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

by David Turell , Thursday, March 15, 2018, 14:45 (2443 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: We still differ: In life I cannot reach my s/s/c without using my brain. In life my s/s/c is not floating around separate from my brain as you constantly imply, but firmly interfaced with it. I cannot enter new concepts or change my immaterial personality without using my brain to think. That is not just external implementation but actual internal modification of my s/s/c by my own free will.

dhw: You continue to ignore your own dualistic belief that the s/s/c is the THINKING you. Of course it doesn’t “float around” separately in life. Dualists believe that it only floats around in NDEs and in death, and of course in material life it interfaces with the material you. But your thinking self does not use your brain in order to THINK. It uses your brain in order to gather information that it thinks about, and to give material expression/ implementation to its thoughts. They work together, but the whole point of dualism is that although they are interdependent, interactive, interwoven in life, the s/s/c is the THINKING part of the mechanism. Otherwise, in death, “you” would not and could not be you.

Because you choose to ignore my hardware/software analogy we keep discussing past each other. I do not ignore that the s/s/c is me, my developed personality from the blank slate at birth. But I also believe my consciousness is part of God's universal consciousness which is at the quantum level of reality, and is a quantum mechanism given to my material brain as it is developed in utero. I don't expect you to accept any of this, but as I mull over it, it makes sense to me.

DAVID: The changes in cabby and musician brains is in memory areas which are then used by the pre-frontal areas. No need for expansion as you have just pointed out. Your 'logical' explanation does not fit 200 cc sudden jumps in frontal size between advancing species.

dhw: But those areas of the brain HAVE expanded. We come back to Einstein. If memory and auditory sections of the brain expand with use, why can’t you accept the possibility that the genius Einstein’s thinking expanded the section of his brain connected with theoretical thinking? Immaterial concepts are also theoretical thinking until they are given material form. So why should the pre-sapiens brain not expand with the effort of conceiving and implementing its concepts? But in their case, unlike Einstein’s, the skull was too small to contain the necessary expansion.

You don't like the idea of compartmentalizing areas of the brain, but it is what science has found. The cabbies and musicians enlarged memory areas enlarging like a library would as it adds books. Einstein's area is frontal conceptual thinking region. I see you comparing apples and oranges.

DAVID: In life the s/s/c does not think without using the brain.

dhw: I have no idea how dualism works. I only know that dualists including yourself believe that the s/s/c is the THINKING you, and yes indeed, it USES the brain, but the brain does not DO the thinking. You continually forget the division of function that is the whole point of dualism. But if you wish to argue that the immaterial self/soul cannot live a material life in the material world without its materials, then nobody is going to argue.

Please remember my hardware/software analogy. I don't continually forget!

xxxxxxx

DAVID’s comment (under “Brain complexity”): The brain is compartmentalized into functional regions, but is fully interconnected. we recognize we are thirsty in the frontal cortex.

dhw: This ties in with the comment I made yesterday:
I have always been reluctant to accept the rigid pigeon-holing of brain areas, especially in relation to cognition. My own view is that the brain is a community of cells cooperating with one another and with the other cell communities of the body. Whether the material communities produce the personality/self/soul/consciousness (materialistic collective thinking) or there is an immaterial s/s/c that uses and directs the material communities is the core of the debate between materialists and dualists.

The brain has parts, but they are fully coordinated and work completely together seamlessly.