Big brain evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, January 18, 2018, 18:01 (2499 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: 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.

Now you, the dualist, tell us that the bigger brain has the new idea! Dualists believe the self/soul/consciousness has the ideas, but on Wed, 17 January you dispense with your dualistic soul altogether! As for discontinuous: no. Soul of hominin with small brain has idea, and effort to implement idea causes brain to expand, so appearance of artefact and appearance of enlarged brain coincide in one continuous process. The discontinuity lies in your dualistic version, which you have suddenly forgotten about: sudden expansion of BRAIN for no reason, but only then can SOUL come up with new ideas.

You have forgotten I write brain and imply s/s/c in action as understood. We've covered this, but you keep editing my writing. Sudden expansion is God in action.

dhw: […] now that new concepts of sapiens' immediate predecessor have been implemented, we have sapiens’ brain which can no longer expand without nasty anatomical consequences.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: So your God decided to stop expansion, whereas you can envisage current humans in current conditions with elephant-sized heads, and you don’t think that would pose problems for the rest of the anatomy. I can’t.

We shrunk 150 cc. We can easily add it back anatomically, but I doubt that will happen. Elephant heads on humans will never appear, and you know it. We are at God's endpoint, as you have demonstrated.

DAVID: 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: Incidentally, I don’t know where your figures come from. Most websites suggest sapiens goes back 200,000 not 300,000 years, but nobody knows for sure, just as nobody knows for sure when erectus became extinct (one website suggests as recently as 20,000 years).

You have forgotten the recent finding of a Moroccan sapiens fossil dated at 300,000 years ago.

dhw: The soul (if it exists) uses the brain to provide the information it thinks about, and it uses the brain to implement its ideas. You have agreed to this over and over again (see your post under “brain damage”, 13 January at 01.05), as exemplified by your facile computer image, in which the software (soul) provides the idea, and the brain (computer) implements it.

Good explanation.

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?

DAVID: 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.

dhw: I have added improvement to survivability as a major driving force. You are discussing this with me, not with Darwin.

Darwin always lurks in the background as we discuss evolution. I think survivability is an overrated concept. I have always felt God created the evolutionary process to create complexity. 99% of species are gone. That is non-survival to prove the point and all the complexity didn't work. Not all 'advances' are improvement as I've shown in the whale series which is just an experiment in complexity.