Different in degree or kind:our speech has pitch control (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, June 30, 2018, 10:46 (2339 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID’s comment: I've described how complex the voice mechanism is in humans, involving tongue, lips, throat, laryngeal muscles. The only interpretation possible is when humans arrived all of this was present to be activated when humans learned how to do it. The big brain allowed all sorts of new mental activity, including that initiated by the soul.

dhw: There is another possible interpretation: as new thoughts – which you as a dualist believe to be initiated by the soul and not the brain – demanded new material actions and abilities, the brain had to expand in order to provide the means of realizing the concepts. Thought first, brain change second - as proven by modern science.

DAVID: The 'science' referred to is about H. sapiens already enlarged brains, which only complexifies and shrinks.

Modern science proves that changes to the brain are caused by the implementation of thought. We have discussed (and even sometimes agreed on) the reason for sapiens non-expansion and shrinkage over and over again. Nobody knows why the pre-sapiens brain expanded, but there is no evidence that brains change in anticipation of new thoughts. (But see my THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE for a means of welding your unwitting materialism together with your professed dualism.)

dhw: Each generation builds on the discoveries of its predecessors, and the more new ideas there are, the more complex must be the means of communication. Pre-sapiens would no doubt have had to refine their own means of communicating new thoughts to one another, and eventually the more primitive sounds made by our fellow primates would not have sufficed to keep up with the advances being made by our ancestors. Just as the bigger brain and indeed most major innovations require adjustments to the rest of the body, it is perfectly possible that the need for more flexible means of communication resulted in changes throughout the network of material mechanisms that implement vocal communication. In other words, the changes involving tongue, lips, throat and laryngeal muscles were not made in advance of human speech, but were the RESULT of humans trying to develop their own means of speech.

DAVID: Bottom up evolution with all the complicated parts designed by brainless committees of cells. Hard to believe in view of our beautifully designed vocal system with proper control areas in the brain.

It is no harder than believing that there is an unknown, unknowable, sourceless mind that preprogrammed every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder 3.8 billion years ago, or dabbled them individually, which you claim is the "only interpetation possible". And it is no harder than believing that if such a mind does exist, it could have endowed brainless cells with an intelligence of their own (some prominent experts in the field have no doubt that cells are intelligent), and that these cells pool their intelligence to create all the innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders that constitute the history of evolution, rather than the unknown mind designing them all individually (including the 99% that are extinct) to keep life going until it could design sapiens’ brain and vocal chords.