Introducing the brain (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, May 27, 2018, 10:55 (2370 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Software and hardware are designed to work together as capacity is enlarged. […]
dhw: 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.

DAVID: You sit at a computer and your thinking drives your fingers to type the thought which appear before you in words. The software is your servant. What is your question?

Software/hardware is supposed to be an analogy for dualism! My thinking soul drives my material brain to direct my fingers to give material expression to its thoughts. The software is a metaphor for the thinking soul, and the hardware is a metaphor for the implementing brain.

DAVID: My theory is the soul is a quantum malleable mechanism that can change as I have described. You want a rigid unchanging form.

Dealt with under THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: You have scuttled to God, as usual, when you have no answer.

I have offered you a theistic version of my theory. Atheists can attribute the mechanism to chance if they wish. It makes no difference to the logic of the theory itself.

DAVID: The only brain we know has shrunk 150 cc since it appeared. It is the only fact we can extrapolate to the past forms of brains. Known areas of enlargement ( taxi drivers) occurred as the brain shrunk! That is consistent thinking about expansion.

Back we go to your other digression! Complexification and limited expansion are also known facts in the sapiens brain, and expansion is a known fact in the pre-sapiens brain. There is no evidence of shrinkage in the pre-sapiens brain. What is your objection to the explanation for shrinkage that I keep offering? (Continued overall expansion would have given us elephant-sized heads. Enhanced complexification resulted in some cells becoming superfluous, and so the brain shrunk. The existing capacity still allows for the expansion of individual sections of the brain.)