Introducing the brain: half a brain is just fine (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 03, 2020, 15:41 (1724 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You are, as usual, ignoring the gaps in brain size, 150 cc each time with new artifacts.

dhw: I am not ignoring the gaps, I am explaining them! Read the bold. Every expansion is your gap of xxx cc. Now please tell me what other “knowledge” you are referring to.

DAVID: Your past discussion has noted specifically areas enlarged in London cabbies and Italian illiterate women who learn to read. All true, but your interpretation is entirely wrong. What type of brain use caused the enlargement? That is the key. Were there new concepts developed which involves planning and design. Of course not. Their brains were learning from known information and the process was memorization of streets and for reading a complex of learning printed words and learning the meaning of some words not known before reading.
And later: Your theory is totally debunked above if you are using the cabbies, etc.

Firstly, your attempt to “debunk” my theory does not tell us what other “knowledge“ you were referring to. Please identify it. Secondly, learning to read is not a matter of learning words but of learning a process (implementing a concept) that was new to the women themselves, and it proves that the brain responds to the demands made on it. Your post is merely distinguishing between different categories of new concept. I see no reason to suppose that although the current brain is known to change in response to new demands, the old brain would have had to be changed before new demands could be made on it. But we’d need to monitor an inventor’s brain from concept to implementation in order to satisfy you. Change in response to new demands would apply whether the ideas came from the brain itself (materialism) or from a “soul” (dualism) – an issue which becomes more and more confusing since you keep insisting that it is the brain that provides the ideas. (See below for more obfuscation.)

dhw: The earlier homo doesn’t think about what it needs in future! It thinks about how it can improve its responses to the needs of the present! We think of it as a smaller brain because it WAS a smaller brain, and we think of it as more primitive because the improvements only became visible once the brain had expanded!

DAVID: But it is limited to only what its soul can conceive of, using a less complex brain.

dhw: Disregarding your materialist/dualist obfuscation, you might just as well say that nobody can think of anything he/she can't think of. I'm sure we'll all agree!

DAVID: Just my point. A new concept will bring new artifacts. Smart new ideas require a more complex brain for use by the soul/consciousness. But teh artifacts will appear after the new brain is used.

Of course the new concept will bring new artefacts, and in my theory, yes indeed the new concept requires a more complex brain for its implementation, with either the thinking soul using the implementing brain (dualism), or the thinking brain using itself (materialism). And so the artefacts appear when the brain has finished expanding to the size required for the implementation of the concept. We are both repeating our theories, and this adds nothing to the discussion.

DAVID: We each discuss our viewpoints about God from how we conceive of God. Adler has guided me as to how to do it properly.

dhw: I’m sorry, but nobody has the right to say their way of thinking about God is the proper way. Please stop hiding behind Adler.

DAVID: I don't hide. Adler has taught me how to think properly about God.

Nobody has the right to say that their way or anybody else’s way is the proper way.

dhw: The cerebellum would not have changed itself in anticipation of language development.

DAVID: But as usual you forget. In anticipation of our newer developing functions, such as grammatical language our complex brain has been given excellent plasticity to make all the necessary adaptations and still shrink 150 cc in 30-35,000 years.

dhw: Stop harping on about shrinkage unless you have a different explanation from the one we have agreed on. Of course our brain has excellent plasticity. It would not have complexified or expanded if it didn’t. That is not the issue. The issue is your claim that your God preprogrammed or dabbled every change in advance of new concepts, as opposed to the only process we can actually observe, which is that the brain changes in its efforts to implement new concepts.[/b]

DAVID: I've shown you the bold is not true.

Of course you haven’t. Reading was a new concept for the illiterate women.

DAVID: Just to help you the only true sort-of evidence we have about enlargement is Einstein's autopsy. The area thought to relate to his theorizing was much thicker. Problem:was he born with it or did he develop it from thinking/conceptualizing? We don't know. Brilliant folks are generally born that way? No real evidence.

Thank you for your honesty in helping me. We do not know the source of thought (dualism versus materialism), but Einstein’s brain certainly does not “debunk” my theory. It fits in perfectly with what we actually know about the brain from the examples given: it makes changes according to how it is used.