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

by David Turell , Thursday, April 02, 2020, 23:29 (1694 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Thursday, April 02, 2020, 23:35

dhw: How can you possibly reject the argument that nobody can know whether the first artefacts were produced by an already enlarged brain, or their design and production were the cause of the brain’s enlargement?

DAVID: Against all I have read and reported to you.

dhw: You have reported that archaeologists don’t deal with possible reasons for expansion, and you simply refuse to answer my question, so I’ll bold it and ask you again to answer it.

DAVID: Once again they assume what new artifacts are found with the larger brained fossils were made by those fossils. Have you seen the opposite?

dhw: You simply refuse to answer my question. Of course the artefacts were made by the larger brained fossils! The question is what caused the brain to enlarge. Theoretical answer: designing and making a new artefact as conceived by the smaller brain which did not have the capacity to design and make said artefact. Said artefact cannot appear until brain has finished expanding.

I will repeat, and it is an answer to your strange theory. The earlier tinier brain does not have the abstract thinking capacity to envision a new better artifact for the future. New designs must combine what is known with a new abstract idea/design. Abstract thought is the tough part. Producing it is mechanical labor with some trial and error involved. Thomas Edison was a prime example of this. Please look at the following extremely long article, second half of which will give you different brain sizes at different evolutionary stages and how artifacts are considered.

https://paleontology.fandom.com/wiki/Human_evolution

In this article please note the time it took for sapiens to learn how to use their newly enlarged brain. This alone totally refute your 'natural enlargement' theory. We are a species that arrived living/acting just like erectus. The real arrival of our current abstract conceptualization is all in the past eight thousand years since agriculture started

dhw: Once the brain is enlarged, it will continue to conceive, design and make new artefacts until another big idea requires another expansion. Question: how can you possibly know whether designing and making the FIRST artefact was the CAUSE of the expansion or was performed by an already expanded brain? I’ll give you the answer: you can’t know. If you think you can, please tell us how.

It doesn't fit any interpretations/discussions I read at the natural development level of presentation. I absolutely reject the idea that an earlier brain can think itself into a larger size, which is exactly what your theory gives us. It is wishful thinking to get around the question of speciation among early homos, hoping it gets around God doing it. Your anticipated answer to keep you on the fence: God let the do it themselves is your way of staying agnostic. For us theists, it is God-lite, a poor excuse of a purposeful God who know full well what He is doing, as He made the universe, the perfect Earth and life quite efficiently all by iHmself.

This is a discussion between a theist and an agnostic. On that basis I feel God speciates.

dhw: The natural level is that the smaller brain has an idea and the effort to implement (design and produce) the original concept requires greater capacity – hence enlargement. What facts do you have to prove that this is backwards?

DAVID: Outside this natural arguing, I still say God makes all new species and enlarged all brains +/- 200 cc at a jump.

dhw: And I still ask why you think your God could not simply have created the mechanism enabling the natural progression I have described.
And I still ask you what facts you have to prove that my version is “backwards”.

DAVID: You describe a different God than the God I have my faith in.

dhw: I describe a different theory than the theory you have faith in. Mine is extrapolated from known facts (the way the modern brain functions) and you apparently have no facts at all to support your own.

Your theory ignores all the considerations I give you, all factual. The bold seems to indicate I don't know how to think about the facts I have presented.