Introducing the brain (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, May 26, 2018, 11:22 (2597 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Your theory is that you had to have a new computer before the new programmes could be designed. Which comes first: thought or implementation of thought?
DAVID: Software and hardware are designed to work together as capacity is enlarged. Obviously thought must initiate implementation, as they work together.

I have never disputed the fact that soul/software and brain/hardware work together. But they fulfil different functions: the former provides the thought and the latter implements the thought. That is the whole point of this metaphor for dualism. If you believe the programmes have not already been designed before the software is inserted into the computer, then please say so.

dhw: Your theory demands an increase in frontal lobe size to enable the soul to think.
DAVID: Not to just think but to have more advanced thinking, as explained above.
dhw: What does this mean? If the bigger frontal lobe enables the soul to think bigger thoughts, then the smaller frontal lobe only enables it to think smaller thoughts. You still have the frontal lobe responsible for thought, which is the direct opposite of the dualistic belief that the soul does the thinking.
DAVID: The frontal lobe capacity for working with the soul is the exact point. The soul is a non-material mechanism that is tied to the human brain networks to think. Since neither of us know what is real, my theory is just as likely as yours.

The dualist’s brain and soul work together in earthly life, but that is not the “exact point”. The “exact point” is that they perform different functions, as above, and that is why it is logical to argue that the immaterial thinking self can live on without the brain, and it is illogical to argue that the immaterial thinking self cannot think without the brain, until it doesn’t have a brain to think with.

dhw: […] 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.
[ …]
DAVID: And once again you have neatly skipped the related problems: bigger skull to accommodate the bigger brain, and change the mother's pelvis etc.
dhw: Once again you resort to one of your digressions, to which I give the same answer every time: any major change in the body will require major changes elsewhere in the body.
DAVID: Which changes require complex design changes in a speciation. It is still only chance or design, to which you have never offered anything substantive, since there is nothing else.

You scuttled from the findings of modern science to the female pelvis, and from there to chance v design (and I dealt earlier with your other favourite digression of shrinkage). In the theistic version of my theory, your God has designed the mechanism which enables cells/cell communities to do their own designing. Chance has no place. Now please tell me why it is illogical to argue that since modern science tells us that the sapiens brain expands and complexifies as a result of thought, the same process may have taken place in the pre-sapiens brain.