Introducing the brain (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, May 25, 2018, 00:04 (2373 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The soul using the brain mechanisms to think is explained in the software/hardware analogy. Software is implanted on an existing material computer network, but the soul/software is immaterial.

dhw: That part of your analogy is perfectly clear, and is the essence of conventional dualism. But software contains the thought that is to be implemented by hardware, and the task of the hardware is to obey the software’s instructions. The programmes are not invented AFTER insertion into the hardware. And if the software/soul’s programmes cannot be implemented by your existing hardware/brain, you have to change your computer (i.e. get a larger or more complex brain).

You have just described my theory. If God wants more advanced thought with more complex software, the hardware has to be enlarged to accommodate the larger more complex software.

DAVID: There is no right or wrong here. My concept differs from yours: you want a rigid soul formulation, but it very well may be malleable and work somewhat differently in each situation while producing the same personality.

dhw: I have never said the soul must be rigid! As the thinking, feeling part of your being, it changes all the time throughout its lifetime of experience. But it is always the immaterial thinking, feeling you, as opposed to the material implementing you.

I'm describing your concept of a rigid unchanging mechanism of soul in life and death. There can be a different mode of thought in life and in death with the personage/soul kept entirely the same.

DAVID: It certainly fits the facts we have. Each of us has invented our own form of soul, and mine fits my theory about increasing frontal lobe size through God's intervention. Habilis' weak thinking would not force brain enlargement like exercise increases muscle size. The brain, involves size and amazing complexity of networks. Muscles simply enlarge existing muscle bands by enlarging existing fibers.

dhw: Your theory demands an increase in frontal lobe size to enable the soul to think.

Not to just think but to have m ore advanced thinking, as explained above

dhw: The fallacy is amply covered by your software/hardware analogy above, in which the software soul instructs the hardware brain to implement its programmes/thoughts. We know that the brain involves size and amazing complexity of networks, and we know that in some cases (musicians, taxi drivers) thinking INCREASES the size of certain parts of the sapiens brain and INCREASES the complexity (the illiterate women learning to read and write). It is therefore perfectly logical that the existing cells of earlier brains should also have complexified and expanded through thought. To forestall your usual digression: sapiens brain has shrunk. This is most likely because there had to be a limit to skull expansion, or we’d have finished up with elephant-sized heads. Complexification proved so efficient that some cells were no longer required.

And once again you have neatly skipped the related problems: bigger skull to accommodate the bigger brain, and change the mother's pelvis so she can dump the bigger-headed kid without dying in the process or killing the baby. There are three interval changes that must occur here, all coordinated by different DNA's in different organs and people..