Big brain evolution: learning new tasks (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, May 01, 2018, 14:11 (2396 days ago) @ David Turell

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

Why did you leave out my next sentence? “That is why I emphasize that the body is a community of cell communities which cooperate.” This is true whether your God preprogrammed them 3.8 billion years ago to cooperate in changing the mother’s pelvis, personally reorganized them with a dabble, or gave them the means to work it out for themselves. Or do you think these changes have nothing to do with the reorganization of cell communities?

DAVID: 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!

There is no disagreement on any of this! In dualism the immaterial s/s/c uses the material brain. The disagreement lies in your insistence that the immaterial s/s/c cannot think new thoughts until the material brain has already changed, together with statements to the effect that a sick brain will produce sick thoughts and that only a more complex brain can “give” more complex concepts, all of which are materialist arguments that contradict the dualism you believe in.

dhw: 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.
DAVID: 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.

The sidestepping is yours. The subject of this thread is the expansion of the brain. But in answer to your comment, I’m surprised that you don’t regard our giant pre-frontal cortex as an improvement, since it plays such a vital role in our ability to implement the new concepts that make us so different from other species. See above re coordination. If all the cell communities fail to adapt, the organism won’t survive.

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

Mine can also include God.