Big brain evolution: Evidence of trading 300,000 years ago (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, March 18, 2018, 18:14 (2440 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: The s/s/c learns from experience, and that is an ongoing process, but the concept always has to precede the implementation, and that is what causes expansion/complexification.

DAVID: Yes, concept precedes implementation, but that in no way proves it is the reason the brain expanded. It is just your hypothesis.

dhw: Yes, it is a hypothesis, just like your belief that your God expanded the brain before hominins could think up new concepts. However, modern science has demonstrated that thought changes areas of the brain through complexification and limited expansion, which would seem to support the dualism you claim to believe in, i.e. the hypothesis that the self/soul/conscious mind is a separate immaterial entity which in life works with and controls the brain (the will being an integral part of the s/s/c) but in death remains itself. This clearly runs directly counter to the hypothesis that the immaterial s/s/c is incapable of THINKING without the material brain.

You have just contradicted yourself. I am in full agreement with my bolded statement of yours. In life I believe the s/s/c must think WITH the brain during life. It is obligated to do so. But not the next statement of yours, which, therefore, doesn't follow.

DAVID: And you keep forgetting my theory that in life the only way original thought occurs is if the s/s/c is interfaced with the brain.

dhw: Not forgotten at all. The question is how the two function in life. If your dualism is correct, the s/s/c does the THINKING, and the brain provides information and implementation. If, as you frequently agree, the s/s/c USES the brain, the thoughts of the s/s/c have to PRECEDE the activities of the brain.

I do not believe the s/s/c thinks before the brain gets it. You are imagining a time sequence. They work together thinking simultaneously, because they are intimately interfaced in life . Brain implementation than follows under s/s/c direction. They never are separate in time.

DAVID: My concept of how brain and s/s/c relate: In life the s/s/c and the brain must work together. Your interpretation of my theory is totally incorrect.

dhw: There is no disagreement over the fact that they work together in life. But if it is “totally incorrect” that you believe your God had to expand the implementing brain BEFORE the thinking s/s/c had the ability to think up new ideas, i.e. that new thought was impossible without prior expansion of the brain, then I apologize but have no idea what we are arguing about.

I am disputing your concept that the s/s/c must be exactly the same in life and death in its mechanism. It is the same in memory, thought pattern, personality in life and death, but in life it must interface with the living brain. In death it doesn't and logically must work slightly differently. That is my point.