Big brain evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 23, 2018, 14:11 (2494 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Cells act intelligently as they function. That doesn't mean they can design a major advance as in the Cambrian explosion. That is the flaw in your theory. You cannot extrapolate from cell function to design by committee! No Nobel for you.

I agree, and have always acknowledged that, despite the evidence “my” scientists have amassed for cellular intelligence, there is none that cells/cell communities are intelligent enough to design the major advances. If we had the evidence, it would no longer be a hypothesis but a fact. That is why, under “autonomy verses automaticity” I wrote "You know my hypothesis (not dogma and not even belief, but an alternative to hypotheses such as Darwin’s random mutations and your own divine 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme or dabbling)." I shan’t repeat all the flaws in your own hypothesis.

dhw: I’m sorry that you cannot see the contradiction between your belief that the SOUL is responsible for ideas, but pre-sapiens souls could not have had new ideas until the brain had already expanded enough to implement them.
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DAVID: Of course the brain expanded. You want it driven by the soul in this example. How does the soul cause it? You can't tell me.

No, I can’t tell you. Give me a clue. Please tell me how the soul causes sapiens’ brain to complexify. Please explain how the immaterial activates the material. Please explain exactly what your God did to expand the brain and skull.

dhw: It makes no sense for the brain to complexify/expand before it has a reason for doing so, and the dualist’s reason CANNOT be so that the brain can think of new concepts, because for the dualist, it is the soul that does the thinking. Concept first, implementation by complexification/expansion second.
DAVID: Your logic excludes God expanding the brain. I don't.

That is not an answer to my logic. Or are you going to fall back on your argument that God’s logic is different from human logic?

DAVID: You refuse to recognize brains only needed to be in a survival mode of implementation until 30,00 years ago.
dhw: Survival mode is a totally different point, quite irrelevant to the question of how your dualist soul can be responsible for ideas and yet not have the ideas until the brain has expanded.
DAVID: Survival mode is exactly on point. You cannot explain a drive to brain enlargement, your theory, and then accept 270,000 years before the expansion is used, which creates a gap in timing in the drive. Why isn't it used immediately if expansion is not immediately required as you state?: " It makes no sense for the brain to complexify/expand before it has a reason for doing so". It has the reason, then it should be used. The gap is because the newly minted sapiens had to learn how to use it,

I keep answering this, and you keep forgetting the answer! Immediate pre-sapiens has new concept that demands implementation. Pre-sapiens brain implements new concept by expanding to sapiens size. Now we have sapiens-sized brain. Then for 270,000 years nothing special happens – just as nothing special happened during the one or two million years that erectus used his expanded brain. It takes clever individuals to come up with new ideas. Sapiens’ major new ideas arrived 30,000 years ago. Why didn’t the clever individuals arrive earlier? No idea. Nor do I have any idea why, if your God’s sole purpose was to produce the brain of Homo sapiens, it took him one to two million years to expand the brain of erectus (or whichever hominin was our immediate predecessor). And for the third time, this has nothing to do with the question of how your dualist soul can be responsible for ideas and yet not have the ideas until the brain has expanded.