Big brain evolution: brain size and intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 25, 2018, 13:00 (2402 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your alternative of God given the cell communities the intelligence to do it is still God at work, or haven't you noticed.
dhw: I keep repeating that cellular intelligence may be God-given, or haven’t you noticed? The dispute here is not over God but over your insistence that your God directed every stage of evolution, every lifestyle and every natural wonder, and that he did so in order to produce the sapiens brain. “Chance” is not involved in my proposal. Once the perhaps God-given mechanism is in place, the advances are brought about by the intelligence of the cell communities of which all organisms consist. And if your God speciated by expanding the brain, then expansion of the brain as I propose is the same means of speciation.
DAVID: Neat sidestep. Your version of God's role is simply a different role for God than I grant Him. Evolution ended up with humans, a most unexpected outcome. If you will agree with me that God did it by whatever mechanism, what are we debating?

There is no sidestep. I cannot explain how the complexities of life and consciousness came into being, which is why I remain an agnostic. You have quoted me above, and then ignored what you have quoted! What we are debating is not God’s existence, which remains an open question for me, but how evolution works and, if your God exists, what might have been his motives. We are therefore debating two totally different answers to both these questions.

DAVID: You separate soul software from brain hardware. I view them as intimately interfaced and inseparable. You must see that the material brain is inseparable from the immaterial soul in life. When will you really accept my analogy as you state above.
dhw: I have agreed over and over again that in life they are interfaced and inseparable. You cannot lead a material existence without materials! But over and over again you ignore the fact that your own analogy identifies their different FUNCTIONS. Otherwise what is the point of the analogy? Our organs also form interdependent, interactive parts of a unit, but they perform different functions. So what is the function of the software soul, as opposed to the function of the hardware brain? The one provides the thought, and continues to do so after death if your faith is correct, while the other provides information and produces material implementation of immaterial thought. You keep agreeing, and then trying to disagree by pretending that I don’t accept the fact that they work together.
DAVID: I agree they must work together.

So do I, so please stop pretending that I don’t.

DAVID’s comment (under “memory at molecular level”): The work of the s/s/c is represented by work at the molecular level. No way to separate the material and the immaterial.
dhw: Of course you can’t separate them. The s/s/c does the thinking and the molecules do the implementing. In life you can’t have one without the other. But that does not mean they have the same FUNCTION.
DAVID: Of course they have different functions. You seem to object to my reviewing where in the brain the interlocking is required to take place.

I have no objection whatsoever. Since you now agree that in dualism the “soul” functions as the thinker of thoughts and the brain/body as the implementer of thoughts, you have no grounds for your insistence that your God had to expand the pre-sapiens brain before pre-sapiens could think up new concepts.