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

by dhw, Sunday, March 18, 2018, 11:55 (2440 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: For me dualism must be thought of in different ways in life and death. In life the s/s/c cannot think without using the brain. In death it can. A material brain is required.

That is not the point at issue. The question is whether in life thought precedes or follows the activities of the brain. You have provided us with ample evidence that thought causes complexification and even expansion within the modern brain. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that it did the same in the pre-sapiens brain. If you claim that expansion had to precede new thoughts, you are arguing that the s/s/c depends on the brain for its ability to think. And that is materialism, not dualism.

Dhw: So the only disagreement is your insistence that the s/s/c can't do any new THINKING until it has been given a bigger brain, i.e. that the level of thought depends on the size of the brain. And that is your disagreement with yourself, not with me, as you say you are a dualist (which means that the s/s/c and not the brain does the thinking), whereas I remain neutral in the battle between materialism and dualism.

DAVID: I see no disagreement with myself. Only the substrate of a complex brain can allow complex thought.

If, as you keep agreeing, the s/s/c is the THINKING half of your dualistic self, then only the substrate of a complex brain can allow the implementation of complex thought. The thought comes first, and we know that implementation of thought creates changes in the brain.

DAVID: In life the s/s/c must depend upon the type of brain that is present. Back to IQ as an example.

And back to materialism, which may well be correct, and which incidentally makes nonsense of your claim that the s/s/c is a blank slate at birth, since we are born with the “type of brain that is present”. If intelligence (part of the immaterial s/s/c) depends on the brain, then you are faced with the prospect of an afterlife without your intelligence. And yet you believe (sometimes) that the s/s/c is the same in death as in life.