Introducing the brain: how emotions relate (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, March 06, 2020, 15:47 (1723 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: A major nuance of difference in interpretation. Until it receives the first important information to shape it s personality it is blank. Its mechanism lying in wait is not the issue as it relates to my statement. The fact that the mechanism might have slight differences due to differing inheritance is beside the point. It still starts blank.

It is not a nuance, it is a direct opposite. Here is our first exchange on the subject:

dhw: There are inborn characteristics, which a materialist would attribute to the genetic makeup.

DAVID: Of course there are inborn characteristics. It is the byplay that forms the adult brain through the brain's plasticity, but the brain itself is very blank in the beginning.
Then you wrote: "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”.

Either the baby has inborn characteristics or it doesn’t. You agree that it does, so how can a brain containing inborn characteristics be a blank? I have defined “blank” above, so maybe you’d better define it too, as clearly we are not speaking the same language.