does not explain the gaps in usage, if the new brain size is driven by a previous idea.

dhw: Each new bigger size may well enable implementation through complexification for limited time, but “allow the soul to use it to come up with more advanced concepts” is not clear: the soul uses the brain to gain information and to IMPLEMENT its concepts, not to do its thinking for it.

The soul uses the brain to think!

dhw: (But new concepts may well arise from the soul’s thoughts about existing implementations of its concepts. We progress by building on earlier concepts and their implementations.) There is no preconceived agenda. Expansion and complexification take place in response to whatever new ideas are provided by “genius” souls.

Fallacy: the thoughts are in a previous brain to create the new size! Only survival mode ideas existed until 30,000 years ago. Then the concepts came fast and furious

DAVID: The false thought here is that future concepts desired in a smaller less complex brain forces expansion to a larger more complex brain.

dhw They are not “future” concepts.”Genius” pre-sapiens’ small brain has concept of spear, and implementation of concept forces expansion – just as concept of reading and writing forces new complexifications in brains of illiterate women.

That is not expansion, but shrinkage!

dhw: Once more: concept formed by soul with current brain; implementation changes brain – precisely as described so vividly in your post of 2 December under “learning new tasks”.

Stop. I've told you a previous size increase in brain was implied, but not clear the way I wrote it.

DAVID: “Your point about a physical limit agrees with my point that current sapiens are/were God's goal all along.”

dhw: Physical limit has nothing whatsoever to do with your God’s goal. All species reach a certain size, with limbs, head etc. in proportion to the rest of the body. We may assume that the dimensions are optimum under current conditions. Maybe in a billion years, there will be new conditions, with elephant-sized ants, ant-sized elephants, and humans...well, who knows?

Of course it is God's goal. We survived well with it until 30,000 years ago when concepts and implementation exploded. Proof that our current brain is not needed for survival, but despite Darwin's theory about survivability as a major driving force, it is here.