Introducing the brain: how emotions relate (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, March 07, 2020, 11:11 (1512 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Let's use the comparison of a brain and a computer. When purchased it has certain abilities for use, but it contains no personal input information. It is blank to that point and it will change in what it contains when the info is added and then used.

Computers are all the same “at birth” until they are programmed. But each baby has its own individual characteristics right from the moment of birth, and probably even before birth, since experts agree that babies already respond to certain influences while still in the womb. Your comparison is pointless. The brain is not a computer.

DAVID: Intelligence levels appear to be variable at birth, so some brains start with advantage or disadvantage.

Already an indication that the brain is not a blank!

DAVID: IQ can be increased by teaching and training. My 'blank' is not about the brain as its inner construction attributes. The baby 'blank' state leaves the moment it starts to experience any input from the inside or the outside. Note this: most folks cannot remember before two years of age, because the proper memory elements haven't formed yet.

Nobody is saying the brain arrives fully formed! But its individual characteristics are not “construction attributes”; they are part of the personality. Now please give us your definition of the word “blank”.

DAVID: Ability to open new blanks appear as the brain develops. I sharply remember two episodes two years and three months of age. It as if I suddenly appeared! We are discussing two different views of 'blank". I agree with you your baby brain started different than mine in how it was constructed. But that is not the blank I'm describing. Nuanced difference of how to view the brain.

There is no nuance. You are simply refusing to define the word "blank", because you know as well as I do that the baby’s brain is not an empty vessel or a page with no writing on it. The fact that it develops does not mean it started out with nothing.

DAVID: And to remind you, I am discussing my dualist view of a brain tool for my soul to use, something you keep forgetting, or pounce on if I don't remind you.

On the contrary, I am the one who keeps reminding you that the dualist view is that the soul uses the brain to gather information and to implement its concepts. I pounce on the fact that you keep forgetting it, because you keep telling us that the brain does the conceiving and the thinking. And this has nothing to do with your argument that a brain with individual characteristics, including varying degrees of intelligence, is a blank!