Brain complexity: baby brains under study (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, March 07, 2018, 18:09 (2241 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Note you have claimed implementation enlarges the brain, but what I have presented in describing areas of the brain and what they do and I have shown you implementation occurs in areas that did not enlarge as the frontal cortex did. The cerebellum controls muscular coordination, which is the conductor of implementation. It was already enlarged in Erectus. The 'big question' is not your subterfuge about concepts. You know full well the s/s/c is interfaced there. The issue of my presentation is what implements new concepts and it shows your theory of enlargement has no basis in how the brain functions.

dhw: This would be fine (a) if you were a materialist, and (b) if we knew how the brain functions.

But we do know the areas of brain activity that control functions of the body! For example we know the motor area where every part of the body has its represented parts of the bodies muscles. We know the smell area, the visual area, etc.

dhw: The materialist view of brain enlargement is that it was the CAUSE of our enhanced intelligence, which is precisely what you keep arguing, since you claim that intelligence is impossible without an advanced brain – except, of course, when we are dead, and then you become a dualist again.

In life we have to use the brain and its fairly specific areas. Brain, material; thoughts immaterial. Dualism in life. Dualism exists in two different circumstances.

dhw: There is no “subterfuge” in the question of concepts! All the material actions you described earlier have to be directed. If the self/soul/consciousness thought up the concept, then it will also direct the implementing areas of the brain to realize the concept. It will presumably do this through the prefrontal cortex, as its material link to the rest of the brain. (For the sake of argument, I will accept that the pfc is the only “seat” of mental activity, though I would prefer to leave that vague.) S/s/c designs concepts, and uses pfc as material means to get rest of brain and body to implement concepts. But to do this, the pre-sapiens pfc needs extra capacity. You have asked me several times how this mental exercise can enlarge the pfc, and of course I don’t know.

Once the cortex using the s/s/c conceives of a flint tip idea, which may involve complexification of the neuronal web and shrinkage of the cortex, implementation involves eye hand coordination with teaching the muscles and arm in hammering and shaping, a job which is controlled in the cerebellum. The cerebellum was enlarged to its present size back in
Erectus times. No evidence for your theory.

dhw: But that is why I try to draw an analogy with muscle expansion (analogy – I am not saying they are the same). Muscles can be expanded through exercise. I suggest that the intensity of thought that accompanies new concepts can do the same to the pfc. This relationship between the thinking s/s/c and the implementing brain appears to be confirmed by NDEs, in which the s/s/c thinks independently of the functioning brain/pfc. You keep agreeing with all this, including the fact that the s/s/c plays the same thinking role in NDEs, though in a different situation, but then you revert back to the argument that the s/s/c cannot THINK without a functioning brain. That is the massive contradiction you refuse to face up to.

Again you are putting together two different circumstances for the s/s/c. Life and death seem quite different to me. Therefore, the s/s/c interacts differently in each realm. Your debate ploy doesn't work.