Big brain evolution: brain size and intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, April 23, 2018, 11:54 (2404 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your theory is some not very complex thought, as compared to ours, in early hominins explodes the brain and with it the skull to larger size. Is this an explanation for speciation?

dhw: Why do you insist on comparing degrees of complexity? The advance from bare hands to manufactured weapons and tools was a huge advance in its day, and as you once acknowledged, involved highly complex thinking and physical activity. Use the word “explode” if you like: your theory then is that your God “exploded” the brain, and only then could pre-sapiens’ soul think the complex thoughts enabling him to manufacture weapons/tools. This directly contradicts your dualistic belief that thoughts derive from the soul and not the brain! And yes, if your God speciates by exploding the brain before it can think new thoughts, then the brain exploding through implementation of new thoughts also explains speciation.

DAVID: Hands that had a useful thumb required species anatomic changes and learned coordination movements, not the complex thoughts of today. I'll stick to my analogy that the brain is a computer using the s/s/c as software.

I accept your analogy, which you keep agreeing means that the “soul” (software) provides the thought, and uses the brain (hardware) to implements the thought. I don’t know how your response is meant to counter my argument 1) that making and using tools required complex thought and new use of the brain/body, and 2) that if your theory of brain explosion could have led to speciation, then my theory of brain explosion could also have led to speciation.

DAVID: The larger brains that appeared with each new advanced species produced more advanced artifacts. Artifacts require planning thought that only a bigger brain could supply through its s/s/c. And then implement the production of them. This pattern is consistent with history.

dhw: “…thought that only a bigger brain could supply through its s/s/c” is one of your now typical obfuscations. In dualism the brain does not supply thought through anything! You have agreed over and over again that the s/s/c is the supplier of thought. Planning is thought. The material brain implements the immaterial thoughts/plans of the immaterial s/s/c by producing the material object. Concept (thought/plan) precedes implementation of concept. Yes, the larger brains produced the artefacts, but it was the s/s/c that planned them, and we know that brains change through implementation of ideas – they do not change in anticipation of new ideas.

DAVID:I full well know how the s/s/c interfaces with the brain, and I view the process is that only a more complex brain can permit the s/s/c software to advance to more complex thought.

Thought is thought, whether more complex or not. If the source of thought is the “soul”, as you profess to believe, then the complexities of the brain cannot be the source of more complex thought. “Soul” software provides the thought, brain hardware implements it, and if you believe in dualism, no amount of obfuscation can justify the claim that the brain must expand (pre-sapiens) or complexify (sapiens) before the soul can think its thoughts, no matter how simple or complex. That is pure materialism.