Big brain evolution: learning new tasks (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, April 27, 2018, 15:28 (2400 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You keep agreeing that the software/hardware analogy fits, but you refuse to recognize that only a complex expanded capacity computer can do complex expanded capacity solutions/concepts.

dhw: What do you mean by “do”? Only a complex expanded capacity computer brain can implement the new complex concepts that are provided by the software s/s/c. If your computer is working perfectly well with the software you already have, you don’t get a new one. I suggest that the pre-sapiens brain (computer) could not implement the new concepts provided by the s/s/c (software), and so it required additional cells and connections (a computer with a larger capacity).

A bigger brain requires a bigger skull and a different Mother's pelvic shape, all coordinated at once. Requires design across two sexes. Not by chance.

DAVID: […] I know I made the thought initiated in my prefrontal cortex, which then told my motor cortex what to do. Immaterial thought appeared in this material entry. Obvious dualism.

DAVID: Once again, you are discussing what we know about the sapiens brain, and forgetting that evolution builds on what was accomplished in the past iterations of progressive species. We do not know that the erectus brain did not have the same plasticity, but perhaps not to the same degree. Recognize that erectus may well have had brain plasticity. It fits what we know.

dhw: Another of your straw men. I have never suggested that erectus did not have brain plasticity – how else could it have expanded? No doubt it complexified too, until the s/s/c came up with concepts that required a great capacity. You insist that your God provided the greater capacity before it was needed. I propose that the need led to the increased capacity.

And your 'need' might have created whales and all the other strange and wonderful creatures in the bush of life. The brain of humans was never needed for survival; the Darwin view of evolution doesn't fit.