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

by David Turell , Sunday, March 18, 2018, 18:39 (2440 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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.

Answered in the other thread. In life the s/s/c must use the brain to think and the thought appears simultaneously in s/s/c and brain. Actively causing implementation is by the s/s/c interfaced guiding the brain's activity functions.

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

dhw: 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.

Strange stretch of logic. I am discussing the degree of intelligence, IQ, the brain allows not intelligence itself! The brain offers a basic substrate but I am fully aware that factors improve or reduce the IQ, but only a few can achieve genius status.. To repeat: the s/s/c has the same content in life and death but probably does not operate with entirely the same mechanism. As for blank slate, the fetus brain operates at a sensory and muscle level in the womb, but development of personality and therefore content of s/s/c starts at birth tightly interfaced with the brain, guided by genetics, nurturing controls and also other uncontrolled events.