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

by David Turell , Saturday, February 17, 2018, 15:14 (2469 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID (later in the post): The only size modification we know is shrinkage, no matter how you twist it!

dhw: This is not “twisting”. Nobody knows why the brain enlarged, and so we propose hypotheses. We DO know that implementation causes modifications now, and so once again it is not unreasonable to propose that implementation caused modifications in the past. You yourself used that argument in relation to complexity and shrinkage, and you now acknowledge that enlargement is a modification.

You are equating implementation with enlargement, when the only fact we have is shrinkage. I'll stop with that in my theorizing.

dhw: …a million years ago brains must have been plastic enough to allow for lots of new neurons.
DAVID: We don't know the brain and skull won't expand again, and ancient brains jumped in size by 200 cc with each enlargement. Adding the need for increased skull size means brain plasticity alone is only part of a complex process in advancement. Not by chance. God in action.

dhw: How does all this mean that the pre-sapiens brain was not plastic enough to add more than a few neurons? If it was plastic enough for your God to add lots of neurons before the implementation of new concepts, it was plastic enough to add lots of neurons during the process of implementation.

I'm only adding to my theory about God and brain size are facts we know. If an ancient brain wanted to add many neurons and grow in volume it had to tell the skull to enlarge and the Mothers to change their pelvis size. All had to coordinated. Do you now see the reason for design?

xxxxx

DAVID: As a living physical person I can only sense my s/s/c through my functioning brain.

Same as before. “You” ARE your self/soul/consciousness. In the living physical dualist, the self/soul/consciousness is aware of itself. The functioning brain is not the source of its awareness or indeed of any thought, as you have agreed at the top of this thread and elsewhere - over and over again.

DAVID: Currently my s/s/c is in my skull doing my immaterial thinking.

Exactly.

DAVID: I believe my s/s/c is a quantum mechanism totally intimately interfaced with the physical brain (Penrose). As I think I am in control of my s/s/c which I formed from childhood. My concept of dualism differs from yours. The s/s/c mechanism is an organized quantum arrangement, yet to be discovered. It can separate and go into an afterlife. Only its thought capacity is immaterial.

dhw: None of this means that the self depends on the functioning brain to do its THINKING! Interface yes, but your immaterial s/s/c, your “I” – which has developed since childhood and does the thinking – is in control of your material brain, which provides information and does the material expressing and implementing.

But I can reach my immaterial s/s/c only through my material brain. My living 'me' is material with active thoughts that are immaterial. My living 'me' has shaped my immaterial personality. I see 'me' as both material and immaterial all the time fully interfaced. The s/s/c becomes independent and function on its own is in death or non -functionality of the brain.