Big brain evolution: learning new tasks (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, April 30, 2018, 18:17 (2397 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Note you are still ignoring the bigger picture. The Mother's pelvis has to change at the same tine for all of this to work.

dhw: Any major change will require changes to the rest of the body!

Neat sidestep. The Mother's body has to accommodate a bigger bay head. Two separate bodies are involved. No way around it!

dhw: According to you, God provided the complex hardware (brain) and only then could pre-sapiens produce his new thoughts (software) – a clear sequence. We should stop faffing around with this unnecessary analogy. I suggest that the pre-sapiens s/s/c produced the concept and needed new brain capacity to implement it. You insist that the new capacity had to come first and only then could the s/s/c think of the new concept. The latter argument is pure materialism, whereas you claim to be a dualist.

The only material needed is the brain and its level of function. The s/s/c has to use something material. No way around it. Material brain, immaterial thought is recognized dualism, before trying to explain the mechanism. I am not your dualist theory; I am my dualist theory. Don't squeeze me into your mental box!

DAVID: And you want a giant jump in brain complexity and size due to the force of thought that may not exist in a brain not capable of handling that level of thought, all without remembering the Mother's pelvis has to change simultaneously, something you carefully never comment about.

dhw: Yet another switch of subject! I don’t comment on the pelvis when the discussion is about the brain, but see above for your answer. And yes, my hypothesis is that the pre-sapiens s/s/c was capable of new thoughts, the implementation of which required an increase in brain capacity, just as the sapiens s/s/c is capable of new thoughts, the implementation of which requires an increase in complexity.

Sidestep: how does the larger baby's head tell the Mother to enlarge her pelvic outlet which got much more complicated, as the pelvis changed for upright posture? Apes spit their kids out and we can't. That is not your drive for improvement. Somehow it was all coordinated so we have have our giant prefrontal cortex, when it was never needed for survival.

DAVID: Because of the enormous difficult to achieve physiological changes required that I have pointed out continuously. They require a tremendous number of coordinated mutations. Only design can do this. You have animals transforming their own limbs by force of wishing it so!

dhw: Not quite: I do not think a pre-whale says to itself: “I must change my legs to fins”, any more than the illiterate person says to himself/herself: “In order to read and write I must complexify my brain.” The s/s/c provides the thought, and the cell communities get to work to implement it. But I have always accepted your first objection: we know that the cell communities can achieve smaller changes (adaptations), but we don’t know the extent of their talents, which is why my hypothesis is a hypothesis and not a fact.

Nothing is fact except the new species exist, and each of us has a favorite theory in which mine includes God.