Brain complexity: gene response to light stimuli (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, February 15, 2018, 11:23 (2474 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw (Feb. 13): …as you keep agreeing and then disagreeing, the s/s/c does the thinking (software) and the brain gives material expression to the thought (hardware). That is how they work together.
DAVID: Agreed.
dhw: Then let us keep this in mind throughout our discussion.

But you don’t.

dhw: You are now saying yet again that the brain is enlarged BEFORE the hominin is able to conceive and implement his new concepts! (It may be true, but that is materialism, which you claim to reject.)

DAVID: You are forgetting my contention that only an advanced complexity allows the s/s/c to form advanced concepts, hardware and software.

And you are forgetting yet again the very essence of your dualism and your analogy, to which you have agreed over and over again: that the software (s/s/c) thinks up the concepts, and the hardware (brain) implements them. The hardware does not “allow” the software to think!

dhw: 1) Why can you accept a few new neurons but not a lot of new neurons as “modification”?
DAVID: Because that is how plasticity is described in the literature.

Plasticity is simply the ability to change, to be shaped or moulded, to adapt…I don’t know of any definition of plasticity that places a limit on the number of cells that can be changed.

dhw: 2) Neurons are cells, and your last statement is indeed the essence of dualism: according to you it is NOT the material cells that do the planning. It is the immaterial self/soul/consciousness. Therefore additional cells will NOT enable the hominin to come up with new concepts.
DAVID: Again forgetting my hardware software concept. Only advanced brains in complexity can come up with advanced concepts designed/created by the s/s/c.

Yet again, as you keep forgetting, in dualism the concepts are designed by the s/s/c (software) and implemented by the brain (hardware). It is not the brain that comes up with the concept.

dhw: 3 You agree that “implementation RESULTS in automatic plastic changes”: additional neurons plus all their connections = automatic plastic changes. But you claim that these changes are NOT the result of implementation.
DAVID: What did you read? Each new advanced brain has plasticity at that level, since it is already enlarged and more complex.

The brain is plastic at all levels. It is you who wrote that implementation results in changes, as quoted above. And of course once the implementation has taken place, the brain is enlarged and more complex. Then along comes the next new concept, and its implementation results in more changes and eventually the next enlargement. As you keep forgetting, in dualism it is the s/s/c and not the brain that comes up with new concepts.

dhw: 4 You agree that “size had plasticity and could modify with implementations”, and yet it now appears that size is not plastic and cannot modify with new implementations.
But you cannot see any of these contradictions.
DAVID: No contradictions. You are the one who wants to drive enlargement with implementation when we know in sapiens (as the only evidence we have) all we see is complexity and shrinkage.

The contradiction lies in your continued refusal to accept your own basic premise, which is that the s/s/c (software) does the thinking first and then the brain (hardware) does the implementing. If complexification and shrinkage are the result of implementing new concepts, then it is not unreasonable to suppose that enlargement would also be the result of implementation.

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