Brain complexity: baby brains under study (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, January 20, 2018, 14:20 (2499 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I had two objections to your original post. Firstly, there is nothing special about homo sapiens having to learn to use his brain. You now agree. Second was the idea that the soul/self starts “from zero to learn every function of self/soul/consciousness/brain activity”. I may have misunderstood this, but if all you meant was that a newborn baby knows nothing about life outside the womb, I shan’t argue. And yes indeed, they are born with different genomes, which a materialist will tell you explains their different characters/selves and hence their different responses to whatever early life throws at them. But if they have a dualist soul, according to your beliefs (most of the time), it is the soul that has to learn to use the brain, not the other way round. The twins did not start at zero, because the way in which they used their brain right from the first “WAH!” was dictated by their already existing (materialist) genome or (dualist) soul. The only zero was their knowledge of life outside the womb.

DAVID: Please see my entry from Cosmos today. It covers all of this.

Please see my reply. The experiment is with six-month old and not new born babies and tells us that babies learn in bursts, which vary from one individual to another (confirming my observations of my twin grandsons from birth). It does not tell us that newborn babies start from zero, or that the brain learns to use the soul, and it does not even discuss what dictates the individuality of the responses.