Introducing the brain: how emotions relate (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, March 05, 2020, 11:29 (1512 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I understood the presented, materialist concept, but I disagreed with your description of the infant. If it has inborn characteristics, it is not “blank-like”, and its brain is not “very blank in the beginning”. I also find the author’s statement that an infant’s brain “doesn’t look like an adult brain” a bit silly. How much of the baby looks like the adult? And the fact that the brain will continually rewire itself throughout life does not mean it does not already have some wiring when the baby is born after its first nine months of formation (and some say experience) in the womb.

DAVID: To be clear your concept of not blank is not true. I'm referring to the timing of developments.The baby brain arrives with the proper areas and connections, but the characteristics it brings along, that you note, are in the DNA of the neurons and when experiences occur the brain will then respond and form itself with those influences actively in participation, so the future results reflects its inheritence.

dhw: “To be clear”, I find your concept of “blank” incomprehensible. I understand by “blank” that there is nothing – whatever it is, is empty. If the baby arrives with a brain containing proper areas and connections and individual characteristics, it is not blank or empty. Future experiences will of course go on developing and changing whatever connections and characteristics it started out with.

DAVID: Not that complex for you to understand. Yes the brain is prepared to receive info, but until it receives the experiences, it is blank. Think of a blank paper before you type some words. Simple.

I understand the meaning of blank, and am pointing out that if, as you have agreed, the brain already contains proper areas and connections and individual characteristics, it is not blank. Simple.