Big brain evolution: changes in sapiens skull shape (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, February 03, 2018, 00:58 (2484 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: With a goalless endpoint and no apparent purpose has always been your approach, except create a spectacle for God's enjoyment. He appears to be much more serious than that from the evidence at hand. Evolution creating humans is why beyond an entertaining TV show!

dhw:.... The only evidence we have “at hand” is the ever-changing bush of life, which includes humans, and as above you still haven’t explained why this does not suggest that your God’s purpose was to produce an ever-changing bush of life, including humans.

As I noted in the other ( autonomy) thread, God did produce an ever changing bush of life to supply energy to allow His evolutionary process to produce the final step, the human brain.

dhw: According to you, the cortex does not do the thinking, because you are a dualist and you believe the soul/self/consciousness does the thinking. And so the s/s/c (software) uses the brain (computer) to IMPLEMENT its ideas, not to DEVELOP them.

DAVID: You are deliberately misinterpreting my theory. The s/s/c uses the cortex to think. The s/s/c (software) both develops concepts and implementation by using the brain (computer). As you sit at your computer and create a play, you come up with the concept for a play and then you create the dialogue (implement) all using your s/s/c. How can you separate concept and implementation as you attempted above.

dhw: Separating concept and implementation is the whole essence of dualism! You keep agreeing that the s/s/c does the thinking and the brain does the implementing, and you separate the two processes with your analogy of software (soul) and computer (brain). As for your attempt at a new analogy, the dialogue and stage directions ARE the concept of the play, conceived and developed entirely by my s/s/c. The computer (brain) does not contribute a single thought, and I do not “use it” or even need it to think! I use it to implement my thoughts by giving them the material form of material letters, and I use the printer to put the material letters on material paper.

It seems to me you have described a brainless process of producing a written play. Aren't you thinking in that thing that occupies your skull in the brain pan.

dhw: As above: the software (s/s/c) does the thinking, and so it makes absolutely no sense to say that the computer (brain) had to expand before the software (s/s/c) could think of its new ideas.

DAVID: Makes perfect sense to me as I sit at my computer, coming up with answers to your statements (concepts) and typing responses (implementation).

dhw: According to your hypothesis, you have to have a computer (enlarged brain) BEFORE you can think up your answers! (And I must have a computer before I think up my play.) Are you really telling me you can’t think of your answers without the computer? Of course you aren’t. The very idea is absurd.

I can write a play entirely by hand, but my s/s/c still had to use my brain to have the thoughtds to create it. Why are you are inferring I see my brain as separte from my body, when all I am pointing out is my brain is, in a sense, my onboard computer.