Brain Expansion (Evolution)
Our posts on this subject have switched between different threads. Entirely my fault, so I’m starting a new thread. My apologies.
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: Under your weird theory, the earlier homo wishes he had a bigger brain because he wants to throw something, better than a stone, needs to design it, but can't, and his wishes force the brain to grow in size?!!
Where does this “wishes” theory come from? When illiterates want to read, they try to read. They don’t say: “I wish I had a more complex brain so that I could read!” THE BRAIN RESPONDS TO THE EFFORT TO PERFORM NEW TASKS. This is an established fact. Please stop putting up silly straw men. And please answer the bolded question.
DAVID: I absolutely reject the idea that an earlier brain can think itself into a larger size, which is exactly what your theory gives us.
dhw: I note that you have reverted to materialism. As a dualist, do you absolutely reject the idea that the soul can influence the brain to the extent that it can change itself and even add connections?
DAVID: Will you please ignore my short hand! The modern soul/brain complex only tells us about tiny enlargements.
If the brain is responsible for thought (materialism) you might have a case – I tried to resolve the dichotomy with my “Theory of Intelligence” – but if the soul is responsible for thought, you are floundering. Why would the soul be incapable of having an idea based solely on EXISTING information? (We may have to develop this aspect of the subject.) And again you have avoided answering my question.
dhw: Do you honestly believe that every theist accepts your version of evolution and your explanation of brain expansion?
DAVID: i have no idea, but the ID folks are with me.
You say they don’t even mention God, so how can they be with you when you insist that God specially designed 3.X billion years’ worth of non-humans to eat one another until he could design us, and God expanded brains before souls/brains could come up with new ideas?
dhw: Now please tell me what logic and what facts support your theory that your God preprogrammed or dabbled each expansion BEFORE your dualist’s soul could come up with a new idea which did not require any new information?
DAVID: Same weird tale: wishing for some new complex abstract design hard enough grows a bigger brain which then designs it!
Same refusal to answer my question, and same silly insertion of your “wishing” theory.
QUOTE: "However, plant food in general yields considerably less energy and nutritive value than meat. Therefore, being able to hunt for large animals, which was only possible by using tools such as spears, made it possible for humans to sustain larger and more complex brains, which in turn allowed them to develop yet more intelligent and efficient tools." (David’s bold)
Yes, the larger brain would have required more feeding. Yes, once the brain had expanded, it would have been able to design and develop more intelligent and efficient tools. How does this invalidate the proposal that each expansion was triggered by a new concept from the smaller brain? How does it prove that developing and making the FIRST artefacts could not have been the cause of the expansion? See next quote:
QUOTE: "Until about 50,000–40,000 years ago the use of stone tools seems to have progressed stepwise: each phase (habilis, ergaster, neanderthal) started at a higher level than the previous one, but once that phase had started further development was slow.” (dhw’s bold)
Fits in perfectly with my proposal that the trigger for the expansion was a “higher level” of tool which the smaller brain could not design and make. “Further development was slow” is what I referred to as periods of stasis.
QUOTE: “After 50,000 BP, […] human culture apparently started to change at much greater speed….” Followed by lots of examples, which you have bolded. I’m not denying the leap forward!
DAVID: : The bolded statements, especially the first, fit my approach, to which you now seem to agree, that bigger, better brains (remember souls at work) create the better artifacts.
Of course they do. But our subject is what CAUSED each expansion! Not what happened AFTER each expansion.
DAVID: But then you strain credulity by imagining the earlier form absorbing current info thinks a new design might exist, and somehow grows a bigger, better brain to achieve the design. […]
Not “somehow grows”! As proven by modern science, it is the effort to perform a new task (designing, reading, memorizing,playing an instrument) that causes changes to the modern brain. It is not illogical to propose that it also changed earlier brains. Your quotes have offered no explanation for expansion, and nothing contrary to my theory.
DAVID: Note the authors use my approach: we had to learn to use our newly developed brain over the 315.000 +/- years it has existed. We were just like erectus at our start.
I have never denied the “Great Leap”! It followed a period of stasis. How does that prove that the initial expansion was caused by a divine dabble?
Brain Expansion
by David Turell 
, Saturday, April 04, 2020, 21:44 (1692 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I absolutely reject the idea that an earlier brain can think itself into a larger size, which is exactly what your theory gives us.
dhw: I note that you have reverted to materialism. As a dualist, do you absolutely reject the idea that the soul can influence the brain to the extent that it can change itself and even add connections?
DAVID: Will you please ignore my short hand! The modern soul/brain complex only tells us about tiny enlargements.
dhw: If the brain is responsible for thought (materialism) you might have a case – I tried to resolve the dichotomy with my “Theory of Intelligence” – but if the soul is responsible for thought, you are floundering. Why would the soul be incapable of having an idea based solely on EXISTING information?
Of course the exiting brain/soul knows existing info. It is the conceptualizing of the new design that requires a more complex brain /soul to do the abstract thinking required for the newly visualized concept.
DAVID: Same weird tale: wishing for some new complex abstract design hard enough grows a bigger brain which then designs it!
DAVID: but the ID folks are with me.
dhw: You say they don’t even mention God, so how can they be with you when you insist that God specially designed 3.X billion years’ worth of non-humans to eat one another until he could design us, and God expanded brains before souls/brains could come up with new ideas?
God is always implied when they discuss design in evolution.
QUOTE: "However, plant food in general yields considerably less energy and nutritive value than meat. Therefore, being able to hunt for large animals, which was only possible by using tools such as spears, made it possible for humans to sustain larger and more complex brains, which in turn allowed them to develop yet more intelligent and efficient tools." (David’s bold)dhw: Yes, the larger brain would have required more feeding. Yes, once the brain had expanded, it would have been able to design and develop more intelligent and efficient tools. How does this invalidate the proposal that each expansion was triggered by a new concept from the smaller brain? How does it prove that developing and making the FIRST artefacts could not have been the cause of the expansion? See next quote:
Total distortion of the meaning of their comment. No one in what I read makes that theoretical jump. They think that evolution caused the enlargement and bigger better brains make bigger better artifacts. We never see a discussion of your lonely theory .
dhw: QUOTE: "Until about 50,000–40,000 years ago the use of stone tools seems to have progressed stepwise: each phase (habilis, ergaster, neanderthal) started at a higher level than the previous one, but once that phase had started further development was slow.” (dhw’s bold)
dhw: Fits in perfectly with my proposal that the trigger for the expansion was a “higher level” of tool which the smaller brain could not design and make. “Further development was slow” is what I referred to as periods of stasis.
QUOTE: “After 50,000 BP, […] human culture apparently started to change at much greater speed….” Followed by lots of examples, which you have bolded. I’m not denying the leap forward!
DAVID: : The bolded statements, especially the first, fit my approach, to which you now seem to agree, that bigger, better brains (remember souls at work) create the better artifacts.
dhw: Of course they do. But our subject is what CAUSED each expansion! Not what happened AFTER each expansion.
I know that. God expanded. But at the natural level I see no one discuss your weird idea., and I've looked.
DAVID: But then you strain credulity by imagining the earlier form absorbing current info thinks a new design might exist, and somehow grows a bigger, better brain to achieve the design. […]dhw: Not “somehow grows”! As proven by modern science, it is the effort to perform a new task (designing, reading, memorizing,playing an instrument) that causes changes to the modern brain. It is not illogical to propose that it also changed earlier brains. Your quotes have offered no explanation for expansion, and nothing contrary to my theory.
The enlargements are small and involve primarily memory activity, not new abstract concepts, although you have sneaked design in your list of activities, and our only known example is Einstein, with a one centimeter enlarged area, and we cannot know if he was born with it or developed the tiny area from thinking. The quotes observe bigger brain and bigger, better artifacts, nothing more, but the implication is obvious. Except to you as your struggle to defend your weird extrapolation from our very advanced brain with its small logical expansions. My position is God expanded the brains and your natural theory is a non-starter.
Brain Expansion
dhw: Why would the soul be incapable of having an idea based solely on EXISTING information?
DAVID: Of course the exiting brain/soul knows existing info. It is the conceptualizing of the new design that requires a more complex brain /soul to do the abstract thinking required for the newly visualized concept.
You still refuse to separate the initial idea, based on existing information, from implementation (= design and making) of the idea. Yet again: It is the effort to design and make the artefact which I propose to be the cause of expansion.
DAVID: but the ID folks are with me.
dhw: You say they don’t even mention God, so...
DAVID: God is always implied when they discuss design in evolution.
… do they insist that their implied God specially designed 3.X billion years’ worth of non-humans to eat one another until he could design us, and God expanded brains before souls/brains could come up with new ideas?
QUOTE: "However, plant food in general yields considerably less energy and nutritive value than meat. Therefore, being able to hunt for large animals, which was only possible by using tools such as spears, made it possible for humans to sustain larger and more complex brains, which in turn allowed them to develop yet more intelligent and efficient tools." (David’s bold)
dhw: Yes, the larger brain would have required more feeding. Yes, once the brain had expanded, it would have been able to design and develop more intelligent and efficient tools. How does this invalidate the proposal that each expansion was triggered by a new concept from the smaller brain? How does it prove that developing and making the FIRST artefacts could not have been the cause of the expansion?
DAVID: Total distortion of the meaning of their comment. No one in what I read makes that theoretical jump. They think that evolution caused the enlargement and bigger better brains make bigger better artifacts. We never see a discussion of your lonely theory.
What distortion? I agree with the quote! But it does not in any way contradict my theory, so why did you quote it?
QUOTE: "Until about 50,000–40,000 years ago the use of stone tools seems to have progressed stepwise: each phase (habilis, ergaster, neanderthal) started at a higher level than the previous one, but once that phase had started further development was slow.” (dhw’s bold)
dhw: Fits in perfectly with my proposal that the trigger for the expansion was a “higher level” of tool which the smaller brain could not design and make. “Further development was slow” is what I referred to as periods of stasis.
No comment from you!
QUOTE: “After 50,000 BP, […] human culture apparently started to change at much greater speed….” Followed by lots of examples, which you have bolded. I’m not denying the leap forward!
DAVID: The bolded statements, especially the first, fit my approach, to which you now seem to agree, that bigger, better brains (remember souls at work) create the better artifacts.
dhw: Of course they do. But our subject is what CAUSED each expansion! Not what happened AFTER each expansion.
DAVID: I know that. God expanded. But at the natural level I see no one discuss your weird idea., and I've looked.
Because they don’t deal with the question of what caused expansion! I don’t suppose any of them say “God caused expansion” either!
dhw: As proven by modern science, it is the effort to perform a new task (designing, reading, memorizing, playing an instrument) that causes changes to the modern brain. It is not illogical to propose that it also changed earlier brains. Your quotes have offered no explanation for expansion, and nothing contrary to my theory.
DAVID: The enlargements are small and involve primarily memory activity, not new abstract concepts, although you have sneaked design in your list of activities, and our only known example is Einstein, with a one centimeter enlarged area, and we cannot know if he was born with it or developed the tiny area from thinking.
If Einstein was born with it, we need to discuss the materialist interpretation of thought. If he developed it, you cannot escape the conclusion that thought can expand the materials of the brain, so the theory can’t be a non-starter, as you claim below.
DAVID: The quotes observe bigger brain and bigger, better artifacts, nothing more, but the implication is obvious. […] My position is God expanded the brains and your natural theory is a non-starter.
I know your position. If “each phase started at a higher level than the previous one”, and if the modern brain changes as a result of new activities, the obvious implication of the two facts combined is that the new phase started at a higher level because new activities had made it change – in this case, expand. Nobody knows what causes expansion, so I don’t know why you think these two facts can’t be used as a possible explanation. Now please tell us what facts you have to support the theory that your God expanded the brain before it could have an idea based on existing information?
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, April 05, 2020, 22:05 (1691 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: but the ID folks are with me.
dhw: You say they don’t even mention God, so...
DAVID: God is always implied when they discuss design in evolution.
dhw: do they insist that their implied God specially designed 3.X billion years’ worth of non-humans to eat one another until he could design us, and God expanded brains before souls/brains could come up with new ideas?
They do not discuss my theories. They concentrate totally on the need for design, designer. Why did you ask the question when you should know the answer from my previous discussions
QUOTE: "However, plant food in general yields considerably less energy and nutritive value than meat. Therefore, being able to hunt for large animals, which was only possible by using tools such as spears, made it possible for humans to sustain larger and more complex brains, which in turn allowed them to develop yet more intelligent and efficient tools." (David’s bold)dhw: Yes, the larger brain would have required more feeding. Yes, once the brain had expanded, it would have been able to design and develop more intelligent and efficient tools. How does this invalidate the proposal that each expansion was triggered by a new concept from the smaller brain? How does it prove that developing and making the FIRST artefacts could not have been the cause of the expansion?
DAVID: Total distortion of the meaning of their comment. No one in what I read makes that theoretical jump. They think that evolution caused the enlargement and bigger better brains make bigger better artifacts. We never see a discussion of your lonely theory.
dhw: What distortion? I agree with the quote! But it does not in any way contradict my theory, so why did you quote it?
That it doesn't disagree means it doesn't support either. Have you every found any third party support? Answer, no. because it is not discussed by anyone except dhw.
QUOTE: "Until about 50,000–40,000 years ago the use of stone tools seems to have progressed stepwise: each phase (habilis, ergaster, neanderthal) started at a higher level than the previous one, but once that phase had started further development was slow.” (dhw’s bold)dhw: Fits in perfectly with my proposal that the trigger for the expansion was a “higher level” of tool which the smaller brain could not design and make. “Further development was slow” is what I referred to as periods of stasis.
dhw: No comment from you!
You know I totally disagree with your unsupported pipe dream of a theory.
DAVID: God expanded. But at the natural level I see no one discuss your weird idea., and I've looked.dhw: Because they don’t deal with the question of what caused expansion! I don’t suppose any of them say “God caused expansion” either!
Of course not. Not allowed.
DAVID: The enlargements are small and involve primarily memory activity, not new abstract concepts, although you have sneaked design in your list of activities, and our only known example is Einstein, with a one centimeter enlarged area, and we cannot know if he was born with it or developed the tiny area from thinking.dhw: If Einstein was born with it, we need to discuss the materialist interpretation of thought. If he developed it, you cannot escape the conclusion that thought can expand the materials of the brain, so the theory can’t be a non-starter, as you claim below.
Contra to your imagined giant early expansions, Einstein's area was one centimeter. His soul could use it. I do not understand how knowing some current info and realizing attack at a distance is good, but not knowing how to do it, grows a brain 200 cc.
DAVID: The quotes observe bigger brain and bigger, better artifacts, nothing more, but the implication is obvious. […] My position is God expanded the brains and your natural theory is a non-starter.dhw: I know your position. If “each phase started at a higher level than the previous one”, and if the modern brain changes as a result of new activities, the obvious implication of the two facts combined is that the new phase started at a higher level because new activities had made it change – in this case, expand. Nobody knows what causes expansion, so I don’t know why you think these two facts can’t be used as a possible explanation. Now please tell us what facts you have to support the theory that your God expanded the brain before it could have an idea based on existing information?
Simple, I believe in God, based on vast study of the science of evolution and biochemistry. He creates the better brain to allow the soul to abstractly design the new artifact. The issue you totally ignore is the required ability to do advanced abstract thought for new designs. The previous brain cortex was not complex enough to do the job for the soul.
Brain Expansion
DAVID: but the ID folks are with me.
dhw: You say they don’t even mention God, so...
DAVID: God is always implied when they discuss design in evolution.
dhw: do they insist that their implied God specially designed 3.X billion years’ worth of non-humans to eat one another until he could design us, and God expanded brains before souls/brains could come up with new ideas?
DAVID: They do not discuss my theories. They concentrate totally on the need for design, designer. Why did you ask the question when you should know the answer from my previous discussions.
I asked the question because whenever I attack your theory of evolution (but I don’t attack your theory of design), you claim that “the ID folks are with me”. They are not.
I agreed with an article you quoted, and pointed out that it did not in any way contradict my theory.
DAVID: That it doesn't disagree means it doesn't support either. Have you every found any third party support? Answer, no. because it is not discussed by anyone except dhw.
Of course it doesn’t support my theory – it doesn’t deal with the subject! That’s why I asked you why you’d quoted it!
QUOTE: "Until about 50,000–40,000 years ago the use of stone tools seems to have progressed stepwise: each phase (habilis, ergaster, neanderthal) started at a higher level than the previous one, but once that phase had started further development was slow.” (dhw’s bold)
dhw: Fits in perfectly with my proposal that the trigger for the expansion was a “higher level” of tool which the smaller brain could not design and make. “Further development was slow” is what I referred to as periods of stasis.
DAVID: You know I totally disagree with your unsupported pipe dream of a theory.
I do. Now please tell me how the above quote invalidates my theory.
DAVID: God expanded. But at the natural level I see no one discuss your weird idea., and I've looked.
dhw: Because they don’t deal with the question of what caused expansion! I don’t suppose any of them say “God caused expansion” either!
DAVID: Of course not. Not allowed.
So according to you, the fact that nobody discusses my theory must mean that my theory is wrong, but the fact that nobody discusses your theory means…what?
DAVID: The enlargements are small and involve primarily memory activity, not new abstract concepts, although you have sneaked design in your list of activities, and our only known example is Einstein, with a one centimeter enlarged area, and we cannot know if he was born with it or developed the tiny area from thinking.
dhw: If Einstein was born with it, we need to discuss the materialist interpretation of thought. If he developed it, you cannot escape the conclusion that thought can expand the materials of the brain, so the theory can’t be a non-starter, as you claim below.
DAVID: Contra to your imagined giant early expansions, Einstein's area was one centimeter. His soul could use it. I do not understand how knowing some current info and realizing attack at a distance is good, but not knowing how to do it, grows a brain 200 cc.
You constantly gloss over the general principle: the modern brain does not expand (I would say cannot, for anatomical reasons), but earlier brains could and did. We know that brains change when they are made to perform new tasks. It is therefore not unreasonable to propose that they did the same in earlier times, when there was room for expansion. Nobody knows what caused expansion. But we can extrapolate a general principle from what we know. Your summary of the theory is silly. I have told you over and over again that my theory follows the pattern of the modern brain’s behaviour: it is the EFFORT to implement the concept that causes the change.
Dhw: Now please tell us what facts you have to support the theory that your God expanded the brain before it could have an idea based on existing information?
DAVID: Simple, I believe in God, based on vast study of the science of evolution and biochemistry.
No facts yet.
DAVID: He creates the better brain to allow the soul to abstractly design the new artifact. The issue you totally ignore is the required ability to do advanced abstract thought for new designs. The previous brain cortex was not complex enough to do the job for the soul.
“Ignore”? That issue lies at the very core of my theory! In dualist terms the previous, smaller brain was not complex enough to design and make the artefact which – oops, you forgot to mention this - the soul had first conceived and which was based entirely on known information. The dualist’s soul only uses the brain to acquire information and to implement (= design and make) the artefact. The small brain which had the original idea now has to come up with advanced abstract thought for new designs and production, i.e. the brain has to perform new tasks, and so it is the EFFORT to design and make that causes the expansion. You’ve got it, except that you keep forgetting the soul’s original idea which sparks the whole process off.
And you still haven’t produced a single FACT to support your theory.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Monday, April 06, 2020, 21:13 (1690 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: I asked the question because whenever I attack your theory of evolution (but I don’t attack your theory of design), you claim that “the ID folks are with me”. They are not.
They say God designs by inference, as I do.
DAVID: The enlargements are small and involve primarily memory activity, not new abstract concepts, although you have sneaked design in your list of activities, and our only known example is Einstein, with a one centimeter enlarged area, and we cannot know if he was born with it or developed the tiny area from thinking.
dhw: If Einstein was born with it, we need to discuss the materialist interpretation of thought. If he developed it, you cannot escape the conclusion that thought can expand the materials of the brain, so the theory can’t be a non-starter, as you claim below.
DAVID: Contra to your imagined giant early expansions, Einstein's area was one centimeter. His soul could use it. I do not understand how knowing some current info and realizing attack at a distance is good, but not knowing how to do it, grows a brain 200 cc.
dhw: You constantly gloss over the general principle: the modern brain does not expand (I would say cannot, for anatomical reasons), but earlier brains could and did. We know that brains change when they are made to perform new tasks. It is therefore not unreasonable to propose that they did the same in earlier times, when there was room for expansion.
Please think more completely about Einstein's brain. He was a recognized genius who was able to think differently, using known current info from others and abstractly conceptualize and entirely new theory. My original finding of a one centimeter enlargement is wrong. From Wiki current info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein%27s_brain
"..further analysis by a team at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario revealed that his parietal operculum region in the inferior frontal gyrus in the frontal lobe of the brain was vacant. Also absent was part of a bordering region called the lateral sulcus (Sylvian fissure). Researchers at McMaster University speculated that the vacancy may have enabled neurons in this part of his brain to communicate better. "This unusual brain anatomy...[missing part of the Sylvian fissure]... may explain why Einstein thought the way he did," said Professor Sandra Witelson who led the research published in The Lancet. This study was based on photographs of the whole brain made at autopsy in 1955.
***
"In the 1980s Dr. Diamond's laboratory made thin sections of Einstein's brain, each 6 micrometers thick. They then used a microscope to count the cells. Einstein's brain had more glial cells relative to neurons in all areas studied, but only in the left inferior parietal area was the difference statistically significant. This area is part of the association cortex, regions of the brain responsible for incorporating and synthesizing information from multiple other brain regions. A stimulating environment can increase the proportion of glial cells and the high ratio could possibly result from Einstein's life studying stimulating scientific problems.[15] [16] The limitation that Diamond admits in her study is that she had only one Einstein to compare with 11 brains of normal intelligence individuals."
Dhw: Now please tell us what facts you have to support the theory that your God expanded the brain before it could have an idea based on existing information?
DAVID: Simple, I believe in God, based on vast study of the science of evolution and biochemistry.
dhw: No facts yet.
I've added the new info about Einstein. Not enlarged, but very different!
DAVID: He creates the better brain to allow the soul to abstractly design the new artifact. The issue you totally ignore is the required ability to do advanced abstract thought for new designs. The previous brain cortex was not complex enough to do the job for the soul.dhw: “Ignore”? That issue lies at the very core of my theory! In dualist terms the previous, smaller brain was not complex enough to design and make the artefact which – oops, you forgot to mention this - the soul had first conceived and which was based entirely on known information. The dualist’s soul only uses the brain to acquire information and to implement (= design and make) the artefact. The small brain which had the original idea now has to come up with advanced abstract thought for new designs and production, i.e. the brain has to perform new tasks, and so it is the EFFORT to design and make that causes the expansion. You’ve got it, except that you keep forgetting the soul’s original idea which sparks the whole process off.
Entire materialistic thought: Einstein's brain is my proof of a very different type of brain allowing new abstract concepts. Only more advanced brains/soul mechanisms can create the newer advanced concepts as the artifacts show. The bold makes no sense to me: you think desire makes it grow! Based on what? Not growth of tiny areas from new memory issues.
Brain Expansion: new Einstein's brain studies
by David Turell , Monday, April 06, 2020, 21:33 (1690 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by David Turell, Monday, April 06, 2020, 22:11
Certain very different:
https://earthsky.org/human-world/einsteins-brain-was-different-from-other-peoples
"A new study led by Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk has revealed that portions of the brain of Albert Einstein are unlike those of most people. The differences could relate to Einstein’s unique discoveries about the nature of space and time. Falk’s team used photographs of Einstein’s brain, taken shortly after his death, but not previously analyzed in detail. The photographs showed that Einstein’s brain had an unusually complex pattern of convolutions in the prefrontal cortex, which is important for abstract thinking.
In other words, Einsteins’ brain actually looks different from yours or mine. Falk and her team published their work on November 16, 2012 in the journal Brain."
https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/136/4/1304/356614
Abstract of original study:
"Here we describe the external gross neuroanatomy of Einstein’s entire cerebral cortex from 14 recently discovered photographs, most of which were taken from unconventional angles. Two of the photographs reveal sulcal patterns of the medial surfaces of the hemispheres, and another shows the neuroanatomy of the right (exposed) insula. Most of Einstein’s sulci are identified, and sulcal patterns in various parts of the brain are compared with those of 85 human brains that have been described in the literature. To the extent currently possible, unusual features of Einstein’s brain are tentatively interpreted in light of what is known about the evolution of higher cognitive processes in humans. As an aid to future investigators, these (and other) features are correlated with blocks on the roadmap (and therefore histological slides). Einstein’s brain has an extraordinary prefrontal cortex, which may have contributed to the neurological substrates for some of his remarkable cognitive abilities. The primary somatosensory and motor cortices near the regions that typically represent face and tongue are greatly expanded in the left hemisphere. Einstein’s parietal lobes are also unusual and may have provided some of the neurological underpinnings for his visuospatial and mathematical skills, as others have hypothesized. Einstein’s brain has typical frontal and occipital shape asymmetries (petalias) and grossly asymmetrical inferior and superior parietal lobules. Contrary to the literature, Einstein’s brain is not spherical, does not lack parietal opercula and has non-confluent Sylvian and inferior postcentral sulci.
From the summary:
"Einstein’s brain is of unexceptional size and its combination of a relatively wide and forward-projecting right frontal lobe with a relatively wide and posteriorly protruding left occipital lobe is the most prevalent pattern seen in right-handed adult males. We have identified the sulci that delimit expansions of cortex (gyri or convolutions) on the external surfaces of all of the lobes of the brain and on the medial surfaces of both hemispheres. The morphology in some parts of Einstein’s cerebral cortex is highly unusual compared with 25 (Ono et al., 1990) and 60 (Connolly, 1950) human brains for which sulcal patterns have been thoroughly described.
" Nevertheless, our findings are concordant with the earlier suggestion that unusual morphology in Einstein’s parietal lobes may have provided neurological substrates for his visuospatial and mathematical abilities.
"Our results also suggest that Einstein had relatively expanded prefrontal cortices, which may have provided underpinnings for some of his extraordinary cognitive abilities, including his productive use of thought experiments. From an evolutionary perspective, the specific parts of Einstein’s prefrontal cortex that appear to be differentially expanded are of interest because recent findings indicate that these same areas increased differentially in size and became neurologically reorganized at microanatomical levels during hominin evolution in association with the emergence of higher cognitive abilities."
Comment: think about that bold. It all fits my commentary about enlarged brains and the ability for advanced concepts and designs by the brain /soul complex. As Einstein's brain shows a different kind of brain is required for newly advanced thought. My previous note about a one centimeter area, from memory, was in a parietal area and some enlargement is noted there. Note his brain is not in any way totally enlarged beyond nor mal, just not naturally developed in comparison to other human brains of similar age ,to which it was compared..
Brain Expansion: new Einstein's brain studies II
by David Turell , Monday, April 06, 2020, 22:23 (1690 days ago) @ David Turell
Another article on Einstein's brain with another version of the study results:
https://scitechdaily.com/photos-of-einsteins-brain-show-unique-features/
The autopsy revealed that Einstein’s brain was smaller than average, and the analyses showed the normal changes that happen with aging. Nothing more at the time was analyzed and the brain fragments were stored. Decades later, researchers asked Harvey for samples and noticed some unusual features while analyzing them.
In 1985, they showed that two parts of his brain contained an unusually large number of glia for every neuron. Another study showed that the parietal lobe lacks a furrow and operculum. This missing furrow might have enhanced the connections in this region, which is involved in the visual/spatial functions and mathematical skills like arithmetic.
***
Many of the photos were taken from unusual angles, and show structures not visible in photos that were analyzed previously. The most striking observation was the complexity and pattern of convolutions on certain parts of the cerebral cortex, especially in the prefrontal cortex and also the parietal lobes and visual cortex.
The prefrontal cortex is important for abstract thinking. The complex pattern of convolutions probably gave the region an unusual surface area, which might have contributed to his remarkable thought processes.
There was also an unusual feature in the right somatosensory cortex, which receives sensory information from the body. In this part, Einstein’s brain is expanded, which might have contributed to this accomplished violin playing. (my bold...no surprise to us)
According to Sandra Witelson, a behavioral neuroscientist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, who discovered that the parietal operculum is missing from Einstein’s brain, the study’s biggest contribution may be in encouraging further studies. “It makes clear the location and accessibility of photographs and slides of Einstein’s brain,” she says.
Comment: Same point. His brain was unique as he was
Brain Expansion
DAVID: […] our only known example is Einstein, with a one centimeter enlarged area, and we cannot know if he was born with it or developed the tiny area from thinking.
dhw: If Einstein was born with it, we need to discuss the materialist interpretation of thought. If he developed it, you cannot escape the conclusion that thought can expand the materials of the brain, so the theory can’t be a non-starter, as you claim below.(dhw: See below re the bold.)
DAVID (under “Human evolution: tool and brain advances correlated”): There is no evidence from this presentation that dhw's theory that a drive for abstract design forced brain enlargement. Lots of new sized brains but not much advancement.
As usual, they do not try to explain why brains enlarged. There is no evidence from their presentation that God did a dabble before each stage of enlargement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein%27s_brain
QUOTE: ".."This unusual brain anatomy […] may explain why Einstein thought the way he did…"
Already we are confronted with the theory that the brain is responsible for thought (materialism), which I anticipated above. I’m going to have to cherrypick from all the quotes:
QUOTE: " A stimulating environment can increase the proportion of glial cells and the high ratio could possibly result from Einstein's life studying stimulating scientific problems." (dhw’s bold)
This is a highly significant quote: the author regards it as possible that Einstein’s brain changed AS A RESULT of thought - here the EFFORT to solve problems. That is the key to my theory.
Dhw: Now please tell us what facts you have to support the theory that your God expanded the brain before it could have an idea based on existing information?
DAVID: Simple, I believe in God, based on vast study of the science of evolution and biochemistry.
dhw: No facts yet.
DAVID: I've added the new info about Einstein. Not enlarged, but very different!
Still no facts to support your theory. The different brain may have been the cause of his different thoughts (materialism) or the result of his different thoughts (perfectly suited to dualism, but also fits in with materialism if the brain is a community of communities with different functions which may influence one another’s patterns).
dhw: The small brain which had the original idea now has to come up with advanced abstract thought for new designs and production, i.e. the brain has to perform new tasks, and so it is the EFFORT to design and make that causes the expansion. You’ve got it, except that you keep forgetting the soul’s original idea which sparks the whole process off.
DAVID: Entire materialistic thought….
The bold is my fault. I was supposed to be adopting the dualistic approach (as I do at the end). I'll try again: The soul which uses the small brain has the original idea, but the small brain cannot implement the idea, and therefore responds to the soul’s efforts to implement the idea. Similarly, if Einstein had a soul (dualism), or if the thinking section of his brain (materialism) came up with a problem (the initial concept), the effort to solve it may have caused the responses that made his brain different from other people’s.
DAVID: …..Einstein's brain is my proof of a very different type of brain allowing new abstract concepts. Only more advanced brains/soul mechanisms can create the newer advanced concepts as the artifacts show. [...] you think desire makes it grow! Based on what? Not growth of tiny areas from new memory issues.
Not desire, and not wish. Please stop substituting your silly terms for the term I keep using, which is EFFORT. Meanwhile, you’ve gone back to the meaningless term “allow”. Either the brain is responsible for concepts (materialism) or the soul creates the concepts and uses the brain to gather information and to implement them (dualism). No permits necessary. Yes, new concepts demand more advanced brains – but there is no way of knowing whether the FIRST artefacts made by the new species were made AFTER brain expansion or were the cause of brain expansion. Once again you ignore this quote:”each phase (habilis, ergaster, neanderthal) started at a higher level than the previous one, but once the phase had started further development was slow”. This fits the pattern of my theory.
QUOTE " From an evolutionary perspective, the specific parts of Einstein’s prefrontal cortex that appear to be differentially expanded are of interest because recent findings indicate that these same areas increased differentially in size and became neurologically reorganized at microanatomical levels during hominin evolution in association with the emergence of higher cognitive abilities." (David’s bold)
DAVID: […] It all fits my commentary about enlarged brains and the ability for advanced concepts and designs by the brain /soul complex.
There is no mention of a soul, and the association with higher cognitive abilities fits my own theory just as well as it fits yours, since there is no way of knowing whether the reorganization of the brain preceded those cognitive abilities (i.e. caused them, which = materialism, though you don’t seem to realize that) or came about as a result of the effort to perform new tasks or solve problems (see the first Einstein quote).
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, April 07, 2020, 19:47 (1689 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID (under “Human evolution: tool and brain advances correlated”): There is no evidence from this presentation that dhw's theory that a drive for abstract design forced brain enlargement. Lots of new sized brains but not much advancement.
dhw: As usual, they do not try to explain why brains enlarged. There is no evidence from their presentation that God did a dabble before each stage of enlargement.
:A non-answer usual. The point of my comment: 'Lots of new sized brains but not much advancement'. Meaning not much real new thinking, which dhw's theory demands!! Has dhw ever found third-party support for his theory? Not here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein%27s_brainQUOTE: ".."This unusual brain anatomy […] may explain why Einstein thought the way he did…"
QUOTE: " A stimulating environment can increase the proportion of glial cells and the high ratio could possibly result from Einstein's life studying stimulating scientific problems." (dhw’s bold)
dhw: This is a highly significant quote: the author regards it as possible that Einstein’s brain changed AS A RESULT of thought - here the EFFORT to solve problems. That is the key to my theory.
A very speculative comment, with no support in the literature I've reviewed today:
https://www.amazon.com/Root-Thought-Unlocking-Sharpen-papeback/dp/0134383036
Selling blurb: "Koob reveals the surprising correlation between intelligence and the brain's percentage of glial cells - and why these cells' unique wavelike communications may be especially conducive to the fluid information processing human beings depend upon."
In the book a reference to my old finding on Einstein:
In the 1950s, scientists studied the brain of Albert Einstein, a man renowned for his imaginative thought, which eventually resulted in arguably the most important discovery in modern physics. As Koob puts it more straightforwardly, "this is the kind of man who used his glia." Not surprisingly, Einstein had significantly greater number of astrocytes in his left parietal cortex, an area associated with higher thought, mathematics, and spatial learning.
Critical review: However, to anyone trained in science or critical analysis, Koob's evidence simply does not fully support his hypothesis, and the book is disappointing as an argument at large.
Comment: Glial cells are support cells and do communicate with neurons. How they contribute to intelligent thought is still unknown. Many papers reviewed.
DAVID: I've added the new info about Einstein. Not enlarged, but very different!dhw: The soul which uses the small brain has the original idea, but the small brain cannot implement the idea, and therefore responds to the soul’s efforts to implement the idea. Similarly, if Einstein had a soul (dualism), or if the thinking section of his brain (materialism) came up with a problem (the initial concept), the effort to solve it may have caused the responses that made his brain different from other people’s.
Wow: your finally explained concept is the thinking soul forces enlargement, or with Einstein, the thought effort made his brain very different. Either soul or natural thought recognize the current brain is inadequate and must be improved (enlarged), but only by force of effort
DAVID: …..Einstein's brain is my proof of a very different type of brain allowing new abstract concepts. Only more advanced brains/soul mechanisms can create the newer advanced concepts as the artifacts show. [...] you think desire makes it grow! Based on what? Not growth of tiny areas from new memory issues.
QUOTE " From an evolutionary perspective, the specific parts of Einstein’s prefrontal cortex that appear to be differentially expanded are of interest because recent findings indicate that these same areas increased differentially in size and became neurologically reorganized at microanatomical levels during hominin evolution in association with the emergence of higher cognitive abilities." (David’s bold)
DAVID: […] It all fits my commentary about enlarged brains and the ability for advanced concepts and designs by the brain /soul complex.
dhw: There is no mention of a soul, and the association with higher cognitive abilities fits my own theory just as well as it fits yours, since there is no way of knowing whether the reorganization of the brain preceded those cognitive abilities (i.e. caused them, which = materialism, though you don’t seem to realize that) or came about as a result of the effort to perform new tasks or solve problems (see the first Einstein quote).
Another U-turn in your previous thinking. Remember our arguments about the brain as a blank slate. One point we agreed upon was a sizable genetic input. Einstein had a fascinating one based on his early years. See next entry which fully refutes your suppositions about him.
Brain Expansion: Einstein's brain in early years
by David Turell , Tuesday, April 07, 2020, 20:10 (1689 days ago) @ David Turell
A strange childhood:
https://www.ducksters.com/biography/scientists/albert_einstein/early-life.php
"As one might expect, Albert Einstein was not the typical child. However, not in the way one might think. He was not a child prodigy who could read at the age of two and do high level math at four, but quite the opposite. Albert appeared to have great difficulty in learning to talk. An older Albert once recalled that his parents became so concerned about his speaking difficulties that they consulted a doctor. Even when he did start talking, Albert had the strange habit of repeating sentences several times to himself. At one point, he earned the nickname "der Depperte," which means "dopey one."
"As he grew older and entered school, Einstein developed a rebellious attitude towards his teachers and authority in general. Perhaps it was a result of being so intelligent, but not being able to communicate it. His first school was a Catholic school where the teachers treated him fairly, but he was constantly picked on by the other students for being Jewish. He eventually began to excel in school and, contrary to some legends about Einstein, he did not flunk out of math, but typically performed at the top of his class.
"Albert would later conjecture that perhaps his ability to think in unique ways and to develop new scientific concepts differently came from his early struggles. He liked to think in pictures, rather than in words.
"Early brilliance: "While there are many stories telling about how Einstein struggled in school and even failed in math, these are not true. He may have not been the ideal student, but he scored high in most subjects, especially math and physics. As an adult, Einstein was asked about his failure in math and he replied "I never failed in mathematics. Before I was fifteen I had mastered differential and integral calculus.'"
And it is widely accepted he was dyslectic:
https://www.dyslexia.com/famous/albert-einstein/
Einstein also frequently described his thought process as being nonverbal:
Words or language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play
any role in my mechanism of thought.
(From a letter to mathematician Jacques Hadamard, 1945)
Thoughts did not come in any verbal formulation. I very rarely think in
words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words
afterwards. (Said to his friend, psychologist Max Wertheimer).
Writing is difficult, and I communicate this way very badly. (Reported by physicist Robert S. Shankland in Conversations with Einstein)
Einstein’s childhood and early education also shows a pattern of strengths and weaknesses commonly seen among very bright dyslexic children:
Childhood Strengths:
special interest and a knack for studying geometry
as a teenager, he thrived while attending a Swiss school based on creative, visual methods of instruction and discouraging memorization
Areas of Weakness:
verbal development was delayed and Einstein did not speak
until the age of three
early speech was described as laborious and searching, persisting to age 7, suggesting difficulties with word retrieval
as a schoolboy, his poor facility for arithmetic and his great difficulty with foreign language let a teacher to predict that “nothing good” would come of him
Comment: There is no question he was born with a strange brain, contra to your attempts to squeeze him into an example of your unsupported theory of brain expansion. Dyslexia is common and often comes with brilliance. My wife is one, and I've worked a small number of others who fit the point.
Brain Expansion
DAVID: The point of my comment: 'Lots of new sized brains but not much advancement'. Meaning not much real new thinking, which dhw's theory demands!! Has dhw ever found third-party support for his theory? Not here.
Re “not much advancement”, I pointed out that once expansions had taken place there were long periods of stasis. I quoted: “each phase [...] started at a higher level than the previous one, but once that phase had started further development was slow”. I suggest that it was new thinking that demanded the effort which led to each expansion. Why don’t you concentrate on the arguments instead of looking for other people’s opinions and quoting articles that don’t deal with the subject?
QUOTE: "A stimulating environment can increase the proportion of glial cells and the high ratio could possibly result from Einstein's life studying stimulating scientific problems." (dhw’s bold)
dhw: This is a highly significant quote: the author regards it as possible that Einstein’s brain changed AS A RESULT of thought - here the EFFORT to solve problems. That is the key to my theory.
DAVID: A very speculative comment, with no support in the literature I've reviewed today:
Well, there we are: a comment that supports my theory, and the literature you’ve reviewed does not deal with expansion. You go on to quote two articles which tell us absolutely nothing relevant, so I’ll just quote your conclusion:
DAVID: Glial cells are support cells and do communicate with neurons. How they contribute to intelligent thought is still unknown.
And it is still unknown whether the brain is the source of thought (materialism) or is just used and when necessary changed by the thinking soul (dualism) as it implements the latter’s concepts.
dhw: The soul which uses the small brain has the original idea, but the small brain cannot implement the idea, and therefore responds to the soul’s efforts to implement the idea. Similarly, if Einstein had a soul (dualism), or if the thinking section of his brain (materialism) came up with a problem (the initial concept), the effort to solve it may have caused the responses that made his brain different from other people’s.
DAVID: Wow: your finally explained concept is the thinking soul forces enlargement, or with Einstein, the thought effort made his brain very different. Either soul or natural thought recognize the current brain is inadequate and must be improved (enlarged), but only by force of effort.
What’s the “wow”? I don’t know why you bring in “recognition”, but otherwise you’ve simply tried to rephrase what I wrote in much clearer terms!
QUOTE "From an evolutionary perspective, the specific parts of Einstein’s prefrontal cortex that appear to be differentially expanded are of interest because recent findings indicate that these same areas increased differentially in size and became neurologically reorganized at microanatomical levels during hominin evolution in association with the emergence of higher cognitive abilities." (David’s bold)
DAVID: […] It all fits my commentary about enlarged brains and the ability for advanced concepts and designs by the brain /soul complex.
dhw: There is no mention of a soul, and the association with higher cognitive abilities fits my own theory just as well as it fits yours […]
DAVID: Another U-turn in your previous thinking. Remember our arguments about the brain as a blank slate. One point we agreed upon was a sizable genetic input. Einstein had a fascinating one based on his early years. See next entry which fully refutes your suppositions about him.
It was you who insisted on a blank slate, and I objected vehemently because of the “sizable genetic input”. What is the U-turn? Nobody knows whether the materialist’s brain or the dualist’s soul is the source of thought, but whichever is the truth, it makes no difference to the argument that thought can cause changes to the brain! The article tells us all about Einstein’s struggles as a child. Your comment is as irrelevant to the subject of expansion as the article itself:
DAVID: There is no question he was born with a strange brain, contra to your attempts to squeeze him into an example of your unsupported theory of brain expansion. Dyslexia is common and often comes with brilliance. My wife is one, and I've worked a small number of others who fit the point.
If you think his strange brain was the cause of his brilliance, then please stop pretending to be a dualist. As far as my theory is concerned, it was you who first raised the subject of Einstein, and you’ve since quoted articles that emphasize several peculiarities in his brain. This can be used as evidence for materialism, but it cannot remove the possibility that his thoughts also caused changes to his brain, as speculated in the quote above, and as illustrated by other examples such as the effort to read, to memorize, to play an instrument. I see these examples as support for my theory that the effort to perform new tasks changes the brain and therefore may (it’s a theory) have been the cause of pre-sapiens expansions. There is absolutely nothing in any of your quotes and articles that even deals with the subject, let alone “refutes” my proposal. And I still wait to hear what facts you can come up with in support of your own.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, April 08, 2020, 22:49 (1688 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: The soul which uses the small brain has the original idea, but the small brain cannot implement the idea, and therefore responds to the soul’s efforts to implement the idea. Similarly, if Einstein had a soul (dualism), or if the thinking section of his brain (materialism) came up with a problem (the initial concept), the effort to solve it may have caused the responses that made his brain different from other people’s.
DAVID: Wow: your finally explained concept is the thinking soul forces enlargement, or with Einstein, the thought effort made his brain very different. Either soul or natural thought recognize the current brain is inadequate and must be improved (enlarged), but only by force of effort.
dhw: I don’t know why you bring in “recognition”, but otherwise you’ve simply tried to rephrase what I wrote in much clearer terms!
Where is "recognition "? My view of your idea is clearer as i stated it
QUOTE "From an evolutionary perspective, the specific parts of Einstein’s prefrontal cortex that appear to be differentially expanded are of interest because recent findings indicate that these same areas increased differentially in size and became neurologically reorganized at microanatomical levels during hominin evolution in association with the emergence of higher cognitive abilities." (David’s bold)DAVID: […] It all fits my commentary about enlarged brains and the ability for advanced concepts and designs by the brain /soul complex.
dhw: There is no mention of a soul, and the association with higher cognitive abilities fits my own theory just as well as it fits yours […]
DAVID: Another U-turn in your previous thinking. Remember our arguments about the brain as a blank slate. One point we agreed upon was a sizable genetic input. Einstein had a fascinating one based on his early years. See next entry which fully refutes your suppositions about him.
dhw: It was you who insisted on a blank slate, and I objected vehemently because of the “sizable genetic input”. What is the U-turn? Nobody knows whether the materialist’s brain or the dualist’s soul is the source of thought, but whichever is the truth, it makes no difference to the argument that thought can cause changes to the brain! The article tells us all about Einstein’s struggles as a child. Your comment is as irrelevant to the subject of expansion as the article itself:
DAVID: There is no question he was born with a strange brain, contra to your attempts to squeeze him into an example of your unsupported theory of brain expansion. Dyslexia is common and often comes with brilliance. My wife is one, and I've worked a small number of others who fit the point.
dhw: If you think his strange brain was the cause of his brilliance, then please stop pretending to be a dualist.
Why do you constantly ignore my theory which you have recognized in the past. Never pure materialism: The soul always uses the brain it is given, in terms of capacity for new thought or unclear thought as in mental illness. The soul can change the brain only through brain plasticity. The only enlargements we know about are small.
dhw: As far as my theory is concerned, it was you who first raised the subject of Einstein, and you’ve since quoted articles that emphasize several peculiarities in his brain. This can be used as evidence for materialism, but it cannot remove the possibility that his thoughts also caused changes to his brain, as speculated in the quote above, and as illustrated by other examples such as the effort to read, to memorize, to play an instrument.
I resurrected Einstein because his brain is now well studied. It is very different. And you have studiously ignored Einstein's dyslexia and strange childhood educational development, his trouble with early speech, the fact that he thought in pictures as he theorized. His early difficulties mean his brain was different from birth. And certainly learning and theorizing as an adult made some other modifications upon the original different brain.
dhw: I see these examples as support for my theory that the effort to perform new tasks changes the brain and therefore may (it’s a theory) have been the cause of pre-sapiens expansions. There is absolutely nothing in any of your quotes and articles that even deals with the subject, let alone “refutes” my proposal. And I still wait to hear what facts you can come up with in support of your own.
Why ask me for facts to support my theory? You have no support from anywhere. I theorize from facts we know about the brain as you do. I am the one who searches in the literature for information and opinion. Occasionally you've looked. I prefer my analysis of the known facts as containing much clearer logic. It is based on my dualistic approach as above, that the soul can only produce thought to the complexity level that brain allows. Thus each new homo with a larger, more complex brain working with its soul produces new more complex artifacts. All follows along well from thought step to thought step, and it fits Archaeological literature descriptions of what is found and known. As for your incomplete theory, it is simply a wishful extrapolation of tiny expansions in our brain. Have anything else?
Brain Expansion
DAVID: Wow: your finally explained concept is the thinking soul forces enlargement, or with Einstein, the thought effort made his brain very different. Either soul or natural thought recognize the current brain is inadequate and must be improved (enlarged), but only by force of effort.
dhw: I don’t know why you bring in “recognition”…
DAVID: Where is "recognition "? My view of your idea is clearer as i stated it.
I have bolded it, and I have no idea what you meant by it, although you claim you are making my thoughts clearer.
DAVID: There is no question [Einstein] was born with a strange brain, contra to your attempts to squeeze him into an example of your unsupported theory of brain expansion. Dyslexia is common and often comes with brilliance.
dhw: If you think his strange brain was the cause of his brilliance, then please stop pretending to be a dualist.
DAVID: Why do you constantly ignore my theory which you have recognized in the past. Never pure materialism: The soul always uses the brain it is given, in terms of capacity for new thought or unclear thought as in mental illness. The soul can change the brain only through brain plasticity. The only enlargements we know about are small.
You agreed that the dualist’s soul uses the brain to gather information and to implement the soul’s concepts. The soul’s capacity for thought will only be limited by the information at its disposal. Einstein couldn’t have thought up his new theories if he hadn’t known about space and time. The effort to understand the nature of space and time may (it’s only a theory) have caused changes to certain parts of his brain, just as we know for a fact that learning to read, memorizing routes and playing instruments cause changes to the brain. Of course the brain has to be plastic if it is to change. Why “only”? And the small enlargements prove that the brain changes when performing new tasks, so it is not unreasonable to propose that when brains were smaller, they increased their capacity by expanding.
DAVID: His early difficulties mean his brain was different from birth. And certainly learning and theorizing as an adult made some other modifications upon the original different brain.
Yippee! His difficulties would have been caused by the fact that his brain was unable to provide all the information that normal brains provide - one of the two uses the dualist’s soul makes of the brain. Your second comment confirms the reasonableness of my theory – learning, theorizing, implementing concepts “modify” or change the brain. God does not have to step in and change it BEFORE the thinker can start learning, theorizing and implementing.
dhw: I still wait to hear what facts you can come up with in support of your own.
DAVID: Why ask me for facts to support my theory?
Because you keep asking me for facts, and I give them to you. I ask, and you don’t respond.
DAVID: I theorize from facts we know about the brain as you do…
No you don’t. You merely tell me that the facts I offer you only cover minor expansions and not major, and God does the biggies.
DAVID: I prefer my analysis of the known facts as containing much clearer logic. It is based on my dualistic approach as above, that the soul can only produce thought to the complexity level that brain allows.
I have tried to explain this weird use of “allows”. It only applies to the amount of information that the brain makes available to the dualist’s soul. That is why I keep emphasizing that the concept of a weapon to be thrown from a distance arises entirely out of EXISTING information. Expansion was only required when our homo began the task of designing and producing it. Einstein had the information that space and time existed and did certain things: it is his theorizing that would have modified his brain.
DAVID: Thus each new homo with a larger, more complex brain working with its soul produces new more complex artifacts. All follows along well from thought step to thought step, and it fits Archaeological literature descriptions of what is found and known.
Of course it does, but you continue to ignore my point that it is the FIRST set of artefacts which would have required each expansion, and there is no way of knowing whether the FIRST set was produced after the brain had ALREADY expanded, or the expansion resulted from the effort to design and make the artefact.
DAVID: As for your incomplete theory, it is simply a wishful extrapolation of tiny expansions in our brain. Have anything else?
No wish involved. Just looking for a logical explanation. And I consider these known facts ample reason for proposing that if new tasks change brains today, they may well have done so in former times. The idea that your God must dabble with existing brains before the soul can produce new ideas might well be described as “wishful” thinking, since it positively beggars belief that he would have to fiddle with the brain of every human who comes up with a new idea, even though you believe it is the soul that comes up with new ideas.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, April 09, 2020, 20:50 (1687 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Thursday, April 09, 2020, 21:18
DAVID: Where is "recognition "? My view of your idea is clearer as I stated it.
dhw: I have bolded it, and I have no idea what you meant by it, as you claim you are making my thoughts clearer.
You recognized soul and brain have to work together at the brain's level of thought complexity ability.
DAVID: Why do you constantly ignore my theory which you have recognized in the past. Never pure materialism: The soul always uses the brain it is given, in terms of capacity for new thought or unclear thought in mental illness. The soul can change the brain only through brain plasticity. The only enlargements we know about are small.dhw: You agreed the dualist’s soul uses the brain to gather information and to implement the soul’s concepts. The soul’s capacity for thought will only be limited by the information at its disposal.... And the small enlargements prove that the brain changes when performing new tasks, so it is not unreasonable to propose that when brains were smaller, they increased their capacity by expanding.
My thoughts are very different from the bold. The soul learns present info through the brain and can think and develop new concepts only up to the extent the brain's complexity allows.
DAVID: His early difficulties mean his brain was different from birth. And certainly learning and theorizing as an adult made some other modifications upon the original different brain.dhw: Yippee! His difficulties would have been caused by the fact that his brain was unable to provide all the information that normal brains provide - one of the two uses the dualist’s soul makes of the brain. Your second comment confirms the reasonableness of my theory – learning, theorizing, implementing concepts “modify” or change the brain. God does not have to step in and change it BEFORE the thinker can start learning, theorizing and implementing.
Of course Einstein eventually learned to manage his strange brain, and by fifteen, he had self-taught himself all of calculus. Underlying brilliance, with small growth in areas he was learning and memorizing. So what reasonableness? You still want giant jumps just from thinking. I'll never buy it. God causes the expansions. You know we had to learn to use our new big brain. Pure logic: if intense thinking forced the enlargement of the new brain as it occurred, we would not have to learn how to use it, since the previous intense thinking should have been a continuous process into the new brain. How does your theory provide for the time gaps that we know existed? It doesn't
dhw: I still wait to hear what facts you can come up with in support of your own.
DAVID: Why ask me for facts to support my theory?
dhw: Because you keep asking me for facts, and I give them to you. I ask, and you don’t respond.
DAVID: I theorize from facts we know about the brain as you do…
dhw: No you don’t. You merely tell me that the facts I offer you only cover minor expansions and not major, and God does the biggies.
Exactly. My position is that God expands the brain, and your naturalistic approach is concentrated thought forces the brain to expand 200 cc, while all our brain does is one cc here and there as required under plasticity. Logically earlier brains had the same limited plasticity.
DAVID: I prefer my analysis of the known facts as containing much clearer logic. It is based on my dualistic approach as above, that the soul can only produce thought to the complexity level that brain allows.dhw: I have tried to explain this weird use of “allows”. It only applies to the amount of information that the brain makes available to the dualist’s soul... Einstein had the information that space and time existed and did certain things: it is his theorizing that would have modified his brain.
Weird: the brain gives the soul all the unlimited information available. Einstein's enlargements are fully compatible with known plasticity in tiny enlargements, starting with his strange early brain.
dhw: you continue to ignore my point that it is the FIRST set of artefacts which would have required each expansion, and there is no way of knowing whether the FIRST set was produced after the brain had ALREADY expanded, or the expansion resulted from the effort to design and make the artefact.
No getting away from fact: Each larger-brained fossil lives with better artifacts it created
DAVID: As for your incomplete theory, it is simply a wishful extrapolation of tiny expansions in our brain. Have anything else?dhw: no wish involved. Just looking for a logical explanation. And I consider these known facts ample reason for proposing that if new tasks change brains today, they may well have done so in former times. The idea that your God must dabble with existing brains before the soul can produce new ideas might well be described as “wishful” thinking, since it positively beggars belief that he would have to fiddle with the brain of every human who comes up with a new idea, even though you believe it is the soul that comes up with new ideas.
Total twist of my approach: Each larger brain is more complex, can allow the soul to produce more complex concepts. The bold implies God working on millions of brain steps. I'm sure tongue-in-cheek, and not serious thought on your part. God only made several enlargement steps
Brain Expansion
DAVID: You recognized soul and brain have to work together at the brain's level of thought complexity ability.
I recognized no such thing. You claim to be a dualist, so what is the brain’s “level of thought complexity”? I have tried to explain your own dualism to you: the brain does not have any level of thought complexity. Thought is the province of the dualist’s soul, which, as you keep agreeing, uses the brain to gather information and to implement the soul’s concepts.
dhw: The soul’s capacity for thought will only be limited by the information at its disposal....
DAVID: My thoughts are very different from the bold. The soul learns present info through the brain and can think and develop new concepts only up to the extent the brain's complexity allows.
There’s no difference, but as usual you’ve left out my point that the soul can think of new concepts based on PRESENT info (the spear). If existing complexity or capacity does not allow the development of the concept, then it has to be increased. That is the logic behind my theory of complexification (proved) and expansion (not proved) as a result of the effort to perform new tasks.
DAVID: [Einstein’s] early difficulties mean his brain was different from birth. And certainly learning and theorizing as an adult made some other modifications upon the original different brain.
dhw: Yippee! He had difficulties because his brain couldn’t provide all the information that normal brains provide - one of the two uses the dualist’s soul makes of the brain. Your second comment confirms the reasonableness of my theory – learning, theorizing, implementing concepts “modify” or change the brain. […]
DAVID: […] what reasonableness? You still want giant jumps just from thinking.
Nobody knows why there were big jumps, but since we know modern brains change as a result of the above processes, it is not unreasonable to believe that the process might have been the same in the days when expansion was possible.
DAVID: […] God causes the expansions. You know we had to learn to use our new big brain. Pure logic: if intense thinking forced the enlargement of the new brain as it occurred, we would not have to learn how to use it, since the previous intense thinking should have been a continuous process into the new brain. How does your theory provide for the time gaps that we know existed? It doesn't.
I keep explaining it to you. All the new phases have been followed by long periods of stasis. If the new brain is adequate to the needs of its possessors, there is no need for major new concepts or artefacts. (You’ve even mentioned modern indigenous tribes who are content with past ways of living.) We don’t know exactly what new concepts caused the comparative sprint to our sophistications, but there is no “having to learn to use it”. We (H.sapiens) used it as needed until X, Y and Z came up with new ideas – just like my old homo and the spear. But our brains complexified instead of expanding.
DAVID: I theorize from facts we know about the brain as you do…
dhw: No you don’t. You merely tell me that the facts I offer you only cover minor expansions and not major, and God does the biggies.
DAVID: Exactly. My position is that God expands the brain, and your naturalistic approach is concentrated thought forces the brain to expand 200 cc, while all our brain does is one cc here and there as required under plasticity. Logically earlier brains had the same limited plasticity.
But earlier brains had the plasticity to expand, whereas our brain apparently doesn’t, which is why complexity has taken over. Now tell me what facts you have to support your theory that God expands the brain.
dhw: […] there is no way of knowing whether the FIRST set was produced after the brain had ALREADY expanded, or the expansion resulted from the effort to design and make the artefact.
DAVID: No getting away from fact: Each larger-brained fossil lives with better artifacts it created.
Yes, but in my theory the FIRST artefacts would have been the ones that caused the expansion. No getting away from the fact that there is no way of knowing...as bolded. Why do you keep ignoring the bold?
DAVID: Each larger brain is more complex, can allow the soul to produce more complex concepts.
But see comments on each species’ FIRST artefacts, on the role of the brain which only provides info and the ability to implement concepts (but not initiate them), and on stasis.
DAVID: […] God only made several enlargement steps.
If your God only deals with biggies, he must have created a mechanism which enables the brain to complexify and expand naturally, i.e. without his intervention. Good news for my theory. If new ideas and their development through complexification and minor enlargement can occur naturally, through a God-made mechanism, it is perfectly feasible that the unexplained expansions in earlier species could also have happened naturally through the same mechanism. Now please explain why you consider this theistic theory ”weird”.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Friday, April 10, 2020, 22:57 (1686 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: You recognized soul and brain have to work together at the brain's level of thought complexity ability.
dhw: I recognized no such thing. You claim to be a dualist, so what is the brain’s “level of thought complexity”?'
Why did you leave out the word "complexity"? It belongs to my theory, that the soul must use the brain to think and complexity of soul's thought must rely on the level of brain complexity. You know my theory and then forget?
DAVID: My thoughts are very different from the bold. The soul learns present info through the brain and can think and develop new concepts only up to the extent the brain's complexity allows.dhw: There’s no difference, but as usual you’ve left out my point that the soul can think of new concepts based on PRESENT info (the spear).
And that is exactly which is counter to what archaeologists present: they assume the bigger brained erectus is only one capable of producing the better artifacts.
DAVID: […] what reasonableness? You still want giant jumps just from thinking.
dhw: Nobody knows why there were big jumps, but since we know modern brains change as a result of the above processes, it is not unreasonable to believe that the process might have been the same in the days when expansion was possible.
Only your body accepts your theory.
DAVID: […] God causes the expansions. You know we had to learn to use our new big brain. Pure logic: if intense thinking forced the enlargement of the new brain as it occurred, we would not have to learn how to use it, since the previous intense thinking should have been a continuous process into the new brain. How does your theory provide for the time gaps that we know existed? It doesn't.dhw: I keep explaining it to you. All the new phases have been followed by long periods of stasis. If the new brain is adequate to the needs of its possessors, there is no need for major new concepts or artefacts. (You’ve even mentioned modern indigenous tribes who are content with past ways of living.) We don’t know exactly what new concepts caused the comparative sprint to our sophistications, but there is no “having to learn to use it”. We (H.sapiens) used it as needed until X, Y and Z came up with new ideas – just like my old homo and the spear. But our brains complexified instead of expanding.
Which means our brain is a totally different sort of brain from those in the past! Obvious.
DAVID: My position is that God expands the brain, and your naturalistic approach is concentrated thought forces the brain to expand 200 cc, while all our brain does is one cc here and there as required under plasticity. Logically earlier brains had the same limited plasticity.dhw: But earlier brains had the plasticity to expand, whereas our brain apparently doesn’t, which is why complexity has taken over. Now tell me what facts you have to support your theory that God expands the brain.
I find no other explanation, and you've strained for one no one else ever mentions.
DAVID: No getting away from fact: Each larger-brained fossil lives with better artifacts it created.dhw: Yes, but in my theory the FIRST artefacts would have been the ones that caused the expansion. No getting away from the fact that there is no way of knowing...as bolded. Why do you keep ignoring the bold?
I don't ignore. I find it unbelievable with no logical support in archaeological studies.
DAVID: Each larger brain is more complex, can allow the soul to produce more complex concepts.dhw: But see comments on each species’ FIRST artefacts, on the role of the brain which only provides info and the ability to implement concepts (but not initiate them), and on stasis.
I know your illogical convolutions about past brains, which obviously were not like ours. The past brains did not set up a real pattern from which to evolve this very different brain!
DAVID: […] God only made several enlargement steps.dhw: If your God only deals with biggies, he must have created a mechanism which enables the brain to complexify and expand naturally, i.e. without his intervention. Good news for my theory. If new ideas and their development through complexification and minor enlargement can occur naturally, through a God-made mechanism, it is perfectly feasible that the unexplained expansions in earlier species could also have happened naturally through the same mechanism. Now please explain why you consider this theistic theory ”weird”.
You are back to repeating a version of a humanistic God who gives up control to explain this most unusual brain we have now. Nice try sneaking your weird God into the conversation.
Brain Expansion
DAVID: You recognized soul and brain have to work together at the brain's level of thought complexity ability.
dhw: I recognized no such thing. You claim to be a dualist, so what is the brain’s “level of thought complexity”?'
DAVID: Why did you leave out the word "complexity"?
I did not leave it out. Look, I’ve bolded it for you. I asked what you meant by the brain’s level of thought complexity, since you don’t believe the brain thinks. You agree that the soul uses the brain to gather information and to implement its ideas. I agree that the more information the brain has in store, the more complex the brain will be, but the dualist’s soul can use existing information to come up with new concepts (the spear example). But it can’t develop them if the brain does not have the necessary connections or capacity. Hence development of concepts leads to brain complexification (proven) or expansion (proven on a minor scale).
+
DAVID: And that is exactly which is counter to what archaeologists present: they assume the bigger brained erectus is only one capable of producing the better artifacts.
It doesn’t run counter to what they present! They don’t try to explain the expansions, and you keep ignoring the following:
dhw: […] there is no way of knowing whether the FIRST set was produced after the brain had ALREADY expanded, or the expansion resulted from the effort to design and make the artefact.
DAVID: I don't ignore. I find it unbelievable with no logical support in archaeological studies.
You keep admitting that your archaeological studies do not try to explain why the brain expanded! And there is no way of knowing...as bolded.
DAVID: […] You still want giant jumps just from thinking.
dhw: Nobody knows why there were big jumps, but since we know modern brains change as a result of the above processes, it is not unreasonable to believe that the process might have been the same in the days when expansion was possible.
DAVID: Only your body accepts your theory.
My body? You have not explained why the above is unreasonable.
DAVID: […] How does your theory provide for the time gaps that we know existed? It doesn't.
dhw: I keep explaining it to you. All the new phases have been followed by long periods of stasis. If the new brain is adequate to the needs of its possessors, there is no need for major new concepts or artefacts. […] there is no “having to learn to use it”. We (H.sapiens) used it as needed until X, Y and Z came up with new ideas – just like my old homo and the spear. But our brains complexified instead of expanding.
DAVID: Which means our brain is a totally different sort of brain from those in the past! Obvious.
I’ve just explained the time gaps. No comment from you, just a switch of subject. I would say that our brain is far more advanced, vastly more complex, but not “totally different”. Earlier homos would also have used their brains to gather information and implement their concepts.
DAVID: […] all our brain does is one cc here and there as required under plasticity. Logically earlier brains had the same limited plasticity.
dhw: But earlier brains had the plasticity to expand, whereas our brain apparently doesn’t, which is why complexity has taken over. Now tell me what facts you have to support your theory that God expands the brain.
DAVID: I find no other explanation, and you've strained for one no one else ever mentions.
I answered your point on plasticity. No comment from you. You wanted facts from me, and I gave them to you. I asked you for facts, and you can’t provide any. I have no idea whether archaeologists have dealt with my theory or have announced that God did it. Why don’t you just deal with the arguments instead of hunting for what other people have to say?
DAVID: […] God only made several enlargement steps.
dhw:If your God only deals with biggies, he must have created a mechanism which enables the brain to complexify and expand naturally, i.e. without his intervention. […] it is perfectly feasible that the unexplained expansions in earlier species could also have happened naturally through the same mechanism. Now please explain why you consider this theistic theory ”weird”.
DAVID: You are back to repeating a version of a humanistic God who gives up control to explain this most unusual brain we have now. Nice try sneaking your weird God into the conversation.
You have missed the point as usual, so I’ve bolded it now. Your silly “humanistic” argument has already been proved irrelevant by your own statements that he probably has thought patterns similar to ours, and why is it “weird” to propose a God who – while reserving the right to dabble - is interested in creating an ever changing spectacle of autonomous creatures rather than puppets, as actually exemplified by the free will you believe he has given to human beings?
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, April 11, 2020, 15:57 (1685 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: You agree that the soul uses the brain to gather information and to implement its ideas. I agree that the more information the brain has in store, the more complex the brain will be,
Vast conceptual gulf: Only an initially complex brain can store more information.
dhw: but the dualist’s soul can use existing information to come up with new concepts (the spear example). But it can’t develop them if the brain does not have the necessary connections or capacity. Hence development of concepts leads to brain complexification (proven) or expansion (proven on a minor scale).
Totally backwards. What proof except tiny areas of our brain? The bold is your lonely theory only.
dhw: You keep admitting that your archaeological studies do not try to explain why the brain expanded! And there is no way of knowing...as bolded.
DAVID: […] You still want giant jumps just from thinking.
dhw: Nobody knows why there were big jumps, but since we know modern brains change as a result of the above processes, it is not unreasonable to believe that the process might have been the same in the days when expansion was possible.
dhw: You have not explained why the above is unreasonable?
dhw: Our brain is different from all previous brains. It has only tiny expansions. There are no comparisons.
The bold is your previous theory that you have accepted as a mantra, 'our brain can't anatomically enlarge any more'. Our brain could easily expand 200 cc as those previous expansions did. But, and don't you remember, over the recent past our brain is now 150 cc smaller!!! And still highly effective in its work.
DAVID: […] How does your theory provide for the time gaps that we know existed? It doesn't.dhw: I keep explaining it to you. All the new phases have been followed by long periods of stasis. If the new brain is adequate to the needs of its possessors, there is no need for major new concepts or artefacts. […] there is no “having to learn to use it”. We (H.sapiens) used it as needed until X, Y and Z came up with new ideas – just like my old homo and the spear. But our brains complexified instead of expanding.
DAVID: Which means our brain is a totally different sort of brain from those in the past! Obvious.
dhw: I would say that our brain is far more advanced, vastly more complex, but not “totally different”. Earlier homos would also have used their brains to gather information and implement their concepts.
Of course those minds did it in their lesser way. You've not diminished the vast difference in how our brain works. Which is Adler's point you won't accept to its logical conclusion.
dhw:If your God only deals with biggies, he must have created a mechanism which enables the brain to complexify and expand naturally, i.e. without his intervention. […] it is perfectly feasible that the unexplained expansions in earlier species could also have happened naturally through the same mechanism. Now please explain why you consider this theistic theory ”weird”.
DAVID: You are back to repeating a version of a humanistic God who gives up control to explain this most unusual brain we have now. Nice try sneaking your weird God into the conversation.
dhw: You have missed the point as usual, so I’ve bolded it now. Your silly “humanistic” argument has already been proved irrelevant by your own statements that he probably has thought patterns similar to ours, and why is it “weird” to propose a God who – while reserving the right to dabble - is interested in creating an ever changing spectacle of autonomous creatures rather than puppets, as actually exemplified by the free will you believe he has given to human beings?
Jumping back to previous statements of mine out of the context of that time to avoid the argument, and returning to God-lite as you attempt to really image God as truer theists would. Really: a spectator God who watches all the nutty things folks do?
Brain Expansion
dhw: You agree that the soul uses the brain to gather information and to implement its ideas. I agree that the more information the brain has in store, the more complex the brain will be.
DAVID: Vast conceptual gulf: Only an initially complex brain can store more information.
More information than what? All brains are complex. The more information they store, the more complex they will be.
dhw: ...but the dualist’s soul can use existing information to come up with new concepts (the spear example). But it can’t develop them if the brain does not have the necessary connections or capacity. Hence development of concepts leads to brain complexification (proven) or expansion (proven on a minor scale).
DAVID: Totally backwards. What proof except tiny areas of our brain? The bold is your lonely theory only.
The bold is proven! Learning to read, memorizing maps, playing musical instruments entail mental developments which are known to change the brain by complexification or minor expansions.
DAVID: […] You still want giant jumps just from thinking.
dhw: Nobody knows why there were big jumps, but since we know modern brains change as a result of the above processes, it is not unreasonable to believe that the process might have been the same in the days when expansion was possible.
DAVID: The bold is your previous theory that you have accepted as a mantra, 'our brain can't anatomically enlarge any more'. Our brain could easily expand 200 cc as those previous expansions did. But, and don't you remember, over the recent past our brain is now 150 cc smaller!!! And still highly effective in its work.
This is becoming a cracked record. The human brain reached capacity, but as you keep agreeing, the efficiency of complexification has caused it to shrink, so it doesn’t need to “refill” the 150 cc!
DAVID: […] How does your theory provide for the time gaps that we know existed? It doesn't.
dhw: I keep explaining it to you. All the new phases have been followed by long periods of stasis. If the new brain is adequate to the needs of its possessors, there is no need for major new concepts or artefacts. […] there is no “having to learn to use it”. We (H.sapiens) used it as needed until X, Y and Z came up with new ideas – just like my old homo and the spear. But our brains complexified instead of expanding.
DAVID: Which means our brain is a totally different sort of brain from those in the past! Obvious.
dhw: I would say that our brain is far more advanced, vastly more complex, but not “totally different”. Earlier homos would also have used their brains to gather information and implement their concepts.
DAVID: Of course those minds did it in their lesser way. You've not diminished the vast difference in how our brain works. […]
I have dealt with your time gaps, I have explained the importance of the FIRST artefacts for each new species, and now I’ve shown how our brains are not “totally different”. You ignore all these answers! I have always agreed that there is a vast difference.
dhw:If your God only deals with biggies, he must have created a mechanism which enables the brain to complexify and expand naturally, i.e. without his intervention. […] it is perfectly feasible that the unexplained expansions in earlier species could also have happened naturally through the same mechanism. Now please explain why you consider this theistic theory ”weird”.
DAVID: You are back to repeating a version of a humanistic God who gives up control to explain this most unusual brain we have now. Nice try sneaking your weird God into the conversation.
dhw: You have missed the point as usual, so I’ve bolded it now. Your silly “humanistic” argument has already been proved irrelevant by your own statements that he probably has thought patterns similar to ours, and why is it “weird” to propose a God who – while reserving the right to dabble - is interested in creating an ever changing spectacle of autonomous creatures rather than puppets, as actually exemplified by the free will you believe he has given to human beings?
DAVID: Jumping back to previous statements of mine out of the context of that time to avoid the argument, and returning to God-lite as you attempt to really image God as truer theists would. Really: a spectator God who watches all the nutty things folks do?
1. You have not explained why it is “weird” to suggest that your God’s mechanism enabling the brain to complexify and expand (on a small scale) naturally, could also have been the unknown cause of major brain expansion. 2. Your statements that God could very well think like us, probably has thought patterns etc. similar to ours, are not only perfectly feasible, but can hardly have any context other than the nature of God. Two days ago you wrote: “All I have agreed to is that God thinks logically as we do, nothing more. "Emotions and attributes similar" is a possibility…” You merely reduced probability to possibility. 3. Please answer my questions at the end of my post on your theory of evolution.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, April 12, 2020, 22:08 (1684 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: ...but the dualist’s soul can use existing information to come up with new concepts (the spear example). But it can’t develop them if the brain does not have the necessary connections or capacity. Hence development of concepts leads to brain complexification (proven) or expansion (proven on a minor scale).
DAVID: Totally backwards. What proof except tiny areas of our brain? The bold is your lonely theory only.
dhw: The bold is proven! Learning to read, memorizing maps, playing musical instruments entail mental developments which are known to change the brain by complexification or minor expansions.
Only in our very different specialized brain. Existing artifacts from previous brains i
DAVID: […] How does your theory provide for the time gaps that we know existed? It doesn't.
DAVID: Of course those minds did it in their lesser way. You've not diminished the vast difference in how our brain works. […]
dhw: I have dealt with your time gaps, I have explained the importance of the FIRST artefacts for each new species, and now I’ve shown how our brains are not “totally different”. You ignore all these answers! I have always agreed that there is a vast difference.
I don't ignore your answers. I find then totally unreasonable and unacceptable working with known facts.
dhw: You have missed the point as usual, so I’ve bolded it now. Your silly “humanistic” argument has already been proved irrelevant by your own statements that he probably has thought patterns similar to ours, and why is it “weird” to propose a God who – while reserving the right to dabble - is interested in creating an ever changing spectacle of autonomous creatures rather than puppets, as actually exemplified by the free will you believe he has given to human beings?DAVID: Jumping back to previous statements of mine out of the context of that time to avoid the argument, and returning to God-lite as you attempt to really image God as truer theists would. Really: a spectator God who watches all the nutty things folks do?
dhw: . You have not explained why it is “weird” to suggest that your God’s mechanism enabling the brain to complexify and expand (on a small scale) naturally, could also have been the unknown cause of major brain expansion.
Just because our very special brain makes tiny enlargements, does not mean it relates at all to the very large previous enlargements. You h ave jumped to a wishful theory with no known support.
2. dhw: Your statements that God could very well think like us, probably has thought patterns etc. similar to ours, are not only perfectly feasible, but can hardly have any context other than the nature of God. Two days ago you wrote: “All I have agreed to is that God thinks logically as we do, nothing more. "Emotions and attributes similar" is a possibility…” You merely reduced probability to possibility.
What I have really thought underlying all this is my God is totally different than your weakly imagined humanized God. My God does not possibly think as you want Him to.
Brain Expansion
dhw: ... Hence development of concepts leads to brain complexification (proven) or expansion (proven on a minor scale).
DAVID: The bold is your lonely theory only.
dhw: The bold is proven! Learning to read, memorizing maps, playing musical instruments entail mental developments which are known to change the brain by complexification or minor expansions.
DAVID: Only in our very different specialized brain.
You have agreed with me that earlier homos “would also have used their brains to gather information and to implement their concepts.” Once again: if implementation of concepts changes our brains (a proven fact), why is it not possible that the same process applied to earlier brains?
DAVID: I don't ignore your answers. I find then totally unreasonable and unacceptable working with known facts.
The ONLY known facts are that our brains are changed by new activities. You have not offered a single reason why my explanations of time gaps and of FIRST artefacts should be deemed unreasonable. You can only come up with the fact that my theory is not proven!
dhw: You have not explained why it is “weird” to suggest that your God’s mechanism enabling the brain to complexify and expand (on a small scale) naturally, could also have been the unknown cause of major brain expansion.
DAVID: Just because our very special brain makes tiny enlargements, does not mean it relates at all to the very large previous enlargements. You have jumped to a wishful theory with no known support.
No theory has been proven. And you still won’t tell us why as a theist you regard it as unreasonable to suggest that your God’s mechanism to enable the brain to complexify and cause minor expansions could not also have caused major expansions at a time when the brain was able to expand. And what “known” support do you have for your theory that your God caused each brain expansion, and only then could homos’ souls come up with new ideas?
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Monday, April 13, 2020, 21:21 (1683 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: The bold is your lonely theory only.
dhw: The bold is proven! Learning to read, memorizing maps, playing musical instruments entail mental developments which are known to change the brain by complexification or minor expansions.
DAVID: Only in our very different specialized brain.
dhw: You have agreed with me that earlier homos “would also have used their brains to gather information and to implement their concepts.” Once again: if implementation of concepts changes our brains (a proven fact), why is it not possible that the same process applied to earlier brains?
I'm sure a habilis brain or an erectus brain had tiny areas of enlargement as our current brain plasticizes. We evolved from them so that is very logical to conclude.
DAVID: I don't ignore your answers. I find then totally unreasonable and unacceptable working with known facts.dhw: The ONLY known facts are that our brains are changed by new activities. You have not offered a single reason why my explanations of time gaps and of FIRST artefacts should be deemed unreasonable. You can only come up with the fact that my theory is not proven!
You are hopefully extrapolating from tiny reasonable changes in our very advanced brain. To remind you, as you remind me, our debate is the possible reason for giant expansions. For habilis, activities of daily living were not very complex. Struggling to conceptualize some way to kill at a distance is not going to force a 200 cc enlargement. One can only think of what one is capable to thinking of in a brain/soul cooperation system.
dhw: You have not explained why it is “weird” to suggest that your God’s mechanism enabling the brain to complexify and expand (on a small scale) naturally, could also have been the unknown cause of major brain expansion.DAVID: Just because our very special brain makes tiny enlargements, does not mean it relates at all to the very large previous enlargements. You have jumped to a wishful theory with no known support.
dhw: No theory has been proven. And you still won’t tell us why as a theist you regard it as unreasonable to suggest that your God’s mechanism to enable the brain to complexify and cause minor expansions could not also have caused major expansions at a time when the brain was able to expand. And what “known” support do you have for your theory that your God caused each brain expansion, and only then could homos’ souls come up with new ideas?
Logic based on artifacts associated with each new brain size, which facts you have twisted beyond all possible belief. The idea that the previous homo knew of a spear concept but had to grow a brain to then manufacture it, is such distorted reasoning when compared to what we know happens today in design and physical creation. You are still pursuing a way to avoid God's activities in evolution. Understandable as an agnostic, but it is much like like atheistic thinking.
Brain Expansion
dhw: The bold is proven! Learning to read, memorizing maps, playing musical instruments entail mental developments which are known to change the brain by complexification or minor expansions.
DAVID: Only in our very different specialized brain.
dhw: You have agreed with me that earlier homos “would also have used their brains to gather information and to implement their concepts.” Once again: if implementation of concepts changes our brains (a proven fact), why is it not possible that the same process applied to earlier brains?
DAVID: I'm sure a habilis brain or an erectus brain had tiny areas of enlargement as our current brain plasticizes. We evolved from them so that is very logical to conclude.
So why do you think it’s not possible that in the days when major expansion was possible, the same mechanisms could not have operated by major expansion instead of the current complexification?
DAVID: I don't ignore your answers. I find then totally unreasonable and unacceptable working with known facts.
dhw: The ONLY known facts are that our brains are changed by new activities. You have not offered a single reason why my explanations of time gaps and of FIRST artefacts should be deemed unreasonable. You can only come up with the fact that my theory is not proven!
DAVID: You are hopefully extrapolating from tiny reasonable changes in our very advanced brain. To remind you, as you remind me, our debate is the possible reason for giant expansions. For habilis, activities of daily living were not very complex. Struggling to conceptualize some way to kill at a distance is not going to force a 200 cc enlargement. One can only think of what one is capable to thinking of in a brain/soul cooperation system.
Not “hopefully”. I am trying to find a reasonable explanation for something nobody has yet explained, and I see no reason why one should not extrapolate a possible procedure based on one that is already proven. We both used the spear example. Why do you think your God expanded the brain by 200 cc if whatever example you choose did not require it? Remember, nothing much happened after that until the next expansion. If the soul exists, then we have a soul/brain cooperation system. That does not mean the brain has to expand before the soul can have new ideas based on the existing information provided by the brain. Hence the vital importance of my argument concerning the FIRST artefacts that accompanied the new brain.
DAVID: You have jumped to a wishful theory with no known support.
dhw: No theory has been proven. […] what “known” support do you have for your theory that your God caused each brain expansion, and only then could homos’ souls come up with new ideas?
DAVID: Logic based on artifacts associated with each new brain size, which facts you have twisted beyond all possible belief. The idea that the previous homo knew of a spear concept but had to grow a brain to then manufacture it, is such distorted reasoning when compared to what we know happens today in design and physical creation.
So do you believe that today’s brain has to complexify BEFORE the designer can have his new idea? It is you who are twisting facts beyond belief. And you are also twisting my description of the process. Initially our homo didn’t “know of” the concept: he had the existing information of meat – danger of close contact with meat supply – better to find way of killing at a distance. That is the new concept using EXISTING information. It is the EFFORT of designing and then making and using the artefact that would have caused the expansion, just as it is the mental EFFORT of reading or memorizing that causes the modern brain to complexify.
DAVID: You are still pursuing a way to avoid God's activities in evolution. Understandable as an agnostic, but it is much like like atheistic thinking.
Please stop assuming that any theory different from yours is a way of avoiding God. We have precisely the same situation as with all evolutionary processes: you think your version of God as a total control freak is the only one possible. You already agree that there must be a mechanism for complexification and minor expansion without your God's intervention. And I see no reason at all why your God should not have designed the mechanism also to engineer major expansion without his intervention. How is that atheistic?
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, April 14, 2020, 20:46 (1682 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: You have agreed with me that earlier homos “would also have used their brains to gather information and to implement their concepts.” Once again: if implementation of concepts changes our brains (a proven fact), why is it not possible that the same process applied to earlier brains?
DAVID: I'm sure a habilis brain or an erectus brain had tiny areas of enlargement as our current brain plasticizes. We evolved from them so that is very logical to conclude.
dhw: So why do you think it’s not possible that in the days when major expansion was possible, the same mechanisms could not have operated by major expansion instead of the current complexification?
Why if our current brain is admittedly so different as you've previously stated, the past brains should not be very different, evolutionarily immature and incomplete in development, compared to ours.
DAVID: You are hopefully extrapolating from tiny reasonable changes in our very advanced brain. To remind you, as you remind me, our debate is the possible reason for giant expansions. For habilis, activities of daily living were not very complex. Struggling to conceptualize some way to kill at a distance is not going to force a 200 cc enlargement. One can only think of what one is capable to thinking of in a brain/soul cooperation system.dhw: Not “hopefully”. I am trying to find a reasonable explanation for something nobody has yet explained, and I see no reason why one should not extrapolate a possible procedure based on one that is already proven.
What is proven is nothing like your extrapolated wishful thought.
dhw: We both used the spear example. Why do you think your God expanded the brain by 200 cc if whatever example you choose did not require it?
Not my God. He evolves as He wishes, not to help homos solve their immediate problems. Still your weird view of my God.
dhw: Hence the vital importance of my argument concerning the FIRST artefacts that accompanied the new brain.
Important only to your invention of a theory about artifacts, not supported by any archaeological report I've read. Can you find one?
dhw: So do you believe that today’s brain has to complexify BEFORE the designer can have his new idea?
No. it is set up from 315,000 years ago to handle the immaterial imagination of advanced designs.
dhw: It is the EFFORT of designing and then making and using the artefact that would have caused the expansion, just as it is the mental EFFORT of reading or memorizing that causes the modern brain to complexify.
As usual I totally reject this wildly imagined scenario. An existing evolving brain can only conceptualize at a level its existing complexity allows the soul to use. Nothing more advanced. Why don't you accept current archaeological theory?
DAVID: You are still pursuing a way to avoid God's activities in evolution. Understandable as an agnostic, but it is much like like atheistic thinking.dhw: Please stop assuming that any theory different from yours is a way of avoiding God. We have precisely the same situation as with all evolutionary processes: you think your version of God as a total control freak is the only one possible. You already agree that there must be a mechanism for complexification and minor expansion without your God's intervention.
Yes, in our current brain He gave us to use.
dhw: And I see no reason at all why your God should not have designed the mechanism also to engineer major expansion without his intervention. How is that atheistic?
it is a God who gives up exact control the process of evolution. I see Him as fully purposeful in managing evolution to reach His goals; giant bush, humans. You deride my version as a control freak. Note another human version of God from you. You cannot think about God without humanizing. Adler warns about your approach. And you deride his advice, claiming I hide behind him. So I can't think; is that it?
Brain Expansion
DAVID: I'm sure a habilis brain or an erectus brain had tiny areas of enlargement as our current brain plasticizes. We evolved from them so that is very logical to conclude.
dhw: So why do you think it’s not possible that in the days when major expansion was possible, the same mechanisms could have operated by major expansion instead of the current complexification?
DAVID: Why if our current brain is admittedly so different as you've previously stated, the past brains should not be very different, evolutionarily immature and incomplete in development, compared to ours.
Of course they are not as “mature” or “developed” as ours. But we are talking about the mechanisms that cause development. So please answer my question. Why do think it’s not POSSIBLE for the same mechanisms to have caused the earlier changes?
dhw: […] I see no reason why one should not extrapolate a possible procedure based on one that is already proven.
DAVID: What is proven is nothing like your extrapolated wishful thought.
What is proven is that the brain changes when it performs new activities, including minor expansions. Major expansions are bigger than minor expansions, but nobody knows how they happened, and so we have different unproven theories. Your God theory has not been “proven” either, and mine is certainly no more “wishful” than yours!
dhw: We both used the spear example. Why do you think your God expanded the brain by 200 cc if whatever example you choose did not require it?
DAVID: Not my God. He evolves as He wishes, not to help homos solve their immediate problems. Still your weird view of my God.
But you keep telling us that he expanded the brain by 200 cc! So why do you think he did it if your chosen example did not require it?
dhw: Hence the vital importance of my argument concerning the FIRST artefacts that accompanied the new brain.
DAVID: Important only to your invention of a theory about artifacts, not supported by any archaeological report I've read. Can you find one?
The archaeological reports do not ask why brains expanded. I know one favourite theory is the discovery of fire (leading to cooked food and a more nutritious diet), and another is bipedalism. I’ve had a quick look at some websites devoted to the subject, all very speculative. I can’t find any mention of my theory or yours. So what? I wish you would deal with the arguments instead of asking for references.
dhw: So do you believe that today’s brain has to complexify BEFORE the designer can have his new idea?
DAVID: No. it is set up from 315,000 years ago to handle the immaterial imagination of advanced designs.
So the designer has his idea before the brain changes (here = complexifies). Thank you. That is the nub of the argument. The initial idea precedes the brain change. It is the “advanced design” or development of the idea that causes change. So once more: It is perfectly logical – even if you don’t believe it – to argue that if the brain only changes AFTER the dualist’s soul (or the thinking part of the materialist’s brain) has had the initial idea, then early brain expansion could have (it’s a hypothesis, just like your own explanation) resulted from the same process: initial idea, development of idea changes brain.
dhw: It is the EFFORT of designing and then making and using the artefact that would have caused the expansion, just as it is the mental EFFORT of reading or memorizing that causes the modern brain to complexify.
DAVID: As usual I totally reject this wildly imagined scenario. An existing evolving brain can only conceptualize at a level its existing complexity allows the soul to use. Nothing more advanced. Why don't you accept current archaeological theory?
According to you, the dualist, it is NOT the brain that conceptualizes! It is the soul that uses the brain to conceptualize, and the brain’s function is to supply information and to implement the concept. If you mean the soul can only conceptualize within the parameters of the information supplied by the brain, then you have your own example of the spear: existing information = bison – meat – close-up killing dangerous – better find way of killing from a distance. THAT is the initial concept within the existing parameters of information. And the rest follows as above (EFFORT - EXPANSION). Now tell me why that is not logical, even if you don’t believe it.
dhw: […] You already agree that there must be a mechanism for complexification and minor expansion without your God's intervention.
DAVID: Yes, in our current brain He gave us to use.
That’s fine with me. So once more: if your God gave us a brain mechanism that now complexifies and expands in certain areas without his intervention, how can you discount the possibility that the same mechanism would have expanded the earlier brain for the same reason: that brains must change in order to perform new tasks?
The rest of your post repeats matters dealt with under your “theory of evolution”.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, April 15, 2020, 21:28 (1681 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: We both used the spear example. Why do you think your God expanded the brain by 200 cc if whatever example you choose did not require it?
You have taken a very narrow view of human evolution, as we discuss a spear. Lucy had a tiny brain, slightly larger than Chimps. Habilis is the very first tool maker, with brain sizes bigger than Lucy: "Their average brain size was about 45% greater than Australopithecus, and 25% greater than Paranthropus. H. habilis appears to have had an expanded cerebrum, unlike australopithecines, specifically the frontal and parietal lobes which govern speech in modern humans."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis
The stone age stopped 10,000 years ago. Habilis had a somewhat developed cortex and frontal lobe which permitted him to learn how to shape sharp stones for scrapping. Some theoretical immaterial analytic thought involved for the first time. What expanded habilis' brain over the million of years from Lucy and intervening species? How much real thinking could Lucy do?
And then you also have a problem of tying artifacts to brain size:
"Because more complete fossil heads than hands are available, it is easier to model increased brain size in parallel with the rich record of artifacts from the Paleolithic Period (c. 3.3 million to 10,000 years ago), popularly known as the Old Stone Age."
https://www.britannica.com/science/human-evolution/Increasing-brain-size
We are debating at your level of looking for a natural way to expand hominin brains. Why is the expansion only in the frontal lobe cortical area? Looks like God's purposeful activity to me.
dhw: So do you believe that today’s brain has to complexify BEFORE the designer can have his new idea?DAVID: No. it is set up from 315,000 years ago to handle the immaterial imagination of advanced designs.
dhw: So the designer has his idea before the brain changes (here = complexifies). Thank you. That is the nub of the argument. The initial idea precedes the brain change. It is the “advanced design” or development of the idea that causes change.
You may have convinced yourself that thinking of abstract concepts cause brain enlargement, but nothing I've written above or copied comports with that. Our present brain enlarges from learning something, and the special Einstein evidence is neutral, and can be easily argued, he was born that way, from all the evidence of his early schoolchild years.
dhw: According to you, the dualist, it is NOT the brain that conceptualizes! It is the soul that uses the brain to conceptualize, and the brain’s function is to supply information and to implement the concept.
Please learn my real concept, which is not changed. It is the advanced complexity of the larger brains neurons and their organization in special circuits in the prefrontal cortex which gives the soul the ability to create advanced conceptualization.
dhw: If you mean the soul can only conceptualize within the parameters of the information supplied by the brain, then you have your own example of the spear: existing information = bison – meat – close-up killing dangerous – better find way of killing from a distance. THAT is the initial concept within the existing parameters of information. And the rest follows as above (EFFORT - EXPANSION). Now tell me why that is not logical, even if you don’t believe
Twisting what I believe offers you no help. Existing information has to be analyzed in immaterial thoughts to then reach a conc ept of how to use that information in a new design.
dhw: […] You already agree that there must be a mechanism for complexification and minor expansion without your God's intervention.DAVID: Yes, in our current brain He gave us to use.
dhw: That’s fine with me. So once more: if your God gave us a brain mechanism that now complexifies and expands in certain areas without his intervention, how can you discount the possibility that the same mechanism would have expanded the earlier brain for the same reason: that brains must change in order to perform new tasks?
But my God didn't do that. Our present brain is a marvelous gift from Him way beyond previous evolutionary iterations. Ask Adler!
And remember, any consideration of Darwin's survival theories raises the issue of why are we here at all? The other forms, apes, etc. did just fine until we began to hurt them, recently.
Brain Expansion
dhw: We both used the spear example. Why do you think your God expanded the brain by 200 cc if whatever example you choose did not require it?
DAVID: You have taken a very narrow view of human evolution, as we discuss a spear.
It’s simply a concrete example, which you also used. You go on to give details of what was expanded and by how much. Then you ask:
DAVID: […] What expanded habilis' brain over the million of years from Lucy and intervening species? […]
You don’t disprove my answer by repeating the question!
DAVID: And then you also have a problem of tying artifacts to brain size:
QUOTE: "Because more complete fossil heads than hands are available, it is easier to model increased brain size in parallel with the rich record of artifacts from the Paleolithic Period (c. 3.3 million to 10,000 years ago), popularly known as the Old Stone Age."
All agreed, but we can’t know whether the FIRST of those artefacts was produced AFTER the brain had already expanded (your theory) or as a result of the smaller brain having expanded through the EFFORT to implement new concepts (my theory). All subsequent artefacts would have been developed by the new-sized brain until the next big idea came along and the process repeated itself. This theory is based on the fact that the modern brain RESPONDS to new activities and does not complexify or expand certain areas BEFORE the new activity.
DAVID: We are debating at your level of looking for a natural way to expand hominin brains. Why is the expansion only in the frontal lobe cortical area? Looks like God's purposeful activity to me.
Because presumably that is the area which needs to expand when the existing area is unable to develop and implement the new concepts.
DAVID: You may have convinced yourself that thinking of abstract concepts cause brain enlargement, but nothing I've written above or copied comports with that.[dhw: None of it attempts to explain brain expansion!] Our present brain enlarges from learning something, and the special Einstein evidence is neutral, and can be easily argued, he was born that way […]
Not “thinking of abstract concepts”. Why do you constantly change my terminology? I propose that it is the EFFORT to develop and implement new abstract concepts that causes the expansion, just as it is the EFFORT to read, memorize, play an instrument that causes complexification and mini-enlargement in the modern brain. As you say, the Einstein evidence – as with the first artefacts – is neutral, so you can’t call on it to discount my theory.
dhw: According to you, the dualist, it is NOT the brain that conceptualizes! It is the soul that uses the brain to conceptualize, and the brain’s function is to supply information and to implement the concept.
DAVID: Please learn my real concept, which is not changed. It is the advanced complexity of the larger brains neurons and their organization in special circuits in the prefrontal cortex which gives the soul the ability to create advanced conceptualization.
Fudge. You have agreed that what I bolded above is correct. The soul does the conceiving, and the “advanced complexity” of the brain enables the soul to develop (another word for “advance”) and implement its concepts.
dhw: If you mean the soul can only conceptualize within the parameters of the information supplied by the brain, then you have your own example of the spear: existing information = bison – meat – close-up killing dangerous – better find way of killing from a distance. THAT is the initial concept within the existing parameters of information. And the rest follows as above (EFFORT - EXPANSION). Now tell me why that is not logical, even if you don’t believe it.
DAVID: Twisting what I believe offers you no help. Existing information has to be analyzed in immaterial thoughts to then reach a conc ept of how to use that information in a new design.
More fudge. Of course once you have the initial concept drawn from existing information you have to continue the process by working out in “immaterial thoughts” how to develop the concept as a new design. And that is what requires the EFFORT which I propose causes expansion. I have offered you a logical step-by-step progression and have asked you why it is not logical. Please answer.
dhw: […] You already agree that there must be a mechanism for complexification and minor expansion without your God's intervention.
DAVID: Yes, in our current brain He gave us to use.
dhw: That’s fine with me. So once more: if your God gave us a brain mechanism that now complexifies and expands in certain areas without his intervention, how can you discount the possibility that the same mechanism would have expanded the earlier brain for the same reason: that brains must change in order to perform new tasks?
DAVID: But my God didn't do that. Our present brain is a marvelous gift from Him way beyond previous evolutionary iterations. Ask Adler!
Yes, our brain is way beyond previous brains. Now please answer the bolded question above. It is not an answer just to pretend that you and Adler know “God didn’t do that”!
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, April 16, 2020, 21:19 (1680 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: […] What expanded habilis' brain over the million of years from Lucy and intervening species? […]
dhw: you don’t disprove my answer by repeating the question!
What expanded was the conceptual areas, not the muscular control and autonomic areas: cortex in frontal and prefrontal regions, with some cerebellar changes with development of speech. But the stone age lasted until 10,000 years ago. God's purpose is obvious. He gave it so we could learn to use it.
DAVID: And then you also have a problem of tying artifacts to brain size:QUOTE: "Because more complete fossil heads than hands are available, it is easier to model increased brain size in parallel with the rich record of artifacts from the Paleolithic Period (c. 3.3 million to 10,000 years ago), popularly known as the Old Stone Age."
dhw: All agreed, but we can’t know whether the FIRST of those artefacts was produced AFTER the brain had already expanded (your theory) or as a result of the smaller brain having expanded through the EFFORT to implement new concepts (my theory).
Exactly counter to the impression given by the quote. You have never explained how your nebulous EFFORT works to greatly expand the mostly unused conceptual area of the new-sized brain
DAVID: We are debating at your level of looking for a natural way to expand hominin brains. Why is the expansion only in the frontal lobe cortical area? Looks like God's purposeful activity to me.
dhw: Because presumably that is the area which needs to expand when the existing area is unable to develop and implement the new concepts.
Not presumably. That area must be present in order develop any new complex immaterial design.
DAVID: You may have convinced yourself that thinking of abstract concepts cause brain enlargement, but nothing I've written above or copied comports with that.[dhw: None of it attempts to explain brain expansion!]
But you have an explanation. It expands by the effort of trying to think!
DAVID: Please learn my real concept, which is not changed. It is the advanced complexity of the larger brains neurons and their organization in special circuits in the prefrontal cortex which gives the soul the ability to create advanced conceptualization.
dhw: Fudge. You have agreed that what I bolded above is correct. The soul does the conceiving, and the “advanced complexity” of the brain enables the soul to develop (another word for “advance”) and implement its concepts.
No fudge. Not my soul/brain concept which you misinterpret: the soul must use the brain to think and develop new concepts. One does not work without the other.
dhw: […] You already agree that there must be a mechanism for complexification and minor expansion without your God's intervention.DAVID: Yes, in our current brain He gave us to use.
dhw: That’s fine with me. So once more: if your God gave us a brain mechanism that now complexifies and expands in certain areas without his intervention, how can you discount the possibility that the same mechanism would have expanded the earlier brain for the same reason: that brains must change in order to perform new tasks?
DAVID: But my God didn't do that. Our present brain is a marvelous gift from Him way beyond previous evolutionary iterations. Ask Adler!
dhw: Yes, our brain is way beyond previous brains. Now please answer the bolded question above. It is not an answer just to pretend that you and Adler know “God didn’t do that”!
The old brains are totally different, given what has been found: bigger brains in bigger thinking areas with better artifacts found with them. Tiny advances until recently. Twist the timing all you want but your twist doesn't fit the facts. Habilis made stone tools. Sapiens used stone tools until 10,000 years ago. We were given advanced brains we had to learn how to use at each stage. In the past 10,000 years we have finally learned to use it fully. God did it and your naturalistic theory makes no sense to me as we argue it.
Brain Expansion
DAVID: What expanded was the conceptual areas, not the muscular control and autonomic areas: cortex in frontal and prefrontal regions, with some cerebellar changes with development of speech.
That fits in perfectly with my proposal that the brain expanded through the effort of developing the initial concepts. I presume the same regions now complexify through the effort of learning, memorizing and – quite possibly – theorizing (Einstein). Till now we’ve only talked of the brain in general. If the muscular control areas did not expand, that’s OK with me – in that case the smaller brain did not need to expand in order to master the physical demands of the new artefact.
DAVID: But the stone age lasted until 10,000 years ago. God's purpose is obvious. He gave it so we could learn to use it.
See my final summary.
QUOTE: "Because more complete fossil heads than hands are available, it is easier to model increased brain size in parallel with the rich record of artifacts from the Paleolithic Period (c. 3.3 million to 10,000 years ago), popularly known as the Old Stone Age."
dhw: All agreed, but we can’t know whether the FIRST of those artefacts was produced AFTER the brain had already expanded (your theory) or as a result of the smaller brain having expanded through the EFFORT to implement new concepts (my theory).
DAVID: Exactly counter to the impression given by the quote. You have never explained how your nebulous EFFORT works to greatly expand the mostly unused conceptual area of the new-sized brain.
Counter? The quote says nothing about the cause of expansion! Of course the size and the artefacts run parallel. See my summary at the end. I don’t understand your second remark. The fact that the conceptual areas expanded fits in with my theory that it is the development of the concept that caused the expansion.
DAVID: You may have convinced yourself that thinking of abstract concepts cause brain enlargement, but nothing I've written above or copied comports with that.[dhw: None of it attempts to explain brain expansion!]
DAVID: But you have an explanation. It expands by the effort of trying to think!
Yes, and the subject is not covered by any of the articles you quoted.
DAVID: Please learn my real concept, which is not changed. It is the advanced complexity of the larger brains neurons and their organization in special circuits in the prefrontal cortex which gives the soul the ability to create advanced conceptualization.
dhw: Fudge. The dualist soul does the conceiving, and the “advanced complexity” of the brain enables the soul to develop (another word for “advance”) and implement its concepts.
DAVID: No fudge. Not my soul/brain concept which you misinterpret: the soul must use the brain to think and develop new concepts. One does not work without the other.
I did not say they did not work without each other! Why do you keep ignoring what we both agreed on – namely, the WAY the dualist’s soul uses the brain: by processing the information provided by the brain, and by getting the brain to implement its concepts. Spear example - initial (dualist) concept: small-brained homo’s soul uses EXISTING information = weapon needed to kill from distance; EFFORT to implement new concept requires expansion of frontal cortex or whatever.
dhw: if your God gave us a brain mechanism that now complexifies and expands in certain areas without his intervention, how can you discount the possibility that the same mechanism would have expanded the earlier brain for the same reason: that brains must change in order to perform new tasks?
DAVID: The old brains are totally different, given what has been found: bigger brains in bigger thinking areas with better artifacts found with them.
“Bigger, bigger, better” do not mean totally different.
DAVID: Tiny advances until recently. Twist the timing all you want but your twist doesn't fit the facts. Habilis made stone tools. Sapiens used stone tools until 10,000 years ago. We were given advanced brains we had to learn how to use at each stage. In the past 10,000 years we have finally learned to use it fully. God did it and your naturalistic theory makes no sense to me as we argue it.
I have not twisted the timing, and I have explained the facts! Each phase is accompanied by some kind of improvement (let’s say better artefacts). Theory: the first artefacts were the result of the smaller brained homo implementing his new concept by brain expansion. Long period of stasis or maybe minor advances until next big idea leading to next expansion. Repeat process till H. sapiens. Bigger and far better brain…long period of stasis…big new ideas, but no room for major expansion, so complexification and minor expansion take over. So efficiently that bigger brain shrinks. I keep repeating this logical, step by step process, and you simply ignore the logical progression and keep repeating your “God did it” mantra. So I’d better forestall the next objection: my theory does not in any way exclude God. If God exists, my theory is that he created the mechanisms to allow for this “naturalistic” process.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Friday, April 17, 2020, 20:52 (1679 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Exactly counter to the impression given by the quote. You have never explained how your nebulous EFFORT works to greatly expand the mostly unused conceptual area of the new-sized brain.
dhw: counter? The quote says nothing about the cause of expansion! Of course the size and the artefacts run parallel. See my summary at the end. I don’t understand your second remark. The fact that the conceptual areas expanded fits in with my theory that it is the development of the concept that caused the expansion.
That is on your harebrained theory based on our very different brain and how its plasticity works. I'll repeat: any advanced complex design development requires that the soul uses a brain of enough exact complexity, which then can allow/develop the proper thoughts to contemplate advanced design. Your idea says thinking shoves a brain to enlarge, and I view it as totally wrong and backwards from the facts we have to interpret, i.e. bigger brains are found with better artifacts.
DAVID: You may have convinced yourself that thinking of abstract concepts cause brain enlargement, but nothing I've written above or copied comports with that.[dhw: None of it attempts to explain brain expansion!]DAVID: But you have an explanation. It expands by the effort of trying to think!
dhw: Yes, and the subject is not covered by any of the articles you quoted.
Of course not! Only you think of the cause of expansion that way, so it is not an issue for anyone else. Do you have any voiced/written support?
DAVID: Please learn my real concept, which is not changed. It is the advanced complexity of the larger brains neurons and their organization in special circuits in the prefrontal cortex which gives the soul the ability to create advanced conceptualization.dhw: Fudge. The dualist soul does the conceiving, and the “advanced complexity” of the brain enables the soul to develop (another word for “advance”) and implement its concepts.
DAVID: No fudge. Not my soul/brain concept which you misinterpret: the soul must use the brain to think and develop new concepts. One does not work without the other.
dhw: I did not say they did not work without each other! Why do you keep ignoring what we both agreed on – namely, the WAY the dualist’s soul uses the brain: by processing the information provided by the brain, and by getting the brain to implement its concepts.
No full agreement with your summary of my approach; as usual part of my concept is missing. Advanced complexity of brain is required for any advance in thinking ability for the soul which must use the brain it is given to create advanced concepts/designs.
dhw: if your God gave us a brain mechanism that now complexifies and expands in certain areas without his intervention, how can you discount the possibility that the same mechanism would have expanded the earlier brain for the same reason: that brains must change in order to perform new tasks?
DAVID: The old brains are totally different, given what has been found: bigger brains in bigger thinking areas with better artifacts found with them.
dhw: “Bigger, bigger, better” do not mean totally different.
Somewhat similar, based on evolution from them.
DAVID: Tiny advances until recently. Twist the timing all you want but your twist doesn't fit the facts. Habilis made stone tools. Sapiens used stone tools until 10,000 years ago. We were given advanced brains we had to learn how to use at each stage. In the past 10,000 years we have finally learned to use it fully. God did it and your naturalistic theory makes no sense to me as we argue it.dhw: I have not twisted the timing, and I have explained the facts! Each phase is accompanied by some kind of improvement (let’s say better artefacts). Theory: the first artefacts were the result of the smaller brained homo implementing his new concept by brain expansion. Long period of stasis or maybe minor advances until next big idea leading to next expansion. Repeat process till H. sapiens. Bigger and far better brain…long period of stasis…big new ideas, but no room for major expansion, so complexification and minor expansion take over. So efficiently that bigger brain shrinks. I keep repeating this logical, step by step process, and you simply ignore the logical progression and keep repeating your “God did it” mantra. So I’d better forestall the next objection: my theory does not in any way exclude God. If God exists, my theory is that he created the mechanisms to allow for this “naturalistic” process.
Your usual sop to bring in your God-lite image of him. Of course I repeat my mantra, God did it. Surprise, I believe in God. Does anyone support your theory?
Brain Expansion
dhw: […] The fact that the conceptual areas expanded fits in with my theory that it is the development of the concept that caused the expansion.
DAVID: That is on your harebrained theory based on our very different brain and how its plasticity works. I'll repeat: any advanced complex design development requires that the soul uses a brain of enough exact complexity, which then can allow/develop the proper thoughts to contemplate advanced design. Your idea says thinking shoves a brain to enlarge, and I view it as totally wrong and backwards from the facts we have to interpret, i.e. bigger brains are found with better artifacts.
More fudge. I will have to stick with your dualism for simplicity’s sake. The only concrete examples we have of the way brain plasticity works are those observed in the modern brain, which complexifies and/or enlarges in certain sections IN RESPONSE to the new tasks which the soul asks it to perform. And yes, bigger brains are found with bigger artefacts but, for the umpteenth time, we are asking why the brain got bigger in the first place, and that is why I suggest that the FIRST artefacts of each phase were produced through the EFFORT of the smaller-brained homo to implement his new concept – using the plasticity of the brain as explained above. New concepts would follow till the next big idea demanded expansion.
DAVID: Only you think of the cause of expansion that way, so it is not an issue for anyone else. Do you have any voiced/written support?
Of course expansion is an issue, but you keep choosing articles that don’t deal with it. Nobody knows the cause, but I’ve told you that common theories include the use of fire and cooked food, and bipedalism. I have no idea if my theory is original, but I’m still waiting for you provide a convincing argument against it. Meanwhile, have you found any articles supporting your theory that God directly expanded each phase of pre-sapiens and finally sapiens BEFORE the first new artefact could be conceived?
dhw: if your God gave us a brain mechanism that now complexifies and expands in certain areas without his intervention, how can you discount the possibility that the same mechanism would have expanded the earlier brain for the same reason: that brains must change in order to perform new tasks?
DAVID: The old brains are totally different, given what has been found: bigger brains in bigger thinking areas with better artifacts found with them.
dhw: “Bigger, bigger, better” do not mean totally different.
DAVID: Somewhat similar, based on evolution from them.
So not “totally different”. Now please answer the bolded question.
dhw: I’d better forestall the next objection: my theory does not in any way exclude God. If God exists, my theory is that he created the mechanisms to allow for this “naturalistic” process.
DAVID: Your usual sop to bring in your God-lite image of him. Of course I repeat my mantra, God did it. Surprise, I believe in God.
Why a “sop”? Why do you always insist that the only possible God is one who dabbles absolutely every step in evolution apart from the odd one which he preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago? It is perfectly possible for other people to believe in God and not to share your views on his nature, purpose and method.
Under “Human cave art”:
DAVID: H. sapiens traveled all over the world, getting to the Western Hemisphere very late. Note my bold. Sapiens arrived 315,000 years ago according to current knowledge. Look how long it took to learn how to use their new-sized brain. Dhw's theory of forced enlargement can be easily interpreted as meaning the new brain did not need a learning period like this.
You keep bringing this up. What is your point? I keep repeating that ALL phases of brain expansion have been followed by long periods of stasis. So what? Advancements come with new ideas, so 260,000 or so years passed before there were any major new ideas. Then along came the new ideas, and brains complexified, mini-expanded and eventually shrank instead of expanding. We’ve been through all this! What “learning” are you talking about? Do you think your God spent 260,000 years giving sapiens courses in brain use? Or generation after generation practised conceiving non-concepts until at last they learned how to conceive a concept? Please explain why you think your omniscient God expanded the brain to sapiens size 260,000 years before you think it was needed.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, April 18, 2020, 21:51 (1678 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: I will have to stick with your dualism for simplicity’s sake. The only concrete examples we have of the way brain plasticity works are those observed in the modern brain, which complexifies and/or enlarges in certain sections IN RESPONSE to the new tasks which the soul asks it to perform. And yes, bigger brains are found with bigger artefacts but, for the umpteenth time, we are asking why the brain got bigger in the first place, and that is why I suggest that the FIRST artefacts of each phase were produced through the EFFORT of the smaller-brained homo to implement his new concept – using the plasticity of the brain as explained above. New concepts would follow till the next big idea demanded expansion.
Exactly backward. All this boils down to is frantic attempts thinking forces a brain to expand by huge amounts and then spending lots of years figuring out how to use the expansion the thinking created. Logic tells us this method logically should not have gaps in time, but the gaps are there. It is much simpler to realize complex ideation by the brain/soul complex can only be achieved as far as the exiting brain allows the soul to work with.
DAVID: Only you think of the cause of expansion that way, so it is not an issue for anyone else. Do you have any voiced/written support?dhw: Of course expansion is an issue, but you keep choosing articles that don’t deal with it. Nobody knows the cause, but I’ve told you that common theories include the use of fire and cooked food, and bipedalism.
Entirely backwards: fire, cooked food, sharply shaped stone tools are all equated with the size of the brain found when the event happened. Bipedalism and brain size developed concurrently, either created by God or what is your proposal. One did not directly cause the other.
dhw: if your God gave us a brain mechanism that now complexifies and expands in certain areas without his intervention, how can you discount the possibility that the same mechanism would have expanded the earlier brain for the same reason: that brains must change in order to perform new tasks?
DAVID: The old brains are totally different, given what has been found: bigger brains in bigger thinking areas with better artifacts found with them.
dhw: “Bigger, bigger, better” do not mean totally different.
DAVID: Somewhat similar, based on evolution from them.
dhw: So not “totally different”. Now please answer the bolded question.
dhw: I’d better forestall the next objection: my theory does not in any way exclude God. If God exists, my theory is that he created the mechanisms to allow for this “naturalistic” process.
DAVID: Your usual sop to bring in your God-lite image of him. Of course I repeat my mantra, God did it. Surprise, I believe in God.
dhw: Why a “sop”? Why do you always insist that the only possible God is one who dabbles absolutely every step in evolution apart from the odd one which he preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago? It is perfectly possible for other people to believe in God and not to share your views on his nature, purpose and method.
As you think you can imagine any sort of God. It is well accepted God is only inferentially known to us.
Under “Human cave art”:
DAVID: H. sapiens traveled all over the world, getting to the Western Hemisphere very late. Note my bold. Sapiens arrived 315,000 years ago according to current knowledge. Look how long it took to learn how to use their new-sized brain. Dhw's theory of forced enlargement can be easily interpreted as meaning the new brain did not need a learning period like this.dhw: You keep bringing this up. What is your point? I keep repeating that ALL phases of brain expansion have been followed by long periods of stasis. So what? Advancements come with new ideas, so 260,000 or so years passed before there were any major new ideas. Then along came the new ideas, and brains complexified, mini-expanded and eventually shrank instead of expanding. We’ve been through all this! What “learning” are you talking about? Do you think your God spent 260,000 years giving sapiens courses in brain use? Or generation after generation practised conceiving non-concepts until at last they learned how to conceive a concept? Please explain why you think your omniscient God expanded the brain to sapiens size 260,000 years before you think it was needed.
Long stasis of advanced intellectual ability interrupts your thought that thinking drives major brain enlargement. You haven't explained the time gap in conceptual development. Why does new thinking drive brain enlargement with complexity and then everything quits for a long time.
Your usual confusion. As for God's actions, He arranged for each expansion and then the existing hominin, homo group started to learn to use it over time, just as history tells us, repeating my standard theory.
Brain Expansion: current literature is puzzled
by David Turell , Sunday, April 19, 2020, 01:30 (1678 days ago) @ David Turell
Not surprising, they stick to natural processes only:
https://www.allaboutscience.org/evolution-of-the-human-brain-faq.htm
However, the human brain presents some unique challenges that must be answered through slightly different methods. There are aspects of the brain of homo sapiens that do not fit Darwin's usual pattern. The time scale allowed for significant change is shorter. The mental capabilities of humans are far above other organisms. The unique nature of man puts our brain in a class by itself.
***
Scientists have experienced problems when applying the normal methods of evolution to the human brain. Paleontologists and neurologists have noted that there is little to no notable difference between the brains of modern humans and so-called Neanderthals, other than a slight change in size. Given the supposedly significant differences in intelligence, social structure, and physical features, this seems strange. Those studying this field admit as much. The coordination required between the brain and the body is another. The development of the human brain is one of the biggest unsolved mysteries for evolution.
The response used by scientists to explain the evolution of the human brain involves a "fast evolution" scheme. Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute concluded that the human brain evolved very rapidly. Their research led them to believe that there was considerable "selection pressure" to evolve the brain into a larger, stronger unit. As human society became more sophisticated, the advantage of a larger brain became more pronounced. This caused the evolutionary process to accelerate, resulting in a quick progression to modern man.
There are some unanswered aspects to these theories, however. As with most other evolutionary studies, there are plenty of reasons given for why a larger, stronger brain is useful, yet no actual biological or physical explanation for how it occurred. It is important to realize that modern science has never observed a beneficial, inheritable mutation that causes a permanent change in a species. Variations from a norm have survived a few generations, but then have swung back to the original form. (my bold)
The response used by scientists to explain the evolution of the human brain involves a "fast evolution" scheme. Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute concluded that the human brain evolved very rapidly. Their research led them to believe that there was considerable "selection pressure" to evolve the brain into a larger, stronger unit. As human society became more sophisticated, the advantage of a larger brain became more pronounced. This caused the evolutionary process to accelerate, resulting in a quick progression to modern man.
The idea that the usefulness of the brain caused evolution to accelerate also seems improbable. If the advantage was very strong, it would seem more likely to see a very clear, steady, uninterrupted evolution. Just because a feature is useful should not make a mutation more likely. To assume that mutation occurred more frequently because the larger brain was "needed" implies intent and intelligence behind the process. (my bold)
Finally, aligning the development of the brain with the development of the body poses a massive problem for evolutionary scientists. Simply looking at a possible evolutionary event brings the dilemma to light. Imagine a mutation, or series of mutations, that improve the eyesight of an organism. For the brain to be able to process this information, it either must evolve after the eye, before the eye, or at the same time. (my bold)
Evolving the brain after the eye means that the eye's function is not immediately usable, and so cannot be an advantage. Also, the likelihood of a random brain mutation granting use of the new ability is low once, let alone for millions of mutations over billions of years. Evolving before the eye is similar, in that the brain would have wasted time, growth, and resources on something not useable. This would be a disadvantage, which natural selection indicates is a sign of impending extinction.
Evolving the brain at the same time as the eye is the only explanation that allows the function to be an actual advantage. However, simultaneous mutations in the eye and brain that work together to provide an advantage cannot be expected to occur repeatedly in every species on earth. There is no doubt that this would be a useful event, but that is not an explanation for how it could happen.(my bold)
Even the terminology used by scientists to explain the evolution of the human brain sounds anything but random: The homo sapiens brain evolution was a "special event." Rapid evolution was "needed." The brain evolved "in preparation" for our complex social structure. Even those dedicated to a random, naturalistic explanation for life cannot avoid using terminology that implies purpose, intent, and intelligence. (my bold)
Comment: this is from a religious website I stumbled into. This article have all the reasons I developed from my studies. Natural science cannot explain why we are here from an evolutionary standpoint, considering the need for survival, as apes and monkeys have done just fine for millions of years. It is so much easier to logically reason from the recognition of the complexity of the design of life, an intelligent designer is required.
Brain Expansion: current literature is puzzled
QUOTE: Imagine a mutation, or series of mutations, that improve the eyesight of an organism. For the brain to be able to process this information, it either must evolve after the eye, before the eye, or at the same time. (DAVID’s bold)
QUOTE: Evolving the brain at the same time as the eye is the only explanation that allows the function to be an actual advantage. .(DAVID’s bold)
Even the terminology used by scientists to explain the evolution of the human brain sounds anything but random: The homo sapiens brain evolution was a "special event." Rapid evolution was "needed." The brain evolved "in preparation" for our complex social structure. bbbEven those dedicated to a random, naturalistic explanation for life cannot avoid using terminology that implies purpose, intent, and intelligence. (DAVID’s bold)
I’ve cherry-picked your bolds to try and create a coherent argument. Simultaneity is crucial to my own theory (expansion accompanies and is caused by the effort to implement the concept), I do not subscribe to randomness, I agree that the human brain is “special” but would suggest that there is a natural progression from one expansion to another until the brain reaches sapiens size, and finally I also agree that there is “purpose, intent and intelligence” behind its evolution. None of this in any way counters the observation that brain cell communities RESPOND to new demands, and that ALL the expansions may have originated when the existing smaller brain could not develop a new concept without adding to its own capabilities (hence expansion). The – perhaps God-given - intelligence etc. may be that of the cells/cell communities responding to new demands, just as they do in a changed environment to which they must adapt or die.
DAVID: this is from a religious website I stumbled into. This article have all the reasons I developed from my studies. Natural science cannot explain why we are here from an evolutionary standpoint, considering the need for survival, as apes and monkeys have done just fine for millions of years. It is so much easier to logically reason from the recognition of the complexity of the design of life, an intelligent designer is required.
We have dealt with this non-argument many times before. The human branch may well have developed from a localized group or groups of our ancestors confronted with different conditions from those of our other ancestors. The latter may have had no problem surviving, whereas the former may have needed to change their way of life because of local conditions. From an evolutionary standpoint, no multicellular organisms were needed for survival, since unicellular organisms have “done just fine for billions of years”. The complexity of the design of life is indeed a logical reason for belief in a designer, but he doesn’t have to think in the way you make him think.
Brain Expansion: current literature is puzzled
by David Turell , Sunday, April 19, 2020, 20:33 (1677 days ago) @ dhw
QUOTE: Imagine a mutation, or series of mutations, that improve the eyesight of an organism. For the brain to be able to process this information, it either must evolve after the eye, before the eye, or at the same time. (DAVID’s bold)
QUOTE: Evolving the brain at the same time as the eye is the only explanation that allows the function to be an actual advantage. .(DAVID’s bold)
Even the terminology used by scientists to explain the evolution of the human brain sounds anything but random: The homo sapiens brain evolution was a "special event." Rapid evolution was "needed." The brain evolved "in preparation" for our complex social structure. bbbEven those dedicated to a random, naturalistic explanation for life cannot avoid using terminology that implies purpose, intent, and intelligence. (DAVID’s bold)dhw: I’ve cherry-picked your bolds to try and create a coherent argument. Simultaneity is crucial to my own theory (expansion accompanies and is caused by the effort to implement the concept), I do not subscribe to randomness, I agree that the human brain is “special” but would suggest that there is a natural progression from one expansion to another until the brain reaches sapiens size, and finally I also agree that there is “purpose, intent and intelligence” behind its evolution. None of this in any way counters the observation that brain cell communities RESPOND to new demands, and that ALL the expansions may have originated when the existing smaller brain could not develop a new concept without adding to its own capabilities (hence expansion). The – perhaps God-given - intelligence etc. may be that of the cells/cell communities responding to new demands, just as they do in a changed environment to which they must adapt or die.
The bold indicates your usual reversion to Darwin. We have no proof that challenges of nature or species competition drive evolution. The article is a complete opposite of that view.
DAVID: this is from a religious website I stumbled into. This article have all the reasons I developed from my studies. Natural science cannot explain why we are here from an evolutionary standpoint, considering the need for survival, as apes and monkeys have done just fine for millions of years. It is so much easier to logically reason from the recognition of the complexity of the design of life, an intelligent designer is required.dhw: We have dealt with this non-argument many times before. The human branch may well have developed from a localized group or groups of our ancestors confronted with different conditions from those of our other ancestors. The latter may have had no problem surviving, whereas the former may have needed to change their way of life because of local conditions. From an evolutionary standpoint, no multicellular organisms were needed for survival, since unicellular organisms have “done just fine for billions of years”. The complexity of the design of life is indeed a logical reason for belief in a designer, but he doesn’t have to think in the way you make him think.
My God is described from the way I view Him.
Brain Expansion: current literature is puzzled
QUOTE: Imagine a mutation, or series of mutations, that improve the eyesight of an organism. For the brain to be able to process this information, it either must evolve after the eye, before the eye, or at the same time. (DAVID’s bold)
QUOTE: Evolving the brain at the same time as the eye is the only explanation that allows the function to be an actual advantage. .(DAVID’s bold)
Even the terminology used by scientists to explain the evolution of the human brain sounds anything but random: The homo sapiens brain evolution was a "special event." Rapid evolution was "needed." The brain evolved "in preparation" for our complex social structure. Even those dedicated to a random, naturalistic explanation for life cannot avoid using terminology that implies purpose, intent, and intelligence. (DAVID’s bold)
dhw: I’ve cherry-picked your bolds to try and create a coherent argument. Simultaneity is crucial to my own theory (expansion accompanies and is caused by the effort to implement the concept), I do not subscribe to randomness, I agree that the human brain is “special” but would suggest that there is a natural progression from one expansion to another until the brain reaches sapiens size, and finally I also agree that there is “purpose, intent and intelligence” behind its evolution. None of this in any way counters the observation that brain cell communities RESPOND to new demands, and that ALL the expansions may have originated when the existing smaller brain could not develop a new concept without adding to its own capabilities (hence expansion). The – perhaps God-given - intelligence etc. may be that of the cells/cell communities responding to new demands, just as they do in a changed environment to which they must adapt or die.
DAVID: The bold indicates your usual reversion to Darwin. We have no proof that challenges of nature or species competition drive evolution. The article is a complete opposite of that view.
The article doesn’t even touch on the subject. I used the reference to “purpose, intent, and intelligence” to point out that this could just as easily refer to cellular intelligence as to God dabbling or preprogramming brain expansion. If you do not believe there is a link between environmental change and evolutionary adaptation and innovation, so be it – I would have thought it was plain common sense. My suggestion here was that the cell communities that make up the brain follow the same procedure: they respond to new demands by changing themselves (in former times, by expansion; today mainly by complexification).
Brain Expansion: current literature is puzzled
by David Turell , Monday, April 20, 2020, 16:11 (1676 days ago) @ dhw
QUOTE: Imagine a mutation, or series of mutations, that improve the eyesight of an organism. For the brain to be able to process this information, it either must evolve after the eye, before the eye, or at the same time. (DAVID’s bold)
QUOTE: Evolving the brain at the same time as the eye is the only explanation that allows the function to be an actual advantage. .(DAVID’s bold)
Even the terminology used by scientists to explain the evolution of the human brain sounds anything but random: The homo sapiens brain evolution was a "special event." Rapid evolution was "needed." The brain evolved "in preparation" for our complex social structure. Even those dedicated to a random, naturalistic explanation for life cannot avoid using terminology that implies purpose, intent, and intelligence. (DAVID’s bold)dhw: I’ve cherry-picked your bolds to try and create a coherent argument. Simultaneity is crucial to my own theory (expansion accompanies and is caused by the effort to implement the concept), I do not subscribe to randomness, I agree that the human brain is “special” but would suggest that there is a natural progression from one expansion to another until the brain reaches sapiens size, and finally I also agree that there is “purpose, intent and intelligence” behind its evolution. None of this in any way counters the observation that brain cell communities RESPOND to new demands, and that ALL the expansions may have originated when the existing smaller brain could not develop a new concept without adding to its own capabilities (hence expansion). The – perhaps God-given - intelligence etc. may be that of the cells/cell communities responding to new demands, just as they do in a changed environment to which they must adapt or die.
DAVID: The bold indicates your usual reversion to Darwin. We have no proof that challenges of nature or species competition drive evolution. The article is a complete opposite of that view.
dhw: The article doesn’t even touch on the subject. I used the reference to “purpose, intent, and intelligence” to point out that this could just as easily refer to cellular intelligence as to God dabbling or preprogramming brain expansion. If you do not believe there is a link between environmental change and evolutionary adaptation and innovation, so be it – I would have thought it was plain common sense.
Since when is common sense scientific proof? Common sense tells us the sun revolves about the Earth.
dhw: My suggestion here was that the cell communities that make up the brain follow the same procedure: they respond to new demands by changing themselves (in former times, by expansion; today mainly by complexification).
Answered elsewhere, contra your theory noting our brain shrunk a substantial amount, a result of increasingly serious thought
Brain Expansion
dhw: I will have to stick with your dualism for simplicity’s sake. The only concrete examples we have of the way brain plasticity works are those observed in the modern brain, which complexifies and/or enlarges in certain sections IN RESPONSE to the new tasks which the soul asks it to perform. And yes, bigger brains are found with bigger artefacts but, for the umpteenth time, we are asking why the brain got bigger in the first place, and that is why I suggest that the FIRST artefacts of each phase were produced through the EFFORT of the smaller-brained homo to implement his new concept – using the plasticity of the brain as explained above. New concepts would follow till the next big idea demanded expansion.
DAVID: Exactly backward.
What is backward? Do you deny that modern brains change in response to new tasks and not before them? Why is it backward to suggest that the first artefacts might have followed the same process: the smaller brain RESPONDED to its new tasks by changing itself – but in this case by major expansion and not by complexification and minor expansion?
DAVID: All this boils down to is frantic attempts thinking forces a brain to expand by huge amounts and then spending lots of years figuring out how to use the expansion the thinking created. Logic tells us this method logically should not have gaps in time, but the gaps are there.
What on earth is this “figuring out”, and learning how to use it etc.? How do you learn to do something? Did God give courses for 260,000 years before anyone could pass the exam? Did he issue an instruction manual 3.8 billion years ago, but no homo thought of switching it on for 260,000 years? You can of course learn to use something by using it and learning from your mistakes, but according to you nobody used it anyway. So what’s your theory? And once again, why do you think your omniscient God expanded it before anyone used it? Ditto every other expansion which was followed by a similar period of stasis. It’s YOUR theory which logically should leave no gaps between any of the expansions. In fact logically your God, who can do whatever he wants whenever he wants, shouldn’t have had to bother with any of these inbetween stages since his one and only purpose was to directly design H. sapiens!
DAVID: Long stasis of advanced intellectual ability interrupts your thought that thinking drives major brain enlargement.
Of course it doesn’t. If there are no new concepts demanding new uses of the brain, then there will be no enlargement! Now please explain (a) how you think sapiens “learned” to use his brain, and why your omniscient God, who must have known it wouldn’t be “used” for 260,000 years, expanded it when he did.
dhw: Of course expansion is an issue, but you keep choosing articles that don’t deal with it. Nobody knows the cause, but I’ve told you that common theories include the use of fire and cooked food, and bipedalism.
DAVID: Entirely backwards: fire, cooked food, sharply shaped stone tools are all equated with the size of the brain found when the event happened. Bipedalism and brain size developed concurrently, either created by God or what is your proposal. One did not directly cause the other.
I keep saying that nobody knows the cause, but unlike you I have quoted articles that try to tackle the issue. Both fire and bipedalism can fit into my theory, as they could lead to new concepts and progressively provide new information and new tasks ultimately leading to expansions. You still don’t seem to have grasped the idea that new concepts can arise out of existing information (held by the smaller brain), and it is the implementation that drives expansion. “Concurrent” is exactly right, since the process of expansion accompanies the development of the concept and does not precede the concept, which is your theory. NB I am referring only to the FIRST artefacts; after them, the new brain would not have expanded until the next big idea.
dhw: if your God gave us a brain mechanism that now complexifies and expands in certain areas without his intervention, how can you discount the possibility that the same mechanism would have expanded the earlier brain for the same reason: that brains must change in order to perform new tasks?
You have never answered this question.
dhw: I’d better forestall the next objection: my theory does not in any way exclude God. If God exists, my theory is that he created the mechanisms to allow for this “naturalistic” process.
DAVID: Your usual sop to bring in your God-lite image of him. Of course I repeat my mantra, God did it. Surprise, I believe in God.
dhw: Why a “sop”? Why do you always insist that the only possible God is one who dabbles absolutely every step in evolution apart from the odd one which he preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago? It is perfectly possible for other people to believe in God and not to share your views on his nature, purpose and method.
DAVID: As you think you can imagine any sort of God. It is well accepted God is only inferentially known to us.
And that applies to your version just as much as to mine. So why is my different version a “sop”?
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, April 19, 2020, 22:39 (1677 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Exactly backward.
dhw: What is backward? Do you deny that modern brains change in response to new tasks and not before them? Why is it backward to suggest that the first artefacts might have followed the same process: the smaller brain RESPONDED to its new tasks by changing itself – but in this case by major expansion and not by complexification and minor expansion?
What is found is advanced artifacts with advanced brain size, all with the same age timing. The standard assumption is those brains caused those artifacts, nothing prior..
dhw: It’s YOUR theory which logically should leave no gaps between any of the expansions. In fact logically your God, who can do whatever he wants whenever he wants, shouldn’t have had to bother with any of these in-between stages since his one and only purpose was to directly design H. sapiens!
Once again, you invoke your strange view of an all-powerful God who shouldn't be so patient as to evolve us over time, but should act impatiently. That is never my view of my God.
DAVID: Long stasis of advanced intellectual ability interrupts your thought that thinking drives major brain enlargement.dhw: Of course it doesn’t. If there are no new concepts demanding new uses of the brain, then there will be no enlargement! Now please explain (a) how you think sapiens “learned” to use his brain, and why your omniscient God, who must have known it wouldn’t be “used” for 260,000 years, expanded it when he did.
That is what history shows us. We arrived 315,000 years ago as of current dating, and left the stone age 10,000 years ago. We have really learned how to use all parts of our brain in the past 5,000 years. Most of it lay fallow until then, although with some preliminary use it started to shrink.
DAVID: Entirely backwards: fire, cooked food, sharply shaped stone tools are all equated with the size of the brain found when the event happened. Bipedalism and brain size developed concurrently, either created by God or what is your proposal. One did not directly cause the other.dhw: I keep saying that nobody knows the cause, but unlike you I have quoted articles that try to tackle the issue. Both fire and bipedalism can fit into my theory, as they could lead to new concepts and progressively provide new information and new tasks ultimately leading to expansions. You still don’t seem to have grasped the idea that new concepts can arise out of existing information (held by the smaller brain), and it is the implementation that drives expansion.
Of course existing brain complexity allows the soul to work with the complexity the brain has to achieve concepts allowed by that brain's complexity. You can't get around what is known. New complexity and new brain size are aged the same on all archaeological sites. I know your theory: thought about current info drives expansion. What doesn't fit is intense continuous thought then suddenly stops to allow the gaps in time? Purely inventive and illogical.
dhw: if your God gave us a brain mechanism that now complexifies and expands in certain areas without his intervention, how can you discount the possibility that the same mechanism would have expanded the earlier brain for the same reason: that brains must change in order to perform new tasks?
I've answered. Our very different brain can modify tiny areas as necessary for new uses and in fact has shrunk about 150 cc in the past 35,000 years as we've increased use, just the opposite of your thoughts. Your theory demands heavy thought expands brains, just the opposite of the reality of our brain's functional workings.
dhw: I’d better forestall the next objection: my theory does not in any way exclude God. If God exists, my theory is that he created the mechanisms to allow for this “naturalistic” process.DAVID: Your usual sop to bring in your God-lite image of him. Of course I repeat my mantra, God did it. Surprise, I believe in God.
dhw: Why a “sop”? Why do you always insist that the only possible God is one who dabbles absolutely every step in evolution apart from the odd one which he preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago? It is perfectly possible for other people to believe in God and not to share your views on his nature, purpose and method.
DAVID: As you think you can imagine any sort of God. It is well accepted God is only inferentially known to us.
dhw: And that applies to your version just as much as to mine. So why is my different version a “sop”?
Because you always run back to allow God to do something, when your basic attempt is to find natural ways to explain evolution without Him.
Brain Expansion
DAVID: What is found is advanced artifacts with advanced brain size, all with the same age timing. The standard assumption is those brains caused those artifacts, nothing prior.
That does not tell us why the brain expanded! Once more: the FIRST artefacts could not exist until the brain had expanded. What followed would have been produced after the brain had expanded. How can anyone possibly know that producing the FIRST ones was NOT the action which caused the expansion? (See later)
dhw: […] logically your God, who can do whatever he wants whenever he wants, shouldn’t have had to bother with any of these in-between stages since his one and only purpose was to directly design H. sapiens!
DAVID: Once again, you invoke your strange view of an all-powerful God who shouldn't be so patient as to evolve us over time, but should act impatiently. That is never my view of my God.
Nothing to do with patience! Please explain why a God whose only purpose was to produce H. sapiens and who was able to do whatever he wanted whenever and however he wanted, produced gap after gap before, according to you, directly designing the only brain he wanted to design.
DAVID: Long stasis of advanced intellectual ability interrupts your thought that thinking drives major brain enlargement.
dhw: Of course it doesn’t. If there are no new concepts demanding new uses of the brain, then there will be no enlargement! Now please explain (a) how you think sapiens “learned” to use his brain, and why your omniscient God, who must have known it wouldn’t be “used” for 260,000 years, expanded it when he did.
DAVID: That is what history shows us. We arrived 315,000 years ago as of current dating, and left the stone age 10,000 years ago. We have really learned how to use all parts of our brain in the past 5,000 years. Most of it lay fallow until then, although with some preliminary use it started to shrink.
Yes, that is the history, and you wanted to know why it took 260,000 years (more now) for sapiens to make advanced progress, and I explained why, and asked you two questions which you have not answered.
DAVID (numbers inserted by dhw): 1) Of course existing brain complexity allows the soul to work with the complexity the brain has to achieve concepts allowed by that brain's complexity. You can't get around what is known. 2) New complexity and new brain size are aged the same on all archaeological sites.3) I know your theory: thought about current info drives expansion. What doesn't fit is intense continuous thought then suddenly stops to allow the gaps in time? Purely inventive and illogical.
1) Muddle. The soul uses information provided by the brain in order to form concepts. It then uses the brain to implement those concepts, and if the brain is not large (earlier) or complex (current) enough to implement them, it expands (earlier) or complexifies (current). 2) Dealt with over and over again, including today, now bolded with “see later”. 3) Dealt with umpteen times, including today after the paragraph ending “see later”, except that you now introduce “intense continuous thought”. No, it’s not intense and it’s not continuous. That is why there are gaps! After the “big idea” everybody carries on surviving until the next “big idea”. You seem to think that every homo should have been an Einstein! So now please tell us why you think your God had all these different homos hanging around for thousands of years making no progress, and then had homo sapiens do the same.
dhw: [...] if your God gave us a brain mechanism that now complexifies and expands in certain areas without his intervention, how can you discount the possibility that the same mechanism would have expanded the earlier brain for the same reason: that brains must change in order to perform new tasks?
DAVID: I've answered. Our very different brain can modify tiny areas as necessary for new uses and in fact has shrunk about 150 cc in the past 35,000 years as we've increased use, just the opposite of your thoughts. Your theory demands heavy thought expands brains, just the opposite of the reality of our brain's functional workings.
Firstly, I have suggested that our brains had reached a maximum size for anatomical comfort, and so complexification took over, and shrinkage was the result of its efficiency. Secondly, you have not answered my question! You believe your God gave our brains the ability to perform new tasks by complexifying and mini-expanding without his intervention. So why should he not have done the same with earlier brains – enabling them to expand without his intervention?
DAVID: As you think you can imagine any sort of God. It is well accepted God is only inferentially known to us.
dhw: And that applies to your version just as much as to mine. So why is my different version a “sop”?
DAVID: Because you always run back to allow God to do something, when your basic attempt is to find natural ways to explain evolution without Him.
I am an agnostic, not an atheist. I challenge your explanation of your God’s actions and motives, but I also offer alternatives. There is no reason why you should regard my theistic alternatives as less theistic than yours.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Monday, April 20, 2020, 16:47 (1676 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: […] logically your God, who can do whatever he wants whenever he wants, shouldn’t have had to bother with any of these in-between stages since his one and only purpose was to directly design H. sapiens!
DAVID: Once again, you invoke your strange view of an all-powerful God who shouldn't be so patient as to evolve us over time, but should act impatiently. That is never my view of my God.
dhw: Nothing to do with patience! Please explain why a God whose only purpose was to produce H. sapiens and who was able to do whatever he wanted whenever and however he wanted, produced gap after gap before, according to you, directly designing the only brain he wanted to design.
You've simply restated your weird idea God should not have been patient. Repetition proves nothing.
DAVID: Long stasis of advanced intellectual ability interrupts your thought that thinking drives major brain enlargement.dhw: Of course it doesn’t. If there are no new concepts demanding new uses of the brain, then there will be no enlargement! Now please explain (a) how you think sapiens “learned” to use his brain, and why your omniscient God, who must have known it wouldn’t be “used” for 260,000 years, expanded it when he did.
DAVID: That is what history shows us. We arrived 315,000 years ago as of current dating, and left the stone age 10,000 years ago. We have really learned how to use all parts of our brain in the past 5,000 years. Most of it lay fallow until then, although with some preliminary use it started to shrink.
dhw: Yes, that is the history, and you wanted to know why it took 260,000 years (more now) for sapiens to make advanced progress, and I explained why, and asked you two questions which you have not answered.
Answer one: each early larger brain had to learn to be used. Answer two: God knew it would take time to develop the learning. Can you deny our brain lay primarily fallow until 50,000 years ago creating a delay of 265,000 years, based on current fossil findings? Simple facts to be analyzed
dhw: So now please tell us why you think your God had all these different homos hanging around for thousands of years making no progress, and then had homo sapiens do the same.
Your same 'patient God' problem. God in charge of evolution evolved everything over the time it took. Why do you struggle with that? We are discussing my theory.
dhw: [...] if your God gave us a brain mechanism that now complexifies and expands in certain areas without his intervention, how can you discount the possibility that the same mechanism would have expanded the earlier brain for the same reason: that brains must change in order to perform new tasks?DAVID: I've answered. Our very different brain can modify tiny areas as necessary for new uses and in fact has shrunk about 150 cc in the past 35,000 years as we've increased use, just the opposite of your thoughts. Your theory demands heavy thought expands brains, just the opposite of the reality of our brain's functional workings.
dhw: Firstly, I have suggested that our brains had reached a maximum size for anatomical comfort, and so complexification took over, and shrinkage was the result of its efficiency.
Your suggestion is not close to fact. I've read a theoretical article I have not presented that theorized the human brain could ideally reach 3,300 cc! Please try to convert to ounces: 2,000 extra cc are only seventy ounces. You think our muscles can't handle that? Back packs are much heavier.
dhw: Secondly, you have not answered my question! You believe your God gave our brains the ability to perform new tasks by complexifying and mini-expanding without his intervention. So why should he not have done the same with earlier brains – enabling them to expand without his intervention?
Obvious. Our current brain shrunk with extensive use, 150 cc, the size of most past enlargements exactly the opposite of your theory about earlier brains, where more extensive use forces large expansions. Now you will reproduce your contorted excuses about this woolly theory. You've made a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Brain Expansion: basic knowledge
by David Turell , Monday, April 20, 2020, 18:49 (1676 days ago) @ David Turell
We both agree to this statement taken from a review article on development of the human CNS (our whole central nervous system:
"Information about fossil hominin brain evolution is not limited to the hard-tissue fossil record. Natural endocasts are a form of trace fossil that record, often in unusual detail, the endocranial morphology of an individual. Archeologists also claim that artifacts reveal information about the evolution of the hominin CNS. Tools, art, and other artifacts found in association with hominin remains provide direct evidence of the capacity of a species for specific behaviors, something that fossils cannot reveal. The combination of paleontological and archeological evidence provides more insight into the brain function of fossil hominins than either of these two lines of evidence could generate on their own."
https://www.academia.edu/2942385/The_hominin_fossil_record_and_the_emergence_of_the_mod...
We agree the article makes no attempt to tell us how the larger brain arrived. That is never the point of the article or any article like it. Evolution is assumed as the underlying process.
What the quote says is in the bold: the existing brain created the concepts that made those artifacts. There can be no other interpretation. Nowhere in any article like it is an attempt made to equate any of these artifacts with a previous earlier form of hominins.
Anyone can invent a theory from wishful thinking with some slight degree of reference to a logical thought or a tangential fact. dhw's proposal, plain and simple, is a preceding form with a smaller brain uses current info to finally conclude a new concept. This forces a brain enlargement from hard thought, and that enlargement allows the brain to think of how to build the new artifact. It is a totally discontinuous process, in contract to what we all experience with our brains if we have designed and made anything we thought of. If I can think of it I can create it. If our brain carries any attributes as evolved from previous brains, why shouldn't it work in similar fashion. Yes it is different: much more complex, and doesn't need to expand. With dhw theory previous brains recognized a need to expand. Really? I'm still with God did it.
Brain Expansion: basic knowledge
by David Turell , Tuesday, April 21, 2020, 19:39 (1675 days ago) @ David Turell
David: We both agree to this statement taken from a review article on development of the human CNS (our whole central nervous system:
"Information about fossil hominin brain evolution is not limited to the hard-tissue fossil record. Natural endocasts are a form of trace fossil that record, often in unusual detail, the endocranial morphology of an individual. Archeologists also claim that artifacts reveal information about the evolution of the hominin CNS. Tools, art, and other artifacts found in association with hominin remains provide direct evidence of the capacity of a species for specific behaviors, something that fossils cannot reveal. The combination of paleontological and archeological evidence provides more insight into the brain function of fossil hominins than either of these two lines of evidence could generate on their own."
https://www.academia.edu/2942385/The_hominin_fossil_record_and_the_emergence_of_the_mod...
We agree the article makes no attempt to tell us how the larger brain arrived. That is never the point of the article or any article like it. Evolution is assumed as the underlying process.
What the quote says is in the bold: the existing brain created the concepts that made those artifacts. There can be no other interpretation. Nowhere in any article like it is an attempt made to equate any of these artifacts with a previous earlier form of hominins.
Anyone can invent a theory from wishful thinking with some slight degree of reference to a logical thought or a tangential fact. dhw's proposal, plain and simple, is a preceding form with a smaller brain uses current info to finally conclude a new concept. This forces a brain enlargement from hard thought, and that enlargement allows the brain to think of how to build the new artifact. It is a totally discontinuous process, in contract to what we all experience with our brains if we have designed and made anything we thought of. If I can think of it I can create it. If our brain carries any attributes as evolved from previous brains, why shouldn't it work in similar fashion. Yes it is different: much more complex, and doesn't need to expand. With dhw theory previous brains recognized a need to expand. Really? I'm still with God did it.
Funny. Six views but no one answered!
Brain Expansion: basic knowledge
My apologies. I wrote a reply, but there are now so many threads that I overlooked it when copying and pasting! However, most of it is a repetition of answers already given umpteen times and ignored by you.
QUOTE: Tools, art, and other artifacts found in association with hominin remains provide direct evidence of the capacity of a species for specific behaviors, something that fossils cannot reveal.[..]."
DAVID: We agree the article makes no attempt to tell us how the larger brain arrived. That is never the point of the article or any article like it. Evolution is assumed as the underlying process.
So please stop quoting this and other articles as if they contradicted my theory!
DAVID: What the quote says is in the bold: the existing brain created the concepts that made those artifacts. There can be no other interpretation. Nowhere in any article like it is an attempt made to equate any of these artifacts with a previous earlier form of hominins.
And there you go again! Of course the products of the expanded brain provide evidence of what the new hominin/homo could do! But that does not tell us why the brain expanded in the first place! As usual you ignore the point that nobody can know if the FIRST artefacts were the product of an already expanded brain or of a brain that expanded because of their making.
DAVID: Anyone can invent a theory from wishful thinking with some slight degree of reference to a logical thought or a tangential fact. dhw's proposal, plain and simple, is a preceding form with a smaller brain uses current info to finally conclude a new concept.
Why have you inserted the word “finally”? There is nothing “final” about the idea of killing from a distance. Please stop twisting my terminology. I always quote your own words, and you should do the same. It is the implementation of the initial concept that causes the expansion.
DAVID: This forces a brain enlargement from hard thought, and that enlargement allows the brain to think of how to build the new artifact.
Yes, hard thought of different kinds is known to cause complexification/enlargement in the human brain (and this may well extend to theoretical thought, as with Einstein). It doesn’t “allow” the brain to think (you claim to be a dualist, which means the brain doesn’t do the thinking anyway) – it is the result of thinking. Nobody knows how it all works, but if the modern brain changes AS A RESULT OF HARD THINKING, there is no reason to suppose that the ancient brain did not do the same.
DAVID: It is a totally discontinuous process, in contract to what we all experience with our brains if we have designed and made anything we thought of. If I can think of it I can create it. If our brain carries any attributes as evolved from previous brains, why shouldn't it work in similar fashion. Yes it is different: much more complex, and doesn't need to expand. With dhw theory previous brains recognized a need to expand. Really? I'm still with God did it.
The process is continuous, but you are not aware that your brain is complexifying or mini-expanding as you do your hard thinking! In my theory, of course the brain didn’t “recognize a need to expand”. It would have happened as spontaneously as your modern brain complexifies.
Brain Expansion: basic knowledge
by David Turell , Wednesday, April 22, 2020, 22:43 (1674 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: What the quote says is in the bold: the existing brain created the concepts that made those artifacts. There can be no other interpretation. Nowhere in any article like it is an attempt made to equate any of these artifacts with a previous earlier form of hominins.
dhw: And there you go again! Of course the products of the expanded brain provide evidence of what the new hominin/homo could do! But that does not tell us why the brain expanded in the first place! As usual you ignore the point that nobody can know if the FIRST artefacts were the product of an already expanded brain or of a brain that expanded because of their making.
Your invention is pure invention. The articles all assume the fossils with the artifacts made them with their bigger brains, and you agree to that much. There is no attempt to explain expansion, as you well recognize, as you push your unsupported creation that thinking of a new concept expands brains; to wit: profound immaterial thinking forces a small brain to gain a much larger size. From habilis to erectus is from 600 cc to 1,200 cc, in roughly 200 cc advances. If habilis goes from 600 to 800, that is an increase of one-third in size for habilis. That is huge to me to answer one of your many complaints as I criticize your idea.
DAVID: This forces a brain enlargement from hard thought, and that enlargement allows the brain to think of how to build the new artifact.
dhw: Yes, hard thought of different kinds is known to cause complexification/enlargement in the human brain (and this may well extend to theoretical thought, as with Einstein). It doesn’t “allow” the brain to think (you claim to be a dualist, which means the brain doesn’t do the thinking anyway) – it is the result of thinking. Nobody knows how it all works, but if the modern brain changes AS A RESULT OF HARD THINKING, there is no reason to suppose that the ancient brain did not do the same.
You love to forget my soul/ brain complex concept. There are lots of reasons to criticize the idea. Our brain is so advanced, it can not be compared to much earlier brains in Lucy or habilis. it obviously has capacities the earlier brains did not have.
DAVID: It is a totally discontinuous process, in contract to what we all experience with our brains if we have designed and made anything we thought of. If I can think of it I can create it. If our brain carries any attributes as evolved from previous brains, why shouldn't it work in similar fashion. Yes it is different: much more complex, and doesn't need to expand. With dhw theory previous brains recognized a need to expand. Really? I'm still with God did it.dhw: The process is continuous, but you are not aware that your brain is complexifying or mini-expanding as you do your hard thinking! In my theory, of course the brain didn’t “recognize a need to expand”. It would have happened as spontaneously as your modern brain complexifies.
You can tout spontaneous evolution. No need for God then. That is your whole point. Find a way to keep God out of the picture. Your agnostic picket fence tilts atheistically much of the time Time to run back to God might have done this or that, which always gives up tight design control.
Brain Expansion: basic knowledge
DAVID: What the quote says is in the bold: the existing brain created the concepts that made those artifacts. There can be no other interpretation. Nowhere in any article like it is an attempt made to equate any of these artifacts with a previous earlier form of hominins.
dhw: And there you go again! Of course the products of the expanded brain provide evidence of what the new hominin/homo could do! But that does not tell us why the brain expanded in the first place! As usual you ignore the point that nobody can know if the FIRST artefacts were the product of an already expanded brain or of a brain that expanded because of their making.
DAVID: Your invention is pure invention. The articles all assume the fossils with the artifacts made them with their bigger brains, and you agree to that much. There is no attempt to explain expansion….
So stop pretending that the articles discredit my theory about the cause of expansion!
DAVID:…as you well recognize, as you push your unsupported creation that thinking of a new concept expands brains; to wit: profound immaterial thinking forces a small brain to gain a much larger size.
You keep changing my terminology to suit your scepticism. It is not “thinking of” a new concept but IMPLEMENTING a new concept (i.e. designing, working out details, learning to rectify mistakes, and making the new concept into a material artefact) that demands brain changes. Just as in the modern brain what you previously called “hard thinking” forces complexification. The change to the brain is a response to thought.
DAVID: From habilis to erectus is from 600 cc to 1,200 cc, in roughly 200 cc advances. If habilis goes from 600 to 800, that is an increase of one-third in size for habilis. That is huge to me to answer one of your many complaints as I criticize your idea.
You say how huge it is, and then you swallow the theory that our brains could easily double in size without any effect on our anatomy, because “2000 cc are only seventy ounces. You think our muscles can’t handle that?” 200 cc is huge, but 2000 cc is nothing.
DAVID: This forces a brain enlargement from hard thought, and that enlargement allows the brain to think of how to build the new artifact.
dhw: Yes, hard thought of different kinds is known to cause complexification/enlargement in the human brain (and this may well extend to theoretical thought, as with Einstein). It doesn’t “allow” the brain to think (you claim to be a dualist, which means the brain doesn’t do the thinking anyway) – it is the result of thinking. Nobody knows how it all works, but if the modern brain changes AS A RESULT OF HARD THINKING, there is no reason to suppose that the ancient brain did not do the same.
DAVID: You love to forget my soul/ brain complex concept. There are lots of reasons to criticize the idea. Our brain is so advanced, it can not be compared to much earlier brains in Lucy or habilis. it obviously has capacities the earlier brains did not have.
I never forget your concept. You are the one who forgets it when you talk of enlargement allowing the brain to think, as bolded above. Nobody in his right mind would deny that our brains have capacities that earlier brains do not have. Each brain is an advance on its predecessor. How does that invalidate the proposal that just as the modern brain RESPONDS to hard thought, the earlier brain might have done the same?
dhw: The process is continuous, but you are not aware that your brain is complexifying or mini-expanding as you do your hard thinking! In my theory, of course the brain didn’t “recognize a need to expand”. It would have happened as spontaneously as your modern brain complexifies.
DAVID: You can tout spontaneous evolution. No need for God then. That is your whole point. Find a way to keep God out of the picture. Your agnostic picket fence tilts atheistically much of the time Time to run back to God might have done this or that, which always gives up tight design control.
The subject of how evolution works tells us nothing about the origin of life and the mechanisms. You are getting really desperate if the only argument you can find is to pretend that my theory excludes God. It doesn’t. What it does do is question your personal belief that your God wishes to control everything (see “Seabirds etc.” to show how you already have to concede that he doesn’t always do so.) And your rigidity in your attempts to read his mind have resulted in a theory of evolution which is so illogical that it forces you to protest that we can’t know God’s reasons and we mustn’t think of him in human terms even though he probably/possibly has thought patterns similar to ours. My agnosticism does not lend credence to your theory, and it does not detract from ANY of the different explanations of evolution which you yourself acknowledge to be perfectly logical.
Brain Expansion: basic knowledge
by David Turell , Thursday, April 23, 2020, 19:59 (1673 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: The process is continuous, but you are not aware that your brain is complexifying or mini-expanding as you do your hard thinking! In my theory, of course the brain didn’t “recognize a need to expand”. It would have happened as spontaneously as your modern brain complexifies.
DAVID: You can tout spontaneous evolution. No need for God then. That is your whole point. Find a way to keep God out of the picture. Your agnostic picket fence tilts atheistically much of the time Time to run back to God might have done this or that, which always gives up tight design control.
dhw: The subject of how evolution works tells us nothing about the origin of life and the mechanisms.
Origin of life is part and parcel of evolution. It is a logical continuum. Darwin and you try to skip over it because it damages your thinking about the role of God as the creator. He started life and evolved it. It cannot be explained from a natural viewpoint.
dhw: You are getting really desperate if the only argument you can find is to pretend that my theory excludes God. It doesn’t. What it does do is question your personal belief that your God wishes to control everything (see “Seabirds etc.” to show how you already have to concede that he doesn’t always do so.) And your rigidity in your attempts to read his mind have resulted in a theory of evolution which is so illogical that it forces you to protest that we can’t know God’s reasons and we mustn’t think of him in human terms even though he probably/possibly has thought patterns similar to ours.
The usual distortions of my thoughts taken from bits and pieces of some statements I have made in the past. We cannot know why God chose to evolve all of life and end with us. I accept that He simply did it that way.
dhw: My agnosticism does not lend credence to your theory, and it does not detract from ANY of the different explanations of evolution which you yourself acknowledge to be perfectly logical.
Yes, logical in human terms.
Brain Expansion
dhw: (under "current literature is puzzled") The – perhaps God-given - intelligence etc. may be that of the [brain] cells/cell communities responding to new demands, just as they do in a changed environment to which they must adapt or die.
DAVID: The bold indicates your usual reversion to Darwin. We have no proof that challenges of nature or species competition drive evolution.
dhw: If you do not believe there is a link between environmental change and evolutionary adaptation and innovation, so be it – I would have thought it was plain common sense.
DAVID: Since when is common sense scientific proof? Common sense tells us the sun revolves about the Earth.
As I said, if you don’t believe there’s a link, so be it.
dhw: My suggestion here was that the cell communities that make up the brain follow the same procedure: they respond to new demands by changing themselves (in former times, by expansion; today mainly by complexification).
DAVID: Answered elsewhere, contra your theory noting our brain shrunk a substantial amount, a result of increasingly serious thought.
dhw: I have suggested that our brains had reached a maximum size for anatomical comfort, and so complexification took over, and you have agreed umpteen times that shrinkage was the result of its efficiency.
DAVID: Your suggestion is not close to fact. I've read a theoretical article I have not presented that theorized the human brain could ideally reach 3,300 cc! Please try to convert to ounces: 2,000 extra cc are only seventy ounces. You think our muscles can't handle that? Back packs are much heavier.
So what is your explanation for the non-expansion? And why do you keep telling us that an expansion of 200 cc is too huge to have happened naturally (theistically = your God creating the mechanism for expansion and not having to intervene)? All of a sudden, even 2000 cc is nothing!
dhw: Please explain why a God whose only purpose was to produce H. sapiens and who was able to do whatever he wanted whenever and however he wanted, produced gap after gap before, according to you, directly designing the only brain he wanted to design.
DAVID: You've simply restated your weird idea God should not have been patient. Repetition proves nothing.
So please stop repeating your “patience” mantra, which proves nothing, and explain to me why your God deliberately produced the gaps.
DAVID: Long stasis of advanced intellectual ability interrupts your thought that thinking drives major brain enlargement.
dhw: Of course it doesn’t. If there are no new concepts demanding new uses of the brain, then there will be no enlargement! Now please explain how you think sapiens “learned” to use his brain, and why your omniscient God, who must have known it wouldn’t be “used” for 260,000 years, expanded it when he did.
DAVID: Answer one: each early larger brain had to learn to be used.
A non-answer. I asked: How do you think sapiens “learned” to use his brain? God giving courses or preparing an instruction manual, or sapiens using his brain and messing things up for 260,000 years? The same applies to all pre-sapiens brains. My proposal is that once the expansion had taken place by developing a “big idea”, there was NO NEED for further expansion until the next “big idea”. None of this nebulous “learning”.
DAVID: Answer two: God knew it would take time to develop the learning. Can you deny our brain lay primarily fallow until 50,000 years ago creating a delay of 265,000 years, based on current fossil findings? […]
Of course I’m not denying it. I asked you why you think your God expanded the sapiens brain 260,000 years before it was used. Your answer is to repeat the meaningless “learning” mantra, which you still haven't explained!
dhw: So now please tell us why you think your God had all these different homos hanging around for thousands of years making no progress, and then had homo sapiens do the same.
DAVID: Your same 'patient God' problem. God in charge of evolution evolved everything over the time it took. Why do you struggle with that? We are discussing my theory.
Indeed we are, and clearly you have no idea why your God decided to specially design all these different homos to hang around for millions of years before he specially designed the only homo he wanted to design. Patience has nothing to do with it. Your stock answer is usually that we can’t know his reasons.
dhw: […] You believe your God gave our brains the ability to perform new tasks by complexifying and mini-expanding without his intervention. So why should he not have done the same with earlier brains – enabling them to expand without his intervention?
DAVID: Obvious. Our current brain shrunk with extensive use, 150 cc, the size of most past enlargements exactly the opposite of your theory about earlier brains, where more extensive use forces large expansions. […]
Firstly, what is your explanation for shrinkage, since apparently you now refuse to accept the explanation you have accepted umpteen times before (the efficiency of complexification)? Secondly, you still haven’t answered my question. You have acknowledged that your God gave our brains the ability to complexify and mini-expand without his intervention. Why should he not have done the same with earlier brains?
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, April 21, 2020, 19:16 (1675 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Your suggestion is not close to fact. I've read a theoretical article I have not presented that theorized the human brain could ideally reach 3,300 cc! Please try to convert to ounces: 2,000 extra cc are only seventy ounces. You think our muscles can't handle that? Back packs are much heavier.
dhw: So what is your explanation for the non-expansion? And why do you keep telling us that an expansion of 200 cc is too huge to have happened naturally (theistically = your God creating the mechanism for expansion and not having to intervene)? All of a sudden, even 2000 cc is nothing!
You invented the size problem, and suddenly it becomes real. It simply never expanded because it was designed to complexify with use and shrink, following real factual history.
DAVID: You've simply restated your weird idea God should not have been patient. Repetition proves nothing.dhw: So please stop repeating your “patience” mantra, which proves nothing, and explain to me why your God deliberately produced the gaps.
Not contrived gaps, deliberate evolutionary advances. And it is you who keeps complaining about a patient God, who should be impatient. How else to analyze your God mantra?
DAVID: God knew it would take time to develop the learning. Can you deny our brain lay primarily fallow until 50,000 years ago creating a delay of 265,000 years, based on current fossil findings? […]dhw: Of course I’m not denying it. I asked you why you think your God expanded the sapiens brain 260,000 years before it was used. Your answer is to repeat the meaningless “learning” mantra, which you still haven't explained!
You don't deny the delays in use, so why demand it needs explanation? it is all of a pattern. Each new larger size had to be learned to be used. Do you think erectus or sapiens had bright new thoughts hey fist day they arrived as adult thinkers. My view of evolutionary changes take time.
dhw: So now please tell us why you think your God had all these different homos hanging around for thousands of years making no progress, and then had homo sapiens do the same.DAVID: Your same 'patient God' problem. God in charge of evolution evolved everything over the time it took. Why do you struggle with that? We are discussing my theory.
dhw: Indeed we are, and clearly you have no idea why your God decided to specially design all these different homos to hang around for millions of years before he specially designed the only homo he wanted to design. Patience has nothing to do with it. Your stock answer is usually that we can’t know his reasons.
Your usual total confusion. My theory is under discussion. God chose to evolve instead of immediate direct creation. We must follow the history of evolution, but we cannot know why He made the choice to evolve. My stock answer is logical following initial assumptions.
dhw: […] You believe your God gave our brains the ability to perform new tasks by complexifying and mini-expanding without his intervention. So why should he not have done the same with earlier brains – enabling them to expand without his intervention?DAVID: Obvious. Our current brain shrunk with extensive use, 150 cc, the size of most past enlargements exactly the opposite of your theory about earlier brains, where more extensive use forces large expansions. […]
dhw: Firstly, what is your explanation for shrinkage, since apparently you now refuse to accept the explanation you have accepted umpteen times before (the efficiency of complexification)?
Distortion as usual. Of course the 150 cc shrinkage was due to more use and complexification. Note the stock answer I gave above, as usual
dhw: Secondly, you still haven’t answered my question. You have acknowledged that your God gave our brains the ability to complexify and mini-expand without his intervention. Why should he not have done the same with earlier brains?
Mini-expansion and complexification with shrinkage is not giant enlargement, your pipe dream of an unsupported theory. We all realize we can invent any action by God to satisfy a desire for a desired possibility. Any possibility by definition is possible. So what!
Brain Expansion
DAVID: Your suggestion is not close to fact. I've read a theoretical article I have not presented that theorized the human brain could ideally reach 3,300 cc! Please try to convert to ounces: 2,000 extra cc are only seventy ounces. You think our muscles can't handle that? Back packs are much heavier.
My suggestion is not close to fact because you’ve read a theoretical article!
dhw: So what is your explanation for the non-expansion? And why do you keep telling us that an expansion of 200 cc is too huge to have happened naturally…? All of a sudden, even 2000 cc is nothing!
DAVID: You invented the size problem, and suddenly it becomes real. It simply never expanded because it was designed to complexify with use and shrink, following real factual history.
YOU invented the size problem! Later in this post, you’ve even referred to 200 cc as a “giant enlargement” – far too big for my theory – and now suddenly even 2000 cc is nothing! If, as you propose, your God specially designed our brain, and bearing in mind that H. sapiens was the only species he wanted to design, what was the point in his specially designing all the preceding brains?
dhw: [..] explain to me why your God deliberately produced the gaps.
DAVID: Not contrived gaps, deliberate evolutionary advances. And it is you who keeps complaining about a patient God, who should be impatient. How else to analyze your God mantra?
How can a gap be an advance? If your all-powerful God wants a sapiens brain and eventually designs it directly, how do all the gaps advance the process? There is no patience or impatience involved. That is another of your inventions. Now please answer my question.
DAVID: You don't deny the delays in use, so why demand it needs explanation? it is all of a pattern. Each new larger size had to be learned to be used. Do you think erectus or sapiens had bright new thoughts hey fist day they arrived as adult thinkers. My view of evolutionary changes take time.
It’s you who keep demanding an explanation of the gaps. I keep asking you what you mean by “learn to use” (divine lessons, instruction manuals, for sapiens 260,000 years of trial and nothing but error?). Never answered. I propose that once the new brain had formed as a result of a new big idea, life went on – as you rightly pointed out with your earlier reference to indigenous tribes – without any major change until a new “big idea” came along. Gaps explained. In pre-sapiens that led to the next expansion. In sapiens it led to complexification and minor expansion.
dhw: … clearly you have no idea why your God decided to specially design all these different homos to hang around for millions of years before he specially designed the only homo he wanted to design. Patience has nothing to do with it. Your stock answer is usually that we can’t know his reasons.
DAVID: Your usual total confusion. My theory is under discussion. God chose to evolve instead of immediate direct creation.
Another massive contradiction, because according to you there is no phase in evolution that was not directly designed by your always-in-control God. (See post on your theory of evolution.)You reject my expansion theory because according to you even a 200 cc expansion needs God’s intervention.
DAVID: We must follow the history of evolution, but we cannot know why He made the choice to evolve. My stock answer is logical following initial assumptions.
Yes, we should follow the history of evolution, and since we cannot know why he would have directly designed anything but the only thing he wanted to design, we should acknowledge that something is radically wrong with your interpretation of evolution.
dhw: Firstly, what is your explanation for shrinkage, since apparently you now refuse to accept the explanation you have accepted umpteen times before (the efficiency of complexification)?
DAVID: Distortion as usual. Of course the 150 cc shrinkage was due to more use and complexification. Note the stock answer I gave above, as usual.
Your stock answer now relies on the new unproven theory that our brains could double in size with no ill effects on our anatomy, and therefore your God must have stepped in and specially designed our brain. I ask why he needed to go through all the other brain phases if all he wanted was ours. My (unproven) theory is that further expansion would have been deleterious, and so complexification and minor expansion took over.
dhw: You have acknowledged that your God gave our brains the ability to complexify and mini-expand without his intervention. Why should he not have done the same with earlier brains?
DAVID: Mini-expansion and complexification with shrinkage is not giant enlargement [dhw: 2000 cc is nothing, but 200 cc is “giant”] [..]
Once again you simply refuse to answer the question! It is you who told us that your God gave our brains the ability to complexify and mini-expand without his intervention! Do you think he was incapable of inventing the means to maxi-expand without his intervention?
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, April 22, 2020, 22:17 (1674 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Your suggestion is not close to fact. I've read a theoretical article I have not presented that theorized the human brain could ideally reach 3,300 cc! Please try to convert to ounces: 2,000 extra cc are only seventy ounces. You think our muscles can't handle that? Back packs are much heavier.
dhw: My suggestion is not close to fact because you’ve read a theoretical article!
Reminder!! You stated your previous size theory suggestion as fact
dhw: [..] explain to me why your God deliberately produced the gaps.
DAVID: Not contrived gaps, deliberate evolutionary advances. And it is you who keeps complaining about a patient God, who should be impatient. How else to analyze your God mantra?
dhw: How can a gap be an advance? If your all-powerful God wants a sapiens brain and eventually designs it directly, how do all the gaps advance the process? There is no patience or impatience involved. That is another of your inventions. Now please answer my question.
Obvious, why the question? The gap in size is an advance in more neuron networks in the prefrontal area. More ability to think once it is learned to be used, by trading simple ideas, gradually developing more complex ones.
DAVID: You don't deny the delays in use, so why demand it needs explanation? it is all of a pattern. Each new larger size had to be learned to be used. Do you think erectus or sapiens had bright new thoughts the first day they arrived as adult thinkers. My view of evolutionary changes take time.
dhw: I keep asking you what you mean by “learn to use” (divine lessons, instruction manuals, for sapiens 260,000 years of trial and nothing but error?). Never answered.
Why can't you envision self-learning with a new instrument? Developing new info (your mantra) and new simple concepts exchanged with others
dhw: Firstly, what is your explanation for shrinkage, since apparently you now refuse to accept the explanation you have accepted umpteen times before (the efficiency of complexification)?
DAVID: Distortion as usual. Of course the 150 cc shrinkage was due to more use and complexification. Note the stock answer I gave above, as usual.
dhw: I ask why he needed to go through all the other brain phases if all he wanted was ours. My (unproven) theory is that further expansion would have been deleterious, and so complexification and minor expansion took over.
And the scientific proposal I noted about doubling size, wasn't worried about your deleterious imagined concern. I will ask: Why deleterious?
dhw: You have acknowledged that your God gave our brains the ability to complexify and mini-expand without his intervention. Why should he not have done the same with earlier brains?DAVID: Mini-expansion and complexification with shrinkage is not giant enlargement
[dhw: 2000 cc is nothing, but 200 cc is “giant”] [..]
Totally off the point of your 'deleterious' enlargement.
dhw: Once again you simply refuse to answer the question! It is you who told us that your God gave our brains the ability to complexify and mini-expand without his intervention! Do you think he was incapable of inventing the means to maxi-expand without his intervention?
God is capable of whatever you wish to propose, but it would help if you tried to analyze from exactly what God produced as a guide to thoughts about His purpose. From the evidence God is very powerful in his ability to create. What He created is what we see. Of course you can create abilities for God that I don't think He used. My God, to use your words is the 'control freak' you bring up as a supposed derogatory term. Nothing wrong with God firmly in control. Your idea again relinquishes God from carefully designing each step in brain enlargement/complexity. The complexity of our brain is still overwhelming us in trying to understand how it works. Once again you want a weak God who gives up control and allows newly-sized brains to self-invent their new size and networks. That implies they are already as smart as God in engineering brains. Then why do they need any further improvement? You have invented a theory with no substance, just seizing on the fact that our brain, with its massive complexity, well beyond those previous iterations, can have very small areas of enlargement to handle new mental and muscular activities. You are trying to make grapes into pineapples.
Brain Expansion
DAVID: Your suggestion is not close to fact. I've read a theoretical article I have not presented that theorized the human brain could ideally reach 3,300 cc! Please try to convert to ounces: 2,000 extra cc are only seventy ounces. You think our muscles can't handle that? Back packs are much heavier.
dhw: My suggestion is not close to fact because you’ve read a theoretical article!
DAVID: Reminder!! You stated your previous size theory suggestion as fact.
I have always stressed that my previous size theory /suggestion is a theory/suggestion. Now please tell us why my theory/suggestion is not close to fact as a result of your reading a theoretical article.
dhw: [..] explain to me why your God deliberately produced the gaps. *
*These are the gaps between a) expansions and b) between H. sapiens’ acquisition of a larger brain and the 260,000-year stasis before the great leap forward.
DAVID: Each new larger size had to be learned to be used.
dhw: I keep asking you what you mean by “learn to use” (divine lessons, instruction manuals, for sapiens 260,000 years of trial and nothing but error?). Never answered.
DAVID: Why can't you envision self-learning with a new instrument? Developing new info (your mantra) and new simple concepts exchanged with others.
I like your explanation. So why do you make such a fuss about the gap between sapiens’ new brain and the great leap forward?It fits in with my proposal and with the pattern of all phases between expansions: I called it stasis, but let’s say comparative stasis – just minor matters for thousands of years until the next big idea causes expansion (earlier phases), and minor matters for 260,000 years before the great leap forward (sapiens), presumably causing complexification and minor expansion, as we know from the modern brain.
dhw: [re the reason why the sapiens brain has not expanded] My (unproven) theory is that further expansion would have been deleterious, and so complexification and minor expansion took over.
DAVID: And the scientific proposal I noted about doubling size, wasn't worried about your deleterious imagined concern. I will ask: Why deleterious?
Because I’d have thought that doubling the size of the brain would require a larger skull, which would require changes to the anatomy. Neanderthals had bigger skulls than ours, which presumably housed bigger brains. There were also differences in their anatomy.
dhw: You have acknowledged that your God gave our brains the ability to complexify and mini-expand without his intervention. Why should he not have done the same with earlier brains?
DAVID: Mini-expansion and complexification with shrinkage is not giant enlargement
[dhw: 2000 cc is nothing, but 200 cc is “giant”]
DAVID: Totally off the point of your 'deleterious' enlargement.
But totally on the point of your claim that 200 cc was too great a leap to have happened spontaneously, and please don’t use the “deleterious” argument as an escape route from answering my bolded question.
DAVID: God is capable of whatever you wish to propose, but it would help if you tried to analyze from exactly what God produced as a guide to thoughts about His purpose. From the evidence God is very powerful in his ability to create. What He created is what we see. Of course you can create abilities for God that I don't think He used.
Stop flannelling. You wrote that he invented a mechanism whereby complexification and mini-expansion take place without his intervention. The fact that you don’t think he invented a mechanism whereby the brain could expand as well as complexify does not invalidate my theory!
DAVID: My God, to use your words is the 'control freak' you bring up as a supposed derogatory term. Nothing wrong with God firmly in control. Your idea again relinquishes God from carefully designing each step in brain enlargement/complexity. […] Once again you want a weak God who gives up control and allows newly-sized brains to self-invent their new size and networks. That implies they are already as smart as God in engineering brains.
Sorry, but this is silly. I propose (theistic version) that he invented a mechanism which allows complexification without his intervention (acknowledged by you) and also expansion. There is “nothing wrong” with God not needing to intervene, it does not make him weak, and if he invented a self-improving brain, that does make the brain into the smart inventor of self-improving brains.
DAVID: Then why do they need any further improvement? You have invented a theory with no substance, just seizing on the fact that our brain, with its massive complexity, well beyond those previous iterations, can have very small areas of enlargement to handle new mental and muscular activities. You are trying to make grapes into pineapples.
I keep proposing that the smaller brains needed further improvement because they could not implement the new big ideas. And I’ve seized on the proven fact that modern brains RESPOND to the demands made on them by what you call “hard thinking”, and do not change in advance of “hard” thoughts. Your theory is the exact opposite of what is known, and also contains a problem for you as a dualist – namely that your God had to dabble changes to the brain before the soul could think of a new idea.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, April 23, 2020, 19:31 (1673 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Thursday, April 23, 2020, 19:45
dhw: I keep asking you what you mean by “learn to use” (divine lessons, instruction manuals, for sapiens 260,000 years of trial and nothing but error?). Never answered.
DAVID: Why can't you envision self-learning with a new instrument? Developing new info (your mantra) and new simple concepts exchanged with others.
Addendum: all that new use and learning from each other adds nothing to size until the next jump.
dhw: I like your explanation. So why do you make such a fuss about the gap between sapiens’ new brain and the great leap forward?It fits in with my proposal and with the pattern of all phases between expansions: I called it stasis, but let’s say comparative stasis – just minor matters for thousands of years until the next big idea causes expansion (earlier phases), and minor matters for 260,000 years before the great leap forward (sapiens)
'Stasis' is like your 'effort' term. Sounds good, really explains nothing, as my discussion above is extremely logical. The size gaps are real, and simple acceptance that new brain size causes new artifacts is seen in all the articles. Soul/brain complex assumed) All you want is a non-God explanation, as atheists do.
DAVID: God is capable of whatever you wish to propose, but it would help if you tried to analyze from exactly what God produced as a guide to thoughts about His purpose. From the evidence God is very powerful in his ability to create. What He created is what we see. Of course you can create abilities for God that I don't think He used.
dhw: Stop flannelling. You wrote that he invented a mechanism whereby complexification and mini-expansion take place without his intervention. The fact that you don’t think he invented a mechanism whereby the brain could expand as well as complexify does not invalidate my theory!
No your imagined theory cannot be invalidated. There are no facts supporting it and none refuting it, because it is all in your imagination. Of course you can present your theory as anything imagined can be possible. There is no refutation for that approach. I'm still with God did it, and at the natural level of argument I view it as totally contrived from our advanced brain, and doesn't fit what archaeological articles present. See below for my thoughts about creating an artifact: thinking of it hard, making it always easy.
DAVID: My God, to use your words is the 'control freak' you bring up as a supposed derogatory term. Nothing wrong with God firmly in control. Your idea again relinquishes God from carefully designing each step in brain enlargement/complexity. […] Once again you want a weak God who gives up control and allows newly-sized brains to self-invent their new size and networks. That implies they are already as smart as God in engineering brains.dhw: Sorry, but this is silly. I propose (theistic version) that he invented a mechanism which allows complexification without his intervention (acknowledged by you) and also expansion. There is “nothing wrong” with God not needing to intervene, it does not make him weak, and if he invented a self-improving brain, that does make the brain into the smart inventor of self-improving brains.
God not needing to intervene, means God, in your terms, created a perfect brain expansion program of about 200 cc each stage, with perfect pre-programming. That fits my pre-programming proposal. Fine. We are together, finally, that God perfectly pre-planned evolution
DAVID: Then why do they need any further improvement? You have invented a theory with no substance, just seizing on the fact that our brain, with its massive complexity, well beyond those previous iterations, can have very small areas of enlargement to handle new mental and muscular activities. You are trying to make grapes into pineapples.dhw: I keep proposing that the smaller brains needed further improvement because they could not implement the new big ideas.
dhw from the other expansion thread: "It is not “thinking of” a new concept but IMPLEMENTING a new concept (i.e. designing, working out details, learning to rectify mistakes, and making the new concept into a material artefact) that demands brain changes."
Your concept above is backward. Visualizing the design is always the key.The 'new big idea' requires intense abstract thought, requiring some advance in brain complexity. That is the only hard part. Where you go totally off the rails is in my experience, if I can think if it I can build it. Implementation requires no advanced thought, just manual activity with brain direction. Have you ever imagined something and built it? I have all my life. At about 12 I built a wooden reading lamp for my bed: shaped wooden pieces, painted, lined with the shiny inside of a tin can nailed in place. Socket and cord. At 14 I designed and built a brick fireplace for cooking steaks in our backyard. I'm not a junior Edison, but trial and error not needed. Your theory is totally unacceptable for me.
Brain Expansion
Here too, the brain expansion threads can be combined.
dhw: I keep asking you what you mean by “learn to use” (divine lessons, instruction manuals, for sapiens 260,000 years of trial and nothing but error?). Never answered.
DAVID: Why can't you envision self-learning with a new instrument? Developing new info (your mantra) and new simple concepts exchanged with others.
DAVID: Addendum: all that new use and learning from each other adds nothing to size until the next jump.
Precisely – as now bolded below in the reply I gave you:
dhw: I like your explanation. So why do you make such a fuss about the gap between sapiens’ new brain and the great leap forward? It fits in with my proposal and with the pattern of all phases between expansions: I called it stasis, but let’s say comparative stasis – just minor matters for thousands of years until the next big idea causes expansion (earlier phases), and minor matters for 260,000 years before the great leap forward (sapiens)
DAVID: 'Stasis' is like your 'effort' term. Sounds good, really explains nothing, as my discussion above is extremely logical. The size gaps are real, and simple acceptance that new brain size causes new artifacts is seen in all the articles. Soul/brain complex assumed) All you want is a non-God explanation, as atheists do.
It was you who kept harping on about the gap between the final sapiens expansion and the great leap forward. So why all the fuss about a sapiens period of stasis (= no change) when the same applied to all phases between expansions? Yet again: your articles don’t deal with reasons for the expansions, and my theory concerns the FIRST artefacts, which would have entailed the “hard thinking” leading to expansion; nobody can possibly tell whether that took place after the brain had expanded (which according to you was engineered directly by God for no particular reason) or was the cause of the expansion.
dhw: You wrote that he [God] invented a mechanism whereby complexification and mini-expansion take place without his intervention. The fact that you don’t think he invented a mechanism whereby the brain could expand as well as complexify does not invalidate my theory!
DAVID: No your imagined theory cannot be invalidated. There are no facts supporting it and none refuting it, because it is all in your imagination etc. etc.
The ONLY facts we have show that the modern brain changes as a result of “hard thinking”. It is therefore perfectly reasonable to argue that earlier brains might have followed the same process.
DAVID: Once again you want a weak God who gives up control and allows newly-sized brains to self-invent their new size and networks. That implies they are already as smart as God in engineering brains.
Re “weak” see your theory of evolution. I repeat: There is nothing wrong with God not needing to intervene, it does not make him weak, and if he invented a self-improving brain, that does make the brain into the smart inventor of self-improving brains.
DAVID: God not needing to intervene, means God, in your terms, created a perfect brain expansion program of about 200 cc each stage, with perfect pre-programming. That fits my pre-programming proposal. Fine. We are together, finally, that God perfectly pre-planned evolution.
It means no such thing! Three weeks ago (see your theory of evolution) even you rejected preprogramming as “minor”! His not needing to intervene relates to the “third option”: my (theistic) theory – I’m surprised you’ve forgotten it – that he invented a mechanism whereby the intelligent cell communities cooperate to produce the vast variety of life forms, innovations, strategies, natural wonders etc., including the increasing capacity of the brain.
DAVID: […] you push your unsupported creation that thinking of a new concept expands brains […]
dhw: It is not “thinking of” a new concept but IMPLEMENTING a new concept (i.e. designing, working out details, learning to rectify mistakes, and making the new concept into a material artefact) that demands brain changes.
DAVID: Your concept above is backward. Visualizing the design is always the key.The 'new big idea' requires intense abstract thought, requiring some advance in brain complexity. That is the only hard part. Where you go totally off the rails is in my experience, if I can think if it I can build it. Implementation requires no advanced thought, just manual activity with brain direction.
There is nothing backward, but simply your refusal to read what I write. I have defined what I mean by implementation! Do you not know the meaning of i.e.? First comes the small brain and the initial concept of killing from a distance. Now read my i.e. list and tell me the difference between the intense abstract thought of visualizing the design and my “designing, working out the details, learning to rectify mistakes”? All you have seized on is that actually making the artefact is easy. But it’s still part of the process, because making it and trying it out will supply new information for the brain (or the dualist’s soul) to think hard about. You are really clutching at straws if the only way you can dismiss my theory is by ignoring what I write!
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Friday, April 24, 2020, 20:10 (1672 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Why can't you envision self-learning with a new instrument? Developing new info (your mantra) and new simple concepts exchanged with others.
DAVID: Addendum: all that new use and learning from each other adds nothing to size until the next jump.dhw: Precisely – as now bolded below in the reply I gave you:
dhw: I like your explanation. So why do you make such a fuss about the gap between sapiens’ new brain and the great leap forward? It fits in with my proposal and with the pattern of all phases between expansions: I called it stasis, but let’s say comparative stasis – just minor matters for thousands of years until the next big idea causes expansion (earlier phases), and minor matters for 260,000 years before the great leap forward (sapiens)
DAVID: 'Stasis' is like your 'effort' term. Sounds good, really explains nothing, as my discussion above is extremely logical. The size gaps are real, and simple acceptance that new brain size causes new artifacts is seen in all the articles. Soul/brain complex assumed) All you want is a non-God explanation, as atheists do.
dhw: It was you who kept harping on about the gap between the final sapiens expansion and the great leap forward... my theory concerns the FIRST artefacts, which would have entailed the “hard thinking” leading to expansion; nobody can possibly tell whether that took place after the brain had expanded.
The obvious conclusion by all written is the artifacts represent creation by the current brain size found. Your bold is a contortion of reasoning generally accepted. Raising a possibility doesn't prove your theory.
DAVID: No your imagined theory cannot be invalidated. There are no facts supporting it and none refuting it, because it is all in your imagination etc. etc.dhw: The ONLY facts we have show that the modern brain changes as a result of “hard thinking”. It is therefore perfectly reasonable to argue that earlier brains might have followed the same process.
It is fine to come up with possibilities. A weak theory if that is its only basis, comparing our tiny enlargements in a much more sophisticated brain with much less sophisticated.
DAVID: Once again you want a weak God who gives up control and allows newly-sized brains to self-invent their new size and networks. That implies they are already as smart as God in engineering brains.Re “weak” see your theory of evolution. I repeat: There is nothing wrong with God not needing to intervene, it does not make him weak, and if he invented a self-improving brain, that does make the brain into the smart inventor of self-improving brains.
DAVID: God not needing to intervene, means God, in your terms, created a perfect brain expansion program of about 200 cc each stage, with perfect pre-programming. That fits my pre-programming proposal. Fine. We are together, finally, that God perfectly pre-planned evolution.
dhw: It means no such thing! Three weeks ago (see your theory of evolution) even you rejected preprogramming as “minor”!
I've explained my muddle about God's handling of evolution above.
DAVID: […] you push your unsupported creation that thinking of a new concept expands brains […]dhw: It is not “thinking of” a new concept but IMPLEMENTING a new concept (i.e. designing, working out details, learning to rectify mistakes, and making the new concept into a material artefact) that demands brain changes.
DAVID: Your concept above is backward. Visualizing the design is always the key.The 'new big idea' requires intense abstract thought, requiring some advance in brain complexity. That is the only hard part. Where you go totally off the rails is in my experience, if I can think if it I can build it. Implementation requires no advanced thought, just manual activity with brain direction.
dhw: There is nothing backward, but simply your refusal to read what I write. I have defined what I mean by implementation! Do you not know the meaning of i.e.? First comes the small brain and the initial concept of killing from a distance. Now read my i.e. list and tell me the difference between the intense abstract thought of visualizing the design and my “designing, working out the details, learning to rectify mistakes”? All you have seized on is that actually making the artefact is easy. But it’s still part of the process, because making it and trying it out will supply new information for the brain (or the dualist’s soul) to think hard about. You are really clutching at straws if the only way you can dismiss my theory is by ignoring what I write!
As I read your prose, all it tells me is the smaller previous brain immaterially thought of the artifact, which to me means visualized it, and that forced a 200 cc enlargement; the new species waited awhile (your stasis) and then put it together easily because of the new complex enlargement. Thus archaeologists find brain and artifacts timed together. You've innvented a possibility that is not based on any interpretations I've seen or had myself for 50 years. I fully reject it.
Brain Expansion
DAVID: Why can't you envision self-learning with a new instrument? Developing new info (your mantra) and new simple concepts exchanged with others.
DAVID: Addendum: all that new use and learning from each other adds nothing to size until the next jump.
dhw: Precisely – as now bolded below in the reply I gave you:
dhw: I like your explanation. So why do you make such a fuss about the gap between sapiens’ new brain and the great leap forward? It fits in with my proposal and with the pattern of all phases between expansions: I called it stasis, but let’s say comparative stasis*** – just minor matters for thousands of years until the next big idea causes expansion (earlier phases), and minor matters for 260,000 years before the great leap forward (sapiens)
***Note what stasis refers to. Not the absurdity below (marked ***).
DAVID: […] simple acceptance that new brain size causes new artifacts is seen in all the articles. […]
dhw: [...] my theory concerns the FIRST artefacts, which would have entailed the “hard thinking” leading to expansion;bb nobody can possibly tell whether that took place after the brain had expanded.bb
DAVID: The obvious conclusion by all written is the artifacts represent creation by the current brain size found. Your bold is a contortion of reasoning generally accepted. Raising a possibility doesn't prove your theory.
The articles don't deal with the cause of expansion! Do give us a reason for expansion which is “generally accepted”. Your God’s 3.8-billion-year old programme for brain expansion plus the whole of evolution? Or successive divine dabbles? (“Damn, wrong size again!” said God.)
DAVID: No your imagined theory cannot be invalidated. There are no facts supporting it and none refuting it, because it is all in your imagination etc.
dhw: The ONLY facts we have show that the modern brain changes as a result of “hard thinking”. It is therefore reasonable to argue that earlier brains might have followed the same process.
DAVID: It is fine to come up with possibilities. A weak theory if that is its only basis, comparing our tiny enlargements in a much more sophisticated brain with much less sophisticated.
I am not making comparisons. Modern brains change in response to “hard thought”. It is therefore possible that earlier brains did the same, but with their smaller capacity were less complex and needed to expand on a larger scale than ours.
DAVID: God not needing to intervene, means God, in your terms, created a perfect brain expansion program of about 200 cc each stage, with perfect pre-programming. That fits my pre-programming proposal. Fine. We are together, finally, that God perfectly pre-planned evolution.
dhw: It means no such thing! Three weeks ago (see your theory of evolution) even you rejected preprogramming as “minor”!
DAVID: I've explained my muddle about God's handling of evolution above.
I’m afraid your muddle does not add any credence to your own theory, and it continues into your absurd representation of mine, as below (marked ***).
DAVID: Your concept above is backward. Visualizing the design is always the key. […] Implementation requires no advanced thought, just manual activity with brain direction.
dhw: There is nothing backward, but simply your refusal to read what I write.
I went on yet again to present a definition of “implementation” which has been totally ignored..
DAVID: As I read your prose, all it tells me is the smaller previous brain immaterially thought of the artifact, which to me means visualized it, and that forced a 200 cc enlargement…..
Once again you ignore what I write, so let me repeat it with a bit more emphasis: small brained homo’s initial concept: KILLING FROM A DISTANCE. Not visualizing it, and no, no, no, the initial concept does not force an enlargement. What forces the enlargement is the process of DESIGNING, WORKING OUT THE DETAILS, LEARNING TO RECTIFY MISTAKES and also making it, because while our homo is making it and trying it out, there will be NEW INFORMATION which will require MORE of that you call “hard thinking”, and it is the “hard thinking” that causes changes – in this case expansion – to the brain.
DAVID:…. the new species waited awhile (your stasis)*** and then put it together easily because of the new complex enlargement.
Crazy! Once the new artefact is made, we have a newly enlarged brain. There then follows a period of thousands of years when there are only minor developments which, as you said yourself, “add nothing to size until the next jump”. THAT is the STASIS! (You fussed about the gap between the launch of sapiens’ brain and the 260,000 or so years of STASIS that followed. I explained it.)
DAVID: Thus archaeologists find brain and artifacts timed together. You've innvented a possibility that is not based on any interpretations I've seen or had myself for 50 years. I fully reject it.
Of course the brain and artefacts are timed together. The FIRST artefacts could not exist until the brain had finished expanding. I would also fully reject a theory as idiotic as the one you have just invented. Now please explain to me why it is unreasonable to assume that if changes to the modern brain are the RESULT of hard thinking, changes to the ancient brain might also have been the RESULT of hard thinking.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, April 25, 2020, 22:56 (1671 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: The obvious conclusion by all written is the artifacts represent creation by the current brain size found. Your bold is a contortion of reasoning generally accepted. Raising a possibility doesn't prove your theory.
dhw: The articles don't deal with the cause of expansion! Do give us a reason for expansion which is “generally accepted”.
Of course they don't. The scientists are limited to their assumption natural evolution caused expansions and the bigger brained hominins made the artifacts found with them. Theists believe God did it.
DAVID: As I read your prose, all it tells me is the smaller previous brain immaterially thought of the artifact, which to me means visualized it, and that forced a 200 cc enlargement…..
dhw: Once again you ignore what I write, so let me repeat it with a bit more emphasis: small brained homo’s initial concept: KILLING FROM A DISTANCE. Not visualizing it, and no, no, no, the initial concept does not force an enlargement. What forces the enlargement is the process of DESIGNING, WORKING OUT THE DETAILS, LEARNING TO RECTIFY MISTAKES and also making it, because while our homo is making it and trying it out, there will be NEW INFORMATION which will require MORE of that you call “hard thinking”, and it is the “hard thinking” that causes changes – in this case expansion – to the brain.
I'm afraid all I can do is analyze what I have done with our very specialized brain. I start recognized need (not a hard part) and then with design as you do. I would remind you design implies visualizing a possible product solution. That is the hard part. I must ask you: tell me about your experiences in conceptualizing a new productive p, and ow difficult is any of it?
DAVID:…. the new species waited awhile (your stasis)*** and then put it together easily because of the new complex enlargement.
dhw: Crazy! Once the new artefact is made, we have a newly enlarged brain. There then follows a period of thousands of years when there are only minor developments which, as you said yourself, “add nothing to size until the next jump”. THAT is the STASIS! (You fussed about the gap between the launch of sapiens’ brain and the 260,000 or so years of STASIS that followed. I explained it.)
A terrible explanation!!! Early sapiens 315,000 years ago lived just like erectus and other following pre-sapiens in a stone age until 12,000 years ago. Yes, they picked up an early form of language and some better hunting artifacts, like the two-foot throwing stick. That is real stasis with a great advanced brain sitting around waiting to be used much more completely.
DAVID: Thus archaeologists find brain and artifacts timed together. You've invented a possibility that is not based on any interpretations I've seen or had myself for 50 years. I fully reject it.dhw: Of course the brain and artefacts are timed together. The FIRST artefacts could not exist until the brain had finished expanding.
We agree, but n o on the method of expansion. I'm still with God doing it
dhw: Now please explain to me why it is unreasonable to assume that if changes to the modern brain are the RESULT of hard thinking, changes to the ancient brain might also have been the RESULT of hard thinking.
It is obvious our advanced brain is totally different from the early ones, like Lucy's and following. Our brain shrunk 150 cc in the past 35,000 years. How does that factor into your thinking. Just ignore it is mainly what you are doing. You are focused on one change, but not the other. The shrinkage tells us how advanced our brain is and how different from past ones. At the natural level of discussion, which we are doing, you've proven nothing by focusing on only one point of brain function. You must use the whole picture as I do before I'll accept any sort of slim proof of your hopeful very strained conjecture.
Brain Expansion
DAVID: The obvious conclusion by all written is the artifacts represent creation by the current brain size found. Your bold is a contortion of reasoning generally accepted. Raising a possibility doesn't prove your theory.
dhw: The articles don't deal with the cause of expansion! Do give us a reason for expansion which is “generally accepted”.
DAVID: Of course they don't. The scientists are limited to their assumption natural evolution caused expansions and the bigger brained hominins made the artifacts found with them. Theists believe God did it.
I know. Now please tell me what reasoning is “generally accepted” and which part of it I have contorted.
DAVID: As I read your prose, all it tells me is the smaller previous brain immaterially thought of the artifact, which to me means visualized it, and that forced a 200 cc enlargement…..
dhw: Once again you ignore what I write, so let me repeat it with a bit more emphasis: small brained homo’s initial concept: KILLING FROM A DISTANCE. Not visualizing it, and no, no, no, the initial concept does not force an enlargement. What forces the enlargement is the process of DESIGNING, WORKING OUT THE DETAILS, LEARNING TO RECTIFY MISTAKES and also making it, because while our homo is making it and trying it out, there will be NEW INFORMATION which will require MORE of that you call “hard thinking”, and it is the “hard thinking” that causes changes – in this case expansion – to the brain.
DAVID: I'm afraid all I can do is analyze what I have done with our very specialized brain. I start recognized need (not a hard part) and then with design as you do. I would remind you design implies visualizing a possible product solution. That is the hard part.
No disagreement here. And as the “hard part” causes the “hard thinking” which changes modern brains, how does this prove that the earlier brain had to change BEFORE it even knew there was a hard part to tackle?!
DAVID: I must ask you: tell me about your experiences in conceptualizing a new productive p, and ow difficult is any of it?
Why “must” you ask me? I am not a designer. We agree that it requires hard thinking to design the initial concept, or in your terms to “visualize a possible product solution”. This raises the crucial question I have asked above. Do please answer it.
DAVID:…. the new species waited awhile (your stasis)*** and then put it together easily because of the new complex enlargement.
dhw: Crazy! Once the new artefact is made, we have a newly enlarged brain. There then follows a period of thousands of years when there are only minor developments which, as you said yourself, “add nothing to size until the next jump”. THAT is the STASIS! (You fussed about the gap between the launch of sapiens’ brain and the 260,000 or so years of STASIS that followed. I explained it.)
DAVID: A terrible explanation!!! Early sapiens 315,000 years ago lived just like erectus and other following pre-sapiens in a stone age until 12,000 years ago. Yes, they picked up an early form of language and some better hunting artifacts, like the two-foot throwing stick. That is real stasis with a great advanced brain sitting around waiting to be used much more completely.
My stasis is not having a pre-sapiens “waiting a while” till his brain has finished expanding, and then putting the artefact together! We have no idea what caused the initial expansion to sapiens size or any of the other expansions, but they were all followed by periods of what I now call comparative stasis. All these pre-homos had bigger brains which “sat around” for thousands of years till whatever caused the the next expansion. We "sat around" for thousands of years till whatever caused the leap forward. So what point are you trying to prove?
dhw: Now please explain to me why it is unreasonable to assume that if changes to the modern brain are the RESULT of hard thinking, changes to the ancient brain might also have been the RESULT of hard thinking.
DAVID: It is obvious our advanced brain is totally different from the early ones, like Lucy's and following. Our brain shrunk 150 cc in the past 35,000 years. How does that factor into your thinking. Just ignore it is mainly what you are doing.
Over and over and over again, you have agreed that shrinkage is the result of efficient complexification!
DAVID: You are focused on one change, but not the other. The shrinkage tells us how advanced our brain is and how different from past ones. […] You must use the whole picture as I do before I'll accept any sort of slim proof of your hopeful very strained conjecture.
It is you who are refusing to consider the whole picture! So here it is again: pre-sapiens brains expanded. Sapiens brains stopped expanding (we don’t know why, and you reject my anatomical explanation), and complexification took over, accompanied by minor expansions. This proved so efficient that the brain shrank. Modern science shows us that the brain changes in response to hard thinking. Therefore it is not unreasonable to propose that earlier brains also changed in response to hard thinking. Your picture skips the modern findings apart from shrinkage (and you agree about the cause) and has God preprogramming each expansion 3.8 billion years ago or dabbling them BEFORE all the hard thinking.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, April 26, 2020, 21:01 (1670 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: The articles don't deal with the cause of expansion! Do give us a reason for expansion which is “generally accepted”.
DAVID: Of course they don't. The scientists are limited to their assumption natural evolution caused expansions and the bigger brained hominins made the artifacts found with them. Theists believe God did it.
dhw: I know. Now please tell me what reasoning is “generally accepted” and which part of it I have contorted.
You have contorted the underlying conclusion of all the Archaeological reports with your strained theory
DAVID: I'm afraid all I can do is analyze what I have done with our very specialized brain. I start recognized need (not a hard part) and then with design as you do. I would remind you design implies visualizing a possible product solution. That is the hard part.dhw: No disagreement here. And as the “hard part” causes the “hard thinking” which changes modern brains, how does this prove that the earlier brain had to change BEFORE it even knew there was a hard part to tackle?!
Because all the new artifacts are timed as appearing with the newly sized-brains, nothing more. Has does an earlier brain know of future artifacts? It has to be able to visualize it beforehand to start a design process which is immaterial thought.
DAVID: I must ask you: tell me about your experiences in conceptualizing a new productive p, and ow difficult is any of it?dhw: Why “must” you ask me? I am not a designer. We agree that it requires hard thinking to design the initial concept, or in your terms to “visualize a possible product solution”. This raises the crucial question I have asked above. Do please answer it.
Thank you for this honest answer. You've now admitted you are not a designer, and so are theorizing about it. I've answered your question over and over with you never noting any recognition of my points. In my view, you have design and production all confusedly backward.
DAVID:…. the new species waited awhile (your stasis)*** and then put it together easily because of the new complex enlargement.DAVID: Early sapiens 315,000 years ago lived just like erectus and other following pre-sapiens in a stone age until 12,000 years ago. Yes, they picked up an early form of language and some better hunting artifacts, like the two-foot throwing stick. That is real stasis with a great advanced brain sitting around waiting to be used much more completely.
dhw: We have no idea what caused the initial expansion to sapiens size or any of the other expansions, but they were all followed by periods of what I now call comparative stasis. All these pre-homos had bigger brains which “sat around” for thousands of years till whatever caused the the next expansion. We "sat around" for thousands of years till whatever caused the leap forward. So what point are you trying to prove?
My view is God created each expansion of thought-capable frontal and prefrontal neuron-rich brain, until it reached a critical mass and could reach new levels of conceptualizing, which is required for new design levels. It is obvious our advanced brain is totally different from the early ones, like Lucy's and following. Our brain shrunk 150 cc in the past 35,000 years, because it had a major complexification process not requiring all the prior giant brain mass it was give, all taken from the frontal pre-frontal neuron networks. How does that factor into your thinking? Just ignore the difference is what you are doing.
dhw: It is you who are refusing to consider the whole picture! So here it is again: pre-sapiens brains expanded. Sapiens brains stopped expanding (we don’t know why, and you reject my anatomical explanation), and complexification took over, accompanied by minor expansions. This proved so efficient that the brain shrank. Modern science shows us that the brain changes in response to hard thinking. Therefore it is not unreasonable to propose that earlier brains also changed in response to hard thinking. Your picture skips the modern findings apart from shrinkage (and you agree about the cause) and has God preprogramming each expansion 3.8 billion years ago or dabbling them BEFORE all the hard thinking.
Yes, surprise my God did it! Your so-called natural theory is pure unsupported conjecture based on one fact about our very special final brain that really shrinks with increased hard use. Expand one fact and ignore the other. How illogical wishful thinking! Can you find any support elsewhere?
Brain Expansion
dhw: Now please tell me what reasoning is “generally accepted” and which part of it I have contorted.
DAVID: You have contorted the underlying conclusion of all the Archaeological reports with your strained theory.
Please tell me what underlying conclusions the reports offer to explain why and how brains expanded.
DAVID: […] I start recognized need (not a hard part) and then with design as you do. I would remind you design implies visualizing a possible product solution. That is the hard part.
dhw: No disagreement here. [...] how does this prove that the earlier brain had to change BEFORE it even knew there was a hard part to tackle?!
DAVID: Because all the new artifacts are timed as appearing with the newly sized-brains, nothing more.
And my proposal is that the first of these artefacts cannot appear until the brain has finished expanding. So of course they appear with the newly sized brains!
DAVID: How does an earlier brain know of future artifacts? It has to be able to visualize it beforehand to start a design process which is immaterial thought.
It doesn’t know of future artefacts! “Me want kill from distance” starts the process of working out HOW he can kill from distance. That is the design process which induces the “hard thinking”. Theory: if the modern brain changes as a result of “hard thinking”, it is possible that the ancient brain did the same. After all, the modern brain evolved from the ancient brain, didn’t it?
DAVID: tell me about your experiences in conceptualizing a new productive p, and how difficult is any of it?
dhw: I am not a designer. […]
DAVID: Thank you for this honest answer. You've now admitted you are not a designer, and so are theorizing about it. I've answered your question over and over with you never noting any recognition of my points. In my view, you have design and production all confusedly backward.
What is backward? I have agreed with you that design is the hard part! That is the hard thinking that changes modern brains. But I have also pointed out that production and design are interwoven because the process of material production may well lead to changes in abstract design (the brain then provides new information during its function of implementation). But firstly, our discussion is not about the difference between design and production. My point is that it is the "hard thinking" that causes the smaller brain to expand as it seeks to make the original concept into something real. And secondly, how does your experience of design even begin to support your claim that the ancient brain changed BEFORE it even knew there was a hard part to tackle?
dhw: […] We "sat around" for thousands of years till whatever caused the leap forward. So what point are you trying to prove?
DAVID: My view is God created each expansion of thought-capable frontal and prefrontal neuron-rich brain, until it reached a critical mass and could reach new levels of conceptualizing, which is required for new design levels.
So what is your point about our brain sitting around for thousands of years before the leap forward? All expansions coincided with new levels of conceptualizing. What do you mean by a “critical mass”? It couldn’t expand any more? That was my point, which you poo-poohed. And you’ve forgotten again that you are a dualist. It’s supposed to be the soul that does the conceptualizing, and the brain informs and implements. If our homo had a soul, he did not need additional information to form his original concept. New information would only have been acquired in the course of the implementation(= design and production).
DAVID: It is obvious our advanced brain is totally different from the early ones, like Lucy's and following.
Not “totally”. You’ve just told us on the other thread: ”God speciates either by modification of the previous, as in hominin brain growth, or […]”.
DAVID: Our brain shrunk 150 cc in the past 35,000 years, because it had a major complexification process not requiring all the prior giant brain mass it was give, all taken from the frontal pre-frontal neuron networks. How does that factor into your thinking? Just ignore the difference is what you are doing.
And
DAVID: Your so-called natural theory is pure unsupported conjecture based on one fact about our very special final brain that really shrinks with increased hard use. Expand one fact and ignore the other. How illogical wishful thinking! Can you find any support elsewhere?
So your God apparently gave us a bigger brain than we needed. What does that prove? Hard use has not shrunk the brain! If it did, we’d have no brain left by now! As you keep agreeing and then forgetting, hard use results in complexification, which is so efficient that it has made certain parts of the brain redundant. Can you find any support for your theory of a divine 3.8 billion-year-old programme of brain expansions culminating in one that was 150 cc bigger than necessary and therefore shrank, and that responded to new demands whereas earlier brains expanded before the new demands even existed?
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Monday, April 27, 2020, 20:11 (1669 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: tell me about your experiences in conceptualizing a new productive product, and how difficult is any of it?
dhw: I am not a designer. […]
DAVID: Thank you for this honest answer. You've now admitted you are not a designer, and so are theorizing about it. I've answered your question over and over with you never noting any recognition of my points. In my view, you have design and production all confusedly backward.
dhw: What is backward? I have agreed with you that design is the hard part! That is the hard thinking that changes modern brains. But I have also pointed out that production and design are interwoven because the process of material production may well lead to changes in abstract design (the brain then provides new information during its function of implementation).
Once again you have shifted to trial and error. If one can visualize the spear design with wooden shaft and stone tip, that includes the materials to be used. In spear building the only secondary decision, since stone napping was known for the point, is how attach the point to the wooden shaft. Simple production follows.
dhw: But firstly, our discussion is not about the difference between design and production. My point is that it is the "hard thinking" that causes the smaller brain to expand as it seeks to make the original concept into something real.
You've denied this before, when I've previously analyzed your thoughts this way. I believe it is your sole invention to explain brain enlargement.
dhw: And secondly, how does your experience of design even begin to support your claim that the ancient brain changed BEFORE it even knew there was a hard part to tackle?
You know. I believe God did it. As a natural theory, I view it as contrived wishful thinking.
DAVID: My view is God created each expansion of thought-capable frontal and prefrontal neuron-rich brain, until it reached a critical mass and could reach new levels of conceptualizing, which is required for new design levels.dhw: So what is your point about our brain sitting around for thousands of years before the leap forward? All expansions coincided with new levels of conceptualizing. What do you mean by a “critical mass”?
I'm using a term from nuclear bomb theory or social political theory. Build a big enough complex brain and it then can conceive of what it couldn't think of before
dhw: And you’ve forgotten again that you are a dualist. It’s supposed to be the soul that does the conceptualizing, and the brain informs and implements.
Useless space-filling criticism. You know what I mean.
DAVID: It is obvious our advanced brain is totally different from the early ones, like Lucy's and following.dhw: Not “totally”. You’ve just told us on the other thread: ”God speciates either by modification of the previous, as in hominin brain growth, or […]”.
The modification can make it as a final product, totally different.
dhw: So your God apparently gave us a bigger brain than we needed. What does that prove? Hard use has not shrunk the brain! If it did, we’d have no brain left by now! As you keep agreeing and then forgetting, hard use results in complexification, which is so efficient that it has made certain parts of the brain redundant.
You've simply answered yourself. I don't forget the points of argument.
dhw: Can you find any support for your theory of a divine 3.8 billion-year-old programme of brain expansions culminating in one that was 150 cc bigger than necessary and therefore shrank, and that responded to new demands whereas earlier brains expanded before the new demands even existed?
Remember, I believe God did it, but your question leaves the natural level of debate where I am disputing your natural wishful claim that hard thinking expands brains. You will not ever find any support for it, certainly not from me.
Brain Expansion
DAVID: You've now admitted you are not a designer, and so are theorizing about it. I've answered your question over and over with you never noting any recognition of my points. In my view, you have design and production all confusedly backward.
dhw: What is backward? I have agreed with you that design is the hard part! That is the hard thinking that changes modern brains. But I have also pointed out that production and design are interwoven because the process of material production may well lead to changes in abstract design (the brain then provides new information during its function of implementation).
DAVID: Once again you have shifted to trial and error. If one can visualize the spear design with wooden shaft and stone tip, that includes the materials to be used. In spear building the only secondary decision, since stone napping was known for the point, is how attach the point to the wooden shaft. Simple production follows.
You are determined to ignore the all-important distinction between the original concept and its implementation. All you want to focus on is the distinction between different parts of the implementation! I can only repeat: our small-brained homo’s initial idea is to kill from a distance. He has not yet thought of wooden shaft and stone tip or the materials to be used! That is part of the implementation (= design and production) or “hard thinking” which we know changes the modern brain, and which I suggest also changed earlier brains. And of course trial and error will be part of the implementation, as it provides new information to be incorporated into the design. But we are using the first ever spear as a simple illustration of the process – I’m not saying that all brain expansions were caused by inventing and reinventing the spear! We can use two of the current theories if you like: use of fire and bipedalism. Same process: each of these will entail new situations which require “hard thinking”. It is the process of tackling new tasks that changes (complexifies) the modern brain, and I propose that the same process would have changed (expanded) the earlier brains. Now tell me why you find that illogical.
dhw: What do you mean by a “critical mass”?
DAVID: I'm using a term from nuclear bomb theory or social political theory. Build a big enough complex brain and it then can conceive of what it couldn't think of before.
dhw: And you’ve forgotten again that you are a dualist. It’s supposed to be the soul that does the conceptualizing, and the brain informs and implements.
DAVID: Useless space-filling criticism. You know what I mean.
No I don’t. It is the crux of our disagreement! I propose that it is “hard thinking” that causes the brain to expand/complexify. The dualist believes that there is a soul that does the thinking and uses the brain to collect new information. But time and again you tell us that the brain has to change before the “hard thinking” can begin! Why would the thinking soul depend on the non-thinking brain's expansion before it can think of a new idea based on EXISTING information? Your statement above could hardly be more explicit, and it fits in perfectly with materialism, with the brain as the source of thought. This is no problem for my theory, however, since it merely means that whatever may be the material source of thought will undergo exactly the same process of using existing information to come up with the new idea, and THEN changing itself through the effort to implement the idea, just as the modern brain changes itself through the effort to perform new tasks.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, April 28, 2020, 20:17 (1668 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: You've now admitted you are not a designer, and so are theorizing about it. I've answered your question over and over with you never noting any recognition of my points. In my view, you have design and production all confusedly backward.
dhw: What is backward? I have agreed with you that design is the hard part! That is the hard thinking that changes modern brains. But I have also pointed out that production and design are interwoven because the process of material production may well lead to changes in abstract design (the brain then provides new information during its function of implementation).
DAVID: Once again you have shifted to trial and error. If one can visualize the spear design with wooden shaft and stone tip, that includes the materials to be used. In spear building the only secondary decision, since stone napping was known for the point, is how attach the point to the wooden shaft. Simple production follows.
dhw: You are determined to ignore the all-important distinction between the original concept and its implementation. All you want to focus on is the distinction between different parts of the implementation! ...But we are using the first ever spear as a simple illustration of the process – I’m not saying that all brain expansions were caused by inventing and reinventing the spear! We can use two of the current theories if you like: use of fire and bipedalism. Same process: each of these will entail new situations which require “hard thinking”. It is the process of tackling new tasks that changes (complexifies) the modern brain, and I propose that the same process would have changed (expanded) the earlier brains. Now tell me why you find that illogical.
It is an illogical extension from what we know about our very advanced different brain which shrank from hard thought, with no sign of expansion except in tiny designated areas from its very advanced complexification mechanism. You've seized on the latter because it fits your hopes for a non-god natural expansion. All hope, no support anywhere.
Because I am the experienced one here, having designed and created as previously described. We both agree the hardest part is new design. Putting the design together is easy, but I admit there may have to be a little easy trial and error. I note your theorizing does not fit my practical experience using our current advanced brain, which complexifies easily and shrank 150 cc. We do not know if previous hominin brains had any shrinkage before expanding. My guess is they did not as the drive was always for enlargement as God evolved each step..
dhw: What do you mean by a “critical mass”?DAVID: I'm using a term from nuclear bomb theory or social political theory. Build a big enough complex brain and it then can conceive of what it couldn't think of before.
dhw: And you’ve forgotten again that you are a dualist. It’s supposed to be the soul that does the conceptualizing, and the brain informs and implements.
DAVID: Useless space-filling criticism. You know what I mean.
dhw: No I don’t. It is the crux of our disagreement! I propose that it is “hard thinking” that causes the brain to expand/complexify. The dualist believes that there is a soul that does the thinking and uses the brain to collect new information. But time and again you tell us that the brain has to change before the “hard thinking” can begin! Why would the thinking soul depend on the non-thinking brain's expansion before it can think of a new idea based on EXISTING information? Your statement above could hardly be more explicit, and it fits in perfectly with materialism, with the brain as the source of thought.
I have never agreed to this distortion of my thoughts. For the last time, hopefully: the soul uses the brain to form thinking and concepts. It can only form advanced concepts if the brain it is given to use allows more advanced concepts than the last smaller brain, which in my view is always the case. That view is based on known history: each brain size advance is in the frontal and prefrontal areas where such thought takes place
dhw: This is no problem for my theory, however, since it merely means that whatever may be the material source of thought will undergo exactly the same process of using existing information to come up with the new idea, and THEN changing itself through the effort to implement the idea, just as the modern brain changes itself through the effort to perform new tasks.
The problem with your theory is it is a lonely thought only in your brain. Leaving the natural level of our discussion, I believe God ran evolution and expanded each brain giving it much improved conceptualization capacity for the soul to work with. Our current brain is not at all like previous brains in its thought capacity and complexification process. Remember our adult brain does not grow new neurons in the cortex but does in the hippocampus. Enlargement is due to more dendrites and synapse connections and more astrocytes, not neurons. How does that fit your 'theory'? In your view the previous brains had to be totally different and ours somehow developed as the oddball!
Brain Expansion
dhw: It is the process of tackling new tasks that changes (complexifies) the modern brain, and I propose that the same process would have changed (expanded) the earlier brains. Now tell me why you find that illogical.
DAVID: It is an illogical extension from what we know about our very advanced different brain which shrank from hard thought, with no sign of expansion except in tiny designated areas from its very advanced complexification mechanism. You've seized on the latter because it fits your hopes for a non-god natural expansion. All hope, no support anywhere.
Nothing to do with “non-god”, since your God may be the designer of the mechanism. Once more: if hard thought caused shrinkage, we would not have any brain left! Our brain shrank, as you keep agreeing and forgetting, because complexification – which took over when the brain stopped expanding - proved to be so efficient that part of the brain became redundant. I have “seized on” the fact that the brain changes IN RESPONSE to new demands, so try again: why is it illogical to suppose that it did NOT do so in earlier times?
DAVID: We both agree the hardest part is new design. Putting the design together is easy, but I admit there may have to be a little easy trial and error.
If it’s the very first design of its kind, there could be a lot of trial and error. So what? Our disagreement concerns “hard thinking” as the cause of expansion (me) or the result of expansion (you).
DAVID: I note your theorizing does not fit my practical experience using our current advanced brain, which complexifies easily and shrank 150 cc. We do not know if previous hominin brains had any shrinkage before expanding. My guess is they did not as the drive was always for enlargement as God evolved each step.
What has your practical experience taught you that I have not agreed to? Of course there would have been no shrinkage in previous brains. The whole point of my theory is that whatever complexification may have taken place would not have been efficient enough to cope with new demands, and that is why the brain had to expand!
dhw: Why would the thinking soul depend on the non-thinking brain's expansion before it can think of a new idea based on EXISTING information? Your statement above [“Build a big enough complex brain and it can then conceive of what it couldn’t think of before” fits in perfectly with materialism, with the brain as the source of thought.
DAVID: I have never agreed to this distortion of my thoughts. For the last time, hopefully: the soul uses the brain to form thinking and concepts. [dhw: Yes, that is dualism.] It can only form advanced concepts if the brain it is given to use allows more advanced concepts than the last smaller brain, which in my view is always the case. That view is based on known history: each brain size advance is in the frontal and prefrontal areas where such thought takes place.
You constantly resort to the nebulous word “allow”. If by that you mean the brain must be large enough for the initial concept to be developed and produced, we are in agreement. We only disagree on the vital question of timing. You constantly agree that the dualist’s soul uses the brain to gather information and to implement (= design and produce) its concepts. So why would the brain need to expand if the soul is only using EXISTING information to form its new concept? Small brained homo has new idea: kill from distance. You claim that God has to expand his brain BEFORE his soul can think of this. I propose that this is the thought that triggers the process of hard thinking, which in turn expands the brain. (But once expanded, it can cope with new ideas until the next “big one”, which leads to the next expansion.)
DAVID: The problem with your theory is it is a lonely thought only in your brain. Leaving the natural level of our discussion, I believe God ran evolution and expanded each brain giving it much improved conceptualization capacity for the soul to work with. Our current brain is not at all like previous brains in its thought capacity and complexification process
The dualist’s brain does not have a “conceptualization” or “thought” capacity, as the dualist’s soul does the conceiving and thinking. That’s one of the problems with your theory, remember? But yes the increased amount of information and capacity for implementation will provide lots more material for the soul to use.
DAVID: Remember our adult brain does not grow new neurons in the cortex but does in the hippocampus. Enlargement is due to more dendrites and synapse connections and more astrocytes, not neurons. How does that fit your 'theory'? In your view the previous brains had to be totally different and ours somehow developed as the oddball!
Since the brain stopped expanding and gave way to complexification, of course it had to have more connections and its response process is different! How does that come to mean that the early homo’s frontal and pre-frontal cortex had to expand before his soul could have a new idea based on EXISTING information? And how does it prove that the brain had to change in anticipation of new tasks and not in response to them?
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, April 29, 2020, 20:01 (1667 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: It is the process of tackling new tasks that changes (complexifies) the modern brain, and I propose that the same process would have changed (expanded) the earlier brains. Now tell me why you find that illogical.
DAVID: It is an illogical extension from what we know about our very advanced different brain which shrank from hard thought, with no sign of expansion except in tiny designated areas from its very advanced complexification mechanism. You've seized on the latter because it fits your hopes for a non-god natural expansion. All hope, no support anywhere.
dhw: Nothing to do with “non-god”, since your God may be the designer of the mechanism. Once more: if hard thought caused shrinkage, we would not have any brain left! Our brain shrank, as you keep agreeing and forgetting, because complexification – which took over when the brain stopped expanding - proved to be so efficient that part of the brain became redundant.
I forget nothing!!! Your explanation describes our brain as fully different and specialized compared to previous brains and hard thought shrank it a limited degree. We agree to that much. As for your God mechanisms, they are always dragged in when you have no other escape. Current,y we are trying to discuss a 'natural' mechanism of brain growth, according to you from hard thought to come up with a new artifact concept.
dhw: I have “seized on” the fact that the brain changes IN RESPONSE to new demands, so try again: why is it illogical to suppose that it did NOT do so in earlier times?
Not illogical, a total invention since the archaeological article all presume the bigger brains made better artifacts, and you introduce a weird timing for the thought and production that no one discusses, but you.
DAVID: I have never agreed to this distortion of my thoughts. For the last time, hopefully: the soul uses the brain to form thinking and concepts. [dhw: Yes, that is dualism.] It can only form advanced concepts if the brain it is given to use allows more advanced concepts than the last smaller brain, which in my view is always the case. That view is based on known history: each brain size advance is in the frontal and prefrontal areas where such thought takes place.
dhw: You constantly resort to the nebulous word “allow”. If by that you mean the brain must be large enough for the initial concept to be developed and produced, we are in agreement. We only disagree on the vital question of timing. You constantly agree that the dualist’s soul uses the brain to gather information and to implement (= design and produce) its concepts. So why would the brain need to expand if the soul is only using EXISTING information to form its new concept?
Not my concept of new ideas. It's yours alone. A new-sized brain is built with more neurons in more complex networks allowing the soul to think more complexly to reach new designs while using known present information. Better brain first always.
DAVID: The problem with your theory is it is a lonely thought only in your brain. Leaving the natural level of our discussion, I believe God ran evolution and expanded each brain giving it much improved conceptualization capacity for the soul to work with. Our current brain is not at all like previous brains in its thought capacity and complexification process
dhw: The dualist’s brain does not have a “conceptualization” or “thought” capacity, as the dualist’s soul does the conceiving and thinking. That’s one of the problems with your theory, remember?
Why contort my theory??? The bigger newer more complex brain allows the soul to use it to conceive of the more complex concepts. The soul must use the brain it is given to think with to have any thoughts at all
DAVID: Remember our adult brain does not grow new neurons in the cortex but does in the hippocampus. Enlargement is due to more dendrites and synapse connections and more astrocytes, not neurons. How does that fit your 'theory'? In your view the previous brains had to be totally different and ours somehow developed as the oddball!
dhw: Since the brain stopped expanding and gave way to complexification, of course it had to have more connections and its response process is different! How does that come to mean that the early homo’s frontal and pre-frontal cortex had to expand before his soul could have a new idea based on EXISTING information? And how does it prove that the brain had to change in anticipation of new tasks and not in response to them?
Again the same distortion. It is not the existing information that is the vital point. The new brain knows existing information when it starts to think of a new design, but the conceptualization of the immaterial design requires a neuronal network complex enough to have that new complex thought. The new larger brain provides that neuronal complexity in the newly enlarged frontal and prefrontal lobes for the soul to think of it. Remember all enlargement is in the thinking areas, and no where else.
Brain Expansion
dhw: […] if hard thought caused shrinkage, we would not have any brain left! Our brain shrank, as you keep agreeing and forgetting, because complexification – which took over when the brain stopped expanding - proved to be so efficient that part of the brain became redundant.
DAVID: I forget nothing!!! Your explanation describes our brain as fully different and specialized compared to previous brains and hard thought shrank it a limited degree. We agree to that much.
Not “fully” different, and as regards shrinkage, please reread the bold.
David: As for your God mechanisms, they are always dragged in when you have no other escape. […]
You always “drag in” this silly objection to any theory of evolution that is different from yours. A god who directly controls absolutely everything is no less a guess than a God who invents a mechanism to allow things to occur without his permanent dabbling.
dhw: I have “seized on” the fact that the brain changes IN RESPONSE to new demands, so try again: why is it illogical to suppose that it did NOT do so in earlier times?
DAVID: Not illogical, a total invention since the archaeological article all presume the bigger brains made better artifacts, and you introduce a weird timing for the thought and production that no one discusses, but you.
Of course bigger brains made better artefacts, but the articles don’t discuss how or why the brains got bigger! Please quote an article stating that God expanded pre-sapiens brains before pre-sapiens souls could come up with any new ideas.
dhw: […] You constantly agree that the dualist’s soul uses the brain to gather information and to implement (= design and produce) its concepts. So why would the brain need to expand if the soul is only using EXISTING information to form its new concept?
DAVID: Not my concept of new ideas. It's yours alone. A new-sized brain is built with more neurons in more complex networks allowing the soul to think more complexly to reach new designs while using known present information. Better brain first always.
Once you have the new size brain, of course it provides more information and implements more new ideas. Again you skip the issue, which is WHY the old size brain becomes the new-size brain! Using our simplified example of a spear: new idea, based on EXISTING information: a means of killing from a distance. Why is this not your concept of a new idea? Now follows the process: how to kill from a distance? This question requires HARD THINKING. And so from that initial idea arises the concept of a sharp tool thrown from a distance etc. until, after more and more HARD THINKING, our homo produces the artefact. HARD THINKING is known to cause changes to the brain. By the time the artefact is made, the brain has expanded. Please tell me why you find this illogical.
I’m going to skip the section dealing with your constant references to the brain’s thinking capacity, because it recurs during the following objection to my theory:
DAVID: It is not the existing information that is the vital point. The new brain knows existing information when it starts to think of a new design….
Stop right there. Our problem is why there is a new brain in the first place! You have skipped to the point at which the new brain already exists! (And dualists don’t believe the brain thinks…)
DAVID: …but the conceptualization of the immaterial design requires a neuronal network complex enough to have that new complex thought…
Once more you the dualist are attributing thought to the neuronal network. (My theory covers both the dualistic and the materialistic view of the source of thought.) According to your belief, it should be the soul that works out the immaterial design, using information supplied by the neuronal network, and the soul will then go on to use the neuronal network to give material form to the immaterial design.
DAVID: …The new larger brain provides that neuronal complexity in the newly enlarged frontal and prefrontal lobes for the soul to think of it
dhw: So the neural network apparently has the thought without which the soul cannot think of the thought!
DAVID: Remember all enlargement is in the thinking areas, and no where else.
But this does not explain why the thinking areas expanded in the first place! Back to the spear example and following your dualism: the soul uses the brain to acquire information. The idea “kill from a distance” arises out of EXISTING information. That IS the vital point. In order for the new idea to be developed/implemented/designed/ produced, it requires NEW information. And that is how it triggers “hard thinking”, and “hard thinking” is a process which we know makes changes to the brain. Once the new brain is there, it will carry on providing information and implementing ideas until a new “big idea” comes along and demands more information than the existing brain can supply, plus new actions which also entail a learning process (a bit like reading or playing an instrument). So long as you ignore the importance of the old brain’s new idea based on existing information, you will continued to miss the point that a new idea or task or demand is the trigger for HARD THINKING,which is known to change the brain, and so long as you the dualist continue to attribute thought to the brain, you will continue to contradict yourself.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, April 30, 2020, 20:13 (1666 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Thursday, April 30, 2020, 20:30
dhw: […] if hard thought caused shrinkage, we would not have any brain left! Our brain shrank, as you keep agreeing and forgetting, because complexification – which took over when the brain stopped expanding - proved to be so efficient that part of the brain became redundant.
DAVID: I forget nothing!!! Your explanation describes our brain as fully different and specialized compared to previous brains and hard thought shrank it a limited degree. We agree to that much.
dhw: Not “fully” different, and as regards shrinkage, please reread the bold.
The bold defines a brain different from its predecessors
dhw: […] You constantly agree that the dualist’s soul uses the brain to gather information and to implement (= design and produce) its concepts. So why would the brain need to expand if the soul is only using EXISTING information to form its new concept?DAVID: Not my concept of new ideas. It's yours alone. A new-sized brain is built with more neurons in more complex networks allowing the soul to think more complexly to reach new designs while using known present information. Better brain first always.
dhw: Once you have the new size brain, of course it provides more information and implements more new ideas. Again you skip the issue, which is WHY the old size brain becomes the new-size brain! ... how to kill from a distance? This question requires HARD THINKING. And so from that initial idea arises the concept of a sharp tool thrown from a distance etc. until, after more and more HARD THINKING, our homo produces the artefact. HARD THINKING is known to cause changes to the brain. By the time the artefact is made, the brain has expanded.
In our brain, our only known example, hard thinking shrinks brains. You've invented a theory no one supports, but you on a natural level of discussion. For me the concept of God enlarging brains is the answer.
dhw: I’m going to skip the section dealing with your constant references to the brain’s thinking capacity, because it recurs during the following objection to my theory:DAVID: It is not the existing information that is the vital point. The new brain knows existing information when it starts to think of a new design….
Stop right there. Our problem is why there is a new brain in the first place! You have skipped to the point at which the new brain already exists!
DAVID: …but the conceptualization of the immaterial design requires a neuronal network complex enough to have that new complex thought…
dhw: (My theory covers both the dualistic and the materialistic view of the source of thought.) According to your belief, it should be the soul that works out the immaterial design, using information supplied by the neuronal network, and the soul will then go on to use the neuronal network to give material form to the immaterial design.
Not my theory: The soul must use the existing brain neuronal network to think. More complex larger network more advanced conceptualization by the soul. If you want to use my theory, please get it correctly!
DAVID: …The new larger brain provides that neuronal complexity in the newly enlarged frontal and prefrontal lobes for the soul to think of itdhw: So the neural network apparently has the thought without which the soul cannot think of the thought!
Still confused. The soul must use the brain to think, just as I use my brain to think.
DAVID: Remember all enlargement is in the thinking areas, and no where else.dhw: But this does not explain why the thinking areas expanded in the first place! Back to the spear example and following your dualism: the soul uses the brain to acquire information. The idea “kill from a distance” arises out of EXISTING information.
And the design of the new weapon comes from the soul using that info, then conceptualizes a new design using the more advanced brain neuronal networks
dhw: That IS the vital point. In order for the new idea to be developed/implemented/designed/ produced, it requires NEW information. And that is how it triggers “hard thinking”, and “hard thinking” is a process which we know makes changes to the brain.
Only tiny areas!!! From that You invent a theory with no support anywhere..
dhw: Once the new brain is there, it will carry on providing information and implementing ideas until a new “big idea” comes along and demands more information than the existing brain can supply, plus new actions which also entail a learning process. So long as you ignore the importance of the old brain’s new idea based on existing information, you will continued to miss the point that a new idea or task or demand is the trigger for HARD THINKING,which is known to change the brain, and so long as you the dualist continue to attribute thought to the brain, you will continue to contradict yourself.
No contradiction if you fully understood my dualism. You still don't understand how I view my dualism: REPEAT, the soul must use brain neuronal networks to think. Your theory is based on our brain which is totally different from past brains. All we know is hard thinking shrinks our brain. For me God evolved new-sized brains. We see few evidences of massive conceptualization until we learned to use our brain in the past 50,000 years as language developed
Brain Expansion
dhw: […] if hard thought caused shrinkage, we would not have any brain left! Our brain shrank, as you keep agreeing and forgetting, because complexification – which took over when the brain stopped expanding - proved to be so efficient that part of the brain became redundant.
DAVID: I forget nothing!!! Your explanation describes our brain as fully different and specialized compared to previous brains and hard thought shrank it a limited degree. We agree to that much.
dhw: Not “fully” different, and as regards shrinkage, please reread the bold.
DAVID: The bold defines a brain different from its predecessors.
Of course it’s different! It stopped expanding and complexification took over. But earlier brains also had a frontal and a prefrontal cortex, and they had sections which provided information and enabled the homo to implement his ideas.
[…]
DAVID: Remember all enlargement is in the thinking areas, and no where else.
dhw: But this does not explain why the thinking areas expanded in the first place! Back to the spear example and following your dualism: the soul uses the brain to acquire information. The idea “kill from a distance” arises out of EXISTING information.
DAVID: And the design of the new weapon comes from the soul using that info, then conceptualizes a new design using the more advanced brain neuronal networks.
Once again you ignore the point that in our example small-brain’s new idea “kill from a distance” was the beginning of the process. Yes, the design requires and in my theory causes expansion, but you insist that only the newly expanded brain could have come up with that new idea in the first place although no new information or design was yet needed.
dhw: That IS the vital point. In order for the new idea to be developed/implemented/designed/ produced, it requires NEW information. And that is how it triggers “hard thinking”, and “hard thinking” is a process which we know makes changes to the brain.
DAVID: Only tiny areas!!! From that You invent a theory with no support anywhere.
You keep harping on about the mini-expansions and ignoring the overall process: HARD THINKING causes changes in the brain. In modern brains, which have stopped expanding, those changes are complexifications and minor expansions (with shrinkage the result of efficient complexification). In earlier brains the change would have been expansion. The focal point is that brains change IN RESPONSE to new ideas, tasks, demands.
dhw: Once the new brain is there, it will carry on providing information and implementing ideas until a new “big idea” comes along and demands more information than the existing brain can supply, plus new actions which also entail a learning process. So long as you ignore the importance of the old brain’s new idea based on existing information, you will continued to miss the point that a new idea or task or demand is the trigger for HARD THINKING,which is known to change the brain, and so long as you the dualist continue to attribute thought to the brain, you will continue to contradict yourself.
I am inserting numbers to make it easier to respond to your different points.
DAVID: You still don't understand how I view my dualism: REPEAT,1) the soul must use brain neuronal networks to think. Your theory is based on our brain 2) which is totally different from past brains. 3) All we know is hard thinking shrinks our brain. For me God evolved new-sized brains. 4) We see few evidences of massive conceptualization until we learned to use our brain in the past 50,000 years as language developed.
1)The dualist’s soul uses the brain to gather information and to implement its thoughts. See the new thread on “Dualism”.
2)It is not “totally” different (see above). It is a huge advance, but it performs the same functions as earlier brains, although it no longer expands. Complexification has taken over from expansion (apart from minor expansions). The dualist’s soul will have retained everything that was learned from earlier brains, and will have benefited from the increased capacity for obtaining and storing knowledge and for implementing new ideas.
3)Hard thinking does not shrink brains (see above and about ten earlier posts). What we know is that the brain responds to new tasks, ideas, demands by making changes to itself. Why do keep denying or ignoring this known fact?
4)Irrelevant. All phases of expansions have been followed by long periods of stasis (= nothing much happens). How does a long period of stasis prove that God dabbled with each smaller brain before it could come up with any new ideas?
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Friday, May 01, 2020, 21:26 (1665 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Only tiny areas!!! From that You invent a theory with no support anywhere.
dhw: You keep harping on about the mini-expansions and ignoring the overall process: HARD THINKING causes changes in the brain. In modern brains, which have stopped expanding, those changes are complexifications and minor expansions (with shrinkage the result of efficient complexification). In earlier brains the change would have been expansion. The focal point is that brains change IN RESPONSE to new ideas, tasks, demands.
Hard thinking caused our brain, the only example we have to shrink 150 cc. Because you've decided you must find a natural cause of expansion, you seized on the tiny expansion in our very different advanced brain to invent the theory that hard thought in the past blew up brains to a much bigger size. Pure imagination can invent a cause for anything.
dhw: Once the new brain is there, it will carry on providing information and implementing ideas until a new “big idea” comes along and demands more information than the existing brain can supply, plus new actions which also entail a learning process. So long as you ignore the importance of the old brain’s new idea based on existing information, you will continued to miss the point that a new idea or task or demand is the trigger for HARD THINKING,which is known to change the brain, and so long as you the dualist continue to attribute thought to the brain, you will continue to contradict yourself.I am inserting numbers to make it easier to respond to your different points.
DAVID: You still don't understand how I view my dualism: REPEAT,1) the soul must use brain neuronal networks to think. Your theory is based on our brain 2) which is totally different from past brains. 3) All we know is hard thinking shrinks our brain. For me God evolved new-sized brains. 4) We see few evidences of massive conceptualization until we learned to use our brain in the past 50,000 years as language developed.
dhw: 1)The dualist’s soul uses the brain to gather information and to implement its thoughts.
Not my theory. The soul must use the brain networks to have thoughts. and of course uses the brain's memory of background information.
dhw: 2)It is not “totally” different (see above). It is a huge advance, but it performs the same functions as earlier brains, although it no longer expands. Complexification has taken over from expansion (apart from minor expansions). The dualist’s soul will have retained everything that was learned from earlier brains, and will have benefited from the increased capacity for obtaining and storing knowledge and for implementing new ideas.
Not exactly my theory, as you present it. The soul works with the brain networks to access the remembered information, and uses the advanced neuronal networks to develop advanced thoughts.
dhw: 3)Hard thinking does not shrink brains (see above and about ten earlier posts). What we know is that the brain responds to new tasks, ideas, demands by making changes to itself. Why do keep denying or ignoring this known fact?
Absurd!!! Where did 150 cc go? Once we sapiens learned to use our new bigger brain, that happened in the past 35,000 years, while we appeared about 315,000 years ago with the current discoveries. 'Learning' is implied by 280,000 years of a persistent larger size and if hard thinking blew it up to larger size, why the gap in time for learning to use?
dhw: 4)Irrelevant. All phases of expansions have been followed by long periods of stasis (= nothing much happens). How does a long period of stasis prove that God dabbled with each smaller brain before it could come up with any new ideas?
The obvious learning periods you call 'stasis' implying nothing was happening in those neurons is totally illogical. At some point in each new stage they invented new artifacts, after an active learning period. The real stasis is your thought in concrete that hard thought blows up brains to new size. Does anyone support your theory?
Brain Expansion
DAVID: Only tiny areas!!! From that You invent a theory with no support anywhere.
dhw: You keep harping on about the mini-expansions and ignoring the overall process: HARD THINKING causes changes in the brain. In modern brains, which have stopped expanding, those changes are complexifications and minor expansions (with shrinkage the result of efficient complexification). In earlier brains the change would have been expansion. The focal point is that brains change IN RESPONSE to new ideas, tasks, demands.
DAVID: Hard thinking caused our brain, the only example we have to shrink 150 cc. Because you've decided you must find a natural cause of expansion, you seized on the tiny expansion in our very different advanced brain to invent the theory that hard thought in the past blew up brains to a much bigger size. Pure imagination can invent a cause for anything.
I don’t know why you continually ignore everything I write on this subject. I did not seize on the tiny expansions, and I have explained shrinkage as being due to the efficiency of complexification (and once upon a time, you agreed). What I seized on is the fact that the modern brain CHANGES IN RESPONSE TO NEW IDEAS, TASKS, DEMANDS. It does not change in anticipation of those ideas, tasks, demands. The changes in the modern brain are complexifications and minor expansions, because for some reason (I offered one which you rejected) the modern brain is no longer expanding. The earlier brain did expand. It is therefore perfectly logical to propose that changes in the earlier brain were also IN RESPONSE TO NEW IDEAS, TASKS, DEMANDS, but the change then was expansion. It is not the tiny expansions but the process that I have “seized on”.
I will skip the references to dualism, as they are dealt with on that thread. Here is your answer to the above:
dhw: 3)Hard thinking does not shrink brains (see above and about ten earlier posts). What we know is that the brain responds to new tasks, ideas, demands by making changes to itself. Why do keep denying or ignoring this known fact?
DAVID: Absurd!!! Where did 150 cc go? Once we sapiens learned to use our new bigger brain, that happened in the past 35,000 years, while we appeared about 315,000 years ago with the current discoveries. 'Learning' is implied by 280,000 years of a persistent larger size and if hard thinking blew it up to larger size, why the gap in time for learning to use?
I have no idea where the 150 cc went. Tell me. And while you’re at it, if hard thinking causes the brain to shrink, do you expect it eventually to be a dot? If our new brain did not produce anything special for 280,000 years, what was it “learning”? Our pre-sapiens ancestors underwent different stages of expansion. After each one, nothing much happened – i.e. there were long periods of “comparative stasis” which were actually far longer than 280,000 years.There may have been mini-improvements (hence “comparative” stasis), but my theory is that the status quo was broken by what I call the “big idea”, which demanded an increase in capacity. After sapiens acquired the larger brain - we don't know what was the "big idea", but the same applies equally to your own theory! – the process repeats itself: newly expanded brain followed by long period of comparative stasis. We don’t know what triggered the leap forward after 280,000 years, but since for whatever reason the brain no longer expanded, the hard thinking led to complexification instead of expansion. Why do you find this illogical?
dhw: 4)All phases of expansions have been followed by long periods of stasis (= nothing much happens). How does a long period of stasis prove that God dabbled with each smaller brain before it could come up with any new ideas?
DAVID: The obvious learning periods you call 'stasis' implying nothing was happening in those neurons is totally illogical. At some point in each new stage they invented new artifacts, after an active learning period.
No doubt something was happening in those neurons all the time, unless you think every homo was a robot. But what was happening during those periods of comparative stasis was not major enough to require expansion. That is why I keep suggesting that each expansion would have resulted from some idea, task, demand which required greater capacity. (We took the first spear as a possible example to illustrate the process.)
DAVID: The real stasis is your thought in concrete that hard thought blows up brains to new size. Does anyone support your theory?
It is only a theory, but you have not yet produced a single argument to counter its logic. I have no idea if the theory is original. Now please tell us who supports the theory that the soul was incapable of producing new ideas until God directly expanded the brains of all the different homos who preceded H. sapiens, although the only brain he actually wanted to produce was that of H. sapiens.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, May 02, 2020, 21:02 (1664 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: I don’t know why you continually ignore everything I write on this subject
Why do you complain? I don't ignore anything you state about expanding brains. I just accept none of it in my explanations.
dhw: The earlier brain did expand. It is therefore perfectly logical to propose that changes in the earlier brain were also IN RESPONSE TO NEW IDEAS, TASKS, DEMANDS, but the change then was expansion. It is not the tiny expansions but the process that I have “seized on”.
Your problem is your need for a natural reason for expansion, but not a God-given one.
dhw: 3)Hard thinking does not shrink brains (see above and about ten earlier posts). What we know is that the brain responds to new tasks, ideas, demands by making changes to itself. Why do keep denying or ignoring this known fact?
DAVID: Absurd!!! Where did 150 cc go? Once we sapiens learned to use our new bigger brain, that happened in the past 35,000 years, while we appeared about 315,000 years ago with the current discoveries. 'Learning' is implied by 280,000 years of a persistent larger size and if hard thinking blew it up to larger size, why the gap in time for learning to use?
dhw: I have no idea where the 150 cc went. Tell me. And while you’re at it, if hard thinking causes the brain to shrink, do you expect it eventually to be a dot?
Ridiculous extension of thought.
dhw: If our new brain did not produce anything special for 280,000 years, what was it “learning”?
How to use it bit by bit. How did you learn your first computer?
dhw: my theory is that the status quo was broken by what I call the “big idea”, which demanded an increase in capacity. After sapiens acquired the larger brain - we don't know what was the "big idea", but the same applies equally to your own theory!
My theory is God did it beforehand. I'm debating the possibility of your totally unsupported natural theory
dhw: 4)All phases of expansions have been followed by long periods of stasis (= nothing much happens). How does a long period of stasis prove that God dabbled with each smaller brain before it could come up with any new ideas?DAVID: The obvious learning periods you call 'stasis' implying nothing was happening in those neurons is totally illogical. At some point in each new stage they invented new artifacts, after an active learning period.
dhw: No doubt something was happening in those neurons all the time, unless you think every homo was a robot. But what was happening during those periods of comparative stasis was not major enough to require expansion. That is why I keep suggesting that each expansion would have resulted from some idea, task, demand which required greater capacity. (We took the first spear as a possible example to illustrate the process.)
DAVID: The real stasis is your thought in concrete that hard thought blows up brains to new size. Does anyone support your theory?
dhw: It is only a theory, but you have not yet produced a single argument to counter its logic. I have no idea if the theory is original. Now please tell us who supports the theory that the soul was incapable of producing new ideas until God directly expanded the brains of all the different homos who preceded H. sapiens, although the only brain he actually wanted to produce was that of H. sapiens.
All of ID supports the theory that a designer made each advance. Each major advance needs a new sized complex brain. See the next entry re erectus and language. Note the author assumes the new enlargement just appeared, no reason for the enlargement a given.
Brain Expansion: enlargement and language
by David Turell , Saturday, May 02, 2020, 21:34 (1664 days ago) @ David Turell
A very long essay claiming erectus had early language and speech:
https://aeon.co/essays/tools-and-voyages-suggest-that-homo-erectus-invented-language
"we need to travel back in time at least 1.9 million years ago to the birth of Homo erectus, as they emerged from the ancient process of primate evolution. Erectus had nearly double the brain size of any previous hominin, walked habitually upright, were superb hunters, travelled the world, and sailed to ocean islands. And somewhere along the way they got language. Yes, erectus. Not Neanderthals. Not sapiens. And if erectus invented language, this means that Neanderthals, born more than a million years later, entered a world already linguistic.
***
"Erectus was an imposing creature. Males stood between 173 cm and 180 cm. Their immediate ancestors, the Australopithecine males, were only about 137 cm tall (their immediate ancestors might have been Homo habilis, but only if we accept that habilis were not Australopithecines, or that they were a separate species from Homo erectus, neither of which is clear). The brains of these early humans averaged around 950 cubic centimetres in volume, double the size of the Australopithecines, though smaller than those of male Neanderthals (1,450 ccs) and sapiens (1,250-1,300 ccs), but still within the range of modern sapiens females. The vocal apparatus of erectus might not have been much more advanced than that of a modern gorilla or it might have been more similar to ours. But whether their speech sounded different than ours or not, it was nevertheless adequate for language.
"Evidence that erectus had language comes from their settlements, their art, their symbols, their sailing ability and their tools. Erectus settlements are found throughout most of the old world. And, most importantly for the idea that erectus had language, open oceans were not barriers to their travel.
***
"Evidence from the erectus settlement studied at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov in Israel, for example, suggests not only that erectus controlled fire but that their settlements were planned. One area was used for plant-food processing, another for animal-material processing, and yet another for communal life. Erectus, incredibly, also made sea craft. Sea travel is the only way to explain the island settlements of Wallacea (Indonesia), Crete and, in the Arabian Sea, Socotra. None of these were accessible to erectus except by crossing open ocean, then and now. These island cultural sites demonstrate that erectus was capable of constructing seaworthy crafts capable of carrying 20 people or more. According to most archaeologists, 20 individuals would have been the minimum required to found the settlements discovered.
***
"Erectus had relative shortcomings of course, beyond possibly lacking the range of sounds of modern humans. It also lacked the modern form of the important FOXP2 gene that sapiens have. Do the shortcomings of vocal apparatus and primitive genes pose a problem for the idea that erectus had language? Not at all. For example, the evolution of speech was triggered by language – as we developed languages, the modes of expressing them improved over time. Yes, sapiens speech is likely better than erectus speech. But this doesn’t mean that erectus lacked speech. Any mammal could have speech with the sounds they are capable of producing today. They just need the right kind of brain. The sapiens version of FOXP2 helps us to articulate sounds more easily and to think more quickly and efficiently than erectus. But it is not a ‘language gene’. And though erectus might have had, as it were, the ‘Model T’ version of this gene while we possess the ‘Tesla version’, their ‘primitive’ FOXP2 would not have deprived them of language. FOXP2 and other genes adapted partially due to evolutionary pressure from language and culture. (my bold)
***
"Erectus was physically capable of at least as many sounds as a gorilla or my laptop’s binary language. In fact, even with the same vocal apparatus, erectus likely could have made many more sounds than gorillas because of its more advanced brain. Chimps don’t talk because they don’t have the brains to support symbols, not because they lack the right vocal apparatus.
***
"The conclusion that erectus invented language through their higher intelligence and cultural development is strong, as evidenced by the archaeological record. But if language is merely a technology based on symbols and grammar, other creatures could have also discovered it. If they didn’t, it would be because they lack culture. "
Comment: McCrone, my resident expert on early language and speech thought erectus could easily manage five simple words a minute (PG. 128 in SVR book). Note my bold which states your idea and I agree with it: all authors assume the brain simply enlarged, no cause give other than evolution did it. The key thought for me is the bold which makes the point that only a large advanced brain can produce the artifacts such as language. And I think you have the whole process backward. Only an advanced brain can have advanced thoughts. You want the thought before the brain is capable of it. We will never agree on this point. Very long essay, worth reading, since it encapsulates all the amazing things erectus did.
Brain Expansion: enlargement and language
DAVID: A very long essay claiming erectus had early language and speech:
https://aeon.co/essays/tools-and-voyages-suggest-that-homo-erectus-invented-language
QUOTE bolded by David: Any mammal could have speech with the sounds they are capable of producing today. They just need the right kind of brain.
DAVID: McCrone, my resident expert on early language and speech thought erectus could easily manage five simple words a minute (PG. 128 in SVR book). Note my bold which states your idea and I agree with it: all authors assume the brain simply enlarged, no cause give other than evolution did it. The key thought for me is the bold which makes the point that only a large advanced brain can produce the artifacts such as language. And I think you have the whole process backward. Only an advanced brain can have advanced thoughts. You want the thought before the brain is capable of it. We will never agree on this point.
Thank you for this fascinating article and for editing it for us. First of all, it is absurd to imagine that any mammal or for that matter any life form can continue to exist without some form of “language” (i.e. means of communication), but this will depend on what kind of communication the body allows. The production of sound depends on the brain and its connections with the sound-producing organs. This is all blindingly obvious. The “key thought” that you have extrapolated from your bold ignores the question of how the brain and the organs developed the ability to produce the sounds of human language. And that is what brings us straight back to the discussion under brain expansion. Yet again (my bold), you have the brain having advanced thoughts, and the brain being capable of thought. This may well be so, but I don't want to digress here with the materialistic version of my theory, and will therefore stick to your professed dualism. In dualism it is the soul that does the thinking, while using the brain for information and implementation (you added memory to this). We know that hard thinking changes the modern brain. Thought precedes speech. The soul has something to express, sound is the medium through which it is to be expressed, and the brain and the sound-producing organs are the material means that enable implementation. If we accept the findings relating to the modern brain, then it is the effort to give material expression to the thought that changes the brain and, in this case,I suggest it would change the sound-producing organs as well. In other words, based on processes that govern the only brain we know, you have the whole process backwards: thought precedes brain change.
Brain Expansion: enlargement and language
by David Turell , Sunday, May 03, 2020, 14:56 (1663 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: A very long essay claiming erectus had early language and speech:
https://aeon.co/essays/tools-and-voyages-suggest-that-homo-erectus-invented-languageQUOTE bolded by David: Any mammal could have speech with the sounds they are capable of producing today. They just need the right kind of brain.
DAVID: McCrone, my resident expert on early language and speech thought erectus could easily manage five simple words a minute (PG. 128 in SVR book). Note my bold which states your idea and I agree with it: all authors assume the brain simply enlarged, no cause give other than evolution did it. The key thought for me is the bold which makes the point that only a large advanced brain can produce the artifacts such as language. And I think you have the whole process backward. Only an advanced brain can have advanced thoughts. You want the thought before the brain is capable of it. We will never agree on this point.
dhw: Thank you for this fascinating article and for editing it for us. First of all, it is absurd to imagine that any mammal or for that matter any life form can continue to exist without some form of “language” (i.e. means of communication), but this will depend on what kind of communication the body allows. The production of sound depends on the brain and its connections with the sound-producing organs. This is all blindingly obvious. The “key thought” that you have extrapolated from your bold ignores the question of how the brain and the organs developed the ability to produce the sounds of human language. And that is what brings us straight back to the discussion under brain expansion. Yet again (my bold), you have the brain having advanced thoughts, and the brain being capable of thought. This may well be so, but I don't want to digress here with the materialistic version of my theory, and will therefore stick to your professed dualism. In dualism it is the soul that does the thinking, while using the brain for information and implementation (you added memory to this). We know that hard thinking changes the modern brain. Thought precedes speech. The soul has something to express, sound is the medium through which it is to be expressed, and the brain and the sound-producing organs are the material means that enable implementation. If we accept the findings relating to the modern brain, then it is the effort to give material expression to the thought that changes the brain and, in this case,I suggest it would change the sound-producing organs as well. In other words, based on processes that govern the only brain we know, you have the whole process backwards: thought precedes brain change.
In the bold you have given your definition of dualism, which is not mine. Repeated again: My dualism believes my soul is my essence and in life uses my brain to think. The soul can only think by itself when detached from my brain in death. NDE's fit this concept beautifully.
As for your backward approach to the evolution of the brain, I am fully convinced the level of advanced complex thought produced by the soul using the brain is dependent upon the advanced complexity of the brain the soul uses.
Brain Expansion
dhw: The earlier brain did expand. It is therefore perfectly logical to propose that changes in the earlier brain were also IN RESPONSE TO NEW IDEAS, TASKS, DEMANDS, but the change then was expansion. It is not the tiny expansions but the process that I have “seized on”.
DAVID: Your problem is your need for a natural reason for expansion, but not a God-given one.
So you ignore the logic of the above, and also ignore the fact that I have always allowed for the mechanism to be “God-given”. I do not have a fixed agenda but am merely trying to find a logical solution to a mystery.
dhw: 3)Hard thinking does not shrink brains (see above and about ten earlier posts). What we know is that the brain responds to new tasks, ideas, demands by making changes to itself. Why do keep denying or ignoring this known fact?
DAVID: Absurd!!! Where did 150 cc go? Once we sapiens learned to use our new bigger brain, that happened in the past 35,000 years, while we appeared about 315,000 years ago with the current discoveries. 'Learning' is implied by 280,000 years of a persistent larger size and if hard thinking blew it up to larger size, why the gap in time for learning to use?
dhw: I have no idea where the 150 cc went. Tell me. And while you’re at it, if hard thinking causes the brain to shrink, do you expect it eventually to be a dot?
DAVID: Ridiculous extension of thought.
So stop telling us that hard thought shrinks the brain. It doesn’t. Hard thought complexifies the brain, and as a result of the efficiency of complexification, 150 cc disappeared. You asked where it went. Tell us your theory.
dhw: If our new brain did not produce anything special for 280,000 years, what was it “learning”?
DAVID: How to use it bit by bit. How did you learn your first computer?
I learned to use my first computer bit by bit. What do you think early sapiens learned bit by bit for 280,000 years? What are the little bits and pieces that show gradual improvement over 280,000 years? You keep telling us that it was only in the last 35,000 years that we came up with the “current discoveries”! So there was a period of comparative stasis until along came the new “big ideas” – the same process I keep proposing for all the different stages of brain expansion. But in sapiens these ideas would have led to complexification.
dhw: ...my theory is that the status quo was broken by what I call the “big idea”, which demanded an increase in capacity. After sapiens acquired the larger brain - we don't know what was the "big idea", but the same applies equally to your own theory! – the process repeats itself.
DAVID: My theory is God did it beforehand. I'm debating the possibility of your totally unsupported natural theory.
I know your own “totally unsupported theory”. And I am waiting for some logical reason why you should reject the possibility that earlier brains might have changed (by expanding) in response to new ideas, tasks, demands, just as modern brains do (by complexifying and mini-expanding).
dhw: It is only a theory, but you have not yet produced a single argument to counter its logic. I have no idea if the theory is original. Now please tell us who supports [your theory]…see below].
DAVID: All of ID supports the theory that a designer made each advance. Each major advance needs a new sized complex brain. See the next entry re erectus and language. Note the author assumes the new enlargement just appeared, no reason for the enlargement a given.
None of these articles give a reason – that is not their concern. So you can’t use them as an argument against my theory. You say nobody supports my theory. I know ID-ers support the argument for design, but I asked you who supported the theory that the soul was incapable of producing new ideas until God directly expanded the brains of all the different homos who preceded H. sapiens, although the only brain he actually wanted to produce was that of H. sapiens. Even if somebody did, it still wouldn’t alter the fact that you have so far been
unable to produce a single argument against the logic of my theory.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, May 03, 2020, 15:26 (1663 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: So stop telling us that hard thought shrinks the brain. It doesn’t. Hard thought complexifies the brain, and as a result of the efficiency of complexification, 150 cc disappeared. You asked where it went. Tell us your theory.
You've told us. Our special brain can complexify, and by increasing certain networks of neurons remove other areas as now unnecessary.
dhw: If our new brain did not produce anything special for 280,000 years, what was it “learning”?DAVID: How to use it bit by bit. How did you learn your first computer?
dhw: I learned to use my first computer bit by bit. What do you think early sapiens learned bit by bit for 280,000 years? What are the little bits and pieces that show gradual improvement over 280,000 years? You keep telling us that it was only in the last 35,000 years that we came up with the “current discoveries”! So there was a period of comparative stasis until along came the new “big ideas” – the same process I keep proposing for all the different stages of brain expansion. But in sapiens these ideas would have led to complexification.
So you have again agreed our brain is different from the past. Which makes your seizing on tiny areas of growth in our brain offering no basis for assuming hard thought grew ancient brains in past early forms of hominins.
dhw: ...my theory is that the status quo was broken by what I call the “big idea”, which demanded an increase in capacity. After sapiens acquired the larger brain - we don't know what was the "big idea", but the same applies equally to your own theory! – the process repeats itself.DAVID: My theory is God did it beforehand. I'm debating the possibility of your totally unsupported natural theory.
dhw: I know your own “totally unsupported theory”. And I am waiting for some logical reason why you should reject the possibility that earlier brains might have changed (by expanding) in response to new ideas, tasks, demands, just as modern brains do (by complexifying and mini-expanding).
We don't know how speciation works, but I'll repeat God does it.
dhw: It is only a theory, but you have not yet produced a single argument to counter its logic. I have no idea if the theory is original. Now please tell us who supports [your theory]…see below].DAVID: All of ID supports the theory that a designer made each advance. Each major advance needs a new sized complex brain. See the next entry re erectus and language. Note the author assumes the new enlargement just appeared, no reason for the enlargement a given.
dhw: None of these articles give a reason – that is not their concern. So you can’t use them as an argument against my theory. You say nobody supports my theory. I know ID-ers support the argument for design, but I asked you who supported the theory that the soul was incapable of producing new ideas until God directly expanded the brains of all the different homos who preceded H. sapiens, although the only brain he actually wanted to produce was that of H. sapiens. Even if somebody did, it still wouldn’t alter the fact that you have so far been unable to produce a single argument against the logic of my theory.
You theory is not logical. It is wishful thinking, a total invention taken from the fact our special brain enlarges tiny areas as it complexifies.
Brain Expansion
dhw: So stop telling us that hard thought shrinks the brain. It doesn’t. Hard thought complexifies the brain, and as a result of the efficiency of complexification, 150 cc disappeared. You asked where it went. Tell us your theory.
DAVID: You've told us. Our special brain can complexify, and by increasing certain networks of neurons remove other areas as now unnecessary.
So why do you keep harping on about hard thinking being the cause of shrinkage when you agree that it is the result of efficient complexification?
dhw: If our new brain did not produce anything special for 280,000 years, what was it “learning”?
DAVID: How to use it bit by bit. How did you learn your first computer?
dhw: I learned to use my first computer bit by bit. What do you think early sapiens learned bit by bit for 280,000 years? What are the little bits and pieces that show gradual improvement over 280,000 years? You keep telling us that it was only in the last 35,000 years that we came up with the “current discoveries”! So there was a period of comparative stasis until along came the new “big ideas” – the same process I keep proposing for all the different stages of brain expansion. But in sapiens these ideas would have led to complexification.
DAVID: So you have again agreed our brain is different from the past. Which makes your seizing on tiny areas of growth in our brain offering no basis for assuming hard thought grew ancient brains in past early forms of hominins.
Thank you for dropping the silly argument about the brain “learning” for 280,000 years. Now please drop the silly repetition of my “seizing on” tiny areas of growth when I have told you umpteen times that I am seizing on the known PROCESS whereby hard thinking changes the brain. And yes, our brain is different: it no longer expands but complexifies. And it is far more complex than earlier brains.
dhw: ...my theory is that the status quo was broken by what I call the “big idea”, which demanded an increase in capacity. After sapiens acquired the larger brain - we don't know what was the "big idea", but the same applies equally to your own theory! – the process repeats itself.
DAVID: My theory is God did it beforehand. I'm debating the possibility of your totally unsupported natural theory.
dhw: I know your own “totally unsupported theory”. And I am waiting for some logical reason why you should reject the possibility that earlier brains might have changed (by expanding) in response to new ideas, tasks, demands, just as modern brains do (by complexifying and mini-expanding).
DAVID: We don't know how speciation works, but I'll repeat God does it.
You went on to say my theory had no support, you claimed that ID supported your theory but it doesn’t (you ignored that paragraph) and finished with the same erroneous “seize on tiny enlargements”, once again totally ignoring the all-important fact that the modern brain changes IN RESPONSE to hard thinking. I’m sorry, but your repetition of “God does it” does not provide a single logical reason for rejecting my theory!
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Monday, May 04, 2020, 18:29 (1662 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: So stop telling us that hard thought shrinks the brain. It doesn’t. Hard thought complexifies the brain, and as a result of the efficiency of complexification, 150 cc disappeared. You asked where it went. Tell us your theory.
DAVID: You've told us. Our special brain can complexify, and by increasing certain networks of neurons remove other areas as now unnecessary.
dhw: So why do you keep harping on about hard thinking being the cause of shrinkage when you agree that it is the result of efficient complexification?
Because it underscores my point that we have a special brain with this remarkable degree of complexification that can cause that much shrinkage, unlike, any previous brain
dhw: If our new brain did not produce anything special for 280,000 years, what was it “learning”?DAVID: How to use it bit by bit. How did you learn your first computer?
dhw: I learned to use my first computer bit by bit. What do you think early sapiens learned bit by bit for 280,000 years? What are the little bits and pieces that show gradual improvement over 280,000 years? You keep telling us that it was only in the last 35,000 years that we came up with the “current discoveries”! So there was a period of comparative stasis until along came the new “big ideas” – the same process I keep proposing for all the different stages of brain expansion. But in sapiens these ideas would have led to complexification.
DAVID: So you have again agreed our brain is different from the past. Which makes your seizing on tiny areas of growth in our brain offering no basis for assuming hard thought grew ancient brains in past early forms of hominins.
dhw: Thank you for dropping the silly argument about the brain “learning” for 280,000 years. Now please drop the silly repetition of my “seizing on” tiny areas of growth when I have told you umpteen times that I am seizing on the known PROCESS whereby hard thinking changes the brain. And yes, our brain is different: it no longer expands but complexifies. And it is far more complex than earlier brains.
Thank you. then way seize upon tiny enlargements as allowing you to invent a major growth ability from hard thinking in earlier primitive brains? It simply shows a desperation for a natural cause for large brain evolution.
dhw: ...my theory is that the status quo was broken by what I call the “big idea”, which demanded an increase in capacity. After sapiens acquired the larger brain - we don't know what was the "big idea", but the same applies equally to your own theory! – the process repeats itself.DAVID: My theory is God did it beforehand. I'm debating the possibility of your totally unsupported natural theory.
dhw: I know your own “totally unsupported theory”. And I am waiting for some logical reason why you should reject the possibility that earlier brains might have changed (by expanding) in response to new ideas, tasks, demands, just as modern brains do (by complexifying and mini-expanding).
DAVID: We don't know how speciation works, but I'll repeat God does it.
dhw: You went on to say my theory had no support, you claimed that ID supported your theory but it doesn’t (you ignored that paragraph) and finished with the same erroneous “seize on tiny enlargements”, once again totally ignoring the all-important fact that the modern brain changes IN RESPONSE to hard thinking. I’m sorry, but your repetition of “God does it” does not provide a single logical reason for rejecting my theory!
I view it as a total invention based on our very special advanced brain that is nothing like previous additions. Any way you describe it, I think it is a total pipe dream. I'll stick with God running evolution to the point of this brain appearing.
Brain Expansion
dhw: So stop telling us that hard thought shrinks the brain. It doesn’t. Hard thought complexifies the brain, and as a result of the efficiency of complexification, 150 cc disappeared. You asked where it went. Tell us your theory.
DAVID: You've told us. Our special brain can complexify, and by increasing certain networks of neurons remove other areas as now unnecessary.
dhw: So why do you keep harping on about hard thinking being the cause of shrinkage when you agree that it is the result of efficient complexification?
DAVID: Because it underscores my point that we have a special brain with this remarkable degree of complexification that can cause that much shrinkage, unlike, any previous brain.
Yes, it is special, and yes it has a remarkable degree of complexification. That does not mean hard thinking causes the brain to shrink, and it does not mean that if hard thinking CAUSES changes to the modern brain, it could not have CAUSED changes to the earlier brain.
dhw: Thank you for dropping the silly argument about the brain “learning” for 280,000 years. Now please drop the silly repetition of my “seizing on” tiny areas of growth when I have told you umpteen times that I am seizing on the known PROCESS whereby hard thinking changes the brain. And yes, our brain is different: it no longer expands but complexifies. And it is far more complex than earlier brains.
DAVID: Thank you. then way seize upon tiny enlargements as allowing you to invent a major growth ability from hard thinking in earlier primitive brains? It simply shows a desperation for a natural cause for large brain evolution.
As bolded above and repeated umpteen times, I have not seized upon tiny enlargements. I have seized upon the known PROCESS whereby hard thinking changes the brain. I see no logical reason why the process should have been the exact opposite in earlier brains. Your constant misrepresentation of what I keep bolding is a sign, I’m afraid, of your “desperation” to ignore the possibility that your God might have organized evolution in a different way from the way you want him to.
DAVID: We don't know how speciation works, but I'll repeat God does it.
dhw: I’m sorry, but your repetition of “God does it” does not provide a single logical reason for rejecting my theory!
DAVID: I view it as a total invention based on our very special advanced brain that is nothing like previous additions. Any way you describe it, I think it is a total pipe dream. I'll stick with God running evolution to the point of this brain appearing.
And still the only fault you can find with my theory is that it is a different pipe dream from yours.
DAVID (under “Dualism”): As for you comment about brain enlargement, my position still is God did it. Your convoluted twist about the archaeological articles dating brain size and artifacts and not really knowing when each aspect occurred is pure sophistry. The assumption in the articles is obvious.
If my theory is correct, each expansion is preceded by something that requires expansion. If the “something” is an artefact, let’s say the very first spear, then the very first spear will exist when the brain has finished expanding. Is this too convoluted for you? And why do you think the argument is designed to deceive you? As for the articles, they assume nothing. They simply do not deal with the subject. Nobody, including yourself, has yet come up with a generally accepted explanation for the series of expansions.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, May 05, 2020, 19:18 (1661 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Because it underscores my point that we have a special brain with this remarkable degree of complexification that can cause that much shrinkage, unlike, any previous brain.
dhw: Yes, it is special, and yes it has a remarkable degree of complexification. That does not mean hard thinking causes the brain to shrink, and it does not mean that if hard thinking CAUSES changes to the modern brain, it could not have CAUSED changes to the earlier brain.
This is at a level of anything is possible. Yours is pure invention.
dhw: As bolded above and repeated umpteen times, I have not seized upon tiny enlargements. I have seized upon the known PROCESS whereby hard thinking changes the brain. I see no logical reason why the process should have been the exact opposite in earlier brains. Your constant misrepresentation of what I keep bolding is a sign, I’m afraid, of your “desperation” to ignore the possibility that your God might have organized evolution in a different way from the way you want him to.
I'm not desperate. I see evolution as a production by God. I don't invent the impression everyone has that larger brains/souls produce better artifacts. You idea is a total distortion of what is generally accepted.
DAVID: I view it as a total invention based on our very special advanced brain that is nothing like previous additions. Any way you describe it, I think it is a total pipe dream. I'll stick with God running evolution to the point of this brain appearing.dhw: And still the only fault you can find with my theory is that it is a different pipe dream from yours.
My faith in God is not a pipe dream
DAVID (under “Dualism”): As for you comment about brain enlargement, my position still is God did it. Your convoluted twist about the archaeological articles dating brain size and artifacts and not really knowing when each aspect occurred is pure sophistry. The assumption in the articles is obvious.dhw: If my theory is correct, each expansion is preceded by something that requires expansion. If the “something” is an artefact, let’s say the very first spear, then the very first spear will exist when the brain has finished expanding. Is this too convoluted for you? And why do you think the argument is designed to deceive you? As for the articles, they assume nothing. They simply do not deal with the subject. Nobody, including yourself, has yet come up with a generally accepted explanation for the series of expansions.
The articles assume evolution provided the expansion. You convoluted explanation is your imagination at work, with the premise that any proposal is possible. Can you find some one else to convince? It won't be me.
Brain Expansion
DAVID: ... it underscores my point that we have a special brain with this remarkable degree of complexification that can cause that much shrinkage, unlike, any previous brain.
dhw: Yes, it is special, and yes it has a remarkable degree of complexification. That does not mean hard thinking causes the brain to shrink, and it does not mean that if hard thinking CAUSES changes to the modern brain, it could not have CAUSED changes to the earlier brain.
DAVID: This is at a level of anything is possible. Yours is pure invention.
If it is a known fact that hard thinking causes changes to the modern brain, why is not possible that hard thinking also caused changes to the ancient brain? And why is this on a different “level” to ancient souls being incapable of having new thoughts until God enlarged their brains?
dhw: As bolded above and repeated umpteen times, I have not seized upon tiny enlargements. I have seized upon the known PROCESS whereby hard thinking changes the brain. I see no logical reason why the process should have been the exact opposite in earlier brains. Your constant misrepresentation of what I keep bolding is a sign, I’m afraid, of your “desperation” to ignore the possibility that your God might have organized evolution in a different way from the way you want him to.
DAVID: I'm not desperate. I see evolution as a production by God. I don't invent the impression everyone has that larger brains/souls produce better artifacts. You idea is a total distortion of what is generally accepted. And later: The articles assume evolution provided the expansion. You convoluted explanation is your imagination at work, with the premise that any proposal is possible. Can you find some one else to convince? It won't be me.
I didn’t know souls also expanded. That’s a new twist. Of course larger brains produce better artefacts! But nobody knows why brains expanded in the first place! There is no “generally accepted” theory. Yours is that God did it, and only then could the soul think new thoughts. Is this “generally accepted”? Evolution “providing the expansion” does not explain what might have been the cause. But I suppose I had better repeat for the umpteenth time that once each brain had expanded, the bigger brain would have continued to produce better artefacts than the previous brain until the next “big idea” required further expansion.
DAVID: I view it as a total invention based on our very special advanced brain that is nothing like previous additions. Any way you describe it, I think it is a total pipe dream. I'll stick with God running evolution to the point of this brain appearing.
dhw: And still the only fault you can find with my theory is that it is a different pipe dream from yours.
DAVID: My faith in God is not a pipe dream.
I didn’t say it was. It is your rigid faith in your subjective interpretation of your God’s thoughts, intentions and methods that produce theories which are certainly no less of a pipe dream than my alternative theories about his possible thoughts, intentions and methods.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, May 06, 2020, 21:09 (1660 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: ... it underscores my point that we have a special brain with this remarkable degree of complexification that can cause that much shrinkage, unlike, any previous brain.
dhw: Yes, it is special, and yes it has a remarkable degree of complexification. That does not mean hard thinking causes the brain to shrink, and it does not mean that if hard thinking CAUSES changes to the modern brain, it could not have CAUSED changes to the earlier brain.
DAVID: This is at a level of anything is possible. Yours is pure invention.
dhw: If it is a known fact that hard thinking causes changes to the modern brain, why is not possible that hard thinking also caused changes to the ancient brain? And why is this on a different “level” to ancient souls being incapable of having new thoughts until God enlarged their brains?
As antecedent brains, the ancient ones may have had some tiny growth areas from complexification as ours does currently. I'll stick with the declaration that an ancient brain/soul could only think to the level that its complexity allowed.
DAVID: I'm not desperate. I see evolution as a production by God. I don't invent the impression everyone has that larger brains/souls produce better artifacts. You idea is a total distortion of what is generally accepted. And later: The articles assume evolution provided the expansion. You convoluted explanation is your imagination at work, with the premise that any proposal is possible. Can you find some one else to convince? It won't be me.dhw: I didn’t know souls also expanded. That’s a new twist. Of course larger brains produce better artefacts! But nobody knows why brains expanded in the first place! There is no “generally accepted” theory. Yours is that God did it, and only then could the soul think new thoughts. Is this “generally accepted”? Evolution “providing the expansion” does not explain what might have been the cause. But I suppose I had better repeat for the umpteenth time that once each brain had expanded, the bigger brain would have continued to produce better artefacts than the previous brain until the next “big idea” required further expansion.
I can accept that much bolded of your hopeful wishful theory. As for souls expanding, I included the brain/soul complex so you refrain from pouncing.
DAVID: I view it as a total invention based on our very special advanced brain that is nothing like previous additions. Any way you describe it, I think it is a total pipe dream. I'll stick with God running evolution to the point of this brain appearing.dhw: And still the only fault you can find with my theory is that it is a different pipe dream from yours.
DAVID: My faith in God is not a pipe dream.
dhw: I didn’t say it was. It is your rigid faith in your subjective interpretation of your God’s thoughts, intentions and methods that produce theories which are certainly no less of a pipe dream than my alternative theories about his possible thoughts, intentions and methods.
I wish we could go before a jury of our clear thinking peers to see who would win this debate. Of course I favor me.
Brain Expansion
dhw: If it is a known fact that hard thinking causes changes to the modern brain, why is not possible that hard thinking also caused changes to the ancient brain? And why is this on a different “level” to ancient souls being incapable of having new thoughts until God enlarged their brains?[/i]
DAVID: As antecedent brains, the ancient ones may have had some tiny growth areas from complexification as ours does currently. I'll stick with the declaration that an ancient brain/soul could only think to the level that its complexity allowed.
It is not “tiny growth areas” we are discussing, but the process that leads to brain change! Sticking to your beliefs does not provide any answer to my two questions, now bolded.
dhw: […] I suppose I had better repeat for the umpteenth time that once each brain had expanded, the bigger brain would have continued to produce better artefacts than the previous brain until the next “big idea” required further expansion.
DAVID: I can accept that much bolded of your hopeful wishful theory.
Thank you. I only repeated it because of your continued refusal to focus on the process whereby the initial thought (“kill from distance”) would come from the smaller brain, and the implementation of the initial thought would expand the brain, so that the FIRST artefacts would only appear once the brain had finished expanding. You only focus on the fact that artefacts and bigger brains are found together.
dhw: And still the only fault you can find with my theory is that it is a different pipe dream from yours.
DAVID: My faith in God is not a pipe dream.
dhw: I didn’t say it was. It is your rigid faith in your subjective interpretation of your God’s thoughts, intentions and methods that produce theories which are certainly no less of a pipe dream than my alternative theories about his possible thoughts, intentions and methods.
DAVID: I wish we could go before a jury of our clear thinking peers to see who would win this debate. Of course I favor me.
You still haven’t explained why my theory, extrapolated from known facts, is more of a pipe dream than yours, which is based on no facts at all.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, May 07, 2020, 20:25 (1659 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: […] I suppose I had better repeat for the umpteenth time that once each brain had expanded, the bigger brain would have continued to produce better artefacts than the previous brain until the next “big idea” required further expansion.
DAVID: I can accept that much bolded of your hopeful wishful theory.
dhw: Thank you. I only repeated it because of your continued refusal to focus on the process whereby the initial thought (“kill from distance”) would come from the smaller brain, and the implementation of the initial thought would expand the brain, so that the FIRST artefacts would only appear once the brain had finished expanding. You only focus on the fact that artefacts and bigger brains are found together.
The bold is the only fact we have. You have totally invented a wishful thought that the previous smaller brain was able to conceive of the design of a new artifact but had to wait for or force the expansion of a bigger brain to get it manufactured. A very inventive tortured inventionof a theory, allowed to appear by you only because the actual cause of brain expansion is never discussed in archaeological articles, and you hide behind that. What archaeologists accept/think is obvious. Bigger brain =s better artifacts.
dhw: And still the only fault you can find with my theory is that it is a different pipe dream from yours.DAVID: My faith in God is not a pipe dream.
dhw: I didn’t say it was. It is your rigid faith in your subjective interpretation of your God’s thoughts, intentions and methods that produce theories which are certainly no less of a pipe dream than my alternative theories about his possible thoughts, intentions and methods.
DAVID: I wish we could go before a jury of our clear thinking peers to see who would win this debate. Of course I favor me.
dhw: You still haven’t explained why my theory, extrapolated from known facts, is more of a pipe dream than yours, which is based on no facts at all.
Remember, I still have faith in God who ran evolution.
Brain Expansion
dhw: […] I suppose I had better repeat for the umpteenth time that once each brain had expanded, the bigger brain would have continued to produce better artefacts than the previous brain until the next “big idea” required further expansion.
DAVID: I can accept that much bolded of your hopeful wishful theory.
dhw: Thank you. I only repeated it because of your continued refusal to focus on the process whereby the initial thought (“kill from distance”) would come from the smaller brain, and the implementation of the initial thought would expand the brain, so that the FIRST artefacts would only appear once the brain had finished expanding. You only focus on the fact that artefacts and bigger brains are found together.
DAVID: The bold is the only fact we have. You have totally invented a wishful thought that the previous smaller brain was able to conceive of the design of a new artifact but had to wait for or force the expansion of a bigger brain to get it manufactured.
The bold fact does not explain why the brain expanded! I am not wishing; I am looking for an explanation. We have another fact: the modern brain changes in response to “hard thinking”. You never answer my next question: why is it illogical to propose that the ancient brain may also have changed in response to “hard thinking”? Your attempt to reproduce my theory is off the mark as usual. A dualist would say that the soul of the homo with the smaller brain (the materialist could say the thinking part of the brain) was able to conceive – not the design but the basic idea of a new artefact (our example: some means or other of killing from a distance). The brain doesn’t wait for or force an expansion to get it manufactured. The soul (or thinking part of the brain) then begins the process of developing the idea, the design, and the manufacture.This process CAUSES the brain to expand. And we know that in the modern brain, hard thinking CAUSES the brain to respond by complexifying.
DAVID: A very inventive tortured invention of a theory, allowed to appear by you only because the actual cause of brain expansion is never discussed in archaeological articles, and you hide behind that. What archaeologists accept/think is obvious. Bigger brain =s better artifacts.
I don’t hide behind anything. The cause of expansion is not known, and the articles don’t offer an explanation. For the umpteenth time, yes bigger brain = better artefacts. But that doesn’t tell us why the brain got bigger in the first place! I shan’t repeat the point about the FIRST artefacts being the cause, because you will simply go on ignoring it, while you also distort the process I keep describing (as bolded above).
dhw: You still haven’t explained why my theory, extrapolated from known facts, is more of a pipe dream than yours, which is based on no facts at all.
DAVID: Remember, I still have faith in God who ran evolution.
Even if I put on my theist’s hat, God dabbling brain expansions before necessary is no less of a pipe dream than God providing brains with the means of expanding themselves when necessary.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Friday, May 08, 2020, 19:39 (1658 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: I only repeated it because of your continued refusal to focus on the process whereby the initial thought (“kill from distance”) would come from the smaller brain, and the implementation of the initial thought would expand the brain, so that the FIRST artefacts would only appear once the brain had finished expanding. You only focus on the fact that artefacts and bigger brains are found together.
DAVID: The bold is the only fact we have. You have totally invented a wishful thought that the previous smaller brain was able to conceive of the design of a new artifact but had to wait for or force the expansion of a bigger brain to get it manufactured.
dhw: The bold fact does not explain why the brain expanded! I am not wishing; I am looking for an explanation. We have another fact: the modern brain changes in response to “hard thinking”. You never answer my next question: why is it illogical to propose that the ancient brain may also have changed in response to “hard thinking”?
I have answered without you responding that I can remember. Older brains are the antecedent forms and may well have some complexification ability resulting in slight enlargement of designated areas as our very special advanced brain does.
dhw: Your attempt to reproduce my theory is off the mark as usual. A dualist would say that the soul of the homo with the smaller brain (the materialist could say the thinking part of the brain) was able to conceive – not the design but the basic idea of a new artefact (our example: some means or other of killing from a distance). The brain doesn’t wait for or force an expansion to get it manufactured. The soul (or thinking part of the brain) then begins the process of developing the idea, the design, and the manufacture.This process CAUSES the brain to expand. And we know that in the modern brain, hard thinking CAUSES the brain to respond by complexifying.
A complete distortion of how our brain reacts to deep thought. First we know it shrank 150 cc from more concentrated thought as we learned how to use our brain over the past 35,000 years. And we know that the complexification mechanism causes that shrinkage by enlarging tiny special highly efficient areas to handle the new concepts. Applying this, to invent a way that ancient brains enlarged, in not only wishful thinking, it is a distinct distortion of what we know as fact, and enters the woolly area of supposing 'anything suggested is possible'. Remember the comment above. Our special brain undoubtedly represents similar processes from the past.
DAVID: A very inventive tortured invention of a theory, allowed to appear by you only because the actual cause of brain expansion is never discussed in archaeological articles, and you hide behind that. What archaeologists accept/think is obvious. Bigger brain =s better artifacts.dhw: I don’t hide behind anything. The cause of expansion is not known, and the articles don’t offer an explanation. For the umpteenth time, yes bigger brain = better artefacts. But that doesn’t tell us why the brain got bigger in the first place! I shan’t repeat the point about the FIRST artefacts being the cause, because you will simply go on ignoring it, while you also distort the process I keep describing (as bolded above).
I ignore nothing. Your contorted imagination is seeking a natural way for brains to enlarge without God having anything to do with it. Your distorted mechanism is an invention not supported by any factual evidence. And your frantic complaints that I ignore your theory are untrue frantic complaints. I fully understand how wrong it is and have explained my reasons over and over. You are simply stating 'anything I can think of can be true'. That can apply to anyone who thinks!!! Proof??? Remember, your strange position of recognizing design exists and avoiding a designer. Try leaving it at that, accepting a designer, without identifying him, as ID does. You are a perfect ID candidate
Brain Expansion
dhw: […] the modern brain changes in response to “hard thinking”. You never answer my next question: why is it illogical to propose that the ancient brain may also have changed in response to “hard thinking”?
DAVID: I have answered without you responding that I can remember. Older brains are the antecedent forms and may well have some complexification ability resulting in slight enlargement of designated areas as our very special advanced brain does.
That is not an answer! Nobody knows why brains expanded. I am offering a theory. You have merely stated your assumption of what older brains could and couldn’t do. I am asking for a logical reason why, if brain changes are known to be caused by “hard thinking” now, they could not also have been changed by “hard thinking” then. I am focusing on the process of thought changing the brain, not on comparing the forms of change.
dhw: Your attempt to reproduce my theory is off the mark as usual. bbbA dualist would say that the soul of the homo with the smaller brain (the materialist could say the thinking part of the brain) was able to conceive – not the design but the basic idea of a new artefact (our example: some means or other of killing from a distance). The brain doesn’t wait for or force an expansion to get it manufactured. The soul (or thinking part of the brain) then begins the process of developing the idea, the design, and the manufacture.This process CAUSES the brain to expand. And we know that in the modern brain, hard thinking CAUSES the brain to respond by complexifying.
DAVID: A complete distortion of how our brain reacts to deep thought. First we know it shrank 150 cc from more concentrated thought as we learned how to use our brain over the past 35,000 years. And we know that the complexification mechanism causes that shrinkage by enlarging tiny special highly efficient areas to handle the new concepts.
Shrinkage is irrelevant, as are the past 35,000 years, to the question of WHY brains expanded! How can shrinkage be caused by expansion anyway? We agreed that the efficiency of complexification made part of the brain redundant. Stop dodging the point that our brains CHANGE IN RESPONSE TO "HARD THINKING"!
DAVID: Applying this, to invent a way that ancient brains enlarged, in not only wishful thinking, it is a distinct distortion of what we know as fact, and enters the woolly area of supposing 'anything suggested is possible'.
How can it be a woolly distortion of fact to propose that the same process whereby thought changes modern brains may also have applied to former brains?
DAVID: Our special brain undoubtedly represents similar processes from the past.
Thank heavens for this accidental admission of the logic of my theory: if our brain represents similar processes from the past, and our brain changes in response to “hard thinking”, it follows that past brains may also have changed in response to “hard thinking”.
DAVID: Your contorted imagination is seeking a natural way for brains to enlarge without God having anything to do with it.
Once again: God may have invented the mechanism.
DAVID: Your distorted mechanism is an invention not supported by any factual evidence.
No “distortion”, as repeatedly explained above. Your own theory is supported only by your faith in it (not to be confused with your faith in God).
DAVID: You are simply stating 'anything I can think of can be true'. That can apply to anyone who thinks!!! Proof???
If there was proof, my theory would be a fact and not a theory. What proof have you for your own theory that your God dabbled or preprogrammed all the expansions before they were needed?
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, May 09, 2020, 18:51 (1657 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I have answered without you responding that I can remember. Older brains are the antecedent forms and may well have some complexification ability resulting in slight enlargement of designated areas as our very special advanced brain does.
dhw: That is not an answer! Nobody knows why brains expanded. I am offering a theory. You have merely stated your assumption of what older brains could and couldn’t do. I am asking for a logical reason why, if brain changes are known to be caused by “hard thinking” now, they could not also have been changed by “hard thinking” then. I am focusing on the process of thought changing the brain, not on comparing the forms of change.
You are simply insisting without any logical thought extending from the facts we know that hard thought expanded brains up to 200 cc at a time. What we know is evolution builds upon past processes as organism complexify. It is reasonable, as I've stated, to assume that ancient brains did do some complexification with tiny areas enlarging and perhaps with some shrinkage as in ours. That makes more sense.
dhw: Your attempt to reproduce my theory is off the mark as usual. bbbA dualist would say that the soul of the homo with the smaller brain (the materialist could say the thinking part of the brain) was able to conceive – not the design but the basic idea of a new artefact (our example: some means or other of killing from a distance). The brain doesn’t wait for or force an expansion to get it manufactured. The soul (or thinking part of the brain) then begins the process of developing the idea, the design, and the manufacture.This process CAUSES the brain to expand. And we know that in the modern brain, hard thinking CAUSES the brain to respond by complexifying.DAVID: A complete distortion of how our brain reacts to deep thought. First we know it shrank 150 cc from more concentrated thought as we learned how to use our brain over the past 35,000 years. And we know that the complexification mechanism causes that shrinkage by enlarging tiny special highly efficient areas to handle the new concepts.
dhw: Shrinkage is irrelevant, as are the past 35,000 years, to the question of WHY brains expanded! How can shrinkage be caused by expansion anyway? We agreed that the efficiency of complexification made part of the brain redundant. Stop dodging the point that our brains CHANGE IN RESPONSE TO "HARD THINKING"!
I'm not avoiding your inventions. The evidence we have is, as we learned use our big new brain by hard thinking, is that it shrank. You want to ignore that major point to championing that our tiny areas of enlargement must lead to a wild theory that hard thinking can expand brains by 200 cc.
DAVID: Applying this, to invent a way that ancient brains enlarged, in not only wishful thinking, it is a distinct distortion of what we know as fact, and enters the woolly area of supposing 'anything suggested is possible'.dhw: How can it be a woolly distortion of fact to propose that the same process whereby thought changes modern brains may also have applied to former brains?
You've just admitted the process in our brain occurs under an advanced complexification process and I've pointed out previous brains may have had simple versions of the same process as evolutionary theory would imply. Therefore I can accept that ancient brains may have had tiny expansion areas as ours does. That is consistent thought.
DAVID: Your contorted imagination is seeking a natural way for brains to enlarge without God having anything to do with it.dhw: Once again: God may have invented the mechanism.
DAVID: Your distorted mechanism is an invention not supported by any factual evidence.
dhw: No “distortion”, as repeatedly explained above. Your own theory is supported only by your faith in it (not to be confused with your faith in God).
DAVID: You are simply stating 'anything I can think of can be true'. That can apply to anyone who thinks!!! Proof???
dhw: If there was proof, my theory would be a fact and not a theory. What proof have you for your own theory that your God dabbled or preprogrammed all the expansions before they were needed?
I have full faith and belief there is a designer who enlarged brain. I have no belief in chance causes which you are consistently trying to find.
Brain Expansion
dhw: I am asking for a logical reason why, if brain changes are known to be caused by “hard thinking” now, they could not also have been changed by “hard thinking” then. I am focusing on the process of thought changing the brain, not on comparing the forms of change.
DAVID: You are simply insisting without any logical thought extending from the facts we know that hard thought expanded brains up to 200 cc at a time. What we know is evolution builds upon past processes as organism complexify. It is reasonable, as I've stated, to assume that ancient brains did do some complexification with tiny areas enlarging and perhaps with some shrinkage as in ours. That makes more sense.
The logical thought concerns the one word you constantly avoid. If brains CHANGE through hard thinking now, why would they not CHANGE through hard thinking in the past? Then they needed to expand. Now they only need to complexify.
dhw: Shrinkage is irrelevant, as are the past 35,000 years, to the question of WHY brains expanded! How can shrinkage be caused by expansion anyway? We agreed that the efficiency of complexification made part of the brain redundant. Stop dodging the point that our brains CHANGE IN RESPONSE TO "HARD THINKING"!
DAVID: I'm not avoiding your inventions. The evidence we have is, as we learned use our big new brain by hard thinking, is that it shrank. You want to ignore that major point to championing that our tiny areas of enlargement must lead to a wild theory that hard thinking can expand brains by 200 cc.
It seems that the message will never get through. You agreed that shrinkage was due to the efficiency of complexification, and it is not the tiny areas of enlargement that I refer to but the process whereby "hard thinking" CHANGES the brain.
DAVID: You've just admitted the process in our brain occurs under an advanced complexification process and I've pointed out previous brains may have had simple versions of the same process as evolutionary theory would imply. Therefore I can accept that ancient brains may have had tiny expansion areas as ours does. That is consistent thought.
But it does not explain why ancient brains expanded! Hence the theory I am proposing.
DAVID: […] Proof???
dhw: What proof have you for your own theory that your God dabbled or preprogrammed all the expansions before they were needed?
DAVID: I have full faith and belief there is a designer who enlarged brain. I have no belief in chance causes which you are consistently trying to find.
My theory does not involve chance at all, and allows for God as the designer of the mechanism for brain change. Do you believe that your God complexified the relevant areas of the modern brain before people learned to read, memorize maps or play instruments? Or did he design the mechanism enabling the brain to respond to their “hard thinking” by complexifying itself? If you favour the second explanation, why do you think it illogical for the same God-designed mechanism to have enabled the brain to respond to “hard thinking” by expanding itself?
Transferred from “dualism”:
dhw: each successive expansion was caused by “hard thinking”, leading to increased knowledge and skills. Erectus was more advanced than australopithecus. We are more advanced than erectus. And so of course the increased knowledge and skills coincide with the bigger or vastly more complex brain (complexification having replaced expansion).
DAVID: In the bold I don't understand the use of the word 'coincide'. The larger brain allowed the development of our very advanced concepts, such as grammatical language 50-70,000 years ago, while erectus had very simple communication skills, and we didn't come out of erectus' stone age until 10-12,000 years ago. I view the stasis as proof we were given a brain we didn't know how use and had to learn to use it.
“Coincide” in the sense that the two go together, but as with the artefacts, I am proposing that it was not the larger brain that allowed our advanced concepts; it was our effort to give material expression to more advanced concepts that caused the brain and other related organs to change - the same process we observe today, when the brain changes in response to new tasks. As I was not around at the time, I can’t tell you what “big idea” would have expanded erectus’s brain to sapiens size, but the process of expansion followed by stasis was common to all our ancestors and in many cases for far longer than 280,000 years. I don’t know either why your all-powerful God would have given us a bigger brain before we needed it, or what you mean by we “had to learn to use it”. We’ve discussed that before. How did we learn to use the brain if we didn’t actually produce anything new for 280,000 years? It makes far more sense to me that the brain would have expanded because of a particular new need, and then life went on virtually unchanged (as for previous homos) until the next “big idea” required new uses of the brain. Immediately after expansion this would not have been anywhere near as complex as it is now, because "hard thinking" is what complexified it, and the efficiency of all the new complexifications is what made it shrink.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, May 10, 2020, 16:24 (1656 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: You are simply insisting without any logical thought extending from the facts we know that hard thought expanded brains up to 200 cc at a time. What we know is evolution builds upon past processes as organism complexify. It is reasonable, as I've stated, to assume that ancient brains did do some complexification with tiny areas enlarging and perhaps with some shrinkage as in ours. That makes more sense.
dhw: The logical thought concerns the one word you constantly avoid. If brains CHANGE through hard thinking now, why would they not CHANGE through hard thinking in the past? Then they needed to expand. Now they only need to complexify.
I know they CHANGE. We know how ours changed and you have twisted that to invent your theory which is not a description of how our brain works, which implies past brains are totally different from ours, denying the concepts of evolutionary change.
dhw: It seems that the message will never get through. You agreed that shrinkage was due to the efficiency of complexification, and it is not the tiny areas of enlargement that I refer to but the process whereby "hard thinking" CHANGES the brain.
I fully get and reject your garbled thinking. All this occurs under our brain's advanced complexification process, which probably came from some earlier processes in earlier brains. Massive enlargement due to hard thinking is your woolly idea from no evidence, just a stretch from a known proven process..
DAVID: You've just admitted the process in our brain occurs under an advanced complexification process and I've pointed out previous brains may have had simple versions of the same process as evolutionary theory would imply. Therefore I can accept that ancient brains may have had tiny expansion areas as ours does. That is consistent thought.dhw: But it does not explain why ancient brains expanded! Hence the theory I am proposing.
Propose all you want. It has no basis in any facts we have.
DAVID: I have full faith and belief there is a designer who enlarged brain. I have no belief in chance causes which you are consistently trying to find.dhw: My theory does not involve chance at all, and allows for God as the designer of the mechanism for brain change. Do you believe that your God complexified the relevant areas of the modern brain before people learned to read, memorize maps or play instruments? Or did he design the mechanism enabling the brain to respond to their “hard thinking” by complexifying itself? If you favour the second explanation, why do you think it illogical for the same God-designed mechanism to have enabled the brain to respond to “hard thinking” by expanding itself?
Because of another consideration. Each new hominin had much more than just brain expansion. That is just one part of our evolution. Bodies were changed in many ways as part of God's work in producing them. God speciates. Consider just the differences in Neanderthal and sapiens body forms!
Transferred from “dualism”:DAVID: In the bold I don't understand the use of the word 'coincide'. The larger brain allowed the development of our very advanced concepts, such as grammatical language 50-70,000 years ago, while erectus had very simple communication skills, and we didn't come out of erectus' stone age until 10-12,000 years ago. I view the stasis as proof we were given a brain we didn't know how use and had to learn to use it.
dhw: “Coincide” in the sense that the two go together, but as with the artefacts, I am proposing that it was not the larger brain that allowed our advanced concepts; it was our effort to give material expression to more advanced concepts that caused the brain and other related organs to change - the same process we observe today, when the brain changes in response to new tasks. As I was not around at the time, I can’t tell you what “big idea” would have expanded erectus’s brain to sapiens size, but the process of expansion followed by stasis was common to all our ancestors and in many cases for far longer than 280,000 years.
Since we weren't there and activities of daily living were quite simple, what stasis are you talking about in the past? We only know our stasis.
dhw: I don’t know either why your all-powerful God would have given us a bigger brain before we needed it, or what you mean by we “had to learn to use it”. We’ve discussed that before. How did we learn to use the brain if we didn’t actually produce anything new for 280,000 years?
WE had to learn to use it like a new instrument. It was our job. Not God's to teach us.
dhw: It makes far more sense to me that the brain would have expanded because of a particular new need, and then life went on virtually unchanged (as for previous homos) until the next “big idea” required new uses of the brain. Immediately after expansion this would not have been anywhere near as complex as it is now, because "hard thinking" is what complexified it, and the efficiency of all the new complexifications is what made it shrink.
How distorted! God gave us a huge brain with the ability to complexify ass needed, and to shrink.
Brain Expansion
dhw:If brains CHANGE through hard thinking now, why would they not CHANGE through hard thinking in the past? Then they needed to expand. Now they only need to complexify.
DAVID: I know they CHANGE. We know how ours changed and you have twisted that to invent your theory which is not a description of how our brain works, which implies past brains are totally different from ours, denying the concepts of evolutionary change.
Past brains are not “totally” different from ours. Even chimps’ brains are not “totally” different from ours! The twisting here is entirely yours. Even you have suggested that past brains are likely to have complexified and undergone minor expansions. How does this make them “totally” different?
dhw: It seems that the message will never get through. You agreed that shrinkage was due to the efficiency of complexification, and it is not the tiny areas of enlargement that I refer to but the process whereby "hard thinking" CHANGES the brain.
DAVID: I fully get and reject your garbled thinking. All this occurs under our brain's advanced complexification process, which probably came from some earlier processes in earlier brains. Massive enlargement due to hard thinking is your woolly idea from no evidence, just a stretch from a known proven process..
If complexification probably came from earlier processes, it is clearly absurd to argue that our brains are “totally” different. So what do you think would have caused complexification in earlier brains if it was not “hard thinking”? And yes indeed, brain change due to “hard thinking” is a known proven process, so why is it “garbled” and “woolly” to suggest that a known proven process might also have taken place in the past?
DAVID: I have full faith and belief there is a designer who enlarged brain. I have no belief in chance causes which you are consistently trying to find.
dhw: My theory does not involve chance at all, and allows for God as the designer of the mechanism for brain change. Do you believe that your God complexified the relevant areas of the modern brain before people learned to read, memorize maps or play instruments? Or did he design the mechanism enabling the brain to respond to their “hard thinking” by complexifying itself? If you favour the second explanation, why do you think it illogical for the same God-designed mechanism to have enabled the brain to respond to “hard thinking” by expanding itself?
DAVID: Because of another consideration. Each new hominin had much more than just brain expansion. That is just one part of our evolution. Bodies were changed in many ways as part of God's work in producing them. God speciates. Consider just the differences in Neanderthal and sapiens body forms!
Please don’t change the subject, which is brain expansion. If you believe that your God designed the mechanism enabling the brain to respond to “hard thinking” by complexifying itself, please give me a reason why that same mechanism should not have enabled the earlier brain to respond to ”hard thinking” by expanding itself?
dhw: […] the process of expansion followed by stasis was common to all our ancestors and in many cases for far longer than 280,000 years.
DAVID: Since we weren't there and activities of daily living were quite simple, what stasis are you talking about in the past? We only know our stasis.
No evidence has been found of anything but “simple living”, as with the first 280,000 years of H. sapiens, though each stage has been accompanied by comparatively minor improvements.
dhw: I don’t know either why your all-powerful God would have given us a bigger brain before we needed it, or what you mean by we “had to learn to use it”. We’ve discussed that before. How did we learn to use the brain if we didn’t actually produce anything new for 280,000 years?
DAVID: WE had to learn to use it like a new instrument. It was our job. Not God's to teach us.
It’s you who keep telling us that nothing new was produced for 280,000 years. How do you learn to use something and yet not produce anything? You yourself drew attention to some indigenous tribes who still live like their ancient ancestors. So-called progress comes from new ideas or new demands. For 280,000 years, sapiens was obviously happy with the way things were. What is your point?
DAVID: God gave us a huge brain with the ability to complexify as needed, and to shrink.
Presumably means your God designed a mechanism to enable us to complexify naturally, which again raises the question why the same mechanism should not have enabled the brain to expand naturally. I don’t know why you regard shrinkage as an ability! We have agreed (umpteen times) that it shrank as a result of efficient complexification.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Monday, May 11, 2020, 18:15 (1655 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I know they CHANGE. We know how ours changed and you have twisted that to invent your theory which is not a description of how our brain works, which implies past brains are totally different from ours, denying the concepts of evolutionary change.
dhw: Past brains are not “totally” different from ours. Even chimps’ brains are not “totally” different from ours! The twisting here is entirely yours. Even you have suggested that past brains are likely to have complexified and undergone minor expansions. How does this make them “totally” different?
Read above!!! I said you implied past brains are totally different. I didn't promote the idea
dhw: If complexification probably came from earlier processes, it is clearly absurd to argue that our brains are “totally” different. So what do you think would have caused complexification in earlier brains if it was not “hard thinking”? And yes indeed, brain change due to “hard thinking” is a known proven process, so why is it “garbled” and “woolly” to suggest that a known proven process might also have taken place in the past?
Fallacy in you basic theory: How do you do 'hard thinking' with only a very basic set of words in your minimal language? Don't you use language to think? So you use visualization of a possible object. How hard is that?
DAVID: Each new hominin had much more than just brain expansion. That is just one part of our evolution. Bodies were changed in many ways as part of God's work in producing them. God speciates. Consider just the differences in Neanderthal and sapiens body forms!
dhw: Please don’t change the subject, which is brain expansion. If you believe that your God designed the mechanism enabling the brain to respond to “hard thinking” by complexifying itself, please give me a reason why that same mechanism should not have enabled the earlier brain to respond to ”hard thinking” by expanding itself?
The same 'anything is possible' under God or without Him approach. Of course it is. And how does hard thinking get the skull to expand to allow the newly required fit, and the mother's birth canal accommodate the newborn's bigger head? The subject is the same as I raised above. Phenotypic changes all apply. Hard thinking must trigger all!!!
dhw: […] the process of expansion followed by stasis was common to all our ancestors and in many cases for far longer than 280,000 years.DAVID: Since we weren't there and activities of daily living were quite simple, what stasis are you talking about in the past? We only know our stasis.
No evidence has been found of anything but “simple living”, as with the first 280,000 years of H. sapiens, though each stage has been accompanied by comparatively minor improvements.
dhw: I don’t know either why your all-powerful God would have given us a bigger brain before we needed it, or what you mean by we “had to learn to use it”. We’ve discussed that before. How did we learn to use the brain if we didn’t actually produce anything new for 280,000 years?
DAVID: WE had to learn to use it like a new instrument. It was our job. Not God's to teach us.
dhw: It’s you who keep telling us that nothing new was produced for 280,000 years. How do you learn to use something and yet not produce anything? You yourself drew attention to some indigenous tribes who still live like their ancient ancestors. So-called progress comes from new ideas or new demands. For 280,000 years, sapiens was obviously happy with the way things were. What is your point?
As above quite clearly: it was there to use when the particular group decided to do it. Some did sooner than others or barely at all.
DAVID: God gave us a huge brain with the ability to complexify as needed, and to shrink.dhw: Presumably means your God designed a mechanism to enable us to complexify naturally, which again raises the question why the same mechanism should not have enabled the brain to expand naturally. I don’t know why you regard shrinkage as an ability! We have agreed (umpteen times) that it shrank as a result of efficient complexification.
You argue in circles. Our overly large brain came with a very active complexification process that is an obvious attribute. With active use, certain areas became more complex and enlarge slightly, and other areas were not needed and disappeared as we learned to use our brain and refine its functions. God did not do these brain changes. He left it up to us, expecting it to happen. And you seize on these tiny enlarged areas to invent a pipe dream
Brain Expansion
dhw:bbb If brains CHANGE through hard thinking now, why would they not CHANGE through hard thinking in the past? Then they needed to expand. Now they only need to complexify.
DAVID: I know they CHANGE. We know how ours changed and you have twisted that to invent your theory which is not a description of how our brain works, which implies past brains are totally different from ours, denying the concepts of evolutionary change.
dhw: Past brains are not “totally” different from ours. Even chimps’ brains are not “totally” different from ours! The twisting here is entirely yours. Even you have suggested that past brains are likely to have complexified and undergone minor expansions. How does this make them “totally” different?
DAVID: Read above!!! I said you implied past brains are totally different. I didn't promote the idea.
Since my whole theory is based on the bolded argument to which you were replying – namely, that the SAME process would have taken place in past and present brains – how can you possibly say this implies “total” difference? It is you who insist that the process of change is totally different: the modern brain changes itself (complexification), whereas the ancient brain had to be changed by your God! Although of course I agree that our brains are vastly more complex and advanced than those of our ancestors, “difference in kind” is paramount to your theory. Look at your heading and comment in another of your posts:
Introducing the brain: our brain is so different
Comment: our current [brain] is very different in kind from previous brains.
dhw: […] brain change due to “hard thinking” is a known proven process, so why is it “garbled” and “woolly” to suggest that a known proven process might also have taken place in the past?
DAVID: Fallacy in you basic theory: How do you do 'hard thinking' with only a very basic set of words in your minimal language? Don't you use language to think? So you use visualization of a possible object. How hard is that?
Again you refuse to answer a straight question. “Hard thinking” is just a term to denote more intense concentration than ordinary thinking, and it’s the extra effort that changes the modern brain. Our fellow animals don't need words to think, and I don’t believe for one second that our taxi drivers and musicians lecture themselves verbally while memorizing their maps or playing their instruments. Our pre-sapiens hunter would not have needed a verbal analysis to know that close-up killing was dangerous and killing from a distance would be safer. But when he’d come up with a strategy and an artefact, he would almost certainly have wanted to invent a sound that would denote the new weapon. That’s how language evolves and, in my theory, how the brain changes: as a response to new requirements, not in anticipation of them.
dhw: If you believe that your God designed the mechanism enabling the brain to respond to “hard thinking” by complexifying itself, please give me a reason why that same mechanism should not have enabled the earlier brain to respond to ”hard thinking” by expanding itself?
DAVID: The same 'anything is possible' under God or without Him approach. Of course it is. And how does hard thinking get the skull to expand to allow the newly required fit, and the mother's birth canal accommodate the newborn's bigger head? The subject is the same as I raised above. Phenotypic changes all apply. Hard thinking must trigger all!!!
Hard thinking applies to the brain, because the brain is the seat of thought, whether there is a soul or not. You can never seem to get your head round the fact that the body consists of multiple cell communities which cooperate with one another, with or without your God’s 3.8-billion-year computer programme or personal dabbling, and whether cells are intelligent or not. Your human examples have their parallel in all adaptations and innovations. Now will you please at last answer my bolded question.
dhw: It’s you who keep telling us that nothing new was produced for 280,000 years. How do you learn to use something and yet not produce anything? You yourself drew attention to some indigenous tribes who still live like their ancient ancestors. So-called progress comes from new ideas or new demands. For 280,000 years, sapiens was obviously happy with the way things were. What is your point?
DAVID: As above quite clearly: it was there to use when the particular group decided to do it. Some did sooner than others or barely at all.
Which is true whether we follow your theory or mine. So what does it prove?
DAVID: Our overly large brain came with a very active complexification process that is an obvious attribute. With active use, certain areas became more complex and enlarge slightly, and other areas were not needed and disappeared as we learned to use our brain and refine its functions. God did not do these brain changes. He left it up to us, expecting it to happen. And you seize on these tiny enlarged areas to invent a pipe dream.
All fine, except that for the umpteenth time, it is the process I seize on, not the tiny enlargements. Now tell us whether you believe your God designed the mechanism which enables the brain to complexify without his direction. If he did, why should the same mechanism not have enabled the brain to expand?
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, May 12, 2020, 15:49 (1654 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Since my whole theory is based on the bolded argument to which you were replying – namely, that the SAME process would have taken place in past and present brains – how can you possibly say this implies “total” difference? It is you who insist that the process of change is totally different: the modern brain changes itself (complexification), whereas the ancient brain had to be changed by your God! Although of course I agree that our brains are vastly more complex and advanced than those of our ancestors, “difference in kind” is paramount to your theory.
Note the bold. This is my totally consistent theory if you recognize God gave our brain this special property while seeing to the enlargement of all hominin/homo brains.
dhw: Look at your heading and comment in another of your posts:
Introducing the brain: our brain is so different
Comment: our current [brain] is very different in kind from previous brains.>dhw: […] brain change due to “hard thinking” is a known proven process, so why is it “garbled” and “woolly” to suggest that a known proven process might also have taken place in the past?
DAVID: Fallacy in you basic theory: How do you do 'hard thinking' with only a very basic set of words in your minimal language? Don't you use language to think? So you use visualization of a possible object. How hard is that?
dhw: Again you refuse to answer a straight question. “Hard thinking” is just a term to denote more intense concentration than ordinary thinking, and it’s the extra effort that changes the modern brain. Our fellow animals don't need words to think, ...Our pre-sapiens hunter would not have needed a verbal analysis to know that close-up killing was dangerous and killing from a distance would be safer. But when he’d come up with a strategy and an artefact, he would almost certainly have wanted to invent a sound that would denote the new weapon. That’s how language evolves and, in my theory, how the brain changes: as a response to new requirements, not in anticipation of them.
Your theory is simple. The naturally existing brain boot-straps itself up to a larger more complex form under the pressure of intense concentration. Please tell us about the natural mechanism that performs that task?
dhw: You can never seem to get your head round the fact that the body consists of multiple cell communities which cooperate with one another, with or without your God’s 3.8-billion-year computer programme or personal dabbling, and whether cells are intelligent or not. Your human examples have their parallel in all adaptations and innovations. Now will you please at last answer my bolded question: If brains CHANGE through hard thinking now, why would they not CHANGE through hard thinking in the past? Then they needed to expand. Now they only need to complexify.
You've asked me my question above to you. We do not know who or what cause speciation, the true seat of the argument. 'You never seem to get it through your head' that larger brains are always found with improved artifacts. So you cover that by offering a confused timing proposal to fit your unsupported theory. Remember, all archaeologists presume their timing tests prove that all that is found occurred all together in that time period
dhw: It’s you who keep telling us that nothing new was produced for 280,000 years. How do you learn to use something and yet not produce anything? You yourself drew attention to some indigenous tribes who still live like their ancient ancestors. So-called progress comes from new ideas or new demands. For 280,000 years, sapiens was obviously happy with the way things were. What is your point?DAVID: As above quite clearly: it was there to use when the particular group decided to do it. Some did sooner than others or barely at all.
Which is true whether we follow your theory or mine. So what does it prove?
DAVID: Our overly large brain came with a very active complexification process that is an obvious attribute. With active use, certain areas became more complex and enlarge slightly, and other areas were not needed and disappeared as we learned to use our brain and refine its functions. God did not do these brain changes. He left it up to us, expecting it to happen. And you seize on these tiny enlarged areas to invent a pipe dream.
dhw: All fine, except that for the umpteenth time, it is the process I seize on, not the tiny enlargements. Now tell us whether you believe your God designed the mechanism which enables the brain to complexify without his direction. If he did, why should the same mechanism not have enabled the brain to expand?
You invoke God for our current brain, but when you discuss past enlargements are you also invoking God? I haven't read it.
Brain Expansion
dhw: Since my whole theory is based on the bolded argument to which you were replying – namely, that the SAME process would have taken place in past and present brains – how can you possibly say this implies “total” difference? It is you who insist that the process of change is totally different: the modern brain changes itself (complexification), whereas the ancient brain had to be changed by your God!
DAVID: Note the bold. This is my totally consistent theory if you recognize God gave our brain this special property while seeing to the enlargement of all hominin/homo brains.
I have just said that it is your theory, and now you are saying that if I recognize your theory, then it is consistent! What you leave out is the inconsistency of your God giving our brain the ability to complexify itself but NOT giving the homo brain the ability to enlarge itself. So yet again: if he could get our brains to complexify by themselves, why is it unthinkable to you that he could also have got their brains to expand by themselves? […]
DAVID: Your theory is simple. The naturally existing brain boot-straps itself up to a larger more complex form under the pressure of intense concentration. Please tell us about the natural mechanism that performs that task?
After a complete non sequitur concerning language, you now dodge my question by asking me to explain how the brain works! (And please note that "naturally" does not preclude God as the designer of what comes naturally.) If I could tell you that, my name would rank alongside Einstein’s. It is a fact that intense concentration, as exemplified by the illiterate women, taxi drivers and musicians, complexifies the brain. Yet again: If it can complexify the brain now, why should it not have enlarged the brain in earlier times?
DAVID: We do not know who or what cause speciation, the true seat of the argument. 'You never seem to get it through your head' that larger brains are always found with improved artifacts. So you cover that by offering a confused timing proposal to fit your unsupported theory. Remember, all archaeologists presume their timing tests prove that all that is found occurred all together in that time period.
We have taken artefacts as a concrete example of what might have triggered an expansion. I agree that the true seat of the argument is speciation, so let’s draw a parallel: pre-sapiens homo has new “big idea” (new weapon), and the effort to implement it causes brain expansion. Of course the weapon exists after the brain has expanded. Pre-whale has new “big idea” (go find food in the sea); the effort to implement it causes legs to change into flippers. The flippers exist after the pre-whale has adapted to the water. All this is of course massively simplified, but I am trying to illustrate how the process proceeds. The immaterial concept precedes the material changes, as opposed to brains and bodies changing in advance of new requirements. You ignored my paragraph about cell communities, which are the key to evolution and speciation. They cooperate and in my theory they change to meet or exploit new requirements or conditions. In your theory, your God preprogrammed them 3.8 billion years ago to cooperate in making all the changes, or he dabbled with them BEFORE the new requirements arose.
Once again I asked the following question:
dhw: Now tell us whether you believe your God designed the mechanism which enables the brain to complexify without his direction. If he did, why should the same mechanism not have enabled the brain to expand?
DAVID: You invoke God for our current brain, but when you discuss past enlargements are you also invoking God? I haven't read it.
Still no answer! With my theist’s hat on, I have “invoked” God as the designer of the mechanism that enables our brains to complexify, and I have asked you why you reject the idea that the same mechanism might have enabled earlier brains to expand. Please may we have an answer.
QUOTE FROM “Evolution and humans”: The argument I shall explore as to why more evidence can be extracted from the archaeological record starts by assuming that users, artifacts, practices and tasks have coevolved. Artifacts typically arise to address a need connected with a task.
All agreed.
DAVID: The prevailing view is artifacts represent the cultural time/generation with which they are found.
Also agreed.
DAVID: No one ascribes artifacts to thoughts in a previous species.
Of course they don’t. The first artefacts only exist when the new bigger brain exists. Flippers only exist after adaptation to life in the water.
DAVID: It is either evolution produced larger brained hominins/homos or as ID and I believe, God did it.
Nobody knows how or why the brain expanded! Your comment tells us nothing and nor does the article! You believe your God preprogrammed stages of brain expansion 3.8 billion years ago or did a series of hands-on dabbles. With my theist’s hat on, I propose that he may have invented a mechanism which, as well as enabling the modern brain to complexify in response to new requirements, may also have enabled past brains to expand in response to new requirements. You keep quoting articles that make no attempt to solve the mystery of expansion, as if somehow they support your theory and disprove mine!
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, May 13, 2020, 15:49 (1653 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: So yet again: if he could get our brains to complexify by themselves, why is it unthinkable to you that he could also have got their brains to expand by themselves? […]
You have ignored my comments in my recent series of introducing the brain':
Introducing the brain: fast evolution explanation (Introduction)
by David Turell @, Tuesday, May 12, 2020, 00:56
"my point is more important to consider, that the brain enlargement has to coordinate with bigger skull (bone) size and a necessary enlargement change in the female birth canal (pelvic bone) to accommodate the bigger baby skull (bone). "
Giving the brain the ability to expand itself does not explain how it all must happen. Please explain for us how your theory does all of this.
dhw: All this is of course massively simplified, but I am trying to illustrate how the process proceeds. The immaterial concept precedes the material changes, as opposed to brains and bodies changing in advance of new requirements. You ignored my paragraph about cell communities, which are the key to evolution and speciation. They cooperate and in my theory they change to meet or exploit new requirements or conditions. In your theory, your God preprogrammed them 3.8 billion years ago to cooperate in making all the changes, or he dabbled with them BEFORE the new requirements arose.
Of course I ignored your cell committees as totally off the mark.
dhw: Once again I asked the following question:
dhw: Now tell us whether you believe your God designed the mechanism which enables the brain to complexify without his direction. If he did, why should the same mechanism not have enabled the brain to expand?
Total confusion of facts: complexification results in overall shrinkage! And how about the bony problems?
QUOTE FROM “Evolution and humans”: The argument I shall explore as to why more evidence can be extracted from the archaeological record starts by assuming that users, artifacts, practices and tasks have coevolved. Artifacts typically arise to address a need connected with a task.
dhw: All agreed.
DAVID: The prevailing view is artifacts represent the cultural time/generation with which they are found.
dhw: Also agreed.
DAVID: No one ascribes artifacts to thoughts in a previous species.
dhw: Of course they don’t. The first artefacts only exist when the new bigger brain exists. Flippers only exist after adaptation to life in the water.
DAVID: It is either evolution produced larger brained hominins/homos or as ID and I believe, God did it.
dhw: Nobody knows how or why the brain expanded! Your comment tells us nothing and nor does the article! You believe your God preprogrammed stages of brain expansion 3.8 billion years ago or did a series of hands-on dabbles. With my theist’s hat on, I propose that he may have invented a mechanism which, as well as enabling the modern brain to complexify in response to new requirements, may also have enabled past brains to expand in response to new requirements. You keep quoting articles that make no attempt to solve the mystery of expansion, as if somehow they support your theory and disprove mine!
My quotes simply show most folks thinking about brain size and artifacts simply assume the bigger brains did it. We both also agree. Your theory is your theory no one else's. And you have never answered the 'bony problem' which involved separate organs than brain.
Brain Expansion
dhw: So yet again: if he could get our brains to complexify by themselves, why is it unthinkable to you that he could also have got their brains to expand by themselves? […]
DAVID: You have ignored my comments in my recent series of introducing the brain':
Introducing the brain: fast evolution explanation (Introduction)
by David Turell @, Tuesday, May 12, 2020, 00:56
"my point is more important to consider, that the brain enlargement has to coordinate with bigger skull (bone) size and a necessary enlargement change in the female birth canal (pelvic bone) to accommodate the bigger baby skull (bone). "
In your continued desperation to avoid answering my straightforward question, you repeated your question on this thread, which I answered on Tuesday at 12.29:
DAVID: And how does hard thinking get the skull to expand to allow the newly required fit, and the mother's birth canal accommodate the newborn's bigger head? The subject is the same as I raised above. Phenotypic changes all apply. Hard thinking must trigger all!!!
dhw: Hard thinking applies to the brain, because the brain is the seat of thought, whether there is a soul or not. You can never seem to get your head round the fact that the body consists of multiple cell communities which cooperate with one another, with or without your God’s 3.8-billion-year computer programme or personal dabbling. Any anatomical change will involve different cell communities cooperating.
I repeated this yesterday, accused you of ignoring my answer, and now you say:
DAVID: Of course I ignored your cell committees as totally off the mark.
I gave you an answer which you ignored, and now you tell me I ignored your question. The fact that you dismiss cellular intelligence (= Shapiro’s “natural genetic engineering”) as an explanation for adaptations and innovations (including skull and birth canal expansion) is no reason for pretending that I have not given you an answer. Dismissing the answer as “off the mark” presupposes that you know the mark, which you don’t.
Meanwhile:
dhw: Once again I asked the following question:
dhw: Now tell us whether you believe your God designed the mechanism which enables the brain to complexify without his direction. If he did, why should the same mechanism not have enabled the brain to expand?
DAVID: Total confusion of facts: complexification results in overall shrinkage! And how about the bony problems?
Total non sequitur plus continued attempt at digression. Once more: if as you believe, your God invented a mechanism which enabled the brain to complexify itself autonomously in response to new requirements (with shrinkage simply the result of its efficiency), why should his invention not also have enabled the earlier brain to expand autonomously for the same reason? If he was happy to leave the modern brain to do its own thing (complexify), why would he not have been happy to let the ancient brain do its own thing (expand) as well?
dhw: You keep quoting articles that make no attempt to solve the mystery of expansion, as if somehow they support your theory and disprove mine!
DAVID: My quotes simply show most folks thinking about brain size and artifacts simply assume the bigger brains did it. We both also agree. Your theory is your theory no one else's. And you have never answered the 'bony problem' which involved separate organs than brain.
Yes, they don’t deal with the possible cause of brain expansion, which nobody has yet explained. My apparently original explanation calls for rational discussion, which so far you have not yet provided. Attempted diversion through “bony problem” now dealt with three times.
Under “Introducing the brain”:
"Senior author of the study, Dr. Penny Spikins, from the Department of Archaeology said: "More sophisticated tools like the Boxgrove handaxes start to appear around the same time as our hominin ancestors were developing much bigger brains. (DAVID’s bold)
DAVID: Note the bold once again associating the advances in technique with brain size. It is known that erectus brain size increased from the time they first appeared. This also fits my idea that the bigger brain allows for thought advances, that is, learning to use it as knowledge builds and is passed on.
Your bold in no way contradicts my theory that the first handaxes would have been the cause of the expansion. Three cheers for homo erectus, who clearly began with a smaller brain but went on expanding it through his thought advances (or “hard thinking”). Or are you now saying that your God must have kept “stepping in” and dabbling erectus’ continued brain expansion to enable him to think more advanced thoughts as time passed? And this in spite of the fact that as a dualist you believe that only the soul does the thinking?
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, May 14, 2020, 22:52 (1652 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Once again I asked the following question:
dhw: Now tell us whether you believe your God designed the mechanism which enables the brain to complexify without his direction. If he did, why should the same mechanism not have enabled the brain to expand?DAVID: Total confusion of facts: complexification results in overall shrinkage! And how about the bony problems?
dhw: Total non sequitur plus continued attempt at digression. Once more: if as you believe, your God invented a mechanism which enabled the brain to complexify itself autonomously in response to new requirements (with shrinkage simply the result of its efficiency), why should his invention not also have enabled the earlier brain to expand autonomously for the same reason? If he was happy to leave the modern brain to do its own thing (complexify), why would he not have been happy to let the ancient brain do its own thing (expand) as well?
It is possible to ascribe any actions to God as you wish. My position remains God runs evolution, and your invented theory is not based on any factual material. I doubt if this was an issue of God's happiness. Using this brain as a model of past brains, it IS logical to assume they also complexified a little. Nothing more can be logically assumed from present evidence. But imagination can run wild.
dhw: You keep quoting articles that make no attempt to solve the mystery of expansion, as if somehow they support your theory and disprove mine!DAVID: My quotes simply show most folks thinking about brain size and artifacts simply assume the bigger brains did it. We both also agree. Your theory is your theory no one else's. And you have never answered the 'bony problem' which involved separate organs than brain.
dhw: Yes, they don’t deal with the possible cause of brain expansion, which nobody has yet explained. My apparently original explanation calls for rational discussion, which so far you have not yet provided. Attempted diversion through “bony problem” now dealt with three times.
Bony problems are not a diversion. They represent a major problem for your theory. I don't remember your answer, so please repeat it. As for expansion, God did it. As for rational discussion, see above, which states it is just vivid imagination, not based on current facts.
Under “Introducing the brain”:
"Senior author of the study, Dr. Penny Spikins, from the Department of Archaeology said: "More sophisticated tools like the Boxgrove handaxes start to appear around the same time as our hominin ancestors were developing much bigger brains. (DAVID’s bold)DAVID: Note the bold once again associating the advances in technique with brain size. It is known that erectus brain size increased from the time they first appeared. This also fits my idea that the bigger brain allows for thought advances, that is, learning to use it as knowledge builds and is passed on.
dhw: Your bold in no way contradicts my theory that the first handaxes would have been the cause of the expansion. Three cheers for homo erectus, who clearly began with a smaller brain but went on expanding it through his thought advances (or “hard thinking”). Or are you now saying that your God must have kept “stepping in” and dabbling erectus’ continued brain expansion to enable him to think more advanced thoughts as time passed? And this in spite of the fact that as a dualist you believe that only the soul does the thinking?
My approach never changes. God enlarged the erectus brain during its time on Earth, and the soul, using the more advanced brain size and possibly more complex networks used them for more advanced designs of artifacts.
Brain Expansion
dhw: Once more: if as you believe, your God invented a mechanism which enabled the brain to complexify itself autonomously in response to new requirements (with shrinkage simply the result of its efficiency), why should his invention not also have enabled the earlier brain to expand autonomously for the same reason? If he was happy to leave the modern brain to do its own thing (complexify), why would he not have been happy to let the ancient brain do its own thing (expand) as well?
DAVID: It is possible to ascribe any actions to God as you wish. My position remains God runs evolution, and your invented theory is not based on any factual material. I doubt if this was an issue of God's happiness. Using this brain as a model of past brains, it IS logical to assume they also complexified a little. Nothing more can be logically assumed from present evidence. But imagination can run wild.
Your theory ascribes to your God the actions you wish. My theory is based on the fact that the modern brain changes in response to new requirements, and you cannot find a single reason why the same process should not have applied to the ancient brain. Your invented theory is not based on any facts. “Happy to” was not meant to lead to a discussion on happiness. If God invented a mechanism for the modern brain to complexify independently, why do you assume that the same mechanism would not have enabled the ancient brain to expand independently? My theory is not an assumption but a theory based on the only facts we have. Your theory is an assumption based on nothing but faith in your own personal belief in God and in your personal reading of his purpose and method.
dhw: Attempted diversion through “bony problem” now dealt with three times.
DAVID: Bony problems are not a diversion. They represent a major problem for your theory. I don't remember your answer, so please repeat it. As for expansion, God did it. As for rational discussion, see above, which states it is just vivid imagination, not based on current facts.
“God did it” is not my idea of rational discussion, and your claim that a theory extrapolated from current facts is “vivid imagination” is not my idea of rational discussion either. I have dealt with the bony problem three times, the last being yesterday (bolded), and I include your irrational comment (bolded) as follows:
DAVID: And how does hard thinking get the skull to expand to allow the newly required fit, and the mother's birth canal accommodate the newborn's bigger head? The subject is the same as I raised above. Phenotypic changes all apply. Hard thinking must trigger all!!!
dhw: Hard thinking applies to the brain, because the brain is the seat of thought, whether there is a soul or not. You can never seem to get your head round the fact that the body consists of multiple cell communities which cooperate with one another, with or without your God’s 3.8-billion-year computer programme or personal dabbling. Any anatomical change will involve different cell communities cooperating.
DAVID: Of course I ignored your cell committees as totally off the mark.
First you accuse me of not answering, then you dismiss my answer (as if you alone knew “the mark”), and now you have forgotten my answer!
dhw: Three cheers for homo erectus, who clearly began with a smaller brain but went on expanding it through his thought advances (or “hard thinking”). Or are you now saying that your God must have kept “stepping in” and dabbling erectus’ continued brain expansion to enable him to think more advanced thoughts as time passed? And this in spite of the fact that as a dualist you believe that only the soul does the thinking?
DAVID: My approach never changes. God enlarged the erectus brain during its time on Earth, and the soul, using the more advanced brain size and possibly more complex networks used them for more advanced designs of artifacts.
So your God carried on dabbling to make the erectus brain bigger and bigger (and possibly more and more complex), because it couldn’t change by itself, whereas he’s now stopped dabbling because sapiens’s brain can change by itself. (And all he ever wanted was sapiens’ complexification.)
An article in today’s Times discusses the importance of highly sophisticated axes believed to have been created about 600,000 years ago by Homo heidelbergensis. “Researchers said these advances in craftsmanship suggest individuals were acquiring multiple characteristics of self-control, such as forward-planning, concentration and frustration tolerance. This happened across a broad area over a period of about 100,000 years, coinciding closely in time with evidence of increases in brain size and social collaboration.”
I like the 100,000 years reference, which lessens the drama of brains suddenly “exploding”. A materialist might claim the brain expansion (cause unknown - maybe chance mutations) led to the advances. My favourite dualist would presumably claim God stepped in with dabbles, and the soul used the bigger brain to advance skills and its own self-awareness. My proposal would be that it was the other way round – new ideas required hard thinking (concentration), and as with the modern brain, this resulted in the changes (first, expansion - probably when complexification could no longer cope within existing dimensions - then sapiens complexification).
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Friday, May 15, 2020, 21:37 (1651 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Your theory ascribes to your God the actions you wish. My theory is based on the fact that the modern brain changes in response to new requirements, and you cannot find a single reason why the same process should not have applied to the ancient brain. Your invented theory is not based on any facts. “Happy to” was not meant to lead to a discussion on happiness. If God invented a mechanism for the modern brain to complexify independently, why do you assume that the same mechanism would not have enabled the ancient brain to expand independently? My theory is not an assumption but a theory based on the only facts we have.
The only facts we have is complexification causes shrinkage. See today's entry for a logical extrapolation of what our brain demonstrates: May 15, 2020, 16:17
"Our brain did not enlarge from this strenuous effort. It shrunk. Our evolved brain came from previous ancient brains an should reflect what they did as a result of thought, develop slightly complex neuronal networks with small regions of enlargement. Logical, involving no new theory."
DAVID: And how does hard thinking get the skull to expand to allow the newly required fit, and the mother's birth canal accommodate the newborn's bigger head? The subject is the same as I raised above. Phenotypic changes all apply. Hard thinking must trigger all!!!
dhw: Hard thinking applies to the brain, because the brain is the seat of thought, whether there is a soul or not. You can never seem to get your head round the fact that the body consists of multiple cell communities which cooperate with one another, with or without your God’s 3.8-billion-year computer programme or personal dabbling. Any anatomical change will involve different cell communities cooperating.
DAVID: Of course I ignored your cell committees as totally off the mark.
dhw: First you accuse me of not answering, then you dismiss my answer (as if you alone knew “the mark”), and now you have forgotten my answer!
I find it so unreasonable I didn't concentrate on it, and apologize for forgetting. Please explain how the comment in red works. I understand organs cooperating in life, but not evolution, in which an active positive change in the DNA of germ cells must be required. You have so far proposed nothing supported by facts in evolution.
dhw: An article in today’s Times discusses the importance of highly sophisticated axes believed to have been created about 600,000 years ago by Homo heidelbergensis. “Researchers said these advances in craftsmanship suggest individuals were acquiring multiple characteristics of self-control, such as forward-planning, concentration and frustration tolerance. This happened across a broad area over a period of about 100,000 years, coinciding closely in time with evidence of increases in brain size and social collaboration.”
I like the 100,000 years reference, which lessens the drama of brains suddenly “exploding”. A materialist might claim the brain expansion (cause unknown - maybe chance mutations) led to the advances. My favourite dualist would presumably claim God stepped in with dabbles, and the soul used the bigger brain to advance skills and its own self-awareness. My proposal would be that it was the other way round – new ideas required hard thinking (concentration), and as with the modern brain, this resulted in the changes (first, expansion - probably when complexification could no longer cope within existing dimensions - then sapiens complexification).
Heidelbergensis is just an erectus branch. I covered this without receiving comment. I was aware of the scientific research presented two -three days ago. And entered it here:
Introducing the brain:new skills require developing patience (Introduction)
by David Turell @, Wednesday, May 13, 2020, 19:12 with this comment:
"Comment: Note the bold once again associating the advances in technique with brain size. It is known that erectus brain size increased from the time they first appeared. This also fits my idea that the bigger brain allows for thought advances, that is, learning to use it as knowledge builds and is passed on."
My objections to your theory just restated are above.
Brain Expansion
DAVID:(from "B.E.: Learning how to use it") This shows a series of observations that finally led to a usable wheel, but using our brain to think and conceive. Our brain did not enlarge from this strenuous effort. It shrunk. Our evolved brain came from previous ancient brains an should reflect what they did as a result of thought, develop slightly complex neuronal networks with small regions of enlargement. Logical involving no new theory.
By the time the actual wheel hit the ground rolling, H. sapiens’ brain had ALREADY expanded, and we know that strenuous hard thinking complexifies the sapiens brain. The H. sapiens brain did not expand any more. It complexified. And as you have agreed over and over again, complexification was so efficient that parts of the brain became redundant and so the brain shrank. You keep agreeing and then ignoring what you have agreed. We also agree that our brains should reflect the processes undergone by ancient brains. Our brains CHANGE as a result of what you aptly called “hard thinking” and the evolutionary change was from expansion to complexification because for some reason (I offered you a logical one, which you rejected, but you have never offered one of your own) sapiens brain STOPPED expanding. If you refuse to take into account what we have agreed over and over again on shrinkage, we shall continue to go round and round like a wheel in a rut.
DAVID: And how does hard thinking get the skull to expand to allow the newly required fit, and the mother's birth canal accommodate the newborn's bigger head? The subject is the same as I raised above. Phenotypic changes all apply. Hard thinking must trigger all!!!
dhw: Hard thinking applies to the brain, because the brain is the seat of thought, whether there is a soul or not. You can never seem to get your head round the fact that the body consists of multiple cell communities which cooperate with one another, with or without your God’s 3.8-billion-year computer programme or personal dabbling. Any anatomical change will involve different cell communities cooperating.
DAVID: I understand organs cooperating in life, but not evolution, in which an active positive change in the DNA of germ cells must be required. You have so far proposed nothing supported by facts in evolution.
Why are you questioning the point you highlighted in red? The changes take place! Do you or do you not agree that every organ comprises a community of cells? Do you or do you not agree that these cell communities (organs) must cooperate (i.e. work together) in any body, including the human body, regardless of whether God dabbles with them or not? If you do, then why can’t you see that if there is a change in one organ, it won’t work unless it can continue to cooperate with the cell communities that comprise the rest of the body? If the cell communities that make up the brain grow larger but the cell communities that make up the skull don't cooperate by also expanding, pop goes the upper weasel. If the birth canal doesn’t expand, pop goes the lower weasel. Nothing whatsoever to do with “hard thinking”. The changes are a fact. How they took place requires a theory. Your theory is that your hands-on God stepped in to dabble with the cell communities of the brain and the skull and the birth canal so that they would cooperate. My theistic proposal is that he gave the cells the intelligence to do it without his interference.
Under “Roles of the cerebellum”:
QUOTE: These results confirm that the effective connectivity between the posterior cerebellum and mentalizing areas in the cerebral cortex play a critical role in the understanding and construction of the correct order of social and non-social action sequences."
DAVID: The cerebellum is used primarily to coordinate muscular activities, but in humans it has developed other activities.
I have always been very reluctant to say that there is a rigid division between the functions of the cell communities that make up the brain, as you seem to imply in your post on "Dualism". I prefer to think of the different cell communities within the brain as cooperating and interacting with one another. The article seems to confirm this view.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, May 16, 2020, 15:37 (1650 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Saturday, May 16, 2020, 15:43
DAVID:(from "B.E.: Learning how to use it") This shows a series of observations that finally led to a usable wheel, but using our brain to think and conceive. Our brain did not enlarge from this strenuous effort. It shrunk. Our evolved brain came from previous ancient brains an should reflect what they did as a result of thought, develop slightly complex neuronal networks with small regions of enlargement. Logical involving no new theory.
dhw: By the time the actual wheel hit the ground rolling, H. sapiens’ brain had ALREADY expanded, and we know that strenuous hard thinking complexifies the sapiens brain. The H. sapiens brain did not expand any more. It complexified. And as you have agreed over and over again, complexification was so efficient that parts of the brain became redundant and so the brain shrank. You keep agreeing and then ignoring what you have agreed. We also agree that our brains should reflect the processes undergone by ancient brains. Our brains CHANGE as a result of what you aptly called “hard thinking” and the evolutionary change was from expansion to complexification because for some reason (I offered you a logical one, which you rejected, but you have never offered one of your own) sapiens brain STOPPED expanding.
None of the above confusion tells us why the sapiens brain was so large. It was not due to the wheel appearing 5,500 years ago. What I have rejected is the nonsensical perversion that ancient brains acted differently than ours. They each were expanded in stages. They may have had some complexification like ours. That is what I have proposed. You seem to agree. As for the bold, the cause of enlargement, I have said God did it.
DAVID: And how does hard thinking get the skull to expand to allow the newly required fit, and the mother's birth canal accommodate the newborn's bigger head? The subject is the same as I raised above. Phenotypic changes all apply. Hard thinking must trigger all!!!
dhw: Hard thinking applies to the brain, because the brain is the seat of thought, whether there is a soul or not. You can never seem to get your head round the fact that the body consists of multiple cell communities which cooperate with one another, with or without your God’s 3.8-billion-year computer programme or personal dabbling. Any anatomical change will involve different cell communities cooperating.
DAVID: I understand organs cooperating in life, but not evolution, in which an active positive change in the DNA of germ cells must be required. You have so far proposed nothing supported by facts in evolution.
dhw: Why are you questioning the point you highlighted in red? The changes take place! Do you or do you not agree that every organ comprises a community of cells? Do you or do you not agree that these cell communities (organs) must cooperate (i.e. work together) in any body, including the human body, regardless of whether God dabbles with them or not? If you do, then why can’t you see that if there is a change in one organ, it won’t work unless it can continue to cooperate with the cell communities that comprise the rest of the body? If the cell communities that make up the brain grow larger but the cell communities that make up the skull don't cooperate by also expanding, pop goes the upper weasel. If the birth canal doesn’t expand, pop goes the lower weasel. Nothing whatsoever to do with “hard thinking”. The changes are a fact. How they took place requires a theory. Your theory is that your hands-on God stepped in to dabble with the cell communities of the brain and the skull and the birth canal so that they would cooperate. My theistic proposal is that he gave the cells the intelligence to do it without his interference.
The red sentence is totally off the point in evolutionary changes. your paragraph is verbiage about what? The sentence I've now bolded above in my last reply is the key point about your cooperation theory, and you've totally ignored it or more likely have no answer. Those germ cell's genomes run the show for every expansion of the brain and must be changed to handle all the bony problems I've mentioned attendant to brain enlargement. It is NEVER cell committees cooperation. They are developed from the germ cells instructions to stem cells. Cooperating organs come as a result. Your problem is not recognizing this prior requirement in evolution.
Under “Roles of the cerebellum”:QUOTE: These results confirm that the effective connectivity between the posterior cerebellum and mentalizing areas in the cerebral cortex play a critical role in the understanding and construction of the correct order of social and non-social action sequences."
DAVID: The cerebellum is used primarily to coordinate muscular activities, but in humans it has developed other activities.
dhw: I have always been very reluctant to say that there is a rigid division between the functions of the cell communities that make up the brain, as you seem to imply in your post on "Dualism". I prefer to think of the different cell communities within the brain as cooperating and interacting with one another. The article seems to confirm this view.
The brain does have different functions in different parts connected by networks of fibers.
Brain Expansion
dhw: By the time the actual wheel hit the ground rolling, H. sapiens’ brain had ALREADY expanded, and we know that strenuous hard thinking complexifies the sapiens brain. […] We also agree that our brains should reflect the processes undergone by ancient brains. Our brains CHANGE as a result of what you aptly called “hard thinking” and the evolutionary change was from expansion to complexification because for some reason (I offered you a logical one, which you rejected, but you have never offered one of your own)sapiens brain STOPPED expanding.
DAVID: None of the above confusion tells us why the sapiens brain was so large. It was not due to the wheel appearing 5,500 years ago.
At least you have now stopped harping on about shrinkage! There are two unanswered questions: why did brains expand, and why did they stop expanding? I didn’t say expansion was due to the wheel! I said the brain had ALREADY expanded – with ALREADY in block capitals.
DAVID: What I have rejected is the nonsensical perversion that ancient brains acted differently than ours. They each were expanded in stages. They may have had some complexification like ours. That is what I have proposed. You seem to agree. As for the bold, the cause of enlargement, I have said God did it.
My theory simply proposes a continuous line from modern back to ancient: brain CHANGE in response to new requirements. Why is that perverse?
The bold does not relate to the cause of enlargement! It relates to the reason why the brain STOPPED expanding (also in block capitals). So please tell us why you think your God switched from dabbling expansion after expansion to dabbling non-expansion and the complexification takeover.
DAVID: And how does hard thinking get the skull to expand to allow the newly required fit, and the mother's birth canal accommodate the newborn's bigger head?
dhw: You can never seem to get your head round the fact that the body consists of multiple cell communities which cooperate with one another, with or without your God’s 3.8-billion-year computer programme or personal dabbling. Any anatomical change will involve different cell communities cooperating. (David’s red)
DAVID: I understand organs cooperating in life, but not evolution, in which an active positive change in the DNA of germ cells must be required.
Dhw: […] The changes are a fact. How they took place requires a theory. Your theory is that your hands-on God stepped in to dabble with the cell communities of the brain and the skull and the birth canal so that they would cooperate. My theistic proposal is that he gave the cells the intelligence to do it without his interference.
DAVID: The red sentence is totally off the point in evolutionary changes. […] The sentence I've now bolded above in my last reply is the key point about your cooperation theory, and you've totally ignored it or more likely have no answer. Those germ cell's genomes run the show for every expansion of the brain and must be changed to handle all the bony problems I've mentioned attendant to brain enlargement. It is NEVER cell committees cooperation. They are developed from the germ cells instructions to stem cells. Cooperating organs come as a result. Your problem is not recognizing this prior requirement in evolution.
Your problem is that you continue to ignore the fact that organs are cell communities! Of course the genomes must be changed if the organ is to change! You claim your God stepped in to dabble the changes in the genome. I propose that the intelligent cells themselves made the changes. If they did so through germ cells instructing stem cells, then that is how the cooperation took place! How can you have cells giving or obeying instructions without cooperation? Intelligent cell communities within organs cooperate to make the changes through which the organs can cooperate with one another. It’s what Shapiro calls “natural genetic engineering”.
DAVID: The cerebellum is used primarily to coordinate muscular activities, but in humans it has developed other activities.
dhw: I have always been very reluctant to say that there is a rigid division between the functions of the cell communities that make up the brain, as you seem to imply in your post on "Dualism". I prefer to think of the different cell communities within the brain as cooperating and interacting with one another. The article seems to confirm this view.
DAVID: The brain does have different functions in different parts connected by networks of fibers.
Of course. But the example of the cerebellum shows that we cannot necessarily restrict each section to a specific function: e.g. the cerebellum is not confined to muscular activities. Clearly there is interaction and cooperation between the different cell communities within the brain. This has nothing to do with our discussion on dualism, and so I take it we can close that thread, at least for the time being.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, May 17, 2020, 15:57 (1649 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: By the time the actual wheel hit the ground rolling, H. sapiens’ brain had ALREADY expanded, and we know that strenuous hard thinking complexifies the sapiens brain. […] We also agree that our brains should reflect the processes undergone by ancient brains. Our brains CHANGE as a result of what you aptly called “hard thinking” and the evolutionary change was from expansion to complexification because for some reason (I offered you a logical one, which you rejected, but you have never offered one of your own)sapiens brain STOPPED expanding.
DAVID: None of the above confusion tells us why the sapiens brain was so large. It was not due to the wheel appearing 5,500 years ago.
dhw: At least you have now stopped harping on about shrinkage! There are two unanswered questions: why did brains expand, and why did they stop expanding? I didn’t say expansion was due to the wheel! I said the brain had ALREADY expanded – with ALREADY in block capitals.
Remember, my God expands brains. Your theories are no more logical than that.
dhw: The bold does not relate to the cause of enlargement! It relates to the reason why the brain STOPPED expanding (also in block capitals). So please tell us why you think your God switched from dabbling expansion after expansion to dabbling non-expansion and the complexification takeover.
Obvious, He reached his goal.
DAVID: And how does hard thinking get the skull to expand to allow the newly required fit, and the mother's birth canal accommodate the newborn's bigger head?dhw: You can never seem to get your head round the fact that the body consists of multiple cell communities which cooperate with one another, with or without your God’s 3.8-billion-year computer programme or personal dabbling. Any anatomical change will involve different cell communities cooperating. (David’s red)
DAVID: I understand organs cooperating in life, but not evolution, in which an active positive change in the DNA of germ cells must be required.
Dhw: […] The changes are a fact. How they took place requires a theory. Your theory is that your hands-on God stepped in to dabble with the cell communities of the brain and the skull and the birth canal so that they would cooperate. My theistic proposal is that he gave the cells the intelligence to do it without his interference.
DAVID: The red sentence is totally off the point in evolutionary changes. […] The sentence I've now bolded above in my last reply is the key point about your cooperation theory, and you've totally ignored it or more likely have no answer. Those germ cell's genomes run the show for every expansion of the brain and must be changed to handle all the bony problems I've mentioned attendant to brain enlargement. It is NEVER cell committees cooperation. They are developed from the germ cells instructions to stem cells. Cooperating organs come as a result. Your problem is not recognizing this prior requirement in evolution.
dhw: Your problem is that you continue to ignore the fact that organs are cell communities! Of course the genomes must be changed if the organ is to change! You claim your God stepped in to dabble the changes in the genome. I propose that the intelligent cells themselves made the changes. If they did so through germ cells instructing stem cells, then that is how the cooperation took place! How can you have cells giving or obeying instructions without cooperation? Intelligent cell communities within organs cooperate to make the changes through which the organs can cooperate with one another. It’s what Shapiro calls “natural genetic engineering”.
Genetics and embryology tell us that a new organism is reproduced from the combined DNA of male and female gametes. That combination runs the show. Your bold is bottom up control whereas the fact is genetics runs top down. You have made up a conglomeration that makes no sense at all. There is no evidence beyond Shapiro in bacteria of bottom up. In fact today I will show how complex bacteria really are. Please reread my last comment above which is a recitation of scientific fact. Simply ignoring it doesn't negate the points.
Brain Expansion
dhw: There are two unanswered questions: why did brains expand, and why did they stop expanding?
DAVID: Remember, my God expands brains. Your theories are no more logical than that.
That is not an answer to the two questions.
dhw: […] please tell us why you think your God switched from dabbling expansion after expansion to dabbling non-expansion and the complexification takeover.
DAVID: Obvious, He reached his goal.
If his goal was a brain of a certain size, which would complexify in response to new requirements, why do you think he found it necessary to specially design all the different hominins and homos and expansions? You believe in common descent and in a God who perhaps might set processes in motion and watch them simply evolve,so isn't it possible that the mechanism he invented might have spontaneously produced all the progressions? After all, you believe complexification works “naturally” without a dabble. So why not expansion?
DAVID:I understand organs cooperating in life, but not evolution, in which an active positive change in the DNA of germ cells must be required.
DAVID: […] The sentence I've now bolded above in my last reply is the key point about your cooperation theory, and you've totally ignored it or more likely have no answer. Those germ cell's genomes run the show for every expansion of the brain and must be changed to handle all the bony problems I've mentioned attendant to brain enlargement. It is NEVER cell committees cooperation. They are developed from the germ cells instructions to stem cells. Cooperating organs come as a result. Your problem is not recognizing this prior requirement in evolution.
dhw: Your problem is that you continue to ignore the fact that organs are cell communities! Of course the genomes must be changed if the organ is to change! You claim your God stepped in to dabble the changes in the genome. I propose that the intelligent cells themselves made the changes. If they did so through germ cells instructing stem cells, then that is how the cooperation took place! How can you have cells giving or obeying instructions without cooperation? Intelligent cell communities within organs cooperate to make the changes through which the organs can cooperate with one another. It’s what Shapiro calls “natural genetic engineering”.
DAVID: Genetics and embryology tell us that a new organism is reproduced from the combined DNA of male and female gametes. That combination runs the show […] Please reread my last comment above which is a recitation of scientific fact. Simply ignoring it doesn't negate the points.
Not ignored but answered directly! Your comment above tells us the germ cell’s genomes run the show and issue instructions to the sperm cells. Are you saying that cells instructing other cells does not constitute cooperation? What is your theory? That God delivers lectures to the germ cells before they can pass on his instructions? Of course the male and female must cooperate. If the brain has expanded and new babies have bigger heads, the cell communities of the birth canal must respond by also expanding! The whole system works by cell communities cooperating to cope with new requirements. I suppose you now want fossils of burst birth canals and dead babies before you’ll accept the logic. You say God dabbles every change (usually before needed – do you think he expanded the birth canal before brains expanded?), whereas I propose that all changes occur in a natural sequence as intelligent cells (with your God as the possible source of their intelligence) respond to new conditions.
DAVID: Your bold is bottom up control whereas the fact is genetics runs top down. You have made up a conglomeration that makes no sense at all. There is no evidence beyond Shapiro in bacteria of bottom up. In fact today I will show how complex bacteria really are.
I don’t understand your bottom-up versus top down. We agree that intelligence runs the show. You think your intelligent God dabbles every genome change in every organ/organism. I propose that the changes are made by the intelligent genome itself (which your God may have designed with the capability of changing itself). I don’t know why you’ve suddenly brought in bacteria, other than to snipe at Shapiro and all the other scientists who are convinced that cells are intelligent.
QUOTE: "No one knows whether the structures seen in bacteria represent primitive, intermediate steps in the evolution of eukaryotic organelles, or separate innovations that evolved independently of those of eukaryotes. It’s possible that the answer varies with each organelle. But even if the bacterial and eukaryotic organelles did evolve completely independently, the prokaryotic structures may be useful for understanding the eukaryotic ones. (DAVID’s bold)
DAVID: My bold represents the key point: the evolutionary jump to eukaryote cells may have been much smaller than previously thought, and therefore original bacteria at/after the start of life may have been much more complex than previously realized, implying even more the necessity that a designer was/is required.
Nothing to do with why the brain expanded and then stopped expanding to let complexification take over. But I accept your argument that the greater the complexity, the stronger the case for design.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Monday, May 18, 2020, 19:17 (1648 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: There are two unanswered questions: why did brains expand, and why did they stop expanding?
DAVID: Remember, my God expands brains. Your theories are no more logical than that.
dhw: That is not an answer to the two questions.
It is my answer. You want natural causes. We still discuss at two different levels which cannot meet. God does it as you theistic question below:
dhw: […] please tell us why you think your God switched from dabbling expansion after expansion to dabbling non-expansion and the complexification takeover.DAVID: Obvious, He reached his goal.
dhw: If his goal was a brain of a certain size, which would complexify in response to new requirements, why do you think he found it necessary to specially design all the different hominins and homos and expansions? ...So why not expansion?
Because He evolved us from bacteria. And reached an end point which was His goal.
DAVID:I understand organs cooperating in life, but not evolution, in which an active positive change in the DNA of germ cells must be required.DAVID: […] The sentence I've now bolded above in my last reply is the key point about your cooperation theory, and you've totally ignored it or more likely have no answer. Those germ cell's genomes run the show for every expansion of the brain and must be changed to handle all the bony problems I've mentioned attendant to brain enlargement. It is NEVER cell committees cooperation. They are developed from the germ cells instructions to stem cells. Cooperating organs come as a result. Your problem is not recognizing this prior requirement in evolution.
dhw: Your problem is that you continue to ignore the fact that organs are cell communities! Of course the genomes must be changed if the organ is to change! You claim your God stepped in to dabble the changes in the genome. I propose that the intelligent cells themselves made the changes. If they did so through germ cells instructing stem cells, then that is how the cooperation took place! How can you have cells giving or obeying instructions without cooperation? Intelligent cell communities within organs cooperate to make the changes through which the organs can cooperate with one another. It’s what Shapiro calls “natural genetic engineering”.
DAVID: Genetics and embryology tell us that a new organism is reproduced from the combined DNA of male and female gametes. That combination runs the show […] Please reread my last comment above which is a recitation of scientific fact. Simply ignoring it doesn't negate the points.
dhw: Not ignored but answered directly! Your comment above tells us the germ cell’s genomes run the show and issue instructions to the sperm cells. Are you saying that cells instructing other cells does not constitute cooperation? What is your theory? That God delivers lectures to the germ cells before they can pass on his instructions? Of course the male and female must cooperate.
To save your weird cooperation theory you are ignoring the science I'm presenting. Each new individual is formed from top down instructions in gamete DNA from embryo to newborn. Cooperating organs and cells in organs result. Epigenetic coding changes do not speciate, only slightly modify reactions.
DAVID: Your bold is bottom up control whereas the fact is genetics runs top down. You have made up a conglomeration that makes no sense at all. There is no evidence beyond Shapiro in bacteria of bottom up. In fact today I will show how complex bacteria really are.dhw: I don’t understand your bottom-up versus top down. We agree that intelligence runs the show. You think your intelligent God dabbles every genome change in every organ/organism. I propose that the changes are made by the intelligent genome itself (which your God may have designed with the capability of changing itself).
You do understand my point based on your reply. The genome has to change, and the theoretical Darwin proposed mechanisms are all chance! (Drift, mistake, gamma rays damage, etc.) I"ll stick with God. Do Darwinists accept intelligent DNA? No way. You are on your own as a third way.
QUOTE: "No one knows whether the structures seen in bacteria represent primitive, intermediate steps in the evolution of eukaryotic organelles, or separate innovations that evolved independently of those of eukaryotes. It’s possible that the answer varies with each organelle. But even if the bacterial and eukaryotic organelles did evolve completely independently, the prokaryotic structures may be useful for understanding the eukaryotic ones. (DAVID’s bold)
DAVID: My bold represents the key point: the evolutionary jump to eukaryote cells may have been much smaller than previously thought, and therefore original bacteria at/after the start of life may have been much more complex than previously realized, implying even more the necessity that a designer was/is required.
dhw: Nothing to do with why the brain expanded and then stopped expanding to let complexification take over. But I accept your argument that the greater the complexity, the stronger the case for design.
Shows God's good pre-planning
Brain Expansion
dhw: There are two unanswered questions: why did brains expand, and why did they stop expanding?
DAVID: Remember, my God expands brains. Your theories are no more logical than that.
dhw: That is not an answer to the two questions.
DAVID: It is my answer. You want natural causes. […]
These do not exclude God as the possible designer of the mechanisms that enable organs and organisms to evolve “naturally”.
dhw: If his goal was a brain of a certain size, which would complexify in response to new requirements, why do you think he found it necessary to specially design all the different hominins and homos and expansions? ...So why not expansion?
DAVID: Because He evolved us from bacteria. And reached an end point which was His goal.
This does not tell us why, if he was capable of hands-on designing H. sapiens brain, he hands-on designed all the preceding brains, kept dabbling expansions, then stopped dabbling expansions and left the sapiens brain to do all its own complexifications. You left out my question: “After all, you believe complexification works “naturally” without a dabble. So why not expansion?” Perhaps you will answer now.
DAVID: […] Those germ cell's genomes run the show for every expansion of the brain and must be changed to handle all the bony problems I've mentioned attendant to brain enlargement. It is NEVER cell committees cooperation. They are developed from the germ cells instructions to stem cells.
dhw: Of course the genomes must be changed if the organ is to change! You claim your God stepped in to dabble the changes in the genome. I propose that the intelligent cells themselves made the changes. If they did so through germ cells instructing stem cells, then that is how the cooperation took place! How can you have cells giving or obeying instructions without cooperation? […] What is your theory? That God delivers lectures to the germ cells before they can pass on his instructions? Of course the male and female must cooperate.
DAVID: To save your weird cooperation theory you are ignoring the science I'm presenting. Each new individual is formed from top down instructions in gamete DNA from embryo to newborn. Cooperating organs and cells in organs result. Epigenetic coding changes do not speciate, only slightly modify reactions.
You really are determined to dodge the brain expansion issue. First it was the expansion of the skull and the birth canal. Now that I’ve answered that (and you have completely ignored my answer, which I shan’t repeat here) you want to switch to the whole process of how the embryo is formed and turns into the newborn! ALL processes depend on cell communities cooperating. Instruction from cells to cells constitute cooperation. But once a process is established, I would suggest that the cooperation is automatic until new conditions may require a change (as with the skull and the birth canal). Of course the end product of the reproduction process is a community of cell communities that cooperate with one another. How does that mean that the processes leading to the end product do NOT require cooperation? And we are not discussing speciation on this thread. We are discussing brain expansion.
DAVID: You do understand my point based on your reply. The genome has to change, and the theoretical Darwin proposed mechanisms are all chance! (Drift, mistake, gamma rays damage, etc.) I"ll stick with God. Do Darwinists accept intelligent DNA? No way. You are on your own as a third way.
Now all of a sudden the subject switches to Darwin and chance, which we have both long ago rejected. Once again, yes, the genome has to change. You think your God dabbles it. I propose that the cells are intelligent. So does Shapiro, and I am not on my own. And his research is based on the findings of many others who firmly believe in the cellular intelligence which you acknowledge to be 50/50 but reject all the same. May we please return to the subject of brain expansion?
**********
Under "Genome complexity":
QUOTE: The gene system must have the physical freedom to specify itself, as well as any variation of itself.
This article is too technical for me to follow, but as always I accept the logic of the design argument. I’d be grateful, though, if you would explain the implications of the above quote, which seems to me to confirm that the gene system has the potential to vary itself.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, May 19, 2020, 19:24 (1647 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: It is my answer. You want natural causes. […]
dhw: These do not exclude God as the possible designer of the mechanisms that enable organs and organisms to evolve “naturally”.
I'll accept that if you allow guidelines, which you won't. Your weak proposals of God are not the God I envision.
DAVID: Because He evolved us from bacteria. And reached an end point which was His goal.
dhw: This does not tell us why, if he was capable of hands-on designing H. sapiens brain, he hands-on designed all the preceding brains, kept dabbling expansions, then stopped dabbling expansions and left the sapiens brain to do all its own complexifications. You left out my question: “After all, you believe complexification works “naturally” without a dabble. So why not expansion?” Perhaps you will answer now.
I've answered many times. Previous brains undoubtedly had some degree of complexification, and is part of the brain-design God gave them and us. No different than enlarging muscles with repeated exercise. Lose one kidney and the other enlarges to handle the load. Many organs have built-in adaptability, no dabble required. Expansion is by God's design.
DAVID: To save your weird cooperation theory you are ignoring the science I'm presenting. Each new individual is formed from top down instructions in gamete DNA from embryo to newborn. Cooperating organs and cells in organs result. Epigenetic coding changes do not speciate, only slightly modify reactions.dhw: You really are determined to dodge the brain expansion issue. First it was the expansion of the skull and the birth canal. Now that I’ve answered that (and you have completely ignored my answer, which I shan’t repeat here) you want to switch to the whole process of how the embryo is formed and turns into the newborn! ALL processes depend on cell communities cooperating.
I don't dodge. You are ignoring the science. Those cooperating cells in different organs were forced to be that way by DNA instructions. Cells don't cooperate with DNA. They are specifically told what to do in forming their organs and you haven't gotten rid of the bony issues. It is the DNA which tells what changes are required by all groups of cells. No cooperation, just commands. For a new species to appear, DNA must be changed beyond epigenetics, which cells might suggest. As I stated before, you are mixing up what is really happening to fit your ideas. It is top down control, not bottom up.
dhw: Instruction from cells to cells constitute cooperation. But once a process is established, I would suggest that the cooperation is automatic until new conditions may require a change (as with the skull and the birth canal). Of course the end product of the reproduction process is a community of cell communities that cooperate with one another. How does that mean that the processes leading to the end product do NOT require cooperation? And we are not discussing speciation on this thread. We are discussing brain expansion.
Of course we are discussing speciation. Every new individual with a bigger brain is a new species. Again, untrue bottom up controls is what you present.
DAVID: You do understand my point based on your reply. The genome has to change, and the theoretical Darwin proposed mechanisms are all chance! (Drift, mistake, gamma rays damage, etc.) I"ll stick with God. Do Darwinists accept intelligent DNA? No way. You are on your own as a third way.dhw: Now all of a sudden the subject switches to Darwin and chance, which we have both long ago rejected. Once again, yes, the genome has to change. You think your God dabbles it. I propose that the cells are intelligent. So does Shapiro, and I am not on my own. And his research is based on the findings of many others who firmly believe in the cellular intelligence which you acknowledge to be 50/50 but reject all the same. May we please return to the subject of brain expansion?
Your imagined degree of cell intelligence is a gross extrapolation from what Shapiro proposed with no advances in that area since his book.
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Under "Genome complexity":
QUOTE: The gene system must have the physical freedom to specify itself, as well as any variation of itself.dhw: This article is too technical for me to follow, but as always I accept the logic of the design argument. I’d be grateful, though, if you would explain the implications of the above quote, which seems to me to confirm that the gene system has the potential to vary itself.
He uses it in this sense to fit the discussion in biochemical terms: From the dictionary
"specialised, specialized
developed or designed for a special activity or function". DNA is very specific in what it does and maintains it unless changed.
Note this quote: "to specify itself among alternatives." Means it selects a specific function in the process among other possibilities.
My comment should guide you: "This means the molecular reactions go on under precise coordination but each stepwise molecule does not know the end point to which it is directing a process. This demands design, because the chemicals do not get arranged this way on their own, with purposeful results all the time. Note Polanyi uses the concept of guidance by information."
Brain Expansion
dhw: […] Why did brains expand, and why did they stop expanding?
DAVID: Remember, my God expands brains.
dhw: That is not an answer to the two questions.
DAVID: It is my answer. You want natural causes. […]
dhw: These do not exclude God as the possible designer of the mechanisms that enable organs and organisms to evolve “naturally”.
DAVID: I'll accept that if you allow guidelines, which you won't. Your weak proposals of God are not the God I envision.
Your guidelines are a 3.8-billion-year old computer programme (now abandoned) and hands-on dabbling – the opposite of my theory. Why is it “weak” for God to invent a mechanism for natural expansion but not for natural complexification?
DAVID: Previous brains undoubtedly had some degree of complexification, and is part of the brain-design God gave them and us. No different than enlarging muscles with repeated exercise. Lose one kidney and the other enlarges to handle the load. Many organs have built-in adaptability, no dabble required. Expansion is by God's design.
The modern brain does not enlarge with repeated exercise but complexifies. I propose that earlier brains enlarged with hard thinking, just as muscles enlarge with repeated exercise and the kidney responds to new requirements by enlarging itself. In my theistic theory, God would have designed the mechanism whereby brains adapt themselves to new requirements, either by enlarging themselves (pre-sapiens) or by complexifying themselves (sapiens). Thank you for supporting it with your excellent examples.
DAVID: Each new individual is formed from top down instructions in gamete DNA from embryo to newborn. Cooperating organs and cells in organs result. Epigenetic coding changes do not speciate, only slightly modify reactions.
dhw: You really are determined to dodge the brain expansion issue. First it was the expansion of the skull and the birth canal. Now that I’ve answered that [...] you want to switch to the whole process of how the embryo is formed and turns into the newborn! ALL processes depend on cell communities cooperating.
DAVID: I don't dodge. You are ignoring the science. Those cooperating cells in different organs were forced to be that way by DNA instructions. Cells don't cooperate with DNA. They are specifically told what to do in forming their organs and you haven't gotten rid of the bony issues[…]. For a new species to appear, DNA must be changed beyond epigenetics, which cells might suggest. […]
First you had germ cells instructing stem cells, and now you have DNA issuing instructions, as if DNA was not part of the cell! And you want to switch from brain expansion to speciation and epigenetics. Back to basics: Do you deny that the brain consists of cell communities which cooperate with one another, that the cell community of the skull must expand – like muscles expanding through exercise – to accommodate the enlarged brain, and the cell community of the birth canal must expand to accommodate the enlarged skull? And in your theory, do you think your God DOESN’T reorganize the cell communities in such a way that they work together?
dhw: And we are not discussing speciation on this thread.
DAVID: Of course we are discussing speciation. Every new individual with a bigger brain is a new species. […]
On the ant thread you said the giant kangaroo was not a new species, but now the giant brain is a new species. Why are we arguing about what constitutes a species? Please answer the above questions concerning brain expansion and cooperation.
DAVID: The genome has to change, and the theoretical Darwin proposed mechanisms are all chance! (Drift, mistake, gamma rays damage, etc.) I"ll stick with God. Do Darwinists accept intelligent DNA? No way. You are on your own as a third way.
dhw: Now all of a sudden the subject switches to Darwin and chance, which we have both long ago rejected. Once again, yes, the genome has to change. You think your God dabbles it. I propose that the cells are intelligent. So does Shapiro, and I am not on my own.
DAVID: Your imagined degree of cell intelligence is a gross extrapolation from what Shapiro proposed with no advances in that area since his book.
There is no gross extrapolation. You’ve forgotten the list of quotes from your own book, which calls Shapiro’s “an amazing documentation of all the work in the epigenetic field” (p. 146): CELLS are cognitive, sentient beings with “sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities”, and “Evolutionary novelty arises from the production of new cell and multicellular structures as a result of cellular self-modification functions and cell fusions.” Please note the word “novelty”.
**********
QUOTE: "The gene system must have the physical freedom to specify itself, as well as any variation of itself."
dhw: I’d be grateful...if you would explain the implications of the above quote, which seems to me to confirm that the gene system has the potential to vary itself.
You have kindly defined “specialised”, and emphasized design and information. Thank you. But please tell me if I’m right to interpret this as a proposal that the gene system can autonomously change its own structure? (I know you will disagree – I‘m only asking for clarification of the statement itself.)
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, May 20, 2020, 18:17 (1646 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Wednesday, May 20, 2020, 18:28
DAVID: I'll accept that if you allow guidelines, which you won't. Your weak proposals of God are not the God I envision.
dhw: Your guidelines are a 3.8-billion-year old computer programme (now abandoned) and hands-on dabbling – the opposite of my theory. Why is it “weak” for God to invent a mechanism for natural expansion but not for natural complexification?
Apples and eggs. Complexification does not change a species as brain expansion does. God speciates each step. You can't seem to tell the difference. Complexification is a process given to each stage of brain in hominin/homo evolution, previously stated by me over and over. Pre-programming and dabbling are not abandoned, just guesses as to how God works, always under reconsideration. Haven't you noticed the multiple entries on pre-planning?
DAVID: You are ignoring the science. Those cooperating cells in different organs were forced to be that way by DNA instructions. Cells don't cooperate with DNA. They are specifically told what to do in forming their organs and you haven't gotten rid of the bony issues[…]. For a new species to appear, DNA must be changed beyond epigenetics, which cells might suggest. […]
dhw: Back to basics: Do you deny that the brain consists of cell communities which cooperate with one another, that the cell community of the skull must expand – like muscles expanding through exercise – to accommodate the enlarged brain, and the cell community of the birth canal must expand to accommodate the enlarged skull? And in your theory, do you think your God DOESN’T reorganize the cell communities in such a way that they work together?
How do the various bony cell committees know what to do on their own? Answer, they don't. Newly instructed DNA/stem cells tell them how and what to form. Your overwhelming desire for brilliant cells to get rid of God doesn't fit the science. But, thank you. Of course God instructs every part of a body in new species through changes in DNA.
Nothing natural.
dhw: And we are not discussing speciation on this thread.DAVID: Of course we are discussing speciation. Every new individual with a bigger brain is a new species. […]
On the ant thread you said the giant kangaroo was not a new species, but now the giant brain is a new species. Why are we arguing about what constitutes a species? Please answer the above questions concerning brain expansion and cooperation.
Answered above . Of course you recognize species differences. Don't fudge.
DAVID: The genome has to change, and the theoretical Darwin proposed mechanisms are all chance! (Drift, mistake, gamma rays damage, etc.) I"ll stick with God. Do Darwinists accept intelligent DNA? No way. You are on your own as a third way.dhw: Now all of a sudden the subject switches to Darwin and chance, which we have both long ago rejected. Once again, yes, the genome has to change. You think your God dabbles it. I propose that the cells are intelligent. So does Shapiro, and I am not on my own.
DAVID: Your imagined degree of cell intelligence is a gross extrapolation from what Shapiro proposed with no advances in that area since his book.
dhw: There is no gross extrapolation. You’ve forgotten the list of quotes from your own book, which calls Shapiro’s “an amazing documentation of all the work in the epigenetic field” (p. 146): CELLS are cognitive, sentient beings with “sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities”, and “Evolutionary novelty arises from the production of new cell and multicellular structures as a result of cellular self-modification functions and cell fusions.” Please note the word “novelty”.
I fully respect Shapiro and his theory as a great contribution. In this website I quoted his careful presentation to the Royal society which is not as stretched as you constantly want it to be. Your desires are not the truth of where evolutionary theory sits as of now. Invent all you want. I will constantly reject it.
**********
QUOTE: "The gene system must have the physical freedom to specify itself, as well as any variation of itself."dhw: I’d be grateful...if you would explain the implications of the above quote, which seems to me to confirm that the gene system has the potential to vary itself.
You have kindly defined “specialised”, and emphasized design and information. Thank you. But please tell me if I’m right to interpret this as a proposal that the gene system can autonomously change its own structure? (I know you will disagree – I‘m only asking for clarification of the statement itself.)
I've clarified the statement and you hopefully keep trying to subvert it to your unreal realm of thought. DNA does not change itself other than epigenetic marks for adaptations within species. I know what the author meant and described it by definitions. And please accept the concept of information behind or organizing all processes of life. I know you fight it because of the implications for a designing mind.
Brain Expansion
dhw: Why is it “weak” for God to invent a mechanism for natural expansion but not for natural complexification?
DAVID: Apples and eggs. Complexification does not change a species as brain expansion does. God speciates each step. You can't seem to tell the difference. Complexification is a process given to each stage of brain in hominin/homo evolution, previously stated by me over and over.
We are not talking about speciation but about two different processes: enlargement and complexification (usually a potent argument for design, but not here apparently). I’m still wearing my theist’s hat: do you think that the brain’s ability to complexify all by itself came about spontaneously through natural processes, or through God’s hands-on design? If it’s the latter, why could he not also have hands-on-designed the brain to expand all by itself? You told us complexification was “no different than enlarging muscles with repeated exercise” and also gave us the kidney example. Why do you think complexification can be compared to muscles expanding with repeated exercise, but expanding brains can’t?
DAVID: You are ignoring the science. Those cooperating cells in different organs were forced to be that way by DNA instructions. Cells don't cooperate with DNA. They are specifically told what to do in forming their organs and you haven't gotten rid of the bony issues[…]. For a new species to appear, DNA must be changed beyond epigenetics, which cells might suggest. […]
dhw: Back to basics: Do you deny that the brain consists of cell communities which cooperate with one another, that the cell community of the skull must expand – like muscles expanding through exercise – to accommodate the enlarged brain, and the cell community of the birth canal must expand to accommodate the enlarged skull? And in your theory, do you think your God DOESN’T reorganize the cell communities in such a way that they work together?
DAVID: How do the various bony cell committees know what to do on their own? Answer, they don't. Newly instructed DNA/stem cells tell them how and what to form. Your overwhelming desire for brilliant cells to get rid of God doesn't fit the science. But, thank you. Of course God instructs every part of a body in new species through changes in DNA. Nothing natural.
My bolded question remains unanswered. The various bony cell communities contain DNA! What do you mean by DNA/stem cells being newly instructed? Three days ago it was the germ cells instructing the stem cells, then it was DNA issuing instructions, and now DNA and stem cells are being instructed. By what? I don't know which part of the cell community runs which, but I suggest that the bony cells know what to do is because – as many scientists believe – cells are intelligent.
DAVID: Your imagined degree of cell intelligence is a gross extrapolation from what Shapiro proposed with no advances in that area since his book.
dhw: There is no gross extrapolation. You’ve forgotten the list of quotes from your own book, which calls Shapiro’s “an amazing documentation of all the work in the epigenetic field” (p. 146): CELLS are cognitive, sentient beings with “sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities”, and “Evolutionary novelty arises from the production of new cell and multicellular structures as a result of cellular self-modification functions and cell fusions.” Please note the word “novelty”.
DAVID: I fully respect Shapiro and his theory as a great contribution. In this website I quoted his careful presentation to the Royal society which is not as stretched as you constantly want it to be.
The address did not contradict the quotes above. And the above is not a “stretch” – those are his words!
DAVID: Your desires are not the truth of where evolutionary theory sits as of now. Invent all you want. I will constantly reject it.
Do you think evolutionary theory as of now sits with your God preprogramming or dabbling every past and present “evolutionary novelty” plus lifestyles and natural wonders in order to design us? Does it as of now sit with chance mutations? I couldn’t care less where it “sits of now”. Please stick to the logic of the arguments.
**********
QUOTE: "The gene system must have the physical freedom to specify itself, as well as any variation of itself."
dhw: I’d be grateful...if you would explain the implications of the above quote, which seems to me to confirm that the gene system has the potential to vary itself.
DAVID: I've clarified the statement and you hopefully keep trying to subvert it to your unreal realm of thought. DNA does not change itself other than epigenetic marks for adaptations within species. I know what the author meant and described it by definitions.
I merely asked for clarification, not for your views on what DNA can and can’t do. But if it actually means that the gene system can’t vary itself, then of course I shall forbear from quoting it!
DAVID: And please accept the concept of information behind or organizing all processes of life. I know you fight it because of the implications for a designing mind.
No need to reopen this thread, except to say that my objection has absolutely nothing to do with design and everything to do with inadequate and totally misleading and confusing use of language.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, May 21, 2020, 15:35 (1645 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Why is it “weak” for God to invent a mechanism for natural expansion but not for natural complexification?
DAVID: Apples and eggs. Complexification does not change a species as brain expansion does. God speciates each step. You can't seem to tell the difference. Complexification is a process given to each stage of brain in hominin/homo evolution, previously stated by me over and over.
dhw: We are not talking about speciation but about two different processes: enlargement and complexification (usually a potent argument for design, but not here apparently).
Of course we are discussing speciation. Each enlarged-brain Hominin is a new species.
dhw: I’m still wearing my theist’s hat: do you think that the brain’s ability to complexify all by itself came about spontaneously through natural processes, or through God’s hands-on design?
God designed each new brain with the ability to complexify'
dhw: If it’s the latter, why could he not also have hands-on-designed the brain to expand all by itself? You told us complexification was “no different than enlarging muscles with repeated exercise” and also gave us the kidney example. Why do you think complexification can be compared to muscles expanding with repeated exercise, but expanding brains can’t?
Brains are not muscles and complexification is simply a characteristic of the brain, as expansion is a characteristic of muscles. You again have misunderstood or twisted what I give as examples.
DAVID: How do the various bony cell committees know what to do on their own? Answer, they don't. Newly instructed DNA/stem cells tell them how and what to form. Your overwhelming desire for brilliant cells to get rid of God doesn't fit the science. But, thank you. Of course God instructs every part of a body in new species through changes in DNA. Nothing natural.dhw: My bolded question remains unanswered. The various bony cell communities contain DNA! What do you mean by DNA/stem cells being newly instructed? Three days ago it was the germ cells instructing the stem cells, then it was DNA issuing instructions, and now DNA and stem cells are being instructed. By what? I don't know which part of the cell community runs which, but I suggest that the bony cells know what to do is because – as many scientists believe – cells are intelligent.
Pure wishful thinking. Cells are instructed from above.
DAVID: I fully respect Shapiro and his theory as a great contribution. In this website I quoted his careful presentation to the Royal society which is not as stretched as you constantly want it to be.
dhw: The address did not contradict the quotes above. And the above is not a “stretch” – those are his words!
Agreed. But they are pure unproved theory as to how evolution might advance naturally. You have extrapolated as the bold above. You now have cells running everything in bottom up control.
**********
QUOTE: "The gene system must have the physical freedom to specify itself, as well as any variation of itself."
dhw: I’d be grateful...if you would explain the implications of the above quote, which seems to me to confirm that the gene system has the potential to vary itself.
DAVID: I've clarified the statement and you hopefully keep trying to subvert it to your unreal realm of thought. DNA does not change itself other than epigenetic marks for adaptations within species. I know what the author meant and described it by definitions.
dhw: I merely asked for clarification, not for your views on what DNA can and can’t do. But if it actually means that the gene system can’t vary itself, then of course I shall forbear from quoting it!
DAVID: And please accept the concept of information behind or organizing all processes of life. I know you fight it because of the implications for a designing mind.
dhw: No need to reopen this thread, except to say that my objection has absolutely nothing to do with design and everything to do with inadequate and totally misleading and confusing use of language.
The folks who use the word information know what they mean as I do. The basis of life's processes is information it follows.
Brain Expansion
dhw: Why is it “weak” for God to invent a mechanism for natural expansion but not for natural complexification?
DAVID: Apples and eggs. Complexification does not change a species as brain expansion does. God speciates each step. You can't seem to tell the difference. Complexification is a process given to each stage of brain in hominin/homo evolution, previously stated by me over and over.
dhw: We are not talking about speciation but about two different processes: enlargement and complexification (usually a potent argument for design, but not here apparently).
DAVID: Of course we are discussing speciation. Each enlarged-brain Hominin is a new species.
How does that prove that your God had to dabble enlargement but doesn’t have to dabble complexification?
dhw: I’m still wearing my theist’s hat: do you think that the brain’s ability to complexify all by itself came about spontaneously through natural processes, or through God’s hands-on design?
DAVID: God designed each new brain with the ability to complexify.
Which it does autonomously. So he designed a mechanism allowing autonomous complexification. Why then could he not have designed a mechanism allowing for autonomous enlargement?
dhw: […] You told us complexification was “no different than enlarging muscles with repeated exercise” and also gave us the kidney example. Why do you think complexification can be compared to muscles expanding with repeated exercise, but expanding brains can’t?
DAVID: Brains are not muscles and complexification is simply a characteristic of the brain, as expansion is a characteristic of muscles. You again have misunderstood or twisted what I give as examples.
So why did you compare complexification of the brain to expansion of the muscles? Muscles don’t complexify, and the complexifying brain doesn’t expand! But I’ll tell you what: muscles (which are also cell communities) expand with repeated exercise, and I have proposed that brains expanded with the mental equivalent of repeated exercise in the form of “hard thinking”. Now how’s that for a comparison? And I’d still like an answer to the bolded question above.
DAVID: How do the various bony cell committees know what to do on their own?
DAVID: I suggest that the bony cells know what to do is because – as many scientists believe – cells are intelligent.
DAVID: Pure wishful thinking. Cells are instructed from above.
I really don’t think you should be accusing scientists like Shapiro, McClintock, Margulis, Buehler and the many others I listed some time back, of basing their conclusions on wishful thinking. I accept that there is no proof that cellular intelligence is advanced enough to have engineered what Shapiro calls “evolutionary novelty” – which is why his “natural genetic engineering” is a theory and not a fact. As for your own theory, what is “above”? First it was germ cells, then it was DNA – all part of the cell community – but presumably what you really mean is a 3.8-billion-year computer programme for every “evolutionary” novelty in life’s history, including brain expansion, or direct hands-on divine dabbling, or a mixture of both.
DAVID: But they [Shapiro’s words] are pure unproved theory as to how evolution might advance naturally.
And the proof of your theory is…..?
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Friday, May 22, 2020, 20:37 (1644 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: We are not talking about speciation but about two different processes: enlargement and complexification (usually a potent argument for design, but not here apparently).
DAVID: Of course we are discussing speciation. Each enlarged-brain Hominin is a new species.
dhw: How does that prove that your God had to dabble enlargement but doesn’t have to dabble complexification?
You keep forgetting, as God creates a new larger brain it already contains the ability to complexify, as I'v e stated many times.
dhw: I’m still wearing my theist’s hat: do you think that the brain’s ability to complexify all by itself came about spontaneously through natural processes, or through God’s hands-on design?DAVID: God designed each new brain with the ability to complexify.
dhw: Which it does autonomously. So he designed a mechanism allowing autonomous complexification. Why then could he not have designed a mechanism allowing for autonomous enlargement?
Your constant wish. You can have God doing anything you can imagine. As I've reminded you, your autonomous brain enlargement has to include different bony parts to change also in baby skull, adult skull and Mother's pelvis. All without guidance. And how about telling me what specifies which parts of the brain are to be enlarged? Not autonomous if there are specifications to be followed..
dhw: […] You told us complexification was “no different than enlarging muscles with repeated exercise” and also gave us the kidney example. Why do you think complexification can be compared to muscles expanding with repeated exercise, but expanding brains can’t?DAVID: Brains are not muscles and complexification is simply a characteristic of the brain, as expansion is a characteristic of muscles. You again have misunderstood or twisted what I give as examples.
dhw: So why did you compare complexification of the brain to expansion of the muscles? Muscles don’t complexify, and the complexifying brain doesn’t expand! But I’ll tell you what: muscles (which are also cell communities) expand with repeated exercise, and I have proposed that brains expanded with the mental equivalent of repeated exercise in the form of “hard thinking”. Now how’s that for a comparison?
Forgetting, as usual, complexifying brains shrink!
DAVID: How do the various bony cell committees know what to do on their own?dhw: I suggest that the bony cells know what to do is because – as many scientists believe – cells are intelligent.
DAVID: Pure wishful thinking. Cells are instructed from above.
dhw: I accept that there is no proof that cellular intelligence is advanced enough to have engineered what Shapiro calls “evolutionary novelty” – which is why his “natural genetic engineering” is a theory and not a fact. As for your own theory, what is “above”? First it was germ cells, then it was DNA – all part of the cell community – but presumably what you really mean is a 3.8-billion-year computer programme for every “evolutionary” novelty in life’s history, including brain expansion, or direct hands-on divine dabbling, or a mixture of both.
The bold is something you don't seem to understand from the science which I carefully follow. Have you forgotten the zygote carries all the information for the new individual? The zygote comes from the junction of germ cells. From there stem cells take over and modify their DNA directing it into different states for different kinds of cooperating cells in the various organs. All top down creation! The genome is its own special directive community running the others. Where we recognize feedback, repeating myself for the umpteenth time, is in the appearance of methylation for minor epigenetic adaptive changes in the same species. Speciation, itself, must involve a totally different massive DNA alteration. Not by chance. And various cell committees don't have the mental design power to accomplish it. The last of your statement alludes to my guesses about how God does it. Thanks for recognizing them in your off-hand way.
DAVID: But they [Shapiro’s words] are pure unproved theory as to how evolution might advance naturally.
dhw: And the proof of your theory is…..?
You sure resent my obvious down grade of Shapiro to force you to admit, it is pure theory that has not added to any new advance in understanding evolution.
Brain Expansion
DAVID: Of course we are discussing speciation. Each enlarged-brain Hominin is a new species.
dhw: How does that prove that your God had to dabble enlargement but doesn’t have to dabble complexification?
DAVID: You keep forgetting, as God creates a new larger brain it already contains the ability to complexify, as I'v e stated many times.
You keep forgetting that your God must have designed the mechanism for complexification in the first place. And if so, what makes you think he could not also have designed the mechanism for expansion in the first place?
DAVID: Your constant wish. You can have God doing anything you can imagine.
It is not a wish but a theory, and no less fanciful than your divine, 3.8-billion-year-old computer programmes and/or dabbling.
DAVID: As I've reminded you, your autonomous brain enlargement has to include different bony parts to change also in baby skull, adult skull and Mother's pelvis. All without guidance.
Must I remind you that I gave you a full answer? But you don’t believe in cell communities that respond to changing requirements and so you ignore my answer.
DAVID: And how about telling me what specifies which parts of the brain are to be enlarged? Not autonomous if there are specifications to be followed.
More questions, instead of answering my own (now bolded)! The parts of the brain to be enlarged will be determined by the nature of the requirement. For instance, you commented on the human cerebellum:
DAVID: ...the human brain contains the ability for the cerebellum to help with language[…]. This further supports my approach to brain enlargement, that it has to be specially designed for the new processes of which it is capable. Hard thought is not capable of this result, which requires special design.
Nobody knows what hard thought can and cannot do. If the requirement was for improved communication, the effort to achieve this would have resulted in changes to the cerebellum, just as reading, memorizing and playing an instrument change the relevant parts of the modern brain. I find this more likely than the theories that God dabbled, or there was a chance mutation, and only then did humans discover they could improve their language.
dhw: […] why did you compare complexification of the brain to expansion of the muscles? Muscles don’t complexify, and the complexifying brain doesn’t expand! But I’ll tell you what: muscles (which are also cell communities) expand with repeated exercise, and I have proposed that brains expanded with the mental equivalent of repeated exercise in the form of “hard thinking”. Now how’s that for a comparison?
DAVID: Forgetting, as usual, complexifying brains shrink!
Forgetting as usual that it is the efficiency of complexification that causes shrinkage – not hard thinking. Now please explain what’s wrong with my version of the comparison you initiated?
dhw: I accept that there is no proof that cellular intelligence is advanced enough to have engineered what Shapiro calls “evolutionary novelty”[…]. As for your own theory, what is “above”? First it was germ cells, then it was DNA – all part of the cell community – but presumably what you really mean is a 3.8-billion-year computer programme for every “evolutionary” novelty in life’s history, including brain expansion, or direct hands-on divine dabbling, or a mixture of both.
DAVID: The bold is something you don't seem to understand from the science which I carefully follow. Have you forgotten the zygote carries all the information for the new individual? The zygote comes from the junction of germ cells. From there stem cells take over and modify their DNA directing it into different states for different kinds of cooperating cells in the various organs. All top down creation! The genome is its own special directive community running the others.
It’s clear that whatever the process, there is a hierarchy within cell communities, and intelligent levels issue instructions to the rest, who cooperate in producing the required result. If the genome runs all the other cooperating communities, that's fine with me. Thank you for providing a more detailed analysis of the roles played by the different members of the different cooperating cell communities, as outlined in my theory.
DAVID: Where we recognize feedback, repeating myself for the umpteenth time, is in the appearance of methylation for minor epigenetic adaptive changes in the same species. Speciation, itself, must involve a totally different massive DNA alteration. Not by chance. And various cell committees don't have the mental design power to accomplish it.
Now guesswork takes over from science. I keep repeating that my theory is a theory. Your authoritative claim that cells don’t have the ability to design their own “evolutionary novelties” (Shapiro) is as theoretical as the claim that they do.
DAVID: But they [Shapiro’s words] are pure unproved theory as to how evolution might advance naturally.
dhw: And the proof of your theory is…?
DAVID: You sure resent my obvious down grade of Shapiro to force you to admit, it is pure theory that has not added to any new advance in understanding evolution.
I have never ever at any point in any sentence in any thread claimed that it is more than a theory. And the proof of your theory is….?
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, May 23, 2020, 21:08 (1643 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: You keep forgetting, as God creates a new larger brain it already contains the ability to complexify, as I'v e stated many times.
dhw: You keep forgetting that your God must have designed the mechanism for complexification in the first place. And if so, what makes you think he could not also have designed the mechanism for expansion in the first place?
Because I fully believe only God speciates.
DAVID: As I've reminded you, your autonomous brain enlargement has to include different bony parts to change also in baby skull, adult skull and Mother's pelvis. All without guidance.dhw: Must I remind you that I gave you a full answer? But you don’t believe in cell communities that respond to changing requirements and so you ignore my answer.
Your answer doesn't work. Cell committees are made to be cooperative so life can function. They do not have the ability to design for the future. Just your wishful thinking.
DAVID: And how about telling me what specifies which parts of the brain are to be enlarged? Not autonomous if there are specifications to be followed.dhw: More questions, instead of answering my own (now bolded)! The parts of the brain to be enlarged will be determined by the nature of the requirement. For instance, you commented on the human cerebellum:
DAVID: ...the human brain contains the ability for the cerebellum to help with language[…]. This further supports my approach to brain enlargement, that it has to be specially designed for the new processes of which it is capable. Hard thought is not capable of this result, which requires special design.
dhw: Nobody knows what hard thought can and cannot do.
It causes our brain , the only example we have to shrink. That is a fact, not woolly wishes.
dhw: […] why did you compare complexification of the brain to expansion of the muscles? Muscles don’t complexify, and the complexifying brain doesn’t expand! But I’ll tell you what: muscles (which are also cell communities) expand with repeated exercise, and I have proposed that brains expanded with the mental equivalent of repeated exercise in the form of “hard thinking”. Now how’s that for a comparison?
DAVID: Forgetting, as usual, complexifying brains shrink!
dhw; Forgetting as usual that it is the efficiency of complexification that causes shrinkage – not hard thinking. Now please explain what’s wrong with my version of the comparison you initiated?
Ignoring that complexification shrinks brains exactly from hard thought!
DAVID: Have you forgotten the zygote carries all the information for the new individual? The zygote comes from the junction of germ cells. From there stem cells take over and modify their DNA directing it into different states for different kinds of cooperating cells in the various organs. All top down creation! The genome is its own special directive community running the others.
dhw: It’s clear that whatever the process, there is a hierarchy within cell communities, and intelligent levels issue instructions to the rest, who cooperate in producing the required result. If the genome runs all the other cooperating communities, that's fine with me.
Hierarchy means top down control, not your bottom up.
DAVID: Where we recognize feedback, repeating myself for the umpteenth time, is in the appearance of methylation for minor epigenetic adaptive changes in the same species. Speciation, itself, must involve a totally different massive DNA alteration. Not by chance. And various cell committees don't have the mental design power to accomplish it.dhw: Now guesswork takes over from science. I keep repeating that my theory is a theory. Your authoritative claim that cells don’t have the ability to design their own “evolutionary novelties” (Shapiro) is as theoretical as the claim that they do.
DAVID: But they [Shapiro’s words] are pure unproved theory as to how evolution might advance naturally.
dhw: And the proof of your theory is…?
DAVID: You sure resent my obvious down grade of Shapiro to force you to admit, it is pure theory that has not added to any new advance in understanding evolution.
dhw: I have never ever at any point in any sentence in any thread claimed that it is more than a theory. And the proof of your theory is….?
The basis of your theory is primarily wishful thinking, not based on the facts of the necessity of true mental design activity. Cooperation is not designing!
Brain Expansion
DAVID: You keep forgetting, as God creates a new larger brain it already contains the ability to complexify, as I'v e stated many times.
dhw: You keep forgetting that your God must have designed the mechanism for complexification in the first place. And if so, what makes you think he could not also have designed the mechanism for expansion in the first place?
DAVID: Because I fully believe only God speciates.
Your “full beliefs” are not an answer to my question! You are merely saying you fully believe he didn’t!
DAVID: As I've reminded you, your autonomous brain enlargement has to include different bony parts to change also in baby skull, adult skull and Mother's pelvis. All without guidance.
dhw: Must I remind you that I gave you a full answer? But you don’t believe in cell communities that respond to changing requirements and so you ignore my answer.
DAVID: Your answer doesn't work. Cell committees are made to be cooperative so life can function. They do not have the ability to design for the future. Just your wishful thinking.
Yet again: my theory does NOT entail planning for the future, but RESPONDING to new requirements. And despite all the evidence to the contrary (adaptation of all kinds, and the modern brain RESPONDING to new demands) you still cling to the idea that your God steps in to expand brains, skulls and birth canals BEFORE there is any need for expansion.
DAVID: And how about telling me what specifies which parts of the brain are to be enlarged? Not autonomous if there are specifications to be followed.
dhw: […] The parts of the brain to be enlarged will be determined by the nature of the requirement. For instance, you commented on the human cerebellum:
DAVID: ...the human brain contains the ability for the cerebellum to help with language[…]. This further supports my approach to brain enlargement, that it has to be specially designed for the new processes of which it is capable. Hard thought is not capable of this result, which requires special design.
dhw: Nobody knows what hard thought can and cannot do.
DAVID: It causes our brain, the only example we have to shrink. That is a fact, not woolly wishes.
You have agreed over and over again that hard thought causes complexification, and it is the efficiency of complexification that has caused shrinkage: “Our special brain can complexify, and by increasing certain networks of neurons remove other areas as now unnecessary […] We have a special brain with this remarkable degree of complexification that can cause that much shrinkage, unlike any previous brain”. (Quoted by me on May 5 at 10.53.) Elsewhere I pointed out that if hard thought caused brains to shrink, we would finish up with a dot.
dhw: […] why did you compare complexification of the brain to expansion of the muscles? Muscles don’t complexify, and the complexifying brain doesn’t expand! But I’ll tell you what: muscles (which are also cell communities) expand with repeated exercise, and I have proposed that brains expanded with the mental equivalent of repeated exercise in the form of “hard thinking”. […]
DAVID: Ignoring that complexification shrinks brains exactly from hard thought!
See above. Now please explain what’s wrong with my version of the comparison you initiated.
DAVID: Have you forgotten the zygote carries all the information for the new individual? The zygote comes from the junction of germ cells. From there stem cells take over and modify their DNA directing it into different states for different kinds of cooperating cells in the various organs. All top down creation! The genome is its own special directive community running the others.
dhw: It’s clear that whatever the process, there is a hierarchy within cell communities, and intelligent levels issue instructions to the rest, who cooperate in producing the required result. If the genome runs all the other cooperating communities, that's fine with me.
DAVID: Hierarchy means top down control, not your bottom up.
Of course it does. My whole theory is based on intelligent cells directing operations and cell communities cooperating accordingly. I have no idea why you called it “bottom up”. Once again, thank you for confirming my theory and explaining how it works.
DAVID: You sure resent my obvious down grade of Shapiro to force you to admit, it is pure theory that has not added to any new advance in understanding evolution.
dhw: I have never ever at any point in any sentence in any thread claimed that it is more than a theory. And the proof of your theory is….?
DAVID: The basis of your theory is primarily wishful thinking, not based on the facts of the necessity of true mental design activity. Cooperation is not designing!
Of course it isn’t. The designing is done by intelligence ("top down" as you called it), and many scientists believe that cells are intelligent. Their intelligence guides the cooperation between individual cells and between cell communities. Why you call this “wishful thinking” (and “bottom up”) is beyond me, but “natural genetic engineering” remains a theory because we have no proof that this intelligence is powerful enough to create Shapiro’s “evolutionary novelties”. And now, for the third time, please tell us the proof of your theory.
Brain Expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, May 24, 2020, 19:31 (1642 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Your answer doesn't work. Cell committees are made to be cooperative so life can function. They do not have the ability to design for the future. Just your wishful thinking.
dhw: Yet again: my theory does NOT entail planning for the future, but RESPONDING to new requirements. And despite all the evidence to the contrary (adaptation of all kinds, and the modern brain RESPONDING to new demands) you still cling to the idea that your God steps in to expand brains, skulls and birth canals BEFORE there is any need for expansion.
This is simply an objection to my faith.
dhw: Nobody knows what hard thought can and cannot do.DAVID: It causes our brain, the only example we have to shrink. That is a fact, not woolly wishes.
dhw: You have agreed over and over again that hard thought causes complexification, and it is the efficiency of complexification that has caused shrinkage:
You are ignoring that the mechanism of complexification must be designed into/be-part-of the new brain brain and I assume some of that same mechanism was in more ancient brains. All we can know of hard thought is the result we see in our brain. Anything else is a theoretical invention without any underlying facts.
dhw: […] why did you compare complexification of the brain to expansion of the muscles? Muscles don’t complexify, and the complexifying brain doesn’t expand! But I’ll tell you what: muscles (which are also cell communities) expand with repeated exercise, and I have proposed that brains expanded with the mental equivalent of repeated exercise in the form of “hard thinking”. […]
DAVID: Ignoring that complexification shrinks brains exactly from hard thought!
dhw: See above. Now please explain what’s wrong with my version of the comparison you initiated.
My point is the changes we see in muscle and kidney are designed-in response mechanisms and wouldn't happen if the mechanism were absent. We do not know of any expansion mechanism in brains.
DAVID: Hierarchy means top down control, not your bottom up.dhw: Of course it does. My whole theory is based on intelligent cells directing operations and cell communities cooperating accordingly. I have no idea why you called it “bottom up”.
My definition of hierarchy is not yours: "any system of persons or things ranked one above another." https://www.dictionary.com/browse/hierarchy
The cells of organisms are formed from gamete DNA, top down, to act cooperatively. Epigenetics is minimal adaptation from bottom up with messages from the whole organism to the genome of germ cells to make some small phenotypical or physiological changes, bottom up.
DAVID: The basis of your theory is primarily wishful thinking, not based on the facts of the necessity of true mental design activity. Cooperation is not designing!
dhw: Of course it isn’t. The designing is done by intelligence ("top down" as you called it), and many scientists believe that cells are intelligent. Their intelligence guides the cooperation between individual cells and between cell communities. Why you call this “wishful thinking” (and “bottom up”) is beyond me, but “natural genetic engineering” remains a theory because we have no proof that this intelligence is powerful enough to create Shapiro’s “evolutionary novelties”. And now, for the third time, please tell us the proof of your theory.
We are discussing at two levels. At the God level, everything appears by design, my belief. At your level you are looking for a reasonable natural cause for brain enlargement, which I might accept. I haven't seen any as yet.
Brain Expansion
DAVID: Cell committees are made to be cooperative so life can function. They do not have the ability to design for the future. Just your wishful thinking.
dhw: Yet again: my theory does NOT entail planning for the future, but RESPONDING to new requirements. And despite all the evidence to the contrary (adaptation of all kinds, and the modern brain RESPONDING to new demands) you still cling to the idea that your God steps in to expand brains, skulls and birth canals BEFORE there is any need for expansion.
DAVID: This is simply an objection to my faith.[/i]
It is an objection to your use of faith as a means of attacking my theory! A theory extrapolated from known facts seems to me to be far less “wishful” than a theory based on nothing but faith.
dhw: Nobody knows what hard thought can and cannot do.
DAVID: It causes our brain, the only example we have to shrink. That is a fact, not woolly wishes.
dhw: You have agreed over and over again that hard thought causes complexification, and it is the efficiency of complexification that has caused shrinkage:
DAVID: You are ignoring that the mechanism of complexification must be designed into/be-part-of the new brain brain and I assume some of that same mechanism was in more ancient brains.
So do I. That has nothing to do with your persistent disregard of the agreed cause of shrinkage.
DAVID: All we can know of hard thought is the result we see in our brain. Anything else is a theoretical invention without any underlying facts.
And the result we see in our brain is that it changes in response to hard thought! It does not change in anticipation of hard thought. So why is it “wishful thinking” to propose that the early brain also changed in response to hard thought?
dhw: […] why did you compare complexification of the brain to expansion of the muscles? Muscles don’t complexify, and the complexifying brain doesn’t expand! But I’ll tell you what: muscles (which are also cell communities) expand with repeated exercise, and I have proposed that brains expanded with the mental equivalent of repeated exercise in the form of “hard thinking”. […] Now please explain what’s wrong with my version of the comparison you initiated.
DAVID: My point is the changes we see in muscle and kidney are designed-in response mechanisms and wouldn't happen if the mechanism were absent. We do not know of any expansion mechanism in brains.
Of course they wouldn’t happen without the mechanism. Nor would brain expansion happen without the mechanism! Your mechanism is God doing a dabble. And I ask you why, if your God designed an autonomously functioning complexification mechanism, he couldn’t have designed an autonomously functioning expansion mechanism? Your answer apparently is that it’s a matter of faith.
dhw: My whole theory is based on intelligent cells directing operations and cell communities cooperating accordingly. I have no idea why you called it “bottom up”.
DAVID: My definition of hierarchy is not yours: "any system of persons or things ranked one above another." https://www.dictionary.com/browse/hierarchy
No disagreement! I think most of us would rank intelligence as being above non-intelligence, and the director being above the directed.
DAVID: The cells of organisms are formed from gamete DNA, top down, to act cooperatively. Epigenetics is minimal adaptation from bottom up with messages from the whole organism to the genome of germ cells to make some small phenotypical or physiological changes, bottom up.
What has the formation of cells got to do with “evolutionary novelty”? Both innovation and adaptation are the result of cell communities being aware of changing conditions. If you want to call that awareness the “bottom” level, it’s OK with me. However, the process of restructuring will come about through intelligence (top) making decisions and passing instructions to the lower levels (bottom), with cooperation between individual cells and between cell communities. We know that this process takes place in what you call minimal adaptation and small physiological changes, but nobody knows how maximal adaptation/ innovation takes place. My unproven theory is that it takes place through the same process (with the intelligence possibly having been designed by your God). Your theory is that the same process takes place, but instead of the cells having their own intelligence, God steps in and dabbles with them. […] And now, for the third time, please tell us the proof of your theory.
DAVID: We are discussing at two levels. At the God level, everything appears by design, my belief. At your level you are looking for a reasonable natural cause for brain enlargement, which I might accept. I haven't seen any as yet.
Your theory is that God directly dabbled or preprogrammed every life form, econiche, strategy, lifestyle, natural wonder in the history of life, including brain expansion. My theistic theory is that God designed the mechanism that enabled every life form etc. to do its own designing and, in the case of the brain, its own expansion and complexification. In both cases, everything appears by design. You objected to my theory (and Shapiro’s) because it was unproven. For the fourth time, please tell us the proof of your theory. Alternatively, please stop pretending that this is a reason for rejecting my theory.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Monday, May 25, 2020, 15:41 (1641 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Of course they wouldn’t happen without the mechanism. Nor would brain expansion happen without the mechanism! Your mechanism is God doing a dabble. And I ask you why, if your God designed an autonomously functioning complexification mechanism, he couldn’t have designed an autonomously functioning expansion mechanism? Your answer apparently is that it’s a matter of faith.
Simple: expansion requires advanced design for the new attributes of thought and contemplation. It involves decision as which areas need to be enlarged for the new functions. Complexification is neuronal instructions in their DNA for new networking. You call it intelligent cooperating cells, all an integral part of neurons as the brain is designed.
dhw: My whole theory is based on intelligent cells directing operations and cell communities cooperating accordingly. I have no idea why you called it “bottom up”.DAVID: My definition of hierarchy is not yours: "any system of persons or things ranked one above another." https://www.dictionary.com/browse/hierarchy
dhw: No disagreement! I think most of us would rank intelligence as being above non-intelligence, and the director being above the directed.
DAVID: The cells of organisms are formed from gamete DNA, top down, to act cooperatively. Epigenetics is minimal adaptation from bottom up with messages from the whole organism to the genome of germ cells to make some small phenotypical or physiological changes, bottom up.
dhw: What has the formation of cells got to do with “evolutionary novelty”? Both innovation and adaptation are the result of cell communities being aware of changing conditions. If you want to call that awareness the “bottom” level, it’s OK with me. However, the process of restructuring will come about through intelligence (top) making decisions and passing instructions to the lower levels (bottom), with cooperation between individual cells and between cell communities. We know that this process takes place in what you call minimal adaptation and small physiological changes, but nobody knows how maximal adaptation/ innovation takes place. My unproven theory is that it takes place through the same process (with the intelligence possibly having been designed by your God). Your theory is that the same process takes place, but instead of the cells having their own intelligence, God steps in and dabbles with them. […] And now, for the third time, please tell us the proof of your theory.
For the umpteenth time I can't prove God to you, nor have I over 12 years. But my belief in Him came from logical conclusions from my research. You've seen my reasoning. You recognize design but won't allow yourself to get to the issue of the source of the design. IT MUST have one.
DAVID: We are discussing at two levels. At the God level, everything appears by design, my belief. At your level you are looking for a reasonable natural cause for brain enlargement, which I might accept. I haven't seen any as yet.dhw: Your theory is that God directly dabbled or preprogrammed every life form, econiche, strategy, lifestyle, natural wonder in the history of life, including brain expansion. My theistic theory is that God designed the mechanism that enabled every life form etc. to do its own designing and, in the case of the brain, its own expansion and complexification. In both cases, everything appears by design. You objected to my theory (and Shapiro’s) because it was unproven. For the fourth time, please tell us the proof of your theory. Alternatively, please stop pretending that this is a reason for rejecting my theory.
As above, a designer is absolutely required. A designer who is in absolute control of the processes. I will accept your IM if it contains rigid guidelines to control an absolute directional purpose for the goal, humans.
Brain expansion
dhw: Of course they [muscle and kidney changes] wouldn’t happen without the mechanism. Nor would brain expansion happen without the mechanism! Your mechanism is God doing a dabble. And I ask you why, if your God designed an autonomously functioning complexification mechanism, he couldn’t have designed an autonomously functioning expansion mechanism? Your answer apparently is that it’s a matter of faith.
DAVID: Simple: expansion requires advanced design for the new attributes of thought and contemplation. It involves decision as which areas need to be enlarged for the new functions. Complexification is neuronal instructions in their DNA for new networking. You call it intelligent cooperating cells, all an integral part of neurons as the brain is designed.
I know that expansion means enlargement and complexification means new networking. But if your God was able to design an autonomous mechanism for new networking as and when required, why was he incapable of designing an autonomous mechanism for enlargement as and when required?
dhw: […] the process of restructuring will come about through intelligence (top) making decisions and passing instructions to the lower levels (bottom), with cooperation between individual cells and between cell communities. We know that this process takes place in what you call minimal adaptation and small physiological changes, but nobody knows how maximal adaptation/ innovation takes place. My unproven theory is that it takes place through the same process (with the intelligence possibly having been designed by your God). Your theory is that the same process takes place, but instead of the cells having their own intelligence, God steps in and dabbles with them. […] And now, for the third time, please tell us the proof of your theory.
DAVID: For the umpteenth time I can't prove God to you, nor have I over 12 years. But my belief in Him came from logical conclusions from my research. You've seen my reasoning. You recognize design but won't allow yourself to get to the issue of the source of the design. IT MUST have one.
I have not asked you to prove God! We are discussing two different theistic theories about how evolution works. We agree on the hierarchy and top-down process, but you say God preprogrammed or dabbled it all, and I propose that (theistic version) he gave cells the intelligence to do it themselves. You have repeatedly dismissed my theory (and Shapiro’s) on the grounds that it is unproven. What proof do you have for your own theory?
DAVID: As above, a designer is absolutely required. A designer who is in absolute control of the processes. I will accept your IM if it contains rigid guidelines to control an absolute directional purpose for the goal, humans.
Back we go to your theory of evolution and your three rigid and irreconcilable beliefs: (1) all-knowing, all-powerful God, 2) only purpose H. sapiens, 3) designs millions of non-human life forms, natural wonders etc. before designing only species he wants to design. You will only accept autonomous cellular intelligence (possibly invented by your God) as the driving force of evolution if I agree that it is neither autonomous nor intelligent but is dependent on your God’s preprogramming or dabbling. Meanwhile, do you or do you not accept that your theory concerning both brain expansion in particular and evolution in general (God preprogrammed or dabbled it all) is as unproven as mine? If you accept this, please stop using “unproven” as a reason for rejecting my theory.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, May 26, 2020, 20:08 (1640 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: I know that expansion means enlargement and complexification means new networking. But if your God was able to design an autonomous mechanism for new networking as and when required, why was he incapable of designing an autonomous mechanism for enlargement as and when required?
God could but He would have careful guidelines for the advances ment to fit His directional purposes.
dhw: […] the process of restructuring will come about through intelligence (top) making decisions and passing instructions to the lower levels (bottom), with cooperation between individual cells and between cell communities. We know that this process takes place in what you call minimal adaptation and small physiological changes, but nobody knows how maximal adaptation/ innovation takes place. My unproven theory is that it takes place through the same process (with the intelligence possibly having been designed by your God). Your theory is that the same process takes place, but instead of the cells having their own intelligence, God steps in and dabbles with them. […] And now, for the third time, please tell us the proof of your theory.DAVID: For the umpteenth time I can't prove God to you, nor have I over 12 years. But my belief in Him came from logical conclusions from my research. You've seen my reasoning. You recognize design but won't allow yourself to get to the issue of the source of the design. IT MUST have one.
dhw: I have not asked you to prove God! We are discussing two different theistic theories about how evolution works. We agree on the hierarchy and top-down process, but you say God preprogrammed or dabbled it all, and I propose that (theistic version) he gave cells the intelligence to do it themselves. You have repeatedly dismissed my theory (and Shapiro’s) on the grounds that it is unproven. What proof do you have for your own theory?
DAVID: As above, a designer is absolutely required. A designer who is in absolute control of the processes. I will accept your IM if it contains rigid guidelines to control an absolute directional purpose for the goal, humans.
dhw: Back we go to your theory of evolution and your three rigid and irreconcilable beliefs: (1) all-knowing, all-powerful God, 2) only purpose H. sapiens, 3) designs millions of non-human life forms, natural wonders etc. before designing only species he wants to design.
Not irreconcilable to me. God chose to evolve from bacteria and you've stated He could chose that approach, so what is your problem? Obviously you don't like His choice.
dhw: You will only accept autonomous cellular intelligence (possibly invented by your God) as the driving force of evolution if I agree that it is neither autonomous nor intelligent but is dependent on your God’s preprogramming or dabbling. Meanwhile, do you or do you not accept that your theory concerning both brain expansion in particular and evolution in general (God preprogrammed or dabbled it all) is as unproven as mine? If you accept this, please stop using “unproven” as a reason for rejecting my theory.
I can't accept inventions from nothing. What we know is, that on the way to humans brains, resulted from provided expansions especially in the area that can conceive of complex concepts, when the soul wishes to do that. That shows underlying purpose in the process. We can assume previous brains could complexify a bit. You've agreed. We know in our brain, learning and complex thinking by the soul, results in complexification which shrinks the brain, which apparently is somewhat oversized to allow this process to occur. These are the only facts we have to work with. These facts can only lead me to God as the designer. There is no natural evidence for a method of expansion. So you introduce your version of God providing the brain with its own expansion mechanism. Fine. We are now somewhat is agreement, until I add that my purposeful God will have guidelines in the expansion process to be sure of the directionality of His guided evolutionary process. And you balk. That your God shouldn't be in that much control makes no sense to me.
The real problem is only yours. Design keeps you agnostic. You recognize the need for a designing source. A disembodied mind that has always been around is the only possible answer, because we are here to debate the issue. That mind must exist. We don't need to call it God. Something must be a first cause. These are proven points. We disagree on the attributes only because you inexplicably want natural causes while ignoring the chain of reasoning just presented. You have a problem you don't know how to answer. It is not my problem. I'm with a designing mind always existing, an inescapable thought.
Brain expansion
dhw: …if your God was able to design an autonomous mechanism for new networking as and when required, why was he incapable of designing an autonomous mechanism for enlargement as and when required?
DAVID: God could but He would have careful guidelines for the advances ment to fit His directional purposes.
Since your God is all-powerful and all-knowing, I’m sure he would have known what particular thoughts and activities would result in his mechanism expanding the relevant bits of the brain that were needed to give material expression to the thoughts – just as he would have known how his complexification mechanism would have responded to those thoughts.
dhw: You will only accept autonomous cellular intelligence (possibly invented by your God) as the driving force of evolution if I agree that it is neither autonomous nor intelligent but is dependent on your God’s preprogramming or dabbling. Meanwhile, do you or do you not accept that your theory concerning both brain expansion in particular and evolution in general (God preprogrammed or dabbled it all) is as unproven as mine? If you accept this, please stop using “unproven” as a reason for rejecting my theory.
DAVID: I can't accept inventions from nothing. What we know is, that on the way to humans brains, resulted from provided expansions especially in the area that can conceive of complex concepts, when the soul wishes to do that.
I’m sorry, but I can’t follow your syntax or your argument. If we accept your dualism, we have agreed that the soul conceives of concepts, using the brain for information and material expression.
DAVID: That shows underlying purpose in the process. We can assume previous brains could complexify a bit. You've agreed. We know in our brain, learning and complex thinking by the soul, results in complexification which shrinks the brain, which apparently is somewhat oversized to allow this process to occur. These are the only facts we have to work with.
Agreed. And since we know that the modern brain changes (complexifies) in response to learning and complex thinking, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the ancient brain did the same, but when its ability to complexify reached a limit, it needed increased capacity and therefore expanded. For some reason (you didn’t like my anatomical explanation) expansion stopped and complexification took over, apart from minor expansions, and was so efficient that certain parts of the brain were no longer necessary, which led to shrinkage. You have rejected the expansion part of this theory on the grounds that it is not proven, and I have asked you not to use that as a reason for rejection.
DAVID: These facts can only lead me to God as the designer. There is no natural evidence for a method of expansion. So you introduce your version of God providing the brain with its own expansion mechanism. Fine. We are now somewhat is agreement, until I add that my purposeful God will have guidelines in the expansion process to be sure of the directionality of His guided evolutionary process. And you balk. That your God shouldn't be in that much control makes no sense to me.
Both theories allow for God as the designer. Thank you for now agreeing that he could have provided an expansion mechanism, instead of dabbling each and every expansion. Your sudden agreement is suddenly accompanied by nebulous guidelines, and I have answered that point above. Your all-knowing God would have known what his mechanism would produce, and that mechanism would have involved the cooperative work of the cells which he had endowed with the intelligence to change their own structure in response to new requirements. The rest of your post again harps on the existence of a designer, which is not the subject under discussion here since my theory allows for a designer. There is only one point that requires an answer:
DAVID: We disagree on the attributes only because you inexplicably want natural causes while ignoring the chain of reasoning just presented.
I see no reason at all why your God should not have invented a system whereby every effect had a natural cause, e.g. brains expanded and/or complexified, and skulls and birth canals expanded, and pre-whales' legs turned into flippers, IN RESPONSE to new requirements, and bees bite leaves and ants build cities and weaverbirds construct nests using their natural (God-given?) intelligence rather than being preprogrammed or constantly having their genomes dabbled with.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, May 27, 2020, 18:35 (1639 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Since your God is all-powerful and all-knowing, I’m sure he would have known what particular thoughts and activities would result in his mechanism expanding the relevant bits of the brain that were needed to give material expression to the thoughts – just as he would have known how his complexification mechanism would have responded to those thoughts.
I don't know if God can predict each of my thoughts. Stop imagining my God's abilities. But I'm sure He fully understands how His mechanisms would work.
dhw: You will only accept autonomous cellular intelligence (possibly invented by your God) as the driving force of evolution if I agree that it is neither autonomous nor intelligent but is dependent on your God’s preprogramming or dabbling. Meanwhile, do you or do you not accept that your theory concerning both brain expansion in particular and evolution in general (God preprogrammed or dabbled it all) is as unproven as mine? If you accept this, please stop using “unproven” as a reason for rejecting my theory.DAVID: I can't accept inventions from nothing. What we know is, that on the way to humans brains, resulted from provided expansions especially in the area that can conceive of complex concepts, when the soul wishes to do that.
dhw: I’m sorry, but I can’t follow your syntax or your argument. If we accept your dualism, we have agreed that the soul conceives of concepts, using the brain for information and material expression.
All I said was the capable brain areas have to be there for the soul to use.
DAVID: That shows underlying purpose in the process. We can assume previous brains could complexify a bit. You've agreed. We know in our brain, learning and complex thinking by the soul, results in complexification which shrinks the brain, which apparently is somewhat oversized to allow this process to occur. These are the only facts we have to work with.dhw: Agreed. And since we know that the modern brain changes (complexifies) in response to learning and complex thinking, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the ancient brain did the same, but when its ability to complexify reached a limit, it needed increased capacity and therefore expanded. For some reason (you didn’t like my anatomical explanation) expansion stopped and complexification took over, apart from minor expansions, and was so efficient that certain parts of the brain were no longer necessary, which led to shrinkage. You have rejected the expansion part of this theory on the grounds that it is not proven, and I have asked you not to use that as a reason for rejection.
We only can point to shrinkage as fact. Enlargement has its own mechanism. I chose God as agent.
DAVID: These facts can only lead me to God as the designer. There is no natural evidence for a method of expansion. So you introduce your version of God providing the brain with its own expansion mechanism. Fine. We are now somewhat is agreement, until I add that my purposeful God will have guidelines in the expansion process to be sure of the directionality of His guided evolutionary process. And you balk. That your God shouldn't be in that much control makes no sense to me.dhw: Both theories allow for God as the designer. Thank you for now agreeing that he could have provided an expansion mechanism, instead of dabbling each and every expansion. Your sudden agreement is suddenly accompanied by nebulous guidelines, and I have answered that point above. Your all-knowing God would have known what his mechanism would produce,
My God would not allow a mechanism that produces changes on its own. If He knows what will happen, it has guidelines, which fits your bolded sentence.
dhw: and that mechanism would have involved the cooperative work of the cells which he had endowed with the intelligence to change their own structure in response to new requirements. The rest of your post again harps on the existence of a designer, which is not the subject under discussion here since my theory allows for a designer. There is only one point that requires an answer:
DAVID: We disagree on the attributes only because you inexplicably want natural causes while ignoring the chain of reasoning just presented.
dhw: I see no reason at all why your God should not have invented a system whereby every effect had a natural cause, e.g. brains expanded and/or complexified, and skulls and birth canals expanded, and pre-whales' legs turned into flippers, IN RESPONSE to new requirements, and bees bite leaves and ants build cities and weaverbirds construct nests using their natural (God-given?) intelligence rather than being preprogrammed or constantly having their genomes dabbled with.
It is not my God you are describing. And, as usual , you have no idea how natural intelligence develops so you sneak in a possible God, as you continue to try it both ways as if you have an argument. Both ways is no way.
Brain expansion
dhw: Since your God is all-powerful and all-knowing, I’m sure he would have known what particular thoughts and activities would result in his mechanism expanding the relevant bits of the brain that were needed to give material expression to the thoughts – just as he would have known how his complexification mechanism would have responded to those thoughts.
DAVID: I don't know if God can predict each of my thoughts. Stop imagining my God's abilities. But I'm sure He fully understands how His mechanisms would work.
I don’t know where you have found any mention of God predicting your thoughts! Different types of thought will affect different parts of the brain, as evidenced by the illiterate women, the taxi drivers and the musicians. And why should you be the only one allowed to imagine God’s abilities? You finally agreed that he could have invented an autonomous mechanism for expansion, but he would “have careful guidelines”. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to define these guidelines for us.
DAVID: I can't accept inventions from nothing. What we know is, that on the way to humans brains, resulted from provided expansions especially in the area that can conceive of complex concepts, when the soul wishes to do that.
dhw: I’m sorry, but I can’t follow your syntax or your argument. If we accept your dualism, we have agreed that the soul conceives of concepts, using the brain for information and material expression.
DAVID: All I said was the capable brain areas have to be there for the soul to use.
I don’t think any dualist would disagree with that. And any materialist would agree that the capable brain areas would have to be there for the rest of the brain to use.
dhw: You have rejected the expansion part of this theory on the grounds that it is not proven, and I have asked you not to use that as a reason for rejection.
DAVID: We only can point to shrinkage as fact. Enlargement has its own mechanism. I chose God as agent.
Complexification is fact, shrinkage is fact, and we have agreed that shrinkage is the result of the efficiency of complexification. Enlargement is fact and is certainly different from complexification, but both processes could be run by the perhaps God-given intelligence of the brain cells which in both cases must be restructured in response to new requirements. You have rejected this theory because it is unproven. Your theory that God did it with multiple dabbles is also unproven.
dhw: Both theories allow for God as the designer. Thank you for now agreeing that he could have provided an expansion mechanism, instead of dabbling each and every expansion. Your sudden agreement is suddenly accompanied by nebulous guidelines, and I have answered that point above. Your all-knowing God would have known what his mechanism would produce…
DAVID: My God would not allow a mechanism that produces changes on its own. If He knows what will happen, it has guidelines, which fits your bolded sentence.
Far too vague. My theistic proposal is clear: God gave cells intelligence. Those parts of the brain (cell communities) involved in acquiring information, producing thought and giving physical expression to thought, responded to new requirements by complexifying and, when greater capacity was needed, by expanding. You say he is all-knowing, so he would have known how the cells would work. (Not the individual thoughts of every hominin and homo!) Again, please tell us what these “guidelines” of yours consist of.
dhw: I see no reason at all why your God should not have invented a system whereby every effect had a natural cause, e.g. brains expanded and/or complexified, and skulls and birth canals expanded, and pre-whales' legs turned into flippers, IN RESPONSE to new requirements, and bees bite leaves and ants build cities and weaverbirds construct nests using their natural (God-given?) intelligence rather than being preprogrammed or constantly having their genomes dabbled with.
DAVID: It is not my God you are describing. And, as usual , you have no idea how natural intelligence develops so you sneak in a possible God, as you continue to try it both ways as if you have an argument. Both ways is no way.
There are no “both ways” and there is no sneaking. I am an agnostic, so of course I have to allow for God. But that does not mean I must stick to YOUR God. Nobody knows the origin of intelligence, and it presents a strong case for the existence of your God, but the theory that it develops as organisms learn to cope with or exploit new conditions seems to me perfectly feasible – and indeed considerably more so than the theory that your God preprogrammed or personally dabbled all the examples listed above.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, May 28, 2020, 15:56 (1638 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: You finally agreed that he could have invented an autonomous mechanism for expansion, but he would “have careful guidelines”. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to define these guidelines for us.
Just mutational guides to advance complexity until human are achieved
dhw: You have rejected the expansion part of this theory on the grounds that it is not proven, and I have asked you not to use that as a reason for rejection.
DAVID: We only can point to shrinkage as fact. Enlargement has its own mechanism. I chose God as agent.
dhw: Complexification is fact, shrinkage is fact, and we have agreed that shrinkage is the result of the efficiency of complexification. Enlargement is fact and is certainly different from complexification, but both processes could be run by the perhaps God-given intelligence of the brain cells which in both cases must be restructured in response to new requirements. You have rejected this theory because it is unproven. Your theory that God did it with multiple dabbles is also unproven.
Again you return to intelligent cells. Without an active God please explain how cells become intelligent naturally.
dhw: Both theories allow for God as the designer. Thank you for now agreeing that he could have provided an expansion mechanism, instead of dabbling each and every expansion. Your sudden agreement is suddenly accompanied by nebulous guidelines, and I have answered that point above. Your all-knowing God would have known what his mechanism would produce…DAVID: My God would not allow a mechanism that produces changes on its own. If He knows what will happen, it has guidelines, which fits your bolded sentence.
dhw: Far too vague. My theistic proposal is clear: God gave cells intelligence. Those parts of the brain (cell communities) involved in acquiring information, producing thought and giving physical expression to thought, responded to new requirements by complexifying and, when greater capacity was needed, by expanding. You say he is all-knowing, so he would have known how the cells would work. (Not the individual thoughts of every hominin and homo!)
Fair enough. Our brain has tiny expansions as noted in the bold. God's instructions has neurons acting with the appearance of intelligence
dhw: I see no reason at all why your God should not have invented a system whereby every effect had a natural cause, e.g. brains expanded and/or complexified, and skulls and birth canals expanded, and pre-whales' legs turned into flippers, IN RESPONSE to new requirements, and bees bite leaves and ants build cities and weaverbirds construct nests using their natural (God-given?) intelligence rather than being preprogrammed or constantly having their genomes dabbled with.DAVID: It is not my God you are describing. And, as usual , you have no idea how natural intelligence develops so you sneak in a possible God, as you continue to try it both ways as if you have an argument. Both ways is no way.
dhw: There are no “both ways” and there is no sneaking. I am an agnostic, so of course I have to allow for God. But that does not mean I must stick to YOUR God. Nobody knows the origin of intelligence, and it presents a strong case for the existence of your God, but the theory that it develops as organisms learn to cope with or exploit new conditions seems to me perfectly feasible – and indeed considerably more so than the theory that your God preprogrammed or personally dabbled all the examples listed above.
Sorry if my God makes you feel uncomfortable, as you seem to imply. The bold explains nothing as to how intelligence appears naturally. Learning involves thought integrations.
Brain expansion
dhw: You finally agreed that he could have invented an autonomous mechanism for expansion, but he would “have careful guidelines”. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to define these guidelines for us.
DAVID: Just mutational guides to advance complexity until human are achieved
We are trying explain expansion. “Mutational” simply means changes to the structure! I have proposed (theistic version) that the changes to the structure would have occurred through the autonomous responses of the intelligent cell communities to new requirements (with God as the inventor of cellular intelligence). Your guidelines, as usual, turn out to be the exact opposite: God dabbled the changes via mutations.
dhw: Your theory that God did it with multiple dabbles is also unproven.
DAVID: Again you return to intelligent cells. Without an active God please explain how cells become intelligent naturally.
Again you refuse to recognize that your own theory is as unproven as mine, and so this is no reason to reject mine. On both threads you have now suddenly decided to ignore the subjects under discussion in order to focus on the possible origin of cellular intelligence. Nobody knows the origin of any form of intelligence, from your God’s through humans’ and all the way down to that of bacteria. The alternatives (see “David’s theory of evolution”) are 1) an unknown intelligence with no origin which we call God, 2) a stroke of luck arising out of an eternal and infinite process of energy and matter forming different combinations, and 3) a variant on panpsychism which entails all matter having some form of intelligence. Now let’s get back to the subject of brain expansion.
DAVID: My God would not allow a mechanism that produces changes on its own. If He knows what will happen, it has guidelines...
Your guidelines have turned out to be direct dabbling, and next they turn into “instructions”:
DAVID: God's instructions has neurons acting with the appearance of intelligence.
So back we go: You believe that your God invented a mechanism to allow autonomous complexification. Why, then do you believe he could not have invented an autonomous mechanism for expansion? Your previous answer was: “God could but He would have careful guidelines…”. The guidelines turn out to be the exact opposite of autonomous, so please explain the above restriction to his capabilities.
The rest of your post is devoted to the diversionary tactic of focusing on the origin of intelligence, as dealt with above.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Friday, May 29, 2020, 23:19 (1637 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: You finally agreed that he could have invented an autonomous mechanism for expansion, but he would “have careful guidelines”. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to define these guidelines for us.
DAVID: Just mutational guides to advance complexity until human are achieved
dhw: We are trying explain expansion. “Mutational” simply means changes to the structure! I have proposed (theistic version) that the changes to the structure would have occurred through the autonomous responses of the intelligent cell communities to new requirements (with God as the inventor of cellular intelligence). Your guidelines, as usual, turn out to be the exact opposite: God dabbled the changes via mutations.
Of course. I use God to explain evolution under direct control. You really seek a natural cause for evolution. Cellular intelligence is deduced from programmed automatic activity by the cells, but that is how I believe God works.
dhw: Your theory that God did it with multiple dabbles is also unproven.DAVID: Again you return to intelligent cells. Without an active God please explain how cells become intelligent naturally.
dhw: Again you refuse to recognize that your own theory is as unproven as mine, and so this is no reason to reject mine. On both threads you have now suddenly decided to ignore the subjects under discussion in order to focus on the possible origin of cellular intelligence. Nobody knows the origin of any form of intelligence, from your God’s through humans’ and all the way down to that of bacteria. The alternatives (see “David’s theory of evolution”) are 1) an unknown intelligence with no origin which we call God, 2) a stroke of luck arising out of an eternal and infinite process of energy and matter forming different combinations, and 3) a variant on panpsychism which entails all matter having some form of intelligence. Now let’s get back to the subject of brain expansion.
I'll take (1). (2) is strange. Energy =s matter and unless there is a driving force it wouldn't change from its ground state. What force are you contemplating? (3) Panpsychism is just a light form of us created within God's consciousness.
DAVID: My God would not allow a mechanism that produces changes on its own. If He knows what will happen, it has guidelines...Your guidelines have turned out to be direct dabbling, and next they turn into “instructions”:
DAVID: God's instructions has neurons acting with the appearance of intelligence.
dhw: So back we go: You believe that your God invented a mechanism to allow autonomous complexification. Why, then do you believe he could not have invented an autonomous mechanism for expansion? Your previous answer was: “God could but He would have careful guidelines…”. The guidelines turn out to be the exact opposite of autonomous, so please explain the above restriction to his capabilities.
It is no restriction. God is very purposeful and wants His goals reached, so He either does it himself or instructs the genome just how to do it.
dhw: The rest of your post is devoted to the diversionary tactic of focusing on the origin of intelligence, as dealt with above.
No diversion. You keep putting it into cells which are just a bag of coordinated molecular reactions under strict informational instructions from the genome. All information supplied by God, or if you wish, the designing mind behind all of this.
Brain expansion
dhw: You finally agreed that he could have invented an autonomous mechanism for expansion, but he would “have careful guidelines”. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to define these guidelines for us.
DAVID: Just mutational guides to advance complexity until human are achieved
dhw: We are trying explain expansion. “Mutational” simply means changes to the structure! I have proposed (theistic version) that the changes to the structure would have occurred through the autonomous responses of the intelligent cell communities to new requirements (with God as the inventor of cellular intelligence). Your guidelines, as usual, turn out to be the exact opposite: God dabbled the changes via mutations.
DAVID: Of course. I use God to explain evolution under direct control. You really seek a natural cause for evolution. Cellular intelligence is deduced from programmed automatic activity by the cells, but that is how I believe God works. And later: You keep putting it [intelligence]into cells which are just a bag of coordinated molecular reactions under strict informational instructions from the genome. All information supplied by God, or if you wish, the designing mind behind all of this.
There is no reason to assume that your God could not have designed a mechanism (cellular intelligence) that would enable brains and other organs and organisms to restructure themselves “naturally” and autonomously in response to new requirements. You are against it because it runs contrary to your image of an all-controlling God, not because it is unreasonable in itself. I have no problem with the idea that intelligent instructions come from the genome and are carried out by the rest of the cell or the cell community in an ongoing process of cooperation. Your insistence that what looks like intelligence is in fact automatic is purely a matter of opinion even though you state it as if it were a fact.
dhw: Your theory that God did it with multiple dabbles is also unproven.
DAVID: Again you return to intelligent cells. Without an active God please explain how cells become intelligent naturally.
dhw: Again you refuse to recognize that your own theory is as unproven as mine, and so this is no reason to reject mine. On both threads you have now suddenly decided to ignore the subjects under discussion in order to focus on the possible origin of cellular intelligence.
This subject, introduced as a digression leading to discussion of a "first cause", is dealt with on the “Afterlife” thread.
dhw: You believe that your God invented a mechanism to allow autonomous complexification. Why, then do you believe he could not have invented an autonomous mechanism for expansion? Your previous answer was: “God could but He would have careful guidelines…”. The guidelines turn out to be the exact opposite of autonomous, so please explain the above restriction to his capabilities.
DAVID: It is no restriction. God is very purposeful and wants His goals reached, so He either does it himself or instructs the genome just how to do it.
How about: God is very purposeful and wants his goals reached, so he creates a mechanism (cellular intelligence) to ensure that brains will complexify and expand in response to new requirements?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, May 30, 2020, 21:22 (1636 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: We are trying explain expansion. “Mutational” simply means changes to the structure! I have proposed (theistic version) that the changes to the structure would have occurred through the autonomous responses of the intelligent cell communities to new requirements (with God as the inventor of cellular intelligence). Your guidelines, as usual, turn out to be the exact opposite: God dabbled the changes via mutations.
DAVID: Of course. I use God to explain evolution under direct control. You really seek a natural cause for evolution. Cellular intelligence is deduced from programmed automatic activity by the cells, but that is how I believe God works. And later: You keep putting it [intelligence]into cells which are just a bag of coordinated molecular reactions under strict informational instructions from the genome. All information supplied by God, or if you wish, the designing mind behind all of this.
dhw: There is no reason to assume that your God could not have designed a mechanism (cellular intelligence) that would enable brains and other organs and organisms to restructure themselves “naturally” and autonomously in response to new requirements. You are against it because it runs contrary to your image of an all-controlling God, not because it is unreasonable in itself. I have no problem with the idea that intelligent instructions come from the genome and are carried out by the rest of the cell or the cell community in an ongoing process of cooperation. Your insistence that what looks like intelligence is in fact automatic is purely a matter of opinion even though you state it as if it were a fact.
It is my opinion and I accept it as fact, because I find it much more logical of the two possibilities, as a design theorist.
dhw: You believe that your God invented a mechanism to allow autonomous complexification. Why, then do you believe he could not have invented an autonomous mechanism for expansion? Your previous answer was: “God could but He would have careful guidelines…”. The guidelines turn out to be the exact opposite of autonomous, so please explain the above restriction to his capabilities.
Explained: all advances in evolution carefully coded in the genome that contains an IM.
God, totally in charge, knows where He wants evolution to progress and how it should be done. We view God totally differently, and as long as we do we will not reach an agreement. I see humans as God's definite purpose and goal. You don't and give lip service to our vast difference in mind and body.
Brain expansion
dhw: There is no reason to assume that your God could not have designed a mechanism (cellular intelligence) that would enable brains and other organs and organisms to restructure themselves “naturally” and autonomously in response to new requirements. You are against it because it runs contrary to your image of an all-controlling God, not because it is unreasonable in itself. I have no problem with the idea that intelligent instructions come from the genome and are carried out by the rest of the cell or the cell community in an ongoing process of cooperation. Your insistence that what looks like intelligence is in fact automatic is purely a matter of opinion even though you state it as if it were a fact.
DAVID: It is my opinion and I accept it as fact, because I find it much more logical of the two possibilities, as a design theorist.
Design theory has nothing to do with it. A God who designs an autonomous mechanism for change is no less a designer than a God who designs every change himself. Accepting one’s own opinion as fact is just about as unscientific a principle – not to mention other contexts of human life - as anyone can imagine.
dhw: You believe that your God invented a mechanism to allow autonomous complexification. Why, then do you believe he could not have invented an autonomous mechanism for expansion? Your previous answer was: “God could but He would have careful guidelines…”. The guidelines turn out to be the exact opposite of autonomous, so please explain the above restriction to his capabilities.
DAVID: Explained: all advances in evolution carefully coded in the genome that contains an IM. God, totally in charge, knows where He wants evolution to progress and how it should be done.
This does not explain why he couldn’t have invented an autonomous mechanism for expansion. It merely repeats your belief that he didn’t but instead either provided the first living cells with a programme for all advances in evolution, including brain expansion, or personally fiddled with the genome of every organ/organism that needed adjusting.
DAVID: We view God totally differently, and as long as we do we will not reach an agreement. I see humans as God's definite purpose and goal. You don't and give lip service to our vast difference in mind and body.
Your various guesses concerning your God’s nature, purpose and method are dealt with under your "theory of evolution". Yesterday (and repeated today) I also dealt with your total distortion of my views on the vast difference between ourselves and other animals, which you used as an excuse to distract attention from the illogicality of your theory. It has no place on this thread.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, May 31, 2020, 15:59 (1635 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: There is no reason to assume that your God could not have designed a mechanism (cellular intelligence) that would enable brains and other organs and organisms to restructure themselves “naturally” and autonomously in response to new requirements. You are against it because it runs contrary to your image of an all-controlling God, not because it is unreasonable in itself. I have no problem with the idea that intelligent instructions come from the genome and are carried out by the rest of the cell or the cell community in an ongoing process of cooperation. Your insistence that what looks like intelligence is in fact automatic is purely a matter of opinion even though you state it as if it were a fact.
DAVID: It is my opinion and I accept it as fact, because I find it much more logical of the two possibilities, as a design theorist.
dhw: Design theory has nothing to do with it. A God who designs an autonomous mechanism for change is no less a designer than a God who designs every change himself. Accepting one’s own opinion as fact is just about as unscientific a principle – not to mention other contexts of human life - as anyone can imagine.
A designer with purpose will make sure a design mechanism will follow His guidelines.
dhw: You believe that your God invented a mechanism to allow autonomous complexification. Why, then do you believe he could not have invented an autonomous mechanism for expansion? Your previous answer was: “God could but He would have careful guidelines…”. The guidelines turn out to be the exact opposite of autonomous, so please explain the above restriction to his capabilities.DAVID: Explained: all advances in evolution carefully coded in the genome that contains an IM. God, totally in charge, knows where He wants evolution to progress and how it should be done.
dhw: This does not explain why he couldn’t have invented an autonomous mechanism for expansion. It merely repeats your belief that he didn’t but instead either provided the first living cells with a programme for all advances in evolution, including brain expansion, or personally fiddled with the genome of every organ/organism that needed adjusting.
My guesses as to how God controls evolution I admit are my guesses. An autonomous mechanism would come with guidelines. Autonomy for me implies use it or don't use it as you wish. My God would not allow just any possible variety of result and drive evolution off His desired course.
Brain expansion
dhw: There is no reason to assume that your God could not have designed a mechanism (cellular intelligence) that would enable brains and other organs and organisms to restructure themselves “naturally” and autonomously in response to new requirements. You are against it because it runs contrary to your image of an all-controlling God, not because it is unreasonable in itself. I have no problem with the idea that intelligent instructions come from the genome and are carried out by the rest of the cell or the cell community in an ongoing process of cooperation. Your insistence that what looks like intelligence is in fact automatic is purely a matter of opinion even though you state it as if it were a fact.
DAVID: It is my opinion and I accept it as fact, because I find it much more logical of the two possibilities, as a design theorist.
dhw: Design theory has nothing to do with it. A God who designs an autonomous mechanism for change is no less a designer than a God who designs every change himself. Accepting one’s own opinion as fact is just about as unscientific a principle – not to mention other contexts of human life - as anyone can imagine.
DAVID: A designer with purpose will make sure a design mechanism will follow His guidelines.
See below for your “guidelines”. Your opinion, which you think is a fact, is that your God designed a mechanism for autonomous complexification without his having to dabble, but he could not have designed a mechanism for autonomous expansion without his having to dabble. I asked you why not.
DAVID: My guesses as to how God controls evolution I admit are my guesses. An autonomous mechanism would come with guidelines. Autonomy for me implies use it or don't use it as you wish. My God would not allow just any possible variety of result and drive evolution off His desired course.
Your guidelines turn out to be a 3.8-year-old computer programme for targeted brain expansion – not to mention bee leaf-biting – or personal dabbling, i.e. the exact opposite of autonomy. If we focus purely on brain expansion, let me repeat my proposal, which has to be in general terms, as I‘m no expert on the brain, and am also extremely reluctant to restrict any one aspect of brain activity to any one of the cell communities that make up the brain.
Pre-sapiens expansion took place in those areas of the brain that needed to expand their capacity for thinking (materialist view, inapplicable to dualists who attribute thought to the soul), gathering information and giving material expression to thoughts/concepts/ ideas/ aspirations/desires and all the other non-material aspects of the mind-brain interaction. Now I’m sure you’re not trying to tell me that your God wanted to direct all the individual thoughts etc. of all the individual pre-sapiens homos and hominins, so what do you see as the threat to his “desired course” if he invented a mechanism that autonomously expanded the brain in the manner I have described and bolded? Please bear in mind that these processes have now been taken over largely by complexification in the modern brain, and this apparently is an autonomous mechanism, since you don’t seem to think your God dabbles with it.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Monday, June 01, 2020, 18:29 (1634 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: It is my opinion and I accept it as fact, because I find it much more logical of the two possibilities, as a design theorist.
dhw: Design theory has nothing to do with it. A God who designs an autonomous mechanism for change is no less a designer than a God who designs every change himself. Accepting one’s own opinion as fact is just about as unscientific a principle – not to mention other contexts of human life - as anyone can imagine.
DAVID: A designer with purpose will make sure a design mechanism will follow His guidelines.
dhw: See below for your “guidelines”. Your opinion, which you think is a fact, is that your God designed a mechanism for autonomous complexification without his having to dabble, but he could not have designed a mechanism for autonomous expansion without his having to dabble. I asked you why not.
What you miss is our brain has A complexification method which is under instructions as to how to do it
DAVID: My guesses as to how God controls evolution I admit are my guesses. An autonomous mechanism would come with guidelines. Autonomy for me implies use it or don't use it as you wish. My God would not allow just any possible variety of result and drive evolution off His desired course.dhw: Your guidelines turn out to be a 3.8-year-old computer programme for targeted brain expansion – not to mention bee leaf-biting – or personal dabbling, i.e. the exact opposite of autonomy. If we focus purely on brain expansion, let me repeat my proposal, which has to be in general terms, as I‘m no expert on the brain, and am also extremely reluctant to restrict any one aspect of brain activity to any one of the cell communities that make up the brain.
Pre-sapiens expansion took place in those areas of the brain that needed to expand their capacity for thinking (materialist view, inapplicable to dualists who attribute thought to the soul), gathering information and giving material expression to thoughts/concepts/ ideas/ aspirations/desires and all the other non-material aspects of the mind-brain interaction. Now I’m sure you’re not trying to tell me that your God wanted to direct all the individual thoughts etc. of all the individual pre-sapiens homos and hominins, so what do you see as the threat to his “desired course” if he invented a mechanism that autonomously expanded the brain in the manner I have described and bolded? Please bear in mind that these processes have now been taken over largely by complexification in the modern brain, and this apparently is an autonomous mechanism, since you don’t seem to think your God dabbles with it.
No need for dabbling. Complexification controls noted above. The neurons follow built-in rules. Also your comparison is false. You want uncontrolled speciation in brain enlargement. Complexification is in an established new species. Apples and eggs.
Brain expansion
dhw: Your opinion, which you think is a fact, is that your God designed a mechanism for autonomous complexification without his having to dabble, but he could not have designed a mechanism for autonomous expansion without his having to dabble. I asked you why not.
DAVID: What you miss is our brain has A complexification method which is under instructions as to how to do it.
First you agree that it’s autonomous, and then back you go to nebulous guidelines and instructions! You do the same again in the next response and also later in your post! Please explain what “instructions” you are talking about.
DAVID: My guesses as to how God controls evolution I admit are my guesses. An autonomous mechanism would come with guidelines. […] My God would not allow just any possible variety of result and drive evolution off His desired course.
dhw: Your guidelines turn out to be a 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme for targeted brain expansion – not to mention bee leaf-biting – or personal dabbling, i.e. the exact opposite of autonomy. …Let me repeat my proposal:
Pre-sapiens expansion took place in those areas of the brain that needed to expand their capacity for thinking (materialist view, inapplicable to dualists who attribute thought to the soul), gathering information and giving material expression to thoughts/concepts/ ideas/ aspirations/desires and all the other non-material aspects of the mind-brain interaction. Now I’m sure you’re not trying to tell me that your God wanted to direct all the individual thoughts etc. of all the individual pre-sapiens homos and hominins, so what do you see as the threat to his “desired course” if he invented a mechanism that autonomously expanded the brain in the manner I have described and bolded? Please bear in mind that these processes have now been taken over largely by complexification in the modern brain, and this apparently is an autonomous mechanism, since you don’t seem to think your God dabbles with it.
DAVID: No need for dabbling. Complexification controls noted above. The neurons follow built-in rules.
There you go again. No need for dabbling, so what controls/guidelines/instructions/built-in rules are these? They all turn out to be either a 3.8-billion-year old computer programme or dabbling. This time it’s the 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme for every brain response to every new requirement. Can’t you see how ridiculous that is? And how much simpler it all is once you accept the possibility that there is a mechanism enabling the cells of all organs (including the brain) and organisms to respond autonomously to the vast range of demands made on them?
DAVID: Also your comparison is false. You want uncontrolled speciation in brain enlargement. Complexification is in an established new species. Apples and eggs.
You proposed and I agreed that complexification must also have taken place in pre-sapiens brains. The comparison lies in the process of the brain responding to requirements. What do you mean by “speciation in brain enlargement”? We have divided different homos and hominins into “species” whenever they had different features, including different brain sizes. What does that have to do with the mechanics of brain enlargement? The process would have been the same in all of them. So instead of repeating that he could only have designed such an “autonomous” mechanism if it had NOT been autonomous (but each change had been preprogrammed or dabbled), please explain why he could NOT have designed an autonomous mechanism. If your answer is that he wanted to control every response to every requirement, please acknowledge that such an answer is pure guesswork and has no more validity than a guess that he wanted to allow for a variety of responses – which is precisely what the mechanism achieved (varieties of hominins and homos).
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, June 02, 2020, 22:44 (1633 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Your opinion, which you think is a fact, is that your God designed a mechanism for autonomous complexification without his having to dabble, but he could not have designed a mechanism for autonomous expansion without his having to dabble. I asked you why not.
DAVID: What you miss is our brain has A complexification method which is under instructions as to how to do it.
dhw: First you agree that it’s autonomous, and then back you go to nebulous guidelines and instructions! You do the same again in the next response and also later in your post! Please explain what “instructions” you are talking about.
I've never thought a complexification process was autonomous in your sense. It follows established instructions in brain genome
DAVID: My guesses as to how God controls evolution I admit are my guesses. An autonomous mechanism would come with guidelines. […] My God would not allow just any possible variety of result and drive evolution off His desired course.dhw: Your guidelines turn out to be a 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme for targeted brain expansion – not to mention bee leaf-biting – or personal dabbling, i.e. the exact opposite of autonomy. …Let me repeat my proposal:
dhw: Pre-sapiens expansion took place in those areas of the brain that needed to expand their capacity for thinking (materialist view, inapplicable to dualists who attribute thought to the soul), gathering information and giving material expression to thoughts/concepts/ ideas/ aspirations/desires and all the other non-material aspects of the mind-brain interaction. Now I’m sure you’re not trying to tell me that your God wanted to direct all the individual thoughts etc. of all the individual pre-sapiens homos and hominins, so what do you see as the threat to his “desired course” if he invented a mechanism that autonomously expanded the brain in the manner I have described and bolded? Please bear in mind that these processes have now been taken over largely by complexification in the modern brain, and this apparently is an autonomous mechanism, since you don’t seem to think your God dabbles with it.
DAVID: No need for dabbling. Complexification controls noted above. The neurons follow built-in rules.
dhw: There you go again. No need for dabbling, so what controls/guidelines/instructions/built-in rules are these? They all turn out to be either a 3.8-billion-year old computer programme or dabbling. This time it’s the 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme for every brain response to every new requirement. Can’t you see how ridiculous that is? And how much simpler it all is once you accept the possibility that there is a mechanism enabling the cells of all organs (including the brain) and organisms to respond autonomously to the vast range of demands made on them?
As before cells act automatically to demands and stimuli.
DAVID: Also your comparison is false. You want uncontrolled speciation in brain enlargement. Complexification is in an established new species. Apples and eggs.dhw: You proposed and I agreed that complexification must also have taken place in pre-sapiens brains. The comparison lies in the process of the brain responding to requirements. What do you mean by “speciation in brain enlargement”? We have divided different homos and hominins into “species” whenever they had different features, including different brain sizes. What does that have to do with the mechanics of brain enlargement? The process would have been the same in all of them. So instead of repeating that he could only have designed such an “autonomous” mechanism if it had NOT been autonomous (but each change had been preprogrammed or dabbled), please explain why he could NOT have designed an autonomous mechanism. If your answer is that he wanted to control every response to every requirement, please acknowledge that such an answer is pure guesswork and has no more validity than a guess that he wanted to allow for a variety of responses – which is precisely what the mechanism achieved (varieties of hominins and homos).
Home sapiens as the most different species with the largest cortex in the frontal and prefrontal areas had the largest complexification process which contained all the instructions it needed to competently do its shrinkage/reorganization of neurons. I believe we were given a very thoroughly instructed brain from its beginning. Much improved over earlier forms. As for how God did it, my guesses are the same. As for the many hominin/homo varieties in different climates, as I stated before, as they interbred, they provided/ developed naturally different beneficial attributes to the final sapiens species.
I've answered the bolded part many, many times. Inventive mechanisms nave guidelines so God is assured his desired evolutionary advancing paths are followed
Brain expansion
dhw: First you agree that it’s autonomous, and then back you go to nebulous guidelines and instructions! You do the same again in the next response and also later in your post! Please explain what “instructions” you are talking about.
DAVID: I've never thought a complexification process was autonomous in your sense. It follows established instructions in brain genome.
So it’s not autonomous, and you obviously have no idea what “instructions” you are talking about.
DAVID: No need for dabbling. Complexification controls noted above. The neurons follow built-in rules.
dhw: There you go again. No need for dabbling, so what controls/guidelines/ instructions/built-in rules are these? They all turn out to be either a 3.8-billion-year old computer programme or dabbling. This time it’s the 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme for every brain response to every new requirement. Can’t you see how ridiculous that is? And how much simpler it all is once you accept the possibility that there is a mechanism enabling the cells of all organs (including the brain) and organisms to respond autonomously to the vast range of demands made on them?
DAVID: As before cells act automatically to demands and stimuli.
As before, you restate your convictions rather than face the absurd implications I have pointed out in your own theory.
dhw: […] So instead of repeating that he could only have designed such an “autonomous” mechanism if it had NOT been autonomous (but each change had been preprogrammed or dabbled), please explain why he could NOT have designed an autonomous mechanism. If your answer is that he wanted to control every response to every requirement, please acknowledge that such an answer is pure guesswork and has no more validity than a guess that he wanted to allow for a variety of responses – which is precisely what the mechanism achieved (varieties of hominins and homos).
DAVID: Home sapiens as the most different species with the largest cortex in the frontal and prefrontal areas had the largest complexification process which contained all the instructions it needed to competently do its shrinkage/reorganization of neurons. I believe we were given a very thoroughly instructed brain from its beginning. Much improved over earlier forms.
I’m sure we all agree that we have a special, much improved brain. You agreed that complexification must also have taken place in pre-sapiens brains. So we’re talking about larger size and increased complexification. I suggest that – theistic version – this development would have taken place as a result of an autonomous mechanism (cellular intelligence) which enabled the cellular communities of the brain to restructure themselves (enlarging or complexifying) in order to meet new requirements. Now please tell us once and for all what sort of “instructions” you think your God had to provide, if they were not in the form of a mechanism enabling the brain to restructure itself in order to meet new requirements.
DAVID: As for how God did it, my guesses are the same. As for the many hominin/homo varieties in different climates, as I stated before, as they interbred, they provided/ developed naturally different beneficial attributes to the final sapiens species.
How God did it, if I remember rightly, was by personally twiddling the genomes of all the hominins and homos. “Developed naturally”? Are you then saying that your God provided them with an autonomous mechanism that enabled them to develop different attributes? Or are you going to tell us that he twiddled every genome with “instructions” to develop the attributes which presumably he would then transfer to H. sapiens when he eventually got round to directly designing/twiddling the only species of homo he wanted to design/twiddle?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, June 03, 2020, 19:41 (1632 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I've never thought a complexification process was autonomous in your sense. It follows established instructions in brain genome.
dhw: So it’s not autonomous, and you obviously have no idea what “instructions” you are talking about.
Very obvious to me. The neurons have onboard instructions as to how to run a complexification process during deep thought. The soul uses the instrument of the brain's many extra neurons to observe and learn, creates memories of facts and conceptualizes new theories. And the brain is able to shuck cells.
dhw: […] So instead of repeating that he could only have designed such an “autonomous” mechanism if it had NOT been autonomous (but each change had been preprogrammed or dabbled), please explain why he could NOT have designed an autonomous mechanism. If your answer is that he wanted to control every response to every requirement, please acknowledge that such an answer is pure guesswork and has no more validity than a guess that he wanted to allow for a variety of responses – which is precisely what the mechanism achieved (varieties of hominins and homos).
DAVID: Home sapiens as the most different species with the largest cortex in the frontal and prefrontal areas had the largest complexification process which contained all the instructions it needed to competently do its shrinkage/reorganization of neurons. I believe we were given a very thoroughly instructed brain from its beginning. Much improved over earlier forms.
dhw: I’m sure we all agree that we have a special, much improved brain. You agreed that complexification must also have taken place in pre-sapiens brains. So we’re talking about larger size and increased complexification. I suggest that – theistic version – this development would have taken place as a result of an autonomous mechanism (cellular intelligence) which enabled the cellular communities of the brain to restructure themselves (enlarging or complexifying) in order to meet new requirements. Now please tell us once and for all what sort of “instructions” you think your God had to provide, if they were not in the form of a mechanism enabling the brain to restructure itself in order to meet new requirements.
Correct. Our brain obviously contains a mechanism to reorganize existing neurons into more complex circuits to handle more advanced thought, with so many extra neurons that could be deleted and result in a shrinkage of 150 cc.
DAVID: As for how God did it, my guesses are the same. As for the many hominin/homo varieties in different climates, as I stated before, as they interbred, they provided/ developed naturally different beneficial attributes to the final sapiens species.dhw: How God did it, if I remember rightly, was by personally twiddling the genomes of all the hominins and homos. “Developed naturally”? Are you then saying that your God provided them with an autonomous mechanism that enabled them to develop different attributes? Or are you going to tell us that he twiddled every genome with “instructions” to develop the attributes which presumably he would then transfer to H. sapiens when he eventually got round to directly designing/twiddling the only species of homo he wanted to design/twiddle?
Fully explained before. I'll give an example from the Denisovans who gave us the ability to live at high altitude, as they had the ability to adapt to it. Neanderthals gave us improved immunity from the abilities they had. In my view God gave all earlier branches adaptation abilities which all proceeded to supply humans benefits as they interbred with earlier forms..
Brain expansion
DAVID: I've never thought a complexification process was autonomous in your sense. It follows established instructions in brain genome.
dhw: So it’s not autonomous, and you obviously have no idea what “instructions” you are talking about.
DAVID: Very obvious to me. The neurons have onboard instructions as to how to run a complexification process during deep thought. The soul uses the instrument of the brain's many extra neurons to observe and learn, creates memories of facts and conceptualizes new theories. And the brain is able to shuck cells.
So the “instructions” are actually the mechanism for complexification as the cells respond to the demands of the soul. And unless you are going to tell us that your God plants every new demand and then twiddles the cells accordingly, you are left with the fact that this mechanism functions autonomously. Thank you. After more flannel about instructions, we had the following exchange:
dhw: Now please tell us once and for all what sort of “instructions” you think your God had to provide, if they were not in the form of a mechanism enabling the brain to restructure itself in order to meet new requirements.
DAVID: Correct. Our brain obviously contains a mechanism to reorganize existing neurons into more complex circuits to handle more advanced thought, with so many extra neurons that could be deleted and result in a shrinkage of 150 cc.
Thank you again for agreeing that the mechanism enables the brain to restructure itself. All your nebulous instructions, guidelines, controls etc. simply boil down to there being an autonomous mechanism enabling the brain to restructure itself in response to new requirements. And I suggest there is no reason to reject the proposal that the same autonomous mechanism would have enabled the brain to restructure itself by expansion as well as by complexification in response to new requirements.
DAVID: As for the many hominin/homo varieties in different climates, as I stated before, as they interbred, they provided/ developed naturally different beneficial attributes to the final sapiens species.
dhw: How God did it, if I remember rightly, was by personally twiddling the genomes of all the hominins and homos. “Developed naturally”? Are you then saying that your God provided them with an autonomous mechanism that enabled them to develop different attributes? Or are you going to tell us that he twiddled every genome with “instructions” to develop the attributes which presumably he would then transfer to H. sapiens when he eventually got round to directly designing/twiddling the only species of homo he wanted to design/twiddle?
DAVID: Fully explained before. I'll give an example from the Denisovans who gave us the ability to live at high altitude, as they had the ability to adapt to it. Neanderthals gave us improved immunity from the abilities they had. In my view God gave all earlier branches adaptation abilities which all proceeded to supply humans benefits as they interbred with earlier forms.
You don’t need to give us examples. I asked whether “developed naturally” meant God provided them with an autonomous mechanism to develop their attributes, or personally dabbled each one.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, June 04, 2020, 20:29 (1631 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Very obvious to me. The neurons have onboard instructions as to how to run a complexification process during deep thought. The soul uses the instrument of the brain's many extra neurons to observe and learn, creates memories of facts and conceptualizes new theories. And the brain is able to shuck cells.
So the “instructions” are actually the mechanism for complexification as the cells respond to the demands of the soul. And unless you are going to tell us that your God plants every new demand and then twiddles the cells accordingly, you are left with the fact that this mechanism functions autonomously. Thank you. After more flannel about instructions, we had the following exchange:
dhw: Now please tell us once and for all what sort of “instructions” you think your God had to provide, if they were not in the form of a mechanism enabling the brain to restructure itself in order to meet new requirements.
DAVID: Correct. Our brain obviously contains a mechanism to reorganize existing neurons into more complex circuits to handle more advanced thought, with so many extra neurons that could be deleted and result in a shrinkage of 150 cc.
dhw: Thank you again for agreeing that the mechanism enables the brain to restructure itself. All your nebulous instructions, guidelines, controls etc. simply boil down to there being an autonomous mechanism enabling the brain to restructure itself in response to new requirements. And I suggest there is no reason to reject the proposal that the same autonomous mechanism would have enabled the brain to restructure itself by expansion as well as by complexification in response to new requirements.
I recognized awhile ago (especially yesterday) you were planning the bolded 'trap' above, by continuing to misinterpret my meanings. The so called autonomous mechanism is no more than an automatic mechanism God built into the neurons of our brains so they respond properly for to maintain the correct/right form of complexity. Please read carefully my new entry of today, noting the high efficiency of our brain. It partially explains real complexification as the author views it.
DAVID: As for the many hominin/homo varieties in different climates, as I stated before, as they interbred, they provided/ developed naturally different beneficial attributes to the final sapiens species.
dhw: How God did it, if I remember rightly, was by personally twiddling the genomes of all the hominins and homos. “Developed naturally”? Are you then saying that your God provided them with an autonomous mechanism that enabled them to develop different attributes? Or are you going to tell us that he twiddled every genome with “instructions” to develop the attributes which presumably he would then transfer to H. sapiens when he eventually got round to directly designing/twiddling the only species of homo he wanted to design/twiddle?
DAVID: Fully explained before. I'll give an example from the Denisovans who gave us the ability to live at high altitude, as they had the ability to adapt to it. Neanderthals gave us improved immunity from the abilities they had. In my view God gave all earlier branches adaptation abilities which all proceeded to supply humans benefits as they interbred with earlier forms.
dhw: You don’t need to give us examples. I asked whether “developed naturally” meant God provided them with an autonomous mechanism to develop their attributes, or personally dabbled each one.
Can happen either way. So, take your choice.
Brain expansion
dhw: Thank you again for agreeing that the mechanism enables the brain to restructure itself. All your nebulous instructions, guidelines, controls etc. simply boil down to there being an autonomous mechanism enabling the brain to restructure itself in response to new requirements. And I suggest there is no reason to reject the proposal that the same autonomous mechanism would have enabled the brain to restructure itself by expansion as well as by complexification in response to new requirements.
DAVID: I recognized awhile ago (especially yesterday) you were planning the bolded 'trap' above, by continuing to misinterpret my meanings. The so called autonomous mechanism is no more than an automatic mechanism God built into the neurons of our brains so they respond properly for to maintain the correct/right form of complexity. (dhw’s bold)
There is no trap and there is no misinterpretation! According to you, your God dabbled each expansion of pre-sapiens brains. I suggest that he did not have to dabble each expansion because the mechanism was already in place, just as it is for complexification. I have no idea what you mean by the “correct” form of complexity. Different parts of the brain complexify according to different requirements, and you have hit the nail on the head: they do so IN RESPONSE to those requirements. The argument here is not automatic versus autonomous, but divine dabble versus autonomous. If the modern brain complexifies in response to new requirements, why do you assume that it did not also expand in response to new requirements, as opposed to your God having to dabble? (NB please note the distinction between the autonomous power of thought and the automatic mechanism for implementation of thought, as below).
DAVID: Please read carefully my new entry of today, noting the high efficiency of our brain. It partially explains real complexification as the author views it.
QUOTE: "Another salient property of the brain, which is clearly at play in the return of service example from tennis, is that the connection strengths between neurons can be modified in response to activity and experience—a process that is widely believed by neuroscientists to be the basis for learning and memory. Repetitive training enables the neuronal circuits to become better configured for the tasks being performed, resulting in greatly improved speed and precision."(David’s comment: note complexification is automatic) (dhw’s bold)
An excellent summary. Of course it’s automatic! It has the cell communities RESPONDING to activities and experiences. I doubt very much if a single return of serve will result in complexification, but the principle is the same: in your dualistic system, the soul will determine whether to move the feet right or left and return the service backhand or forehand, and the neurons will automatically perform the action decided on. What is the mechanism? Decision first, modification second. And yet you persist in arguing that pre-sapiens brains must have worked differently, and the cell communities could not have expanded in response to the demands made on them, but God must have stepped in to expand them in anticipation of the new requirements. In this case it’s the decision to move, but in our earlier example the decision was to implement the concept of the spear: the dualist’s soul or the materialist’s thinking part of the brain comes up with the idea and the implementing part of the brain obeys the instructions / fulfils the requirements of the thinker. Result: complexification (us) - with shrinkage the result of its efficiency - and complexification and finally expansion (pre-sapiens). No dabbling required!
DAVID: As for the many hominin/homo varieties in different climates, as I stated before, as they interbred, they provided/ developed naturally different beneficial attributes to the final sapiens species.
dhw: “Developed naturally”? Are you then saying that your God provided them with an autonomous mechanism that enabled them to develop different attributes? Or are you going to tell us that he twiddled every genome with “instructions” to develop the attributes which presumably he would then transfer to H. sapiens when he eventually got round to directly designing/twiddling the only species of homo he wanted to design/twiddle?
DAVID: Can happen either way. So, take your choice.
If I’ve understood this correctly, you are now agreeing that your God might have provided the many hominins and homos with an autonomous mechanism that enabled them to develop different attributes. Clearly the same mechanism would have enabled other organisms to do the same. If I didn’t know you better, I would say this is a landmark moment in our discussions!
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Friday, June 05, 2020, 20:19 (1630 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I recognized awhile ago (especially yesterday) you were planning the bolded 'trap' above, by continuing to misinterpret my meanings. The so called autonomous mechanism is no more than an automatic mechanism God built into the neurons of our brains so they respond properly for to maintain the correct/right form of complexity. (dhw’s bold)
dhw: There is no trap and there is no misinterpretation! According to you, your God dabbled each expansion of pre-sapiens brains. I suggest that he did not have to dabble each expansion because the mechanism was already in place, just as it is for complexification. I have no idea what you mean by the “correct” form of complexity. Different parts of the brain complexify according to different requirements, and you have hit the nail on the head: they do so IN RESPONSE to those requirements. The argument here is not automatic versus autonomous, but divine dabble versus autonomous. If the modern brain complexifies in response to new requirements, why do you assume that it did not also expand in response to new requirements, as opposed to your God having to dabble? (NB please note the distinction between the autonomous power of thought and the automatic mechanism for implementation of thought, as below).
See today's entry on introducing design in the brain, for object recognition. This has to be a designed mechanism, and cannot be handled autonomously without conceptual analysis before the temporal cortex brain area is created. The brain cannot organize itself. It can only reorganize an excess of neurons as our brain does.
DAVID: Please read carefully my new entry of today, noting the high efficiency of our brain. It partially explains real complexification as the author views it.QUOTE: "Another salient property of the brain, which is clearly at play in the return of service example from tennis, is that the connection strengths between neurons can be modified in response to activity and experience—a process that is widely believed by neuroscientists to be the basis for learning and memory. Repetitive training enables the neuronal circuits to become better configured for the tasks being performed, resulting in greatly improved speed and precision."(David’s comment: note complexification is automatic) (dhw’s bold)
dhw: An excellent summary. Of course it’s automatic! It has the cell communities RESPONDING to activities and experiences. I doubt very much if a single return of serve will result in complexification, but the principle is the same: in your dualistic system, the soul will determine whether to move the feet right or left and return the service backhand or forehand, and the neurons will automatically perform the action decided on. What is the mechanism? Decision first, modification second. And yet you persist in arguing that pre-sapiens brains must have worked differently, and the cell communities could not have expanded in response to the demands made on them, but God must have stepped in to expand them in anticipation of the new requirements. In this case it’s the decision to move, but in our earlier example the decision was to implement the concept of the spear: the dualist’s soul or the materialist’s thinking part of the brain comes up with the idea and the implementing part of the brain obeys the instructions / fulfils the requirements of the thinker. Result: complexification (us) - with shrinkage the result of its efficiency - and complexification and finally expansion (pre-sapiens). No dabbling required!
As above, how does an earlier brain know how to expand purposely modified regions for exact reproduction of images, as in today's entry? Only conceptual planning can accomplish this advance.
DAVID: As for the many hominin/homo varieties in different climates, as I stated before, as they interbred, they provided/ developed naturally different beneficial attributes to the final sapiens species.dhw: “Developed naturally”? Are you then saying that your God provided them with an autonomous mechanism that enabled them to develop different attributes? Or are you going to tell us that he twiddled every genome with “instructions” to develop the attributes which presumably he would then transfer to H. sapiens when he eventually got round to directly designing/twiddling the only species of homo he wanted to design/twiddle?
DAVID: Can happen either way. So, take your choice.
dhw: If I’ve understood this correctly, you are now agreeing that your God might have provided the many hominins and homos with an autonomous mechanism that enabled them to develop different attributes. Clearly the same mechanism would have enabled other organisms to do the same. If I didn’t know you better, I would say this is a landmark moment in our discussions!
Your usual wishful purposeful misunderstanding. Denisovans adapted to high altitude though attributes they had, and Neanderthals provided certain immunity characteristics, all covered before quite clearly. These autonomous mechanisms worked in highly controlled fashion.
Brain expansion: designed vastly different from chimps
by David Turell , Friday, June 05, 2020, 22:57 (1630 days ago) @ David Turell
As the explanation of recognition of objects by the brain shows (covered today):
https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(13)00217-9?_returnUR...
"•
Comparative neuroimaging can identify unique features of the human brain.
•
Comparisons with chimpanzees are crucial for learning about human brain evolution.
•
Human brains are special in terms of size, cortical organization, and connectivity.
•
Human brains are special in terms of development and aging.
Comparative neuroimaging can identify unique features of the human brain and teach us about human brain evolution. Comparisons with chimpanzees, our closest living primate relative, are critical in this endeavor. Structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been used to compare brain size development, brain structure proportions and brain aging. Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging has been used to compare resting brain glucose metabolism. Functional MRI (fMRI) has been used to compare auditory and visual system pathways, as well as resting-state networks of connectivity. Finally, diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) has been used to compare structural connectivity. Collectively, these methods have revealed human brain specializations with respect to development, cortical organization, connectivity, and aging. These findings inform our knowledge of the evolutionary changes responsible for the special features of the modern human mind. "
Comment: All of this requires purposeful design. A brain does not design its own advances in evolution.
Brain expansion
DAVID: The so called autonomous mechanism is no more than an automatic mechanism God built into the neurons of our brains so they respond properly for to maintain the correct/right form of complexity. (dhw’s bold)
dhw: […] Different parts of the brain complexify according to different requirements, and you have hit the nail on the head: they do so IN RESPONSE to those requirements. The argument here is not automatic versus autonomous, but divine dabble versus autonomous. If the modern brain complexifies in response to new requirements, why do you assume that it did not also expand in response to new requirements, as opposed to your God having to dabble? (NB please note the distinction between the autonomous power of thought and the automatic mechanism for implementation of thought, as below). (dhw's bolds)
DAVID: See today's entry on introducing design in the brain, for object recognition. This has to be a designed mechanism, and cannot be handled autonomously without conceptual analysis before the temporal cortex brain area is created. The brain cannot organize itself. It can only reorganize an excess of neurons as our brain does. And later:
DAVID: As above, how does an earlier brain know how to expand purposely modified regions for exact reproduction of images, as in today's entry? Only conceptual planning can accomplish this advance.
You have ignored my now bolded parenthesis, though that should also have included the information-gathering parts of the brain, to which object recognition belongs. Why have you narrowed the discussion to this one feature? Of course it doesn’t “know” how to expand. It is the thinking part of the brain (or the dualist’s “soul”) that gives the instructions, and the relevant cells will automatically obey. Your example was dealt with by the quote in your previous post, which you now prefer to ignore, as well as ignoring my commentary on it:
QUOTE: "Another salient property of the brain, which is clearly at play in the return of service example from tennis, is that the connection strengths between neurons can be modified in response to activity and experience—a process that is widely believed by neuroscientists to be the basis for learning and memory. Repetitive training enables the neuronal circuits to become better configured for the tasks being performed, resulting in greatly improved speed and precision."(David’s comment: note complexification is automatic) (dhw’s bold)
I shan’t repeat my commentary, except to say once more that both complexification and expansion take place IN RESPONSE to new requirements, and your single example of expanding object-recognition cells fits in perfectly with the bolds (as do the undabbled changes in the modern brains of illiterate people, taxi drivers and musicians). I would like to know why you think your God had to dabble again and again with the object-recognizing parts of the brain and why you don’t think he could have devised a mechanism which would enable them to develop automatically in response to the changing needs of the thinking parts (or “soul”), as they do now.
DAVID: As for the many hominin/homo varieties in different climates, as I stated before, as they interbred, they provided/ developed naturally different beneficial attributes to the final sapiens species.
dhw: “Developed naturally”? Are you then saying that your God provided them with an autonomous mechanism that enabled them to develop different attributes? Or are you going to tell us that he twiddled every genome with “instructions” to develop the attributes which presumably he would then transfer to H. sapiens when he eventually got round to directly designing/twiddling the only species of homo he wanted to design/twiddle?
DAVID: Can happen either way. So, take your choice.
dhw: If I’ve understood this correctly, you are now agreeing that your God might have provided the many hominins and homos with an autonomous mechanism that enabled them to develop different attributes. Clearly the same mechanism would have enabled other organisms to do the same. If I didn’t know you better, I would say this is a landmark moment in our discussions!
DAVID: Your usual wishful purposeful misunderstanding. Denisovans adapted to high altitude though attributes they had, and Neanderthals provided certain immunity characteristics, all covered before quite clearly. These autonomous mechanisms worked in highly controlled fashion.
Your usual effort to dodge the question. What do you mean by “they had”? Did your God dabble them or not? If he didn’t, then those attributes would have developed through an autonomous mechanism. I asked which you thought it was, and you answered “can happen either way”. Which two ways were you referring to? An autonomous mechanism that produces a functioning attribute will of course work in highly controlled fashion, but if it is autonomous, it is not controlled by anything other than its own intelligence – i.e. without your God dabbling!
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, June 06, 2020, 20:24 (1629 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: QUOTE: "Another salient property of the brain, which is clearly at play in the return of service example from tennis, is that the connection strengths between neurons can be modified in response to activity and experience—a process that is widely believed by neuroscientists to be the basis for learning and memory. Repetitive training enables the neuronal circuits to become better configured for the tasks being performed, resulting in greatly improved speed and precision."(David’s comment: note complexification is automatic) (dhw’s bold)
dhw: I shan’t repeat my commentary, except to say once more that both complexification and expansion take place IN RESPONSE to new requirements, and your single example of expanding object-recognition cells fits in perfectly with the bolds (as do the undabbled changes in the modern brains of illiterate people, taxi drivers and musicians). I would like to know why you think your God had to dabble again and again with the object-recognizing parts of the brain and why you don’t think he could have devised a mechanism which would enable them to develop automatically in response to the changing needs of the thinking parts (or “soul”), as they do now.
The problem for you autonomous method is the required planning needed to provide special areas for special tasks, such as Hippocampus for memory and then specialized tracks to the temporal area with specialized regions for defining visual objects. I don't think these areas an tracts were placed by chance. Autonomous would have had to know exactly what it was doing in advance.
DAVID: As for the many hominin/homo varieties in different climates, as I stated before, as they interbred, they provided/ developed naturally different beneficial attributes to the final sapiens species.dhw: “Developed naturally”? Are you then saying that your God provided them with an autonomous mechanism that enabled them to develop different attributes? Or are you going to tell us that he twiddled every genome with “instructions” to develop the attributes which presumably he would then transfer to H. sapiens when he eventually got round to directly designing/twiddling the only species of homo he wanted to design/twiddle?
DAVID: Can happen either way. So, take your choice.
dhw: If I’ve understood this correctly, you are now agreeing that your God might have provided the many hominins and homos with an autonomous mechanism that enabled them to develop different attributes. Clearly the same mechanism would have enabled other organisms to do the same. If I didn’t know you better, I would say this is a landmark moment in our discussions!
DAVID: Your usual wishful purposeful misunderstanding. Denisovans adapted to high altitude though attributes they had, and Neanderthals provided certain immunity characteristics, all covered before quite clearly. These autonomous mechanisms worked in highly controlled fashion.
dhw: our usual effort to dodge the question. What do you mean by “they had”? Did your God dabble them or not? If he didn’t, then those attributes would have developed through an autonomous mechanism. I asked which you thought it was, and you answered “can happen either way”. Which two ways were you referring to? An autonomous mechanism that produces a functioning attribute will of course work in highly controlled fashion, but if it is autonomous, it is not controlled by anything other than its own intelligence – i.e. without your God dabbling!
Adaptation to high altitude involves increasing primarily the population of red blood cells by adding methylation to the genome as an epigenetic modification, an attribute we all have. God has provided this so He didn't dabble high altitude adaptations.
Brain expansion
dhw: QUOTE: "Another salient property of the brain, which is clearly at play in the return of service example from tennis, is that the connection strengths between neurons can be modified in response to activity and experience—a process that is widely believed by neuroscientists to be the basis for learning and memory. Repetitive training enables the neuronal circuits to become better configured for the tasks being performed, bbresulting in greatly improved speed and precision."(David’s comment: note complexification is automatic) (dhw’s bold)
dhw: I shan’t repeat my commentary, except to say once more that both complexification and expansion take place IN RESPONSE to new requirements, and your single example of expanding object-recognition cells fits in perfectly with the bolds (as do the undabbled changes in the modern brains of illiterate people, taxi drivers and musicians). I would like to know why you think your God had to dabble again and again with the object-recognizing parts of the brain and why you don’t think he could have devised a mechanism which would enable them to develop automatically in response to the changing needs of the thinking parts (or “soul”), as they do now.
DAVID: The problem for you autonomous method is the required planning needed to provide special areas for special tasks, such as Hippocampus for memory and then specialized tracks to the temporal area with specialized regions for defining visual objects. I don't think these areas an tracts were placed by chance. Autonomous would have had to know exactly what it was doing in advance.
What you have described applies to all brains, not just human, and you have cleverly switched the subject from the mechanism for the expansion of the human brain to the origin of the brain itself. So God must have dabbled with every brain that ever existed, in order to ensure that one part was devoted to memory and other parts to defining visual objects. The question is important, though, so I’ll follow your attempt to divert attention away from our subject. I suggest – theistic version – that the whole process began with your God’s creation of intelligent single cells (e.g. bacteria). Memory is just one example:
Bacteria have memory, like brain neurons - The Limited Times
newsrnd.com/tech/2020-05-07-bacteria-have-memory--like-brain-neurons--.Sk7K9V-…
QUOTE: Bacteria also have memory: those that form the very thin films adhering to surfaces called biofilms can in fact keep for hours the 'memory' of a light stimulus to which they have been exposed. The mechanism, which has striking parallels with the more sophisticated brain neurons, could open up the development of living computers made of cells.
My proposal, then: As single intelligent cells joined together in intelligent cell communities, they produced ever more “sophisticated” forms of memory, object recognition etc., much as scientists today build on the discoveries of yesterday’s scientists.
Now please tell us why a God who can organize autonomous complexification is incapable of organizing autonomous expansion.
DAVID: […] Denisovans adapted to high altitude though attributes they had, and Neanderthals provided certain immunity characteristics, all covered before quite clearly. These autonomous mechanisms worked in highly controlled fashion.
dhw: Your usual effort to dodge the question. What do you mean by “they had”? Did your God dabble them or not? If he didn’t, then those attributes would have developed through an autonomous mechanism. I asked which you thought it was, and you answered “can happen either way”. Which two ways were you referring to? An autonomous mechanism that produces a functioning attribute will of course work in highly controlled fashion, but if it is autonomous, it is not controlled by anything other than its own intelligence – i.e. without your God dabbling!
DAVID: Adaptation to high altitude involves increasing primarily the population of red blood cells by adding methylation to the genome as an epigenetic modification, an attribute we all have. God has provided this so He didn't dabble high altitude adaptations.
God has provided what? You have chosen this example, which according to you proves that the adaptations which were passed on from pre-sapiens to sapiens were not dabbled but were the product of an autonomous mechanism. If God created a mechanism for the autonomous production of different attributes, and you yourself have insisted that these attributes account for there being different species, then perhaps we have a blueprint for all speciation: cell communities respond to, adapt to, cope with, and perhaps even exploit different conditions and thus develop different attributes.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, June 07, 2020, 22:04 (1628 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: The problem for you autonomous method is the required planning needed to provide special areas for special tasks, such as Hippocampus for memory and then specialized tracks to the temporal area with specialized regions for defining visual objects. I don't think these areas an tracts were placed by chance. Autonomous would have had to know exactly what it was doing in advance.
dhw: What you have described applies to all brains, not just human, and you have cleverly switched the subject from the mechanism for the expansion of the human brain to the origin of the brain itself. So God must have dabbled with every brain that ever existed, in order to ensure that one part was devoted to memory and other parts to defining visual objects. The question is important, though, so I’ll follow your attempt to divert attention away from our subject. I suggest – theistic version – that the whole process began with your God’s creation of intelligent single cells (e.g. bacteria). Memory is just one example:
Bacteria have memory, like brain neurons - The Limited Times
newsrnd.com/tech/2020-05-07-bacteria-have-memory--like-brain-neurons--.Sk7K9V-…QUOTE: Bacteria also have memory: those that form the very thin films adhering to surfaces called biofilms can in fact keep for hours the 'memory' of a light stimulus to which they have been exposed. The mechanism, which has striking parallels with the more sophisticated brain neurons, could open up the development of living computers made of cells.
My proposal, then: As single intelligent cells joined together in intelligent cell communities, they produced ever more “sophisticated” forms of memory, object recognition etc., much as scientists today build on the discoveries of yesterday’s scientists.
Now please tell us why a God who can organize autonomous complexification is incapable of organizing autonomous expansion.
From the article itself:
"The researchers discovered the 'memory' of the bacteria by irradiating a Bacillus subtilis biofilm with light in order to draw the symbol of their university: the light stimulus altered the opening and closing of the channels of the cell membrane from which they enter and exit electrically charged ions, thus ending up changing the membrane potential. "When we disrupted bacteria with light, their cells retained their memory by responding differently from then on"
Note the bold. Membrane potential is a very potent characteristic of membranes and they changed it and it persisted to create the memory. The article is lots of hype, nothing more. The other possibility is membranes may contain rhodopsin molecules, not discussed in the article. You have brought up the simplest of complexification and tried to equate that to working brain neurons and their complex networks and assigned regions of work.
DAVID: […] Denisovans adapted to high altitude though attributes they had, and Neanderthals provided certain immunity characteristics, all covered before quite clearly. These autonomous mechanisms worked in highly controlled fashion.
dhw: Your usual effort to dodge the question. What do you mean by “they had”? Did your God dabble them or not? If he didn’t, then those attributes would have developed through an autonomous mechanism. I asked which you thought it was, and you answered “can happen either way”. Which two ways were you referring to? An autonomous mechanism that produces a functioning attribute will of course work in highly controlled fashion, but if it is autonomous, it is not controlled by anything other than its own intelligence – i.e. without your God dabbling!
DAVID: Adaptation to high altitude involves increasing primarily the population of red blood cells by adding methylation to the genome as an epigenetic modification, an attribute we all have. God has provided this so He didn't dabble high altitude adaptations.
dhw: God has provided what? You have chosen this example, which according to you proves that the adaptations which were passed on from pre-sapiens to sapiens were not dabbled but were the product of an autonomous mechanism. If God created a mechanism for the autonomous production of different attributes, and you yourself have insisted that these attributes account for there being different species, then perhaps we have a blueprint for all speciation: cell communities respond to, adapt to, cope with, and perhaps even exploit different conditions and thus develop different attributes.
Did you read what I wrote? All humans living at altitude can increase their red cell population. I assume the Denisovans genetically had a stronger mechanism, epigenetic change nothing more. Neanderthals with different immune experiences provide some protections for us though interbreeding. No special cell committees involved.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, June 07, 2020, 22:41 (1628 days ago) @ David Turell
DAVID: The problem for you autonomous method is the required planning needed to provide special areas for special tasks, such as Hippocampus for memory and then specialized tracks to the temporal area with specialized regions for defining visual objects. I don't think these areas an tracts were placed by chance. Autonomous would have had to know exactly what it was doing in advance.
dhw: What you have described applies to all brains, not just human, and you have cleverly switched the subject from the mechanism for the expansion of the human brain to the origin of the brain itself. So God must have dabbled with every brain that ever existed, in order to ensure that one part was devoted to memory and other parts to defining visual objects. The question is important, though, so I’ll follow your attempt to divert attention away from our subject. I suggest – theistic version – that the whole process began with your God’s creation of intelligent single cells (e.g. bacteria). Memory is just one example:
Bacteria have memory, like brain neurons - The Limited Times
newsrnd.com/tech/2020-05-07-bacteria-have-memory--like-brain-neurons--.Sk7K9V-…QUOTE: Bacteria also have memory: those that form the very thin films adhering to surfaces called biofilms can in fact keep for hours the 'memory' of a light stimulus to which they have been exposed. The mechanism, which has striking parallels with the more sophisticated brain neurons, could open up the development of living computers made of cells.
My proposal, then: As single intelligent cells joined together in intelligent cell communities, they produced ever more “sophisticated” forms of memory, object recognition etc., much as scientists today build on the discoveries of yesterday’s scientists.
Now please tell us why a God who can organize autonomous complexification is incapable of organizing autonomous expansion.
From the article itself:"The researchers discovered the 'memory' of the bacteria by irradiating a Bacillus subtilis biofilm with light in order to draw the symbol of their university: the light stimulus altered the opening and closing of the channels of the cell membrane from which they enter and exit electrically charged ions, thus ending up changing the membrane potential. "When we disrupted bacteria with light, their cells retained their memory by responding differently from then on"
Note the bold. Membrane potential is a very potent characteristic of membranes and they changed it and it persisted to create the memory. The article is lots of hype, nothing more. The other possibility is membranes may contain rhodopsin molecules, not discussed in the article. You have brought up the simplest of complexification and tried to equate that to working brain neurons and their complex networks and assigned regions of work.
DAVID: […] Denisovans adapted to high altitude though attributes they had, and Neanderthals provided certain immunity characteristics, all covered before quite clearly. These autonomous mechanisms worked in highly controlled fashion.
dhw: Your usual effort to dodge the question. What do you mean by “they had”? Did your God dabble them or not? If he didn’t, then those attributes would have developed through an autonomous mechanism. I asked which you thought it was, and you answered “can happen either way”. Which two ways were you referring to? An autonomous mechanism that produces a functioning attribute will of course work in highly controlled fashion, but if it is autonomous, it is not controlled by anything other than its own intelligence – i.e. without your God dabbling!
DAVID: Adaptation to high altitude involves increasing primarily the population of red blood cells by adding methylation to the genome as an epigenetic modification, an attribute we all have. God has provided this so He didn't dabble high altitude adaptations.
dhw: God has provided what? You have chosen this example, which according to you proves that the adaptations which were passed on from pre-sapiens to sapiens were not dabbled but were the product of an autonomous mechanism. If God created a mechanism for the autonomous production of different attributes, and you yourself have insisted that these attributes account for there being different species, then perhaps we have a blueprint for all speciation: cell communities respond to, adapt to, cope with, and perhaps even exploit different conditions and thus develop different attributes.
I'll repeat what I wrote: All humans living at altitude can increase their red cell population. I assume the Denisovans genetically had a stronger mechanism, epigenetic change nothing more. Neanderthals with different immune experiences provide some protections for us though interbreeding. No special cell committees involved.
Brain expansion
DAVID: The problem for you autonomous method is the required planning needed to provide special areas for special tasks, such as Hippocampus for memory and then specialized tracks to the temporal area with specialized regions for defining visual objects. I don't think these areas an tracts were placed by chance. Autonomous would have had to know exactly what it was doing in advance.
dhw: What you have described applies to all brains, not just human, and you have cleverly switched the subject from the mechanism for the expansion of the human brain to the origin of the brain itself. So God must have dabbled with every brain that ever existed, in order to ensure that one part was devoted to memory and other parts to defining visual objects. The question is important, though, so I’ll follow your attempt to divert attention away from our subject. I suggest – theistic version – that the whole process began with your God’s creation of intelligent single cells (e.g. bacteria). Memory is just one example:
Bacteria have memory, like brain neurons - The Limited Times
newsrnd.com/tech/2020-05-07-bacteria-have-memory--like-brain-neurons--.Sk7K9V-…
QUOTE: “[…] The mechanism, which has striking parallels with the more sophisticated brain neurons, could open up the development of living computers made of cells.
dhw: My proposal, then: As single intelligent cells joined together in intelligent cell communities, they produced ever more “sophisticated” forms of memory, object recognition etc., much as scientists today build on the discoveries of yesterday’s scientists.
DAVID: Membrane potential is a very potent characteristic of membranes and they changed it and it persisted to create the memory. The article is lots of hype, nothing more. […] You have brought up the simplest of complexification and tried to equate that to working brain neurons and their complex networks and assigned regions of work.
You have merely explained how the researchers proved that bacteria have memory. The important thing is that they do have memory. And I am not EQUATING bacterial simplicity with human complexity, but am suggesting how the evolutionary process may have advanced from simple to complex. It was you who initiated this digression, but I’m pleased to see that you do not have any objections to my proposal.
dhw: Now please tell us why a God who can organize autonomous complexification is incapable of organizing autonomous expansion.
Not answered.
DAVID: Adaptation to high altitude involves increasing primarily the population of red blood cells by adding methylation to the genome as an epigenetic modification, an attribute we all have. God has provided this so He didn't dabble high altitude adaptations.
dhw: God has provided what? You have chosen this example, which according to you proves that the adaptations which were passed on from pre-sapiens to sapiens were not dabbled but were the product of an autonomous mechanism. If God created a mechanism for the autonomous production of different attributes, and you yourself have insisted that these attributes account for there being different species, then perhaps we have a blueprint for all speciation: cell communities respond to, adapt to, cope with, and perhaps even exploit different conditions and thus develop different attributes.
DAVID: Did you read what I wrote? All humans living at altitude can increase their red cell population. I assume the Denisovans genetically had a stronger mechanism, epigenetic change nothing more. Neanderthals with different immune experiences provide some protections for us though interbreeding. No special cell committees involved.
You wrote that as the many hominin/homo varieties interbred, "they provided/developed naturally different beneficial attributes to the final sapiens species." So I don't know why you then chose high altitude adaptation as your example. But the principle of the autonomous mechanism is clear. Now you've switched to Neanderthal immune "experiences". Dabbled or autonomous? What "attributes" were you referring to? And what is your objection to the bolded extrapolation from your comments - other than the fact that like your own theory, it is unproven?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Monday, June 08, 2020, 18:58 (1627 days ago) @ dhw
QUOTE: “[…] The mechanism, which has striking parallels with the more sophisticated brain neurons, could open up the development of living computers made of cells.
dhw: My proposal, then: As single intelligent cells joined together in intelligent cell communities, they produced ever more “sophisticated” forms of memory, object recognition etc., much as scientists today build on the discoveries of yesterday’s scientists.
DAVID: Membrane potential is a very potent characteristic of membranes and they changed it and it persisted to create the 'memory'. The article is lots of hype, nothing more. […] You have brought up the simplest of complexification and tried to equate that to working brain neurons and their complex networks and assigned regions of work.
dhw: You have merely explained how the researchers proved that bacteria have memory. The important thing is that they do have memory. And I am not EQUATING bacterial simplicity with human complexity, but am suggesting how the evolutionary process may have advanced from simple to complex. It was you who initiated this digression, but I’m pleased to see that you do not have any objections to my proposal.
The so-called memory is not brain-based memory, but electro-mechanical changes in a bacterial outer membrane. It is not a memory in the sense of our memories and these changes are common in the biochemistry of life. I view the article as pure hype, and in no way will it tell us how neurons work, as foolishly suggested in the write-up.
dhw: Now please tell us why a God who can organize autonomous complexification is incapable of organizing autonomous expansion.Not answered.
Requires exact design planning of parts( regions and connecting tracts of the newly expanded brain. Complexification is a much more simple process of reorganization of what is currently present. What God has given all organisms is methods (epigenetic) for adaptations of existing physiology.
DAVID: Adaptation to high altitude involves increasing primarily the population of red blood cells by adding methylation to the genome as an epigenetic modification, an attribute we all have. God has provided this so He didn't dabble high altitude adaptations.dhw: God has provided what? You have chosen this example, which according to you proves that the adaptations which were passed on from pre-sapiens to sapiens were not dabbled but were the product of an autonomous mechanism. If God created a mechanism for the autonomous production of different attributes, and you yourself have insisted that these attributes account for there being different species, then perhaps we have a blueprint for all speciation: cell communities respond to, adapt to, cope with, and perhaps even exploit different conditions and thus develop different attributes.
DAVID: Did you read what I wrote? All humans living at altitude can increase their red cell population. I assume the Denisovans genetically had a stronger mechanism, epigenetic change nothing more. Neanderthals with different immune experiences provide some protections for us though interbreeding. No special cell committees involved.
dhw: You wrote that as the many hominin/homo varieties interbred, "they provided/developed naturally different beneficial attributes to the final sapiens species." So I don't know why you then chose high altitude adaptation as your example. But the principle of the autonomous mechanism is clear. Now you've switched to Neanderthal immune "experiences". Dabbled or autonomous? What "attributes" were you referring to? And what is your objection to the bolded extrapolation from your comments - other than the fact that like your own theory, it is unproven?
All I have done is quote the current accepted literature about these interbred attributes. The Neanderthals gave us certain immune attributes. So? The Neanderthals had an immune mechanism, provided by God's design and different exposures than Sapiens, so the combination was helpful. I've discussed the magical immunity system and how it is designed to act over a lifetime to create a huge library of antibodies and other defenses as it meets different pathogens. Your comment in red bold is pure invention. God designed each attribute into humans. There never was a separate attribution design mechanism.
Brain expansion
QUOTE: “[…] The mechanism, which has striking parallels with the more sophisticated brain neurons, could open up the development of living computers made of cells.
dhw: My proposal, then: As single intelligent cells joined together in intelligent cell communities, they produced ever more “sophisticated” forms of memory, object recognition etc., much as scientists today build on the discoveries of yesterday’s scientists.
DAVID: The so-called memory is not brain-based memory, but electro-mechanical changes in a bacterial outer membrane. It is not a memory in the sense of our memories and these changes are common in the biochemistry of life. I view the article as pure hype, and in no way will it tell us how neurons work, as foolishly suggested in the write-up.
They never claimed that it was our sort of memory! They were demonstrating that bacteria had memory, and there were parallels to our neurons! I used this simply as an example of how simple may have advanced to complex as outlined in my proposal above.
dhw: Now please tell us why a God who can organize autonomous complexification is incapable of organizing autonomous expansion.
DAVID: Requires exact design planning of parts( regions and connecting tracts of the newly expanded brain. Complexification is a much more simple process of reorganization of what is currently present. […]
Human brain expansion did not result in new parts. Our fellow animals have the same parts with the same functions as ours. But certain parts of our brains expanded and theirs did not. (This is not to downplay the vast gap between our consciousness levels and theirs. I am merely responding to your reference to "parts".) I don’t understand why you think the cell communities that make up the different parts of the brain can respond autonomously to new requirements by reorganizing what already exists (complexification), but can’t possibly have responded autonomously to new requirements by adding to what already exists (expansion).
dhw: . redIf God created a mechanism for the autonomous production of different attributes,red and you yourself have insisted that these attributes account for there being different species, then perhaps we have a blueprint for all speciation: cell communities respond to, adapt to, cope with, and perhaps even exploit different conditions and thus develop different attributes.all
DAVID: Did you read what I wrote? All humans living at altitude can increase their red cell population. I assume the Denisovans genetically had a stronger mechanism, epigenetic change nothing more. Neanderthals with different immune experiences provide some protections for us though interbreeding. No special cell committees involved.
dhw: You wrote that as the many hominin/homo varieties interbred, "they provided/developed naturally different beneficial attributes to the final sapiens species." So I don't know why you then chose high altitude adaptation as your example. But the principle of the autonomous mechanism is clear. Now you've switched to Neanderthal immune "experiences". Dabbled or autonomous? What "attributes" were you referring to? And what is your objection to the bolded extrapolation from your comments - other than the fact that like your own theory, it is unproven?
DAVID: All I have done is quote the current accepted literature about these interbred attributes. The Neanderthals gave us certain immune attributes. So? The Neanderthals had an immune mechanism, provided by God's design and different exposures than Sapiens, so the combination was helpful. I've discussed the magical immunity system and how it is designed to act over a lifetime to create a huge library of antibodies and other defenses as it meets different pathogens. Your comment in red bold is pure invention. God designed each attribute into humans. There never was a separate attribution design mechanism.
So now we have autonomous adaptations, e.g. to altitude, but the immune system was a dabble. But the immune system itself functions through a process of ongoing adaptations, as you’ve just described. It constantly adapts itself to cope with whatever hostile forces attack it. And as such, no doubt it has complexified (apparently an autonomous process) as time has confronted it with more and more problems to tackle. And why have you singled out the human immune system anyway? As with the brain, our fellow animals also have immune systems! Did your God dabble those too before specially dabbling ours?
What I’m suggesting is that if your God created a mechanism for autonomous adaptation, the same mechanism could also be responsible for what you call attributes – and indeed it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the two, since both are so dependent on the interaction between cell communities and the environment. I’m afraid I really can’t accept the authority with which you phrase your concluding statement. Opinion should never be stated as if it were fact.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, June 09, 2020, 21:05 (1626 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: My proposal, then: As single intelligent cells joined together in intelligent cell communities, they produced ever more “sophisticated” forms of memory, object recognition etc., much as scientists today build on the discoveries of yesterday’s scientists.
DAVID: The so-called memory is not brain-based memory, but electro-mechanical changes in a bacterial outer membrane. It is not a memory in the sense of our memories and these changes are common in the biochemistry of life. I view the article as pure hype, and in no way will it tell us how neurons work, as foolishly suggested in the write-up.
dhw: They never claimed that it was our sort of memory! They were demonstrating that bacteria had memory, and there were parallels to our neurons! I used this simply as an example of how simple may have advanced to complex as outlined in my proposal above.
Your brilliant cell committees! Neurons are not bacterial membranes, but are highly complex designed cells for a purposeful function not limited to membrane activities As described in the Ellis piece today.
dhw: Now please tell us why a God who can organize autonomous complexification is incapable of organizing autonomous expansion.DAVID: Requires exact design planning of parts( regions and connecting tracts of the newly expanded brain. Complexification is a much more simple process of reorganization of what is currently present. […]
dhw: Human brain expansion did not result in new parts. Our fellow animals have the same parts with the same functions as ours. But certain parts of our brains expanded and theirs did not. (This is not to downplay the vast gap between our consciousness levels and theirs. I am merely responding to your reference to "parts".) I don’t understand why you think the cell communities that make up the different parts of the brain can respond autonomously to new requirements by reorganizing what already exists (complexification), but can’t possibly have responded autonomously to new requirements by adding to what already exists (expansion).
Same old problem: new brain size, new skull size, new material pelvic size, all coordinated, and you have never really answered how the different cell committees in each different part of the problem coordinated.
dhw: . redIf God created a mechanism for the autonomous production of different attributes,red and you yourself have insisted that these attributes account for there being different species, then perhaps we have a blueprint for all speciation: cell communities respond to, adapt to, cope with, and perhaps even exploit different conditions and thus develop different attributes.allDAVID: All I have done is quote the current accepted literature about these interbred attributes. The Neanderthals gave us certain immune attributes. So? The Neanderthals had an immune mechanism, provided by God's design and different exposures than Sapiens, so the combination was helpful. I've discussed the magical immunity system and how it is designed to act over a lifetime to create a huge library of antibodies and other defenses as it meets different pathogens. Your comment in red bold is pure invention. God designed each attribute into humans. There never was a separate attribution design mechanism.
dhw: So now we have autonomous adaptations, e.g. to altitude, but the immune system was a dabble. But the immune system itself functions through a process of ongoing adaptations, as you’ve just described. It constantly adapts itself to cope with whatever hostile forces attack it. And as such, no doubt it has complexified (apparently an autonomous process) as time has confronted it with more and more problems to tackle. And why have you singled out the human immune system anyway? As with the brain, our fellow animals also have immune systems! Did your God dabble those too before specially dabbling ours?
God gave all early immune systems, animal and man the ability to develop a library of responses. Without it no advanced life would exist.
dhw: What I’m suggesting is that if your God created a mechanism for autonomous adaptation, the same mechanism could also be responsible for what you call attributes – and indeed it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the two, since both are so dependent on the interaction between cell communities and the environment. I’m afraid I really can’t accept the authority with which you phrase your concluding statement. Opinion should never be stated as if it were fact.
My faith makes me take what God provides as fact. You are correct, we must be able to adapt to changing conditions. Adaptability is what God builds into various biological systems.
Brain expansion
dhw: My proposal, then: As single intelligent cells joined together in intelligent cell communities, they produced ever more “sophisticated” forms of memory, object recognition etc., much as scientists today build on the discoveries of yesterday’s scientists.
DAVID: The so-called memory is not brain-based memory, but electro-mechanical changes in a bacterial outer membrane. […]
dhw: They never claimed that it was our sort of memory! They were demonstrating that bacteria had memory, and there were parallels to our neurons! I used this simply as an example of how simple may have advanced to complex as outlined in my proposal above.
DAVID: Your brilliant cell committees! Neurons are not bacterial membranes, but are highly complex designed cells for a purposeful function not limited to membrane activities As described in the Ellis piece today.
You persist in misreading my post. Nobody said that neurons were bacterial membranes. But the article says there are parallels, and from that I have extrapolated my proposal, now in bold.
dhw: Now please tell us why a God who can organize autonomous complexification is incapable of organizing autonomous expansion.
DAVID: Requires exact design planning of parts( regions and connecting tracts of the newly expanded brain. Complexification is a much more simple process of reorganization of what is currently present. […]
dhw: Human brain expansion did not result in new parts. Our fellow animals have the same parts with the same functions as ours. […]I don’t understand why you think the cell communities that make up the different parts of the brain can respond autonomously to new requirements by reorganizing what already exists (complexification), but can’t possibly have responded autonomously to new requirements by adding to what already exists (expansion).
DAVID: Same old problem: new brain size, new skull size, new material pelvic size, all coordinated, and you have never really answered how the different cell committees in each different part of the problem coordinated.
Same old effort to dodge the argument by raising a different question, which in fact I have answered over and over again. Cell communities respond to new requirements. If the cell communities of the brain expand, then of course the cell communities of the skull must respond. And if the skull has enlarged, then of course the pelvis communities must respond. There may well have been major problems during the transitional phases – who knows? But without adaptation to new requirements, organisms will die!
dhw: So now we have autonomous adaptations, e.g. to altitude, but the immune system was a dabble. But the immune system itself functions through a process of ongoing adaptations, as you’ve just described. It constantly adapts itself to cope with whatever hostile forces attack it. And as such, no doubt it has complexified (apparently an autonomous process) as time has confronted it with more and more problems to tackle. And why have you singled out the human immune system anyway? As with the brain, our fellow animals also have immune systems! Did your God dabble those too before specially dabbling ours?
DAVID: God gave all early immune systems, animal and man the ability to develop a library of responses. Without it no advanced life would exist.
I would say the ability to develop a library of responses demands intelligence. In previous posts, if I remember rightly, you had your God providing the library itself – this in fact is what I assume you refer to generally as your God’s instructions. This is a most welcome shift of position.
DAVID: God designed each attribute into humans. There never was a separate attribution design mechanism.
dhw: What I’m suggesting is that if your God created a mechanism for autonomous adaptation, the same mechanism could also be responsible for what you call attributes – and indeed it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the two, since both are so dependent on the interaction between cell communities and the environment. I’m afraid I really can’t accept the authority with which you phrase your concluding statement. Opinion should never be stated as if it were fact.
DAVID: My faith makes me take what God provides as fact. You are correct, we must be able to adapt to changing conditions. Adaptability is what God builds into various biological systems.
Thank you. Your authoritative statement that “God designed each attribute. There never was a separate attribution design mechanism” is not a fact. The question then is whether he supplies all the instructions for all the adaptations, or he gave organisms the intelligence to design their own adaptations and attributes, as above. In the case of the brain, you continue to support the idea of an autonomous mechanism for complexification, and you reject the idea of the same mechanism for expansion, although both entail the response of the brain to changing requirements. I find this illogical.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, June 10, 2020, 18:36 (1625 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: My proposal, then: As single intelligent cells joined together in intelligent cell communities, they produced ever more “sophisticated” forms of memory, object recognition etc., much as scientists today build on the discoveries of yesterday’s scientists.You persist in misreading my post. Nobody said that neurons were bacterial membranes. But the article says there are parallels, and from that I have extrapolated my proposal, now in bold.
Your parallelism is an enormous stretch of a very weak theory, just because bacterial membranes can change their characteristics lightly but the bacteria are really unchanged.
dhw: Now please tell us why a God who can organize autonomous complexification is incapable of organizing autonomous expansion.DAVID: Requires exact design planning of parts( regions and connecting tracts of the newly expanded brain. Complexification is a much more simple process of reorganization of what is currently present. […]
dhw: Human brain expansion did not result in new parts. Our fellow animals have the same parts with the same functions as ours. […]I don’t understand why you think the cell communities that make up the different parts of the brain can respond autonomously to new requirements by reorganizing what already exists (complexification), but can’t possibly have responded autonomously to new requirements by adding to what already exists (expansion).
DAVID: Same old problem: new brain size, new skull size, new material pelvic size, all coordinated, and you have never really answered how the different cell committees in each different part of the problem coordinated.
dhw: Same old effort to dodge the argument by raising a different question, which in fact I have answered over and over again. Cell communities respond to new requirements. If the cell communities of the brain expand, then of course the cell communities of the skull must respond. And if the skull has enlarged, then of course the pelvis communities must respond. There may well have been major problems during the transitional phases – who knows? But without adaptation to new requirements, organisms will die!
Thank you for your non-answer! Of course they will die without designed coordination! Of course cells in each separate organ cooperate physiologically, but morphological changes are not due to cells possibly talking to each other. How does the baby's new skull size tell the mother's pelvis to enlarge?
DAVID: God gave all early immune systems, animal and man the ability to develop a library of responses. Without it no advanced life would exist.dhw: I would say the ability to develop a library of responses demands intelligence. In previous posts, if I remember rightly, you had your God providing the library itself – this in fact is what I assume you refer to generally as your God’s instructions. This is a most welcome shift of position.
Total lack of memory for what I have written.. God has given all organisms the ability to learn and memorize a huge library of antibodies as infections occur. The newborn receives some generalized immune globulins to start with in colostrum.
DAVID: God designed each attribute into humans. There never was a separate attribution design mechanism.dhw: What I’m suggesting is that if your God created a mechanism for autonomous adaptation, the same mechanism could also be responsible for what you call attributes – and indeed it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the two, since both are so dependent on the interaction between cell communities and the environment. I’m afraid I really can’t accept the authority with which you phrase your concluding statement. Opinion should never be stated as if it were fact.
DAVID: My faith makes me take what God provides as fact. You are correct, we must be able to adapt to changing conditions. Adaptability is what God builds into various biological systems.
dhw: Thank you. Your authoritative statement that “God designed each attribute. There never was a separate attribution design mechanism” is not a fact. The question then is whether he supplies all the instructions for all the adaptations, or he gave organisms the intelligence to design their own adaptations and attributes, as above. In the case of the brain, you continue to support the idea of an autonomous mechanism for complexification, and you reject the idea of the same mechanism for expansion, although both entail the response of the brain to changing requirements. I find this illogical.
Providing adaptability for existing organs or organisms is at an existing level of design. Creating a marked change in an organ requires more advanced design for more advanced functions. For example the erectus brain is a pale forerunner of what the sapiens brain is capable of performing. The sapiens design allowed for many extra neurons to be present for proper pruning as the complexification process did its work. Your proposal is that the erectus brain designed the sapiens brain. Really?
Brain expansion
dhw: My proposal, then: As single intelligent cells joined together in intelligent cell communities, they produced ever more “sophisticated” forms of memory, object recognition etc., much as scientists today build on the discoveries of yesterday’s scientists.
You persist in misreading my post. Nobody said that neurons were bacterial membranes. But the article says there are parallels, and from that I have extrapolated my proposal, now in bold.
DAVID: Your parallelism is an enormous stretch of a very weak theory, just because bacterial membranes can change their characteristics lightly but the bacteria are really unchanged.
You still persist in ignoring the bold and focusing solely on bacteria. Once more: bacteria have a simple form of memory. Bacteria are single cells. I propose that once single cells began to merge and cooperate, simple forms became more complex – e.g. the simple form of memory evolved into more complex forms of memory.
dhw: Cell communities respond to new requirements. If the cell communities of the brain expand, then of course the cell communities of the skull must respond. And if the skull has enlarged, then of course the pelvis communities must respond. There may well have been major problems during the transitional phases – who knows? But without adaptation to new requirements, organisms will die!
DAVID: Thank you for your non-answer! Of course they will die without designed coordination! Of course cells in each separate organ cooperate physiologically, but morphological changes are not due to cells possibly talking to each other. How does the baby's new skull size tell the mother's pelvis to enlarge?
It doesn’t! The cell communities that form the mother’s pelvis find themselves confronted with a new problem – a bigger skull. And as all cell communities do when confronted with new requirements, they adapt or die (and no doubt many do die before the process is completed)! You seem to think that the skull and the pelvis have to expand simultaneously in anticipation of the problem! That is not how adaptation works in any context.
DAVID: God gave all early immune systems, animal and man the ability to develop a library of responses. Without it no advanced life would exist.
dhw: I would say the ability to develop a library of responses demands intelligence. In previous posts, if I remember rightly, you had your God providing the library itself – this in fact is what I assume you refer to generally as your God’s instructions. This is a most welcome shift of position.
DAVID: Total lack of memory for what I have written.. God has given all organisms the ability to learn and memorize a huge library of antibodies as infections occur.
Thank you for this confirmation that your God has given them the ability to create the library for themselves, as opposed to obeying instructions set out 3.8 billion years ago or directly dabbled as and when new problems occur. The ability to do this for themselves is clearly indicative of autonomous intelligence.
dhw: Your authoritative statement that “God designed each attribute. There never was a separate attribution design mechanism” is not a fact. The question then is whether he supplies all the instructions for all the adaptations, or he gave organisms the intelligence to design their own adaptations and attributes, as above. In the case of the brain, you continue to support the idea of an autonomous mechanism for complexification, and you reject the idea of the same mechanism for expansion, although both entail the response of the brain to changing requirements. I find this illogical.
DAVID: Providing adaptability for existing organs or organisms is at an existing level of design. Creating a marked change in an organ requires more advanced design for more advanced functions. For example the erectus brain is a pale forerunner of what the sapiens brain is capable of performing. The sapiens design allowed for many extra neurons to be present for proper pruning as the complexification process did its work. Your proposal is that the erectus brain designed the sapiens brain. Really?
No, my proposal is precisely the same as your proposal for the immune system: that the existing cell communities develop a system or “library” as they learn. Each new infection is a new book. Each new experience is an addition to the “library” of the brain. There is no new design. Pre-sapiens advances required complexification of existing neurons and ultimately additional neurons (expansion) to cope with the new demands. The cell communities of the erectus brain did not design the cell communities of the sapiens brain: the sapiens brain emerged from the process of complexification and expansion of the erectus brain, and the sapiens cell communities continue (vastly) to expand their “library” through complexification (which is so efficient that some volumes can even be discarded).
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, June 11, 2020, 16:28 (1624 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Your parallelism is an enormous stretch of a very weak theory, just because bacterial membranes can change their characteristics lightly but the bacteria are really unchanged.
dhw: You still persist in ignoring the bold and focusing solely on bacteria. Once more: bacteria have a simple form of memory. Bacteria are single cells. I propose that once single cells began to merge and cooperate, simple forms became more complex – e.g. the simple form of memory evolved into more complex forms of memory.
I know your bottom-up theory. Complex memory ability simply appeared, because cells cam do it!
dhw: Cell communities respond to new requirements. If the cell communities of the brain expand, then of course the cell communities of the skull must respond. And if the skull has enlarged, then of course the pelvis communities must respond. There may well have been major problems during the transitional phases – who knows? But without adaptation to new requirements, organisms will die!DAVID: Thank you for your non-answer! Of course they will die without designed coordination! Of course cells in each separate organ cooperate physiologically, but morphological changes are not due to cells possibly talking to each other. How does the baby's new skull size tell the mother's pelvis to enlarge?
dhw: It doesn’t! The cell communities that form the mother’s pelvis find themselves confronted with a new problem – a bigger skull. And as all cell communities do when confronted with new requirements, they adapt or die (and no doubt many do die before the process is completed)! You seem to think that the skull and the pelvis have to expand simultaneously in anticipation of the problem! That is not how adaptation works in any context.
Woolly thinking! It has to be simultaneous! With a bigger baby head arriving, the pelvis has to be bigger at the same time! The father's genes played a role, but didn't tell Mom's genes.
DAVID: Total lack of memory for what I have written.. God has given all organisms the ability to learn and memorize a huge library of antibodies as infections occur.dhw: Thank you for this confirmation that your God has given them the ability to create the library for themselves, as opposed to obeying instructions set out 3.8 billion years ago or directly dabbled as and when new problems occur. The ability to do this for themselves is clearly indicative of autonomous intelligence.
Don't thank me for your distortion. The immune system has all the God-given instructions it needs to create this library.
dhw: Your authoritative statement that “God designed each attribute. There never was a separate attribution design mechanism” is not a fact. The question then is whether he supplies all the instructions for all the adaptations, or he gave organisms the intelligence to design their own adaptations and attributes, as above. In the case of the brain, you continue to support the idea of an autonomous mechanism for complexification, and you reject the idea of the same mechanism for expansion, although both entail the response of the brain to changing requirements. I find this illogical.DAVID: Providing adaptability for existing organs or organisms is at an existing level of design. Creating a marked change in an organ requires more advanced design for more advanced functions. For example the erectus brain is a pale forerunner of what the sapiens brain is capable of performing. The sapiens design allowed for many extra neurons to be present for proper pruning as the complexification process did its work. Your proposal is that the erectus brain designed the sapiens brain. Really?
dhw: No, my proposal is precisely the same as your proposal for the immune system: that the existing cell communities develop a system or “library” as they learn. Each new infection is a new book. Each new experience is an addition to the “library” of the brain. There is no new design. Pre-sapiens advances required complexification of existing neurons and ultimately additional neurons (expansion) to cope with the new demands. The cell communities of the erectus brain did not design the cell communities of the sapiens brain: the sapiens brain emerged from the process of complexification and expansion of the erectus brain, and the sapiens cell communities continue (vastly) to expand their “library” through complexification (which is so efficient that some volumes can even be discarded).
You are conflating the functions of two very different systems, and then miraculously brains can expand on their own without worry about the bony problems which simply disappear into the mist of subterfuge. Smart design, smart cells, all require a smart designer who makes cells look intelligent.
Brain expansion
DAVID: Your parallelism is an enormous stretch of a very weak theory, just because bacterial membranes can change their characteristics lightly but the bacteria are really unchanged.
dhw: You still persist in ignoring the bold and focusing solely on bacteria. Once more: bacteria have a simple form of memory. Bacteria are single cells. I propose that once single cells began to merge and cooperate, simple forms became more complex – e.g. the simple form of memory evolved into more complex forms of memory.
DAVID: I know your bottom-up theory. Complex memory ability simply appeared, because cells can do it!
No, it didn’t simply appear. Cells have memory, and by combining and cooperating, they increased the complexity of that memory. Theistic version: instead of your God preprogramming or dabbling each advance in complexity, he gave cells the ability (intelligence) to do their own combining and cooperating.
DAVID: How does the baby's new skull size tell the mother's pelvis to enlarge?
dhw: It doesn’t! The cell communities that form the mother’s pelvis find themselves confronted with a new problem – a bigger skull. And as all cell communities do when confronted with new requirements, they adapt or die (and no doubt many do die before the process is completed)! You seem to think that the skull and the pelvis have to expand simultaneously in anticipation of the problem! That is not how adaptation works in any context.
DAVID: Woolly thinking! It has to be simultaneous! With a bigger baby head arriving, the pelvis has to be bigger at the same time! The father's genes played a role, but didn't tell Mom's genes.
We have no idea how gradual this process was, but I am suggesting that until the pelvis had adapted to the new size of skull, there may well have been lots of dead babies and mothers. That is how adaptation works: one change demands others.
DAVID: God has given all organisms the ability to learn and memorize a huge library of antibodies as infections occur.
dhw: Thank you for this confirmation that your God has given them the ability to create the library for themselves, as opposed to obeying instructions set out 3.8 billion years ago or directly dabbled as and when new problems occur. The ability to do this for themselves is clearly indicative of autonomous intelligence.
DAVID: Don't thank me for your distortion. The immune system has all the God-given instructions it needs to create this library.
Originally you wrote: “God gave all early immune systems, animal and man the ability to develop a library of responses.” I would suggest that this means he gave them the autonomous ability to create or develop the library, and not that the cells of the immune system obeyed 3.8-billion-year-old instructions or were dabbled with “as infections occurred” and automatically held on to each instruction it had miraculously chosen from the programme or been supplied with via a dabble.
DAVID: Your proposal is that the erectus brain designed the sapiens brain. Really?
dhw: No, my proposal is precisely the same as your proposal for the immune system: that the existing cell communities develop a system or “library” as they learn. Each new infection is a new book. Each new experience is an addition to the “library” of the brain. […] The cell communities of the erectus brain did not design the cell communities of the sapiens brain: the sapiens brain emerged from the process of complexification and expansion of the erectus brain, and the sapiens cell communities continue (vastly) to expand their “library” through complexification (which is so efficient that some volumes can even be discarded).
DAVID: You are conflating the functions of two very different systems…
Not the functions! The process of development!
DAVID: ….and then miraculously brains can expand on their own without worry about the bony problems which simply disappear into the mist of subterfuge.
What does that mean? There is no miracle. Instead of your God simultaneously expanding brain, skull and mother’s pelvis in advance of any need, we have the brain expanding to meet new demands, the skull expanding to accommodate the expanded brain, and the pelvis expanding to accommodate the larger skull – all over an unknown period of time and no doubt with plenty of mishaps on the way.
DAVID: Smart design, smart cells, all require a smart designer who makes cells look intelligent.
Or a smart designer who gives cells an autonomous intelligence to work out their own designs (theistic version).
DAVID: dhw has questioned why so many pre-human varieties appeared during evolution. The answer is obvious. The varied experience by all the different populations combined many helpful genes into the sapiens genome.
So we have your God dabbling or preprogramming the changes in various brains and immune systems (since you now reject the idea of cells being able to develop their own library), and specially designing each of these human species - including those that became extinct before sapiens arrived - dabbling or preprogramming different attributes into them, and then preprogramming or dabbling a selection of those attributes into the only species he actually wanted to design, which was H. sapiens. Is that correct?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, June 13, 2020, 00:08 (1623 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Saturday, June 13, 2020, 00:14
DAVID: I know your bottom-up theory. Complex memory ability simply appeared, because cells can do it!
dhw: No, it didn’t simply appear. Cells have memory, and by combining and cooperating, they increased the complexity of that memory. Theistic version: instead of your God preprogramming or dabbling each advance in complexity, he gave cells the ability (intelligence) to do their own combining and cooperating.
And I won't accept any theory which reduced the problems of future design to simple cells that have no idea what the future requires.
DAVID: How does the baby's new skull size tell the mother's pelvis to enlarge?dhw: It doesn’t! The cell communities that form the mother’s pelvis find themselves confronted with a new problem – a bigger skull. And as all cell communities do when confronted with new requirements, they adapt or die (and no doubt many do die before the process is completed)! You seem to think that the skull and the pelvis have to expand simultaneously in anticipation of the problem! That is not how adaptation works in any context.
DAVID: Woolly thinking! It has to be simultaneous! With a bigger baby head arriving, the pelvis has to be bigger at the same time! The father's genes played a role, but didn't tell Mom's genes.
dhw: We have no idea how gradual this process was, but I am suggesting that until the pelvis had adapted to the new size of skull, there may well have been lots of dead babies and mothers. That is how adaptation works: one change demands others.
Still illogically defending the obvious need for simultaneity. No one would ever survive under you illogical answer. Your 'adaptation' requires small changes, as Darwin thought. We know successive species made large cerebral jumps in size.
dhw: Originally you wrote: “God gave all early immune systems, animal and man the ability to develop a library of responses.” I would suggest that this means he gave them the autonomous ability to create or develop the library, and not that the cells of the immune system obeyed 3.8-billion-year-old instructions or were dabbled with “as infections occurred” and automatically held on to each instruction it had miraculously chosen from the programme or been supplied with via a dabble.
Quit trying to reinterpret me. Immune cells know how to create antibodies to any and all antigens offered by infective agents. Each species with an immune system is so programmed.
DAVID: Your proposal is that the erectus brain designed the sapiens brain. Really?dhw: No, my proposal is precisely the same as your proposal for the immune system: that the existing cell communities develop a system or “library” as they learn. Each new infection is a new book. Each new experience is an addition to the “library” of the brain. […] The cell communities of the erectus brain did not design the cell communities of the sapiens brain: the sapiens brain emerged from the process of complexification and expansion of the erectus brain, and the sapiens cell communities continue (vastly) to expand their “library” through complexification (which is so efficient that some volumes can even be discarded).
DAVID: You are conflating the functions of two very different systems…
dhw: Not the functions! The process of development!
Cells can foresee the future requirements in your theory. That does not explain today's entry about the human cerebellum alterations from animals. Which brain cells did that foreseeing of our future socialization needs?
DAVID: Smart design, smart cells, all require a smart designer who makes cells look intelligent.dhw: Or a smart designer who gives cells an autonomous intelligence to work out their own designs (theistic version).
Your designer is not my designer.
DAVID: dhw has questioned why so many pre-human varieties appeared during evolution. The answer is obvious. The varied experience by all the different populations combined many helpful genes into the sapiens genome.dhw: So we have your God dabbling or preprogramming the changes in various brains and immune systems (since you now reject the idea of cells being able to develop their own library), and specially designing each of these human species - including those that became extinct before sapiens arrived - dabbling or preprogramming different attributes into them, and then preprogramming or dabbling a selection of those attributes into the only species he actually wanted to design, which was H. sapiens. Is that correct?
Yes. God is a direct designer, of all that appears
Brain expansion
dhw: Theistic version: instead of your God preprogramming or dabbling each advance in complexity, he gave cells the ability (intelligence) to do their own combining and cooperating.
DAVID: And I won't accept any theory which reduced the problems of future design to simple cells that have no idea what the future requires.
You persist in seeing evolution as a process of foretelling the future instead of responding to the present. We don’t know what caused speciation, but adaptation to new conditions must certainly have been a factor. Nobody has ever seen an organism adapt itself in anticipation of new conditions.
DAVID: With a bigger baby head arriving, the pelvis has to be bigger at the same time!
dhw: We have no idea how gradual this process was, but I am suggesting that until the pelvis had adapted to the new size of skull, there may well have been lots of dead babies and mothers. That is how adaptation works: one change demands others.
DAVID: Still illogically defending the obvious need for simultaneity. No one would ever survive under you illogical answer. Your 'adaptation' requires small changes, as Darwin thought. We know successive species made large cerebral jumps in size.
You seem to be saying that on Monday all skulls were 400 cc, and on Tuesday they were all 600 cc., and all pelvises enlarged from Monday to Tuesday. I don’t believe it. I stand by what I wrote above, and have no idea why you consider it to be illogical.
dhw: Originally you wrote: “God gave all early immune systems, animal and man the ability to develop a library of responses.” I would suggest that this means he gave them the autonomous ability to create or develop the library, and not that the cells of the immune system obeyed 3.8-billion-year-old instructions or were dabbled with “as infections occurred” and automatically held on to each instruction it had miraculously chosen from the programme or been supplied with via a dabble.
DAVID: Quit trying to reinterpret me. Immune cells know how to create antibodies to any and all antigens offered by infective agents. Each species with an immune system is so programmed.
Neither of has any option but to try and interpret what the other says. God giving animals and men the ability to develop a library of responses is quite different from God preprogramming every response.
DAVID (under “Immune system complexity”): These kinds of interlocking defense systems require careful design, with especial care not to allow attacks on one own's tissues, especially when the virus is located intracellularly. This is not something 'cell committees' can develop, since the mechanisms must be present when the organism first appears in evolution. Survival depends upon it.
If you believe in common descent, every organism will have inherited an immune system, all the way back to bacteria! You simply cannot accept the idea that when cell communities merge and cooperate, they will further develop whatever system they have inherited. If I were a theist, I would say that God gave cells/cell communities the ability to develop their own immune system to cope with whatever conditions they encountered. This requires intelligence. I would find that much easier to believe than a theory claiming that God anticipated every possible threat to every organism and therefore provided the first cells with a programme of instructions (to be passed on through the whole history of life) to deal with each threat as it arose.
DAVID: Cells can foresee the future requirements in your theory. That does not explain today's entry about the human cerebellum alterations from animals. Which brain cells did that foreseeing of our future socialization needs?
There is no foreseeing in my theory. All changes are made in response to changing conditions. I have responded separately to the vague hypothesis concerning the cerebellum.
dhw: So we have your God dabbling or preprogramming the changes in various brains and immune systems (since you now reject the idea of cells being able to develop their own library), and specially designing each of these human species - including those that became extinct before sapiens arrived - dabbling or preprogramming different attributes into them, and then preprogramming or dabbling a selection of those attributes into the only species he actually wanted to design, which was H. sapiens. Is that correct?
DAVID: Yes. God is a direct designer, of all that appears.
The above seems to me a very roundabout way of “directly” designing the only species (H. sapiens) he wanted to design, and this objection to your theory also applies, of course, to the directly designed bush of non-human life for 3.X billion years before he directly designed his first humans. This, of course, is not a criticism of God, but a criticism of your theory concerning God’s nature, motives and methods.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, June 13, 2020, 20:33 (1622 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: And I won't accept any theory which reduced the problems of future design to simple cells that have no idea what the future requires.
dhw: You persist in seeing evolution as a process of foretelling the future instead of responding to the present. We don’t know what caused speciation, but adaptation to new conditions must certainly have been a factor. Nobody has ever seen an organism adapt itself in anticipation of new conditions.
No adaptation we have ever seen creates a new species. New species do handle future conditions. and the consideration cannot be ignored
DAVID: Still illogically defending the obvious need for simultaneity. No one would ever survive under you illogical answer. Your 'adaptation' requires small changes, as Darwin thought. We know successive species made large cerebral jumps in size.dhw: You seem to be saying that on Monday all skulls were 400 cc, and on Tuesday they were all 600 cc., and all pelvises enlarged from Monday to Tuesday. I don’t believe it. I stand by what I wrote above, and have no idea why you consider it to be illogical.
Do you still deny we have no evidence of tiny advancements? Just large gaps in size.
DAVID (under “Immune system complexity”): These kinds of interlocking defense systems require careful design, with especial care not to allow attacks on one own's tissues, especially when the virus is located intracellularly. This is not something 'cell committees' can develop, since the mechanisms must be present when the organism first appears in evolution. Survival depends upon it.dhw: If you believe in common descent, every organism will have inherited an immune system, all the way back to bacteria! You simply cannot accept the idea that when cell communities merge and cooperate, they will further develop whatever system they have inherited. If I were a theist, I would say that God gave cells/cell communities the ability to develop their own immune system to cope with whatever conditions they encountered. This requires intelligence.
Whose intelligence? It is obvious the immune systems have the intelligent instructions to build the library.
dhw: I would find that much easier to believe than a theory claiming that God anticipated every possible threat to every organism and therefore provided the first cells with a programme of instructions (to be passed on through the whole history of life) to deal with each threat as it arose.
You have arrived at finally recognizing incorrectly my point about God's design of the immune systems. The immune cells are not innately intelligent. All infections can be handled in a small number of ways, killing cells directly or indirectly as previously described.
Brain expansion
DAVID: And I won't accept any theory which reduced the problems of future design to simple cells that have no idea what the future requires.
dhw: You persist in seeing evolution as a process of foretelling the future instead of responding to the present. We don’t know what caused speciation, but adaptation to new conditions must certainly have been a factor. Nobody has ever seen an organism adapt itself in anticipation of new conditions.
DAVID: No adaptation we have ever seen creates a new species. New species do handle future conditions. and the consideration cannot be ignored
Nobody has ever seen the creation of a new species! That is why we theorize. But it would be absurd to discount adaptation to new conditions as a factor. So please give me an example of a species that adapts itself to new conditions before those conditions arise. Of course some new species will also handle future conditions – otherwise every species would die out when conditions change!
DAVID: Still illogically defending the obvious need for simultaneity. No one would ever survive under you illogical answer. Your 'adaptation' requires small changes, as Darwin thought. We know successive species made large cerebral jumps in size.
dhw: You seem to be saying that on Monday all skulls were 400 cc, and on Tuesday they were all 600 cc., and all pelvises enlarged from Monday to Tuesday. I don’t believe it.
DAVID: Do you still deny we have no evidence of tiny advancements? Just large gaps in size.
Do you expect to find fossils covering every single stage of an adaptation? We have very few fossils to cover thousands and thousands of years, and each find is a sensation. So please tell me whether you think the jumps took place overnight. If not, how long do you think they took? Why do you regard it as illogical that pelvises would adapt to the new size of skull, though there may have been many fatalities along the way?
dhw: If you believe in common descent, every organism will have inherited an immune system, all the way back to bacteria! You simply cannot accept the idea that when cell communities merge and cooperate, they will further develop whatever system they have inherited. If I were a theist, I would say that God gave cells/cell communities the ability to develop their own immune system to cope with whatever conditions they encountered. This requires intelligence.
DAVID: Whose intelligence? It is obvious the immune systems have the intelligent instructions to build the library.
The library is the instructions on how to cope with new infections. So if your God gave cells the ABILITY to build the library, he must have given them the ability to create the instructions – and that ability is what I call cellular intelligence.
dhw: I would find that much easier to believe than a theory claiming that God anticipated every possible threat to every organism and therefore provided the first cells with a programme of instructions (to be passed on through the whole history of life) to deal with each threat as it arose.
DAVID: You have arrived at finally recognizing incorrectly my point about God's design of the immune systems. The immune cells are not innately intelligent. All infections can be handled in a small number of ways, killing cells directly or indirectly as previously described.
Every new infection requires different handling. That is why we need a library which grows with each new infection. Of course the result will be one form of killing or another. Please tell me what is incorrect in my summary of your theory.
QUOTE: "While archeologists have long focused on the uniqueness of European markers of behavioral modernity, the new study is part of a growing awareness that many regions of the world saw extraordinary and complex new technologies emerge at the end of the Paleolithic.
DAVID: Again makes my point: Big brain hardly used until learned how to conceptualize more complex ideas. In my view it is the soul who learns to use. The size at the beginning shows the designer anticipates the use, obviously.
Our ancestors all hung around for hundreds of thousands of years with their larger brains and not much advancement. (We called it “stasis”.) It is the dualist’s soul, not the brain that “conceptualizes ideas”. The brain gathers information and IMPLEMENTS the soul’s ideas. In the case of H. sapiens, expansion ceased and complexification took over, and the dualist’s soul learned to use the larger brain by absorbing the information provided and by getting the brain to implement its ideas. How does this come to mean that the pre-sapiens soul couldn’t think up new concepts before the pre-sapiens brain expanded, and how do 280,000 years of stasis prove that God expanded the brain rather than the brain having expanded itself through implementing ideas cooked up by our ancestors’ souls – just as it complexifies itself now through the same process of brain responding to requirements of the soul?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, June 14, 2020, 19:17 (1621 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: No adaptation we have ever seen creates a new species. New species do handle future conditions. and the consideration cannot be ignored
dhw: Nobody has ever seen the creation of a new species! That is why we theorize. But it would be absurd to discount adaptation to new conditions as a factor. So please give me an example of a species that adapts itself to new conditions before those conditions arise. Of course some new species will also handle future conditions – otherwise every species would die out when conditions change!
The human brain is a great example: arrived 315,000 years ago and really used to full capacity in the past 10,000 years!
DAVID: Do you still deny we have no evidence of tiny advancements? Just large gaps in size.dhw: Do you expect to find fossils covering every single stage of an adaptation? We have very few fossils to cover thousands and thousands of years, and each find is a sensation...Why do you regard it as illogical that pelvises would adapt to the new size of skull, though there may have been many fatalities along the way?
Logically the changes have to be simultaneous. Otherwise not some/many fatalities but both Mothers and babies die. You have never left your Darwin background wanting tiny adaptations. Gould left Darwin to show evolution is nothing but gaps.
DAVID: Whose intelligence? It is obvious the immune systems have the intelligent instructions to build the library.dhw: The library is the instructions on how to cope with new infections. So if your God gave cells the ABILITY to build the library, he must have given them the ability to create the instructions – and that ability is what I call cellular intelligence.
Totally backwards: contrary to all evidence. The library is created from scratch and filled with the newly constructed antibodies developed from existing intelligent instructions. The newborn only has colostrum at the start.
dhw: Every new infection requires different handling. That is why we need a library which grows with each new infection. Of course the result will be one form of killing or another. Please tell me what is incorrect in my summary of your theory.
This version is not like the above and is correct.
QUOTE: "While archeologists have long focused on the uniqueness of European markers of behavioral modernity, the new study is part of a growing awareness that many regions of the world saw extraordinary and complex new technologies emerge at the end of the Paleolithic.DAVID: Again makes my point: Big brain hardly used until learned how to conceptualize more complex ideas. In my view it is the soul who learns to use. The size at the beginning shows the designer anticipates the use, obviously.
dhw: Our ancestors all hung around for hundreds of thousands of years with their larger brains and not much advancement. (We called it “stasis”.) It is the dualist’s soul, not the brain that “conceptualizes ideas”. The brain gathers information and IMPLEMENTS the soul’s ideas. In the case of H. sapiens, expansion ceased and complexification took over, and the dualist’s soul learned to use the larger brain by absorbing the information provided and by getting the brain to implement its ideas. How does this come to mean that the pre-sapiens soul couldn’t think up new concepts before the pre-sapiens brain expanded, and how do 280,000 years of stasis prove that God expanded the brain rather than the brain having expanded itself through implementing ideas cooked up by our ancestors’ souls – just as it complexifies itself now through the same process of brain responding to requirements of the soul?
Simple answer. The new large brain allowed the soul to invent new very advanced concepts that previous less complex brains could not allow the soul to create. In your cellular committee self-creation theory can you explain why the brain was produced oversized in the beginning? A mistake? Purposeful? If purposeful, what purpose? Can you describe the committee's discussion?
Brain expansion
dhw: […] please give me an example of a species that adapts itself to new conditions before those conditions arise. Of course some new species will also handle future conditions – otherwise every species would die out when conditions change!
DAVID: The human brain is a great example: arrived 315,000 years ago and really used to full capacity in the past 10,000 years!
The human brain is not a species. The proven fact that it complexifies as a result of its adaptations to new requirements and does not complexify in anticipation of them suggests the exact opposite of your theory.
dhw: […] Why do you regard it as illogical that pelvises would adapt to the new size of skull, though there may have been many fatalities along the way?
DAVID: Logically the changes have to be simultaneous. Otherwise not some/many fatalities but both Mothers and babies die. You have never left your Darwin background wanting tiny adaptations. Gould left Darwin to show evolution is nothing but gaps.
Of course mothers and babies would die – how does that mean “not some/many fatalities”? But eventually only suitably sized pelvises would have survived, and there would have been no small pelvises left. You have left out my question: do you think the switch to large pelvises happened overnight? If not, how long do you think it might have taken?
DAVID: It is obvious the immune systems have the intelligent instructions to build the library.
dhw: The library is the instructions on how to cope with new infections. So if your God gave cells the ABILITY to build the library, he must have given them the ability to create the instructions – and that ability is what I call cellular intelligence.
DAVID: Totally backwards: contrary to all evidence. The library is created from scratch and filled with the newly constructed antibodies developed from existing intelligent instructions. The newborn only has colostrum at the start.
Intelligent instructions on how to do what? Even babies’ immune systems can fight some bacteria, and this “library” gradually expands. Are you saying that your God gradually adds instructions on how to deal with every infection that can happen? Or are you saying that your God has created a system which is able to create its own instructions on how to deal with each infection? “Intelligent instructions to build the library” sounds very like the latter to me.
dhw: Every new infection requires different handling. That is why we need a library which grows with each new infection. Of course the result will be one form of killing or another. Please tell me what is incorrect in my summary of your theory.
DAVID: This version is not like the above and is correct.
They are the same, and I don’t know what we’re arguing about.
DAVID (under “Immunity system complexity”): this is a protective mechanism that attempts to avoid allergic responses which are not necessary for immune defenses, but are mistakes. It must be part of an immune system design.
So the immune system was designed to make mistakes but it was designed to correct its mistakes. I would suggest that the immune system evolved continuously as its cells learned to deal with more and more infections, including those that resulted from its own allergic reactions. Nothing planned in advance, but a continuous learning process.
dhw: ...how do 280,000 years of stasis prove that God expanded the brain rather than the brain having expanded itself through implementing ideas cooked up by our ancestors’ souls – just as it complexifies itself now through the same process of brain responding to requirements of the soul?
DAVID: Simple answer. The new large brain allowed the soul to invent new very advanced concepts that previous less complex brains could not allow the soul to create.
How does the dualist’s brain “allow” the dualist’s soul to think? It provides information, and it implements the concepts thought up by the soul. If the soul uses existing information to think up a new concept (e.g. me want kill animal; not get too close; maybe invent something to kill from distance), it will then require new information and new activities from the brain in order to implement the concept, and we know for a fact that the brain changes IN RESPONSE to, not in anticipation of new requirements.
DAVID: In your cellular committee self-creation theory can you explain why the brain was produced oversized in the beginning? A mistake? Purposeful? If purposeful, what purpose? Can you describe the committee's discussion?
It would be more appropriate to ask why your God produced an oversized brain in the beginning! A mistake? Or what possible purpose could he have had? Do please answer. My answer is that the sapiens brain had expanded to its full practical capacity (further expansion would have required major anatomical changes), and so the cell communities found new ways of complexifying in order to meet new requirements. Complexification proved so efficient that some of the cells were no longer needed, and so there was a degree of shrinkage. You have agreed to this umpteen times, so I don’t know why you’re pretending that it’s a new mystery. It’s your theory that needs explaining.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Monday, June 15, 2020, 18:27 (1620 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: […] please give me an example of a species that adapts itself to new conditions before those conditions arise. Of course some new species will also handle future conditions – otherwise every species would die out when conditions change!
DAVID: The human brain is a great example: arrived 315,000 years ago and really used to full capacity in the past 10,000 years!
dhw: The human brain is not a species. The proven fact that it complexifies as a result of its adaptations to new requirements and does not complexify in anticipation of them suggests the exact opposite of your theory.
Strange illogical twist. Study the enlarging brain brain and what it allows to be created. A direct reflection of your lack of understanding God's intent.
dhw: […] Why do you regard it as illogical that pelvises would adapt to the new size of skull, though there may have been many fatalities along the way?DAVID: Logically the changes have to be simultaneous. Otherwise not some/many fatalities but both Mothers and babies die. You have never left your Darwin background wanting tiny adaptations. Gould left Darwin to show evolution is nothing but gaps.
dhw: You have left out my question: do you think the switch to large pelvises happened overnight? If not, how long do you think it might have taken?
How large are the known time gaps?
DAVID: Totally backwards: contrary to all evidence. The library is created from scratch and filled with the newly constructed antibodies developed from existing intelligent instructions. The newborn only has colostrum at the start.dhw: Intelligent instructions on how to do what? Even babies’ immune systems can fight some bacteria, and this “library” gradually expands. Are you saying that your God gradually adds instructions on how to deal with every infection that can happen? Or are you saying that your God has created a system which is able to create its own instructions on how to deal with each infection? “Intelligent instructions to build the library” sounds very like the latter to me.
Your usual misinterpretation: the instructions are set for a lifetime of antibody responses.
DAVID (under “Immunity system complexity”): this is a protective mechanism that attempts to avoid allergic responses which are not necessary for immune defenses, but are mistakes. It must be part of an immune system design.
dhw: So the immune system was designed to make mistakes but it was designed to correct its mistakes. I would suggest that the immune system evolved continuously as its cells learned to deal with more and more infections, including those that resulted from its own allergic reactions. Nothing planned in advance, but a continuous learning process.
Again misinterpreted, as above. God recognized mistakes might occur, as in unnecessary allergies.
dhw: ...how do 280,000 years of stasis prove that God expanded the brain rather than the brain having expanded itself through implementing ideas cooked up by our ancestors’ souls – just as it complexifies itself now through the same process of brain responding to requirements of the soul?DAVID: Simple answer. The new large brain allowed the soul to invent new very advanced concepts that previous less complex brains could not allow the soul to create.
dhw: How does the dualist’s brain “allow” the dualist’s soul to think? It provides information, and it implements the concepts thought up by the soul. If the soul uses existing information to think up a new concept (e.g. me want kill animal; not get too close; maybe invent something to kill from distance), it will then require new information and new activities from the brain in order to implement the concept, and we know for a fact that the brain changes IN RESPONSE to, not in anticipation of new requirements.
Please remember violin playing, which is not a planned adaptation for survival.
DAVID: In your cellular committee self-creation theory can you explain why the brain was produced oversized in the beginning? A mistake? Purposeful? If purposeful, what purpose? Can you describe the committee's discussion?dhw: It would be more appropriate to ask why your God produced an oversized brain in the beginning! A mistake? Or what possible purpose could he have had? Do please answer. My answer is that the sapiens brain had expanded to its full practical capacity (further expansion would have required major anatomical changes), and so the cell communities found new ways of complexifying in order to meet new requirements. Complexification proved so efficient that some of the cells were no longer needed, and so there was a degree of shrinkage. You have agreed to this umpteen times, so I don’t know why you’re pretending that it’s a new mystery. It’s your theory that needs explaining.
The enlargement from God allowed complexification to work and shrink the brain, all according to God's plan. All the new abilities the brain contained allowed the soul to develop so many new activities for our enjoyment. None were adaptations.
Brain expansion
dhw: […] please give me an example of a species that adapts itself to new conditions before those conditions arise. [...]
DAVID: The human brain is a great example: arrived 315,000 years ago and really used to full capacity in the past 10,000 years!
dhw: The human brain is not a species. The proven fact that it complexifies as a result of its adaptations to new requirements and does not complexify in anticipation of them suggests the exact opposite of your theory.
DAVID: Strange illogical twist. Study the enlarging brain brain and what it allows to be created. A direct reflection of your lack of understanding God's intent.
How does this prove that species adapt to new conditions before those conditions arise? The brain as it exists at any given moment does NOT allow new things to be created! It has to make changes when new ideas require implementation. In the past, the changes would have been complexifications and then expansions when the capacity was exceeded. In the sapiens brain, the changes are complexifications. Has anyone ever observed a brain changing itself before it is required to do so?
dhw: […] Why do you regard it as illogical that pelvises would adapt to the new size of skull, though there may have been many fatalities along the way?
DAVID: Logically the changes have to be simultaneous. Otherwise not some/many fatalities but both Mothers and babies die. You have never left your Darwin background wanting tiny adaptations. Gould left Darwin to show evolution is nothing but gaps.
dhw: You have left out my question: do you think the switch to large pelvises happened overnight? If not, how long do you think it might have taken?
DAVID: How large are the known time gaps?
That is not an answer.
DAVID [re the immunity system]: Totally backwards: contrary to all evidence. The library is created from scratch and filled with the newly constructed antibodies developed from existing intelligent instructions. The newborn only has colostrum at the start.
dhw: Intelligent instructions on how to do what? Even babies’ immune systems can fight some bacteria, and this “library” gradually expands. Are you saying that your God gradually adds instructions on how to deal with every infection that can happen? Or are you saying that your God has created a system which is able to create its own instructions on how to deal with each infection? “Intelligent instructions to build the library” sounds very like the latter to me.
DAVID: Your usual misinterpretation: the instructions are set for a lifetime of antibody responses.
WHAT instructions? How to deal with every new infection? That = a divine programme for every infection for the rest of time. Do you think our ancestors already had the cure for Covid-19 in their immune system?
DAVID (under “Immunity system complexity”): this is a protective mechanism that attempts to avoid allergic responses which are not necessary for immune defenses, but are mistakes. It must be part of an immune system design.
dhw: So the immune system was designed to make mistakes but it was designed to correct its mistakes. I would suggest that the immune system evolved continuously as its cells learned to deal with more and more infections [...] Nothing planned in advance, but a continuous learning process.
DAVID: Again misinterpreted, as above. God recognized mistakes might occur, as in unnecessary allergies.
I thought your first comment meant he had provided a mechanism to rectify the mistakes. Please tell me why you can’t accept my suggestion.
Under “Immunity system complexity”: “ This suggests a potentially adaptive response to local environmental pressures, including pressures from various tropical diseases.”
DAVID: Same story. Different homo species developed different forms of immunity based on geographical location. The immune programs which respond as necessary are all the same in each species.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. What “programs”? The diseases are different, so how can the responses be the same? I suggest that what is the same is that the cell community/ communities of the immune system create their own instructions on how to deal with each infection, and these sets of instructions are the different volumes to be found in the library of responses to different diseases.
DAVID: In your cellular committee self-creation theory can you explain why the brain was produced oversized in the beginning? A mistake? Purposeful? If purposeful, what purpose? Can you describe the committee's discussion?
dhw: It would be more appropriate to ask why your God produced an oversized brain in the beginning! A mistake? Or what possible purpose could he have had? Do please answer.
DAVID: The enlargement from God allowed complexification to work and shrink the brain, all according to God's plan. All the new abilities the brain contained allowed the soul to develop so many new activities for our enjoyment. None were adaptations.
It was all “God’s plan” does not explain why he produced a bigger brain than necessary! As for the “abilities” etc., see the post on the cerebellum and the violin. We should perhaps confine “adaptations” to changes required by environmental conditions. The spear and the violin demanded changes in response to new concepts, as opposed to new conditions.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, June 16, 2020, 20:02 (1619 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: You have left out my question: do you think the switch to large pelvises happened overnight? If not, how long do you think it might have taken?
DAVID: How large are the known time gaps?
dhw: That is not an answer.
Of course it is. Each new hominin. homo species with larger skull appeared suddenly after hundreds of thousand s of years
DAVID: Your usual misinterpretation: the instructions are set for a lifetime of antibody responses.
dhw: WHAT instructions? How to deal with every new infection? That = a divine programme for every infection for the rest of time. Do you think our ancestors already had the cure for Covid-19 in their immune system?
Total misunderstanding. All diseases can be handled by several immune mechanisms; outright killing (engulfing bugs) and antibodies to kill or neutralize. The instructions are in all immune cells for these actions. No program for all possible present and future bugs. Anything that comes along can be dealt with by present lilmited responses.
DAVID (under “Immunity system complexity”): this is a protective mechanism that attempts to avoid allergic responses which are not necessary for immune defenses, but are mistakes. It must be part of an immune system design.dhw: So the immune system was designed to make mistakes but it was designed to correct its mistakes. I would suggest that the immune system evolved continuously as its cells learned to deal with more and more infections [...] Nothing planned in advance, but a continuous learning process.
DAVID: Again misinterpreted, as above. God recognized mistakes might occur, as in unnecessary allergies.
dhw: I thought your first comment meant he had provided a mechanism to rectify the mistakes. Please tell me why you can’t accept my suggestion.
See the other thread. Unfortunately high speed molecular reactions can make unanticipated mistakes, despite the many built-in corrective mechanism that are present
Under “Immunity system complexity”: “ This suggests a potentially adaptive response to local environmental pressures, including pressures from various tropical diseases.”DAVID: Same story. Different homo species developed different forms of immunity based on geographical location. The immune programs which respond as necessary are all the same in each species.
dhw: I’m not sure what you mean by this. What “programs”? The diseases are different, so how can the responses be the same?
Described above.
DAVID: In your cellular committee self-creation theory can you explain why the brain was produced oversized in the beginning? A mistake? Purposeful? If purposeful, what purpose? Can you describe the committee's discussion?dhw: It would be more appropriate to ask why your God produced an oversized brain in the beginning! A mistake? Or what possible purpose could he have had? Do please answer.
DAVID: The enlargement from God allowed complexification to work and shrink the brain, all according to God's plan. All the new abilities the brain contained allowed the soul to develop so many new activities for our enjoyment. None were adaptations.
dhw: It was all “God’s plan” does not explain why he produced a bigger brain than necessary! As for the “abilities” etc., see the post on the cerebellum and the violin. We should perhaps confine “adaptations” to changes required by environmental conditions. The spear and the violin demanded changes in response to new concepts, as opposed to new conditions.
Bigger brain explained as allowing the appropriate complexification to occur to handle the new invention of activities humans developed like violin playing. Briefly it gave the bigger brain much more flexibility of response to the soul's new demands
Brain expansion: pure Darwinian explanations
by David Turell , Wednesday, June 17, 2020, 00:38 (1619 days ago) @ David Turell
Just for dhw: he will love this drive from environment approach:
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-savanna-like-landscapes-jet-fuel-brain.html
Ever wonder how land animals like humans evolved to become smarter than their aquatic ancestors? You can thank the ground you walk on.
Northwestern University researchers recently discovered that complex landscapes—dotted with trees, bushes, boulders and knolls—might have helped land-dwelling animals evolve higher intelligence than their aquatic ancestors.
Compared to the vast emptiness of open water, land is rife with obstacles and occlusions. By providing prey with spaces to hide and predators with cover for sneak attacks, the habitats possible on land may have helped give rise to planning strategies—rather than those based on habit—for many of those animals.
But the researchers found that planning did not give our ancestors the upper hand in all landscapes. The researchers' simulations show there is a Goldilocks level of barriers—not too few and not too many—to a predator's perception, in which the advantage of planning really shines. In simple landscapes like open ground or packed landscapes like dense jungle, there was no advantage.
"All animals—on land or in water—had the same amount of time to evolve, so why do land animals have most of the smarts?" asked Northwestern's Malcolm MacIver, who led the study. "Our work show
And, no, dolphins and whales do not fall into the category of less intelligent sea creatures. Both are land mammals that recently (evolutionarily speaking) returned to water.
(my bold)
***
"We speculated that moving onto land poured jet fuel on the evolution of the brain as it may have advantaged the hardest cognitive operation there is: Envisioning the future," MacIver said. "It could explain why we can go out for seafood, but seafood can't go out for us."
To test this hypothesis, MacIver and his team developed computational simulations to test the survival rates of prey being actively hunted by a predator under two different decision-making strategies: Habit-based (automatic, such as entering a password that you have memorized) and plan-based (imagining several scenarios and selecting the best one). The team created a simple, open world without visual barriers to simulate an aquatic world. Then, they added objects of varying densities to simulate land.
***
When patches of vegetation and topography are interspersed with wide open areas similar to a savanna, however, simulations showed that planning results in a huge survival payoff compared to habit-based movements. Because planning increases the chance of survival, evolution would have selected for the brain circuitry that allowed animals to imagine future scenarios, evaluate them and then enact one.
"With patchy landscapes, there is an interplay of transparent and opaque regions of space and long-range vision, which means that your movement can hide or reveal your presence to an adversary," MacIver said. "Terra firma becomes a chess board. With every movement, you have a chance to unfurl a strategy.
"Interestingly," he noted, "when we split off from life in the trees with chimpanzees nearly seven million years ago and quickly quadrupled in brain size, paleoecology studies point to our having invaded patchy landscapes, similar to those our study highlights, as giving the biggest payoff for strategic thinking."
Comment: a present just for dhw. In this conclusion we see the Darwin computer simulation garbage going in brings out a Darwinian garbage biased result out. Environment drives evolution and the individual organisms smartly know how to evolve themselves for the best advantage when it is all by chance, according to Darwinists. Note the bolded whale comment: if ocean environment is as detrimental as the author feels, why did the whales bother to become aquatic mammals??
Brain expansion: pure Darwinian explanations
DAVID: Just for dhw: he will love this drive from environment approach:
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-savanna-like-landscapes-jet-fuel-brain.html
QUOTE: Ever wonder how land animals like humans evolved to become smarter than their aquatic ancestors? You can thank the ground you walk on.
DAVID: a present just for dhw. In this conclusion we see the Darwin computer simulation garbage going in brings out a Darwinian garbage biased result out. Environment drives evolution and the individual organisms smartly know how to evolve themselves for the best advantage when it is all by chance, according to Darwinists. Note the bolded whale comment: if ocean environment is as detrimental as the author feels, why did the whales bother to become aquatic mammals??
In terms of intelligence, there are no land animals “like humans”. I’m surprised you haven’t said so, but perhaps you were too intent on dragging Darwin into the discussion, as if somehow that removed all credibility from the proposal. And I’m not convinced that the shrew is more intelligent than the shark. However, in terms of how evolution progresses, the article certainly makes good sense to me. (Re whales, I assume their ancestors returned to the water because under local conditions, food was more plentiful there.) Until humans arrived, the prime motivation for all activity would have been survival, and the quest for survival means that all organisms must adapt to or exploit their respective environments, constantly finding new forms of nourishment, accommodation, hunting, self-defence etc. That in turn requires intelligence, whether the intelligence is autonomous (my proposal) or controlled by your God (your proposal). Please explain why you reject this explanation of evolutionary advancement.
Brain expansion: pure Darwinian explanations
by David Turell , Wednesday, June 17, 2020, 15:52 (1618 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Just for dhw: he will love this drive from environment approach:
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-savanna-like-landscapes-jet-fuel-brain.htmlQUOTE: Ever wonder how land animals like humans evolved to become smarter than their aquatic ancestors? You can thank the ground you walk on.
DAVID: a present just for dhw. In this conclusion we see the Darwin computer simulation garbage going in brings out a Darwinian garbage biased result out. Environment drives evolution and the individual organisms smartly know how to evolve themselves for the best advantage when it is all by chance, according to Darwinists. Note the bolded whale comment: if ocean environment is as detrimental as the author feels, why did the whales bother to become aquatic mammals??
dhw: In terms of intelligence, there are no land animals “like humans”. I’m surprised you haven’t said so, but perhaps you were too intent on dragging Darwin into the discussion, as if somehow that removed all credibility from the proposal. And I’m not convinced that the shrew is more intelligent than the shark. However, in terms of how evolution progresses, the article certainly makes good sense to me. (Re whales, I assume their ancestors returned to the water because under local conditions, food was more plentiful there.) Until humans arrived, the prime motivation for all activity would have been survival, and the quest for survival means that all organisms must adapt to or exploit their respective environments, constantly finding new forms of nourishment, accommodation, hunting, self-defence etc. That in turn requires intelligence, whether the intelligence is autonomous (my proposal) or controlled by your God (your proposal). Please explain why you reject this explanation of evolutionary advancement.
You know the answer. The design of life is so complex a designer is required, it is design that keeps you from being an atheist. Remember I put in this article because 'dhw will love it'.
Brain expansion: pure Darwinian explanations
dhw: In terms of intelligence, there are no land animals “like humans”. I’m surprised you haven’t said so, but perhaps you were too intent on dragging Darwin into the discussion, as if somehow that removed all credibility from the proposal. And I’m not convinced that the shrew is more intelligent than the shark. However, in terms of how evolution progresses, the article certainly makes good sense to me. (Re whales, I assume their ancestors returned to the water because under local conditions, food was more plentiful there.) Until humans arrived, the prime motivation for all activity would have been survival, and the quest for survival means that all organisms must adapt to or exploit their respective environments, constantly finding new forms of nourishment, accommodation, hunting, self-defence etc. That in turn requires intelligence, whether the intelligence is autonomous (my proposal) or controlled by your God (your proposal). Please explain why you reject this explanation of evolutionary advancement.
DAVID: You know the answer. The design of life is so complex a designer is required, it is design that keeps you from being an atheist. Remember I put in this article because 'dhw will love it'.
But what I have written concerns how evolution works – as bolded. This applies just as much to your theory as to mine. Your God would have designed all the different pre-sapiens life forms and their econiches and their ways of adapting to or exploiting environmental changes so that they could stay alive. What is your objection?
Brain expansion: pure Darwinian explanations
by David Turell , Thursday, June 18, 2020, 18:12 (1617 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: In terms of intelligence, there are no land animals “like humans”. I’m surprised you haven’t said so, but perhaps you were too intent on dragging Darwin into the discussion, as if somehow that removed all credibility from the proposal. And I’m not convinced that the shrew is more intelligent than the shark. However, in terms of how evolution progresses, the article certainly makes good sense to me. (Re whales, I assume their ancestors returned to the water because under local conditions, food was more plentiful there.) Until humans arrived, the prime motivation for all activity would have been survival, and the quest for survival means that all organisms must adapt to or exploit their respective environments, constantly finding new forms of nourishment, accommodation, hunting, self-defence etc. That in turn requires intelligence, whether the intelligence is autonomous (my proposal) or controlled by your God (your proposal). Please explain why you reject this explanation of evolutionary advancement.
DAVID: You know the answer. The design of life is so complex a designer is required, it is design that keeps you from being an atheist. Remember I put in this article because 'dhw will love it'.
dhw: But what I have written concerns how evolution works – as bolded. This applies just as much to your theory as to mine. Your God would have designed all the different pre-sapiens life forms and their econiches and their ways of adapting to or exploiting environmental changes so that they could stay alive. What is your objection?
I know what you bolded. My objection is your either/or view of God. I was only reiterating that a designer is required, not either/or.
Brain expansion: pure Darwinian explanations
dhw: In terms of intelligence, there are no land animals “like humans”. I’m surprised you haven’t said so, but perhaps you were too intent on dragging Darwin into the discussion, as if somehow that removed all credibility from the proposal. And I’m not convinced that the shrew is more intelligent than the shark. However, in terms of how evolution progresses, the article certainly makes good sense to me. (Re whales, I assume their ancestors returned to the water because under local conditions, food was more plentiful there.) Until humans arrived, the prime motivation for all activity would have been survival, and the quest for survival means that all organisms must adapt to or exploit their respective environments, constantly finding new forms of nourishment, accommodation, hunting, self-defence etc. That in turn requires intelligence, whether the intelligence is autonomous (my proposal) or controlled by your God (your proposal). Please explain why you reject this explanation of evolutionary advancement.
DAVID: You know the answer. The design of life is so complex a designer is required, it is design that keeps you from being an atheist. Remember I put in this article because 'dhw will love it'.
dhw: But what I have written concerns how evolution works – as bolded. This applies just as much to your theory as to mine. Your God would have designed all the different pre-sapiens life forms and their econiches and their ways of adapting to or exploiting environmental changes so that they could stay alive. What is your objection?
DAVID: I know what you bolded. My objection is your either/or view of God. I was only reiterating that a designer is required, not either/or.
My point, of course, was to emphasize the role played by the environment as a crucial factor in the advancement of evolution. I’m pleased to see that you accept this.
Brain expansion: pure Darwinian explanations
by David Turell , Friday, June 19, 2020, 15:17 (1616 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: In terms of intelligence, there are no land animals “like humans”. I’m surprised you haven’t said so, but perhaps you were too intent on dragging Darwin into the discussion, as if somehow that removed all credibility from the proposal. And I’m not convinced that the shrew is more intelligent than the shark. However, in terms of how evolution progresses, the article certainly makes good sense to me. (Re whales, I assume their ancestors returned to the water because under local conditions, food was more plentiful there.) Until humans arrived, the prime motivation for all activity would have been survival, and the quest for survival means that all organisms must adapt to or exploit their respective environments, constantly finding new forms of nourishment, accommodation, hunting, self-defence etc. That in turn requires intelligence, whether the intelligence is autonomous (my proposal) or controlled by your God (your proposal). Please explain why you reject this explanation of evolutionary advancement.
DAVID: You know the answer. The design of life is so complex a designer is required, it is design that keeps you from being an atheist. Remember I put in this article because 'dhw will love it'.
dhw: But what I have written concerns how evolution works – as bolded. This applies just as much to your theory as to mine. Your God would have designed all the different pre-sapiens life forms and their econiches and their ways of adapting to or exploiting environmental changes so that they could stay alive. What is your objection?
DAVID: I know what you bolded. My objection is your either/or view of God. I was only reiterating that a designer is required, not either/or.
dhw: My point, of course, was to emphasize the role played by the environment as a crucial factor in the advancement of evolution. I’m pleased to see that you accept this.
That I said I know what you wrote is not acceptance. Environment relates to adaptations, without any proof it causes speciation
Brain expansion: pure Darwinian explanations
dhw: Until humans arrived, the prime motivation for all activity would have been survival, and the quest for survival means that all organisms must adapt to or exploit their respective environments, constantly finding new forms of nourishment, accommodation, hunting, self-defence etc. That in turn requires intelligence, whether the intelligence is autonomous (my proposal) or controlled by your God (your proposal). Please explain why you reject this explanation of evolutionary advancement.
DAVID: You know the answer. The design of life is so complex a designer is required, it is design that keeps you from being an atheist. Remember I put in this article because 'dhw will love it'.
dhw: But what I have written concerns how evolution works – as bolded. This applies just as much to your theory as to mine. Your God would have designed all the different pre-sapiens life forms and their econiches and their ways of adapting to or exploiting environmental changes so that they could stay alive. What is your objection?
DAVID: I know what you bolded. My objection is your either/or view of God. I was only reiterating that a designer is required, not either/or.
dhw: My point, of course, was to emphasize the role played by the environment as a crucial factor in the advancement of evolution. I’m pleased to see that you accept this.
DAVID: That I said I know what you wrote is not acceptance. Environment relates to adaptations, without any proof it causes speciation.
I asked you why you rejected my bolded explanation of evolutionary advancement. Your reply was not a reply, and even now the only objection you have raised is that there is no proof. There is no proof for ANY of the theories we discuss. A couple of days ago, you wrote:”Absolute proof, which you always require, does not exist. Choice involves reason with evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.” Please pinpoint whatever section of my bold seems to you to be unreasonable.
Brain expansion: pure Darwinian explanations
by David Turell , Saturday, June 20, 2020, 18:34 (1615 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Until humans arrived, the prime motivation for all activity would have been survival, and the quest for survival means that all organisms must adapt to or exploit their respective environments, constantly finding new forms of nourishment, accommodation, hunting, self-defence etc. That in turn requires intelligence, whether the intelligence is autonomous (my proposal) or controlled by your God (your proposal). Please explain why you reject this explanation of evolutionary advancement.
DAVID: You know the answer. The design of life is so complex a designer is required, it is design that keeps you from being an atheist. Remember I put in this article because 'dhw will love it'.
dhw: But what I have written concerns how evolution works – as bolded. This applies just as much to your theory as to mine. Your God would have designed all the different pre-sapiens life forms and their econiches and their ways of adapting to or exploiting environmental changes so that they could stay alive. What is your objection?
DAVID: I know what you bolded. My objection is your either/or view of God. I was only reiterating that a designer is required, not either/or.
dhw: My point, of course, was to emphasize the role played by the environment as a crucial factor in the advancement of evolution. I’m pleased to see that you accept this.
DAVID: That I said I know what you wrote is not acceptance. Environment relates to adaptations, without any proof it causes speciation.
dhw: I asked you why you rejected my bolded explanation of evolutionary advancement. Your reply was not a reply, and even now the only objection you have raised is that there is no proof. There is no proof for ANY of the theories we discuss. A couple of days ago, you wrote:”Absolute proof, which you always require, does not exist. Choice involves reason with evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.” Please pinpoint whatever section of my bold seems to you to be unreasonable.
What I object to is your theory that autonomous intelligence can exist for no particular reason. Intelligence must have source, cannot appear simply from nothing, cannot arrive by chance in any form. Rocks are not intelligent; Earth started as a big rock, nothing more and now it contains life. There must be a designing mind. We agree on everything except the source of intelligence, which we both agree is absolutely required for life to exist. I name the mind God.
Brain expansion: pure Darwinian explanations
dhw: Until humans arrived, the prime motivation for all activity would have been survival, and the quest for survival means that all organisms must adapt to or exploit their respective environments, constantly finding new forms of nourishment, accommodation, hunting, self-defence etc. That in turn requires intelligence, whether the intelligence is autonomous (my proposal) or controlled by your God (your proposal). Please explain why you reject this explanation of evolutionary advancement.
dhw: My point, of course, was to emphasize the role played by the environment as a crucial factor in the advancement of evolution. I’m pleased to see that you accept this.
DAVID: That I said I know what you wrote is not acceptance. Environment relates to adaptations, without any proof it causes speciation.
dhw: I asked you why you rejected my bolded explanation of evolutionary advancement. Your reply was not a reply, and even now the only objection you have raised is that there is no proof. There is no proof for ANY of the theories we discuss. A couple of days ago, you wrote:”Absolute proof, which you always require, does not exist. Choice involves reason with evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.” Please pinpoint whatever section of my bold seems to you to be unreasonable.
DAVID: What I object to is your theory that autonomous intelligence can exist for no particular reason. Intelligence must have source, cannot appear simply from nothing, cannot arrive by chance in any form. Rocks are not intelligent; Earth started as a big rock, nothing more and now it contains life. There must be a designing mind. We agree on everything except the source of intelligence, which we both agree is absolutely required for life to exist. I name the mind God.
So you do not object to my explanation of evolutionary advancement, which was the purpose of my post. I even went out of my way to emphasize that this explanation applied whether one believed in autonomous intelligence or in control by your God. Thank you for accepting it. Your objection is a complete non sequitur. I have not claimed that autonomous intelligence can exist for no particular reason – and I don’t know why you have switched the focus from the manner in which evolution proceeds to the existence of God. Your statement “intelligence must have source, cannot appear simply from nothing” is at one and the same time an excellent argument for design and a bad argument for God, which is one reason for my agnosticism.
Brain expansion: pure Darwinian explanations
by David Turell , Sunday, June 21, 2020, 15:17 (1614 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: What I object to is your theory that autonomous intelligence can exist for no particular reason. Intelligence must have source, cannot appear simply from nothing, cannot arrive by chance in any form. Rocks are not intelligent; Earth started as a big rock, nothing more and now it contains life. There must be a designing mind. We agree on everything except the source of intelligence, which we both agree is absolutely required for life to exist. I name the mind God.
dhw: So you do not object to my explanation of evolutionary advancement, which was the purpose of my post. I even went out of my way to emphasize that this explanation applied whether one believed in autonomous intelligence or in control by your God. Thank you for accepting it. Your objection is a complete non sequitur. I have not claimed that autonomous intelligence can exist for no particular reason – and I don’t know why you have switched the focus from the manner in which evolution proceeds to the existence of God. Your statement “intelligence must have source, cannot appear simply from nothing” is at one and the same time an excellent argument for design and a bad argument for God, which is one reason for my agnosticism.
The bold is an strange statement on its face. Who does the designing if not a designing mind? For arguments sake it does not need be named.
Brain expansion: pure Darwinian explanations
dhw: So you do not object to my explanation of evolutionary advancement, which was the purpose of my post. I even went out of my way to emphasize that this explanation applied whether one believed in autonomous intelligence or in control by your God. Thank you for accepting it. Your objection is a complete non sequitur. I have not claimed that autonomous intelligence can exist for no particular reason – and I don’t know why you have switched the focus from the manner in which evolution proceeds to the existence of God. Your statement “intelligence must have source, cannot appear simply from nothing” is at one and the same time an excellent argument for design and a bad argument for God, which is one reason for my agnosticism.
DAVID: The bold is an strange statement on its face. Who does the designing if not a designing mind? For arguments sake it does not need be named.
Thank you again for accepting my explanation of evolutionary advancement. As regards the bold, I accept your design argument, but if intelligence must have a source, it is patently absurd to argue that the intelligence you call God does not have to have a source! You simply solve the mystery of organic intelligence by creating a mystery of non-organic intelligence. The claim that it has always been there as a “first cause” is a philosophical cop-out. You might as well claim that the source of intelligence was a chance combination of energy and materials during an eternal history of “first cause” energy and materials combining. Or all materials have a rudimentary form of intelligence. No, I don’t believe in any of these “first causes”, though one must be right!
Brain expansion: pure Darwinian explanations
by David Turell , Monday, June 22, 2020, 15:46 (1613 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: So you do not object to my explanation of evolutionary advancement, which was the purpose of my post. I even went out of my way to emphasize that this explanation applied whether one believed in autonomous intelligence or in control by your God. Thank you for accepting it. Your objection is a complete non sequitur. I have not claimed that autonomous intelligence can exist for no particular reason – and I don’t know why you have switched the focus from the manner in which evolution proceeds to the existence of God. Your statement “intelligence must have source, cannot appear simply from nothing” is at one and the same time an excellent argument for design and a bad argument for God, which is one reason for my agnosticism.
DAVID: The bold is an strange statement on its face. Who does the designing if not a designing mind? For arguments sake it does not need be named.
dhw: Thank you again for accepting my explanation of evolutionary advancement. As regards the bold, I accept your design argument, but if intelligence must have a source, it is patently absurd to argue that the intelligence you call God does not have to have a source! You simply solve the mystery of organic intelligence by creating a mystery of non-organic intelligence. The claim that it has always been there as a “first cause” is a philosophical cop-out. You might as well claim that the source of intelligence was a chance combination of energy and materials during an eternal history of “first cause” energy and materials combining. Or all materials have a rudimentary form of intelligence. No, I don’t believe in any of these “first causes”, though one must be right!
Yes, one is right! And it allows appears out of inanimate inorganic material.
Brain expansion: pure Darwinian explanations
by David Turell , Monday, March 01, 2021, 19:27 (1361 days ago) @ David Turell
This article is a wonderful baseless explanation in Darwin-speak:
https://phys.org/news/2021-03-human-brain-grew-result-extinction.html
"A new paper by Dr. Miki Ben-Dor and Prof. Ran Barkai from the Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University proposes an original unifying explanation for the physiological, behavioral and cultural evolution of the human species, from its first appearance about two million years ago, to the agricultural revolution (around 10,000 BCE). According to the paper, humans developed as hunters of large animals, causing their ultimate extinction. As they adapted to hunting small, swift prey animals, humans developed higher cognitive abilities, evidenced by the most obvious evolutionary change—the growth of brain volume from 650cc to 1,500cc. To date, no unifying explanation has been proposed for the major phenomena in human prehistory. (my bold)
"In recent years more and more evidence has been accumulated to the effect that humans were a major factor in the extinction of large animals, and consequently had to adapt to hunting smaller game, first in Africa and later in all other parts of the world. In Africa, 2.6 million years ago, when humans first emerged, the average size of land mammals was close to 500kg. Just before the advent of agriculture this figure had decreased by over 90%—down to several tens of kilograms.
"According to the researchers, the decrease in the size of game and the need to hunt small, swift animals forced humans to display cunning and boldness—an evolutionary process that demanded increased volume of the human brain and later led to the development of language enabling the exchange of information about where prey could be found. The theory claims that all means served one end: body energy conservation.
***
"'We correlate the increase in human brain volume with the need to become smarter hunters," explains Dr. Ben-Dor. For example, the need to hunt dozens of gazelles instead of one elephant generated prolonged evolutionary pressure on the brain functions of humans, who were now using up much more energy in both movement and thought processes. Hunting small animals, that are constantly threatened by predators and therefore very quick to take flight, requires a physiology adapted to the chase as well as more sophisticated hunting tools. Cognitive activity also rises as fast tracking requires fast decision-making, based on phenomenal acquaintance with the animals' behavior—information that needs to be stored in a larger memory."
***
"Prof. Barkai notes, "While the chimpanzee's brain, for example, has remained stable for 7 million years, the human brain grew threefold, reaching its greatest size about 300,000 years ago. In addition to brain volume, evolutionary pressure caused humans to use language, fire and sophisticated tools such as bow and arrow, adapt their arms and shoulders to the tasks of throwing and hurling and their bodies to the prolonged chase, improve their stone tools, domesticate dogs and ultimately also domesticate the game itself and turn to agriculture.'"
Comment: Note my last bold. There is no explanation why the sapiens brain arrived 315,000 years ago. Note the gap in time: mammoths among others went extinct 20,000 years ago. Totally disconnected Darwin-think. dhw will love it, despite its topsy-turvy mish-mash of thought. Obviously the article reviewers were all Darwinist
Brain expansion
DAVID (under “cerebellum”): In looking at the two paragraphs above, survival is not to be mentioned, yet there are, I assume implied, serious requirements for human life that must be faced. You can't have it both ways.
Of course I can have it both ways! You chose to narrow the field to violin-playing, as if somehow that would disprove my theory that the pre-sapiens brain expanded in response to new requirements. In the pre-sapiens eras, survival would obviously have been the prime motive, so why bring in modern-era violin-playing as your example of new requirements?
DAVID: A giant jump in brain cortex and prefrontal cortex volume (about 300+ cc from erectus to us) implies a need for a very strong response, to use your words. You want it naturally to happen and I feel only a designer could create such a large change.
Your feeling is not a logical response to my proposal. I don’t see why a designer should be incapable of creating a mechanism for large changes as well as small changes.
(The rest of your post under “cerebellum” concerned matters dealt with here:)
DAVID: In your cellular committee self-creation theory can you explain why the brain was produced oversized in the beginning? A mistake? Purposeful? If purposeful, what purpose? Can you describe the committee's discussion?
dhw: It would be more appropriate to ask why your God produced an oversized brain in the beginning! A mistake? Or what possible purpose could he have had? Do please answer. […]
DAVID: Bigger brain explained as allowing the appropriate complexification to occur to handle the new invention of activities humans developed like violin playing. Briefly it gave the bigger brain much more flexibility of response to the soul's new demands.
Thank you. At long last our theories are converging. Of course the bigger brain is better able to respond to the soul’s demands. That is why, in my theory, the brain expanded in the first place – it could not respond to the soul’s new demands because the existing capacity for response through complexification had reached its limit. In our earlier example, the dualist’s soul demanded implementation of the spear concept, and the brain had to expand to handle it; in your example it demanded implementation of the violin concept, and it was handled by complexification.
Your response still hasn’t explained why your God would have produced a bigger brain than necessary, but my theory faces no such problem – complexification is so efficient that certain cells became redundant. My proposal does not, however, exclude your God. As with the rest of evolution, it allows for him to be the inventor of the whole system whereby cells/cells communities use their intelligence to respond to different requirements.
xxxx
dhw: You have left out my question: do you think the switch to large pelvises happened overnight? If not, how long do you think it might have taken?
DAVID: How large are the known time gaps?
dhw: That is not an answer.
DAVID: Of course it is. Each new hominin. homo species with larger skull appeared suddenly after hundreds of thousands of years
And do we have fossils from all of those hundreds of thousands of years? Do you think the switch to large pelvises happened overnight? If not, how long do you think it might have taken? I seem to have asked this question before.
xxxxx
DAVID: Your usual misinterpretation: the instructions are set for a lifetime of antibody responses.
dhw: WHAT instructions? How to deal with every new infection? That = a divine programme for every infection for the rest of time. Do you think our ancestors already had the cure for Covid-19 in their immune system?
DAVID: Total misunderstanding. All diseases can be handled by several immune mechanisms; outright killing (engulfing bugs) and antibodies to kill or neutralize. The instructions are in all immune cells for these actions. No program for all possible present and future bugs. Anything that comes along can be dealt with by present limited responses.
You are simply telling us what an immune system does – it kills or neutralizes the enemy. But the enemies are all different! Our highly intelligent scientists are now trying to find a way to get rid of Covid-19 because the immune system’s library of responses – accumulated from all its past experiences – does not contain “instructions” on how to deal with the new enemy.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, June 17, 2020, 18:05 (1618 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID (under “cerebellum”): In looking at the two paragraphs above, survival is not to be mentioned, yet there are, I assume implied, serious requirements for human life that must be faced. You can't have it both ways.
dhw: You chose to narrow the field to violin-playing, as if somehow that would disprove my theory that the pre-sapiens brain expanded in response to new requirements. In the pre-sapiens eras, survival would obviously have been the prime motive, so why bring in modern-era violin-playing as your example of new requirements?
Violin playing is an advantage gained by the huge brain, not anything to do with survival, which is my point. Violin playing is never a protection for survival. You've just jumped back into Darwin mode, survival of the fittest tautology
DAVID: A giant jump in brain cortex and prefrontal cortex volume (about 300+ cc from erectus to us) implies a need for a very strong response. You want it naturally to happen and I feel only a designer could create such a large change.dhw: I don’t see why a designer should be incapable of creating a mechanism for large changes as well as small changes.
Again a judgement about who God is and what He might do. I've agreed to your IM mechanism many times but with God's guidelines onboard, which you always reject.
dhw: It would be more appropriate to ask why your God produced an oversized brain in the beginning! A mistake? Or what possible purpose could he have had? Do please answer. […]DAVID: Bigger brain explained as allowing the appropriate complexification to occur to handle the new invention of activities humans developed like violin playing. Briefly it gave the bigger brain much more flexibility of response to the soul's new demands.
dhw: Thank you. At long last our theories are converging. Of course the bigger brain is better able to respond to the soul’s demands. That is why, in my theory, the brain expanded in the first place – it could not respond to the soul’s new demands because the existing capacity for response through complexification had reached its limit. In our earlier example, the dualist’s soul demanded implementation of the spear concept, and the brain had to expand to handle it; in your example it demanded implementation of the violin concept, and it was handled by complexification.
I don't see a convergence. Violin playing is a sideshow from the real advances. Only you think the brain can enlarge itself. All it can do from the evidence is complexify itself and shrink. How did your cell committees know to overly enlarge the sapiens brain so it could complexify?
dhw: Your response still hasn’t explained why your God would have produced a bigger brain than necessary, but my theory faces no such problem – complexification is so efficient that certain cells became redundant. My proposal does not, however, exclude your God. As with the rest of evolution, it allows for him to be the inventor of the whole system whereby cells/cells communities use their intelligence to respond to different requirements.
The cell intelligence is seen in massive automatic molecular reactions God gave them
dhw: You have left out my question: do you think the switch to large pelvises happened overnight? If not, how long do you think it might have taken?
DAVID: How large are the known time gaps?
dhw: That is not an answer.
DAVID: Of course it is. Each new hominin. homo species with larger skull appeared suddenly after hundreds of thousands of years
dhw: And do we have fossils from all of those hundreds of thousands of years? Do you think the switch to large pelvises happened overnight? If not, how long do you think it might have taken? I seem to have asked this question before.
All we have is gaps, and Gould felt they were important. In questioning gap size you are constantly avoiding that big pelvis must be simultaneous with big baby head appearance. Disagree?
xxxxxDAVID: Your usual misinterpretation: the instructions are set for a lifetime of antibody responses.
dhw: WHAT instructions? How to deal with every new infection? That = a divine programme for every infection for the rest of time. Do you think our ancestors already had the cure for Covid-19 in their immune system?
DAVID: Total misunderstanding. All diseases can be handled by several immune mechanisms; outright killing (engulfing bugs) and antibodies to kill or neutralize. The instructions are in all immune cells for these actions. No program for all possible present and future bugs. Anything that comes along can be dealt with by present limited responses.
dhw: You are simply telling us what an immune system does – it kills or neutralizes the enemy. But the enemies are all different! Our highly intelligent scientists are now trying to find a way to get rid of Covid-19 because the immune system’s library of responses – accumulated from all its past experiences – does not contain “instructions” on how to deal with the new enemy.
Of course our immune systems don't know it. It is a novelty!!! Yet we know herd immunity can develop. But we want human invented vaccines to speed the herd immune process. The instructions for herd immunity are there, just too slow to save more lives, so we step in.
Brain expansion
dhw: In the pre-sapiens eras, survival would obviously have been the prime motive, so why bring in modern-era violin-playing as your example of new requirements?
DAVID: Violin playing is an advantage gained by the huge brain, not anything to do with survival, which is my point. Violin playing is never a protection for survival. You've just jumped back into Darwin mode, survival of the fittest tautology.
The subject of this thread is brain expansion – i.e. from pre-sapiens times to our own, when expansion stopped. It makes no difference whether the new requirements relate to matters of survival or otherwise, the process is the same: both expansion and complexification occur as a result of the brain responding to new requirements, not anticipating them. The violin example only applies to sapiens’ complexification.
DAVID: A giant jump in brain cortex and prefrontal cortex volume (about 300+ cc from erectus to us) implies a need for a very strong response. You want it naturally to happen and I feel only a designer could create such a large change.
dhw: I don’t see why a designer should be incapable of creating a mechanism for large changes as well as small changes.
DAVID: Again a judgement about who God is and what He might do. I've agreed to your IM mechanism many times but with God's guidelines onboard, which you always reject.
Of course I reject “guidelines”, which = a 3.8-billion-year-old programme for every change, or a direct dabble – the exact opposite of the autonomous mechanism I propose. Your theory is no less a judgement than mine about who God is and what he might do!
dhw: It would be more appropriate to ask why your God produced an oversized brain in the beginning! A mistake? Or what possible purpose could he have had? Do please answer. […]
DAVID: Bigger brain explained as allowing the appropriate complexification to occur to handle the new invention of activities humans developed like violin playing. Briefly it gave the bigger brain much more flexibility of response to the soul's new demands.
dhw: Thank you. At long last our theories are converging. Of course the bigger brain is better able to respond to the soul’s demands. That is why, in my theory, the brain expanded in the first place – it could not respond to the soul’s new demands because the existing capacity for response through complexification had reached its limit. In our earlier example, the dualist’s soul demanded implementation of the spear concept, and the brain had to expand to handle it; in your example it demanded implementation of the violin concept, and it was handled by complexification.
DAVID: I don't see a convergence. Violin playing is a sideshow from the real advances. Only you think the brain can enlarge itself. All it can do from the evidence is complexify itself and shrink. How did your cell committees know to overly enlarge the sapiens brain so it could complexify?
Violin playing is irrelevant to brain expansion. The only alternative to the brain enlarging itself is your God preprogramming and/or dabbling the expansion, and not everybody believes in God. There are various theories (random mutations, diet, discovery of fire) – ask any atheist. The evidence does indeed show that the brain can complexify itself, and so it is not unreasonable to propose that the same autonomous mechanism also engineered expansion. In my theory, the pre-sapiens cell communities would have recognized that their autonomous complexification process required reinforcements (= expansion), and finally that there was a limit to the amount of expansion possible. Hence enhanced complexification, which proved so efficient that certain cells became redundant. Your agreement that the brain RESPONDS to the new demands made by the dualist’s soul (as opposed to being changed in advance of new demands) is the breakthrough in our discussions.
dhw: Your response still hasn’t explained why your God would have produced a bigger brain than necessary, but my theory faces no such problem – complexification is so efficient that certain cells became redundant. My proposal does not, however, exclude your God. As with the rest of evolution, it allows for him to be the inventor of the whole system whereby cells/cells communities use their intelligence to respond to different requirements.
DAVID: The cell intelligence is seen in massive automatic molecular reactions God gave them.
That's your theory. And you still haven’t explained why you think your God made the sapiens brain bigger than necessary.
DAVID: Each new hominin. homo species with larger skull appeared suddenly after hundreds of thousands of years
dhw: And do we have fossils from all of those hundreds of thousands of years? Do you think the switch to large pelvises happened overnight? If not, how long do you think it might have taken?
DAVID: All we have is gaps, and Gould felt they were important. In questioning gap size you are constantly avoiding that big pelvis must be simultaneous with big baby head appearance. Disagree?
I am suggesting that for a period of time, there would have been lots of casualties until the big pelvis WAS "simultaneous" with the big baby head! That is why I asked you whether you thought the switch to large pelvises happened overnight, and if not, how long you thought it might have taken. You still haven’t answered.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, June 18, 2020, 18:43 (1617 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: It would be more appropriate to ask why your God produced an oversized brain in the beginning! A mistake? Or what possible purpose could he have had? Do please answer. […]
DAVID: Bigger brain explained as allowing the appropriate complexification to occur to handle the new invention of activities humans developed like violin playing. Briefly it gave the bigger brain much more flexibility of response to the soul's new demands.
dhw: Thank you. At long last our theories are converging. Of course the bigger brain is better able to respond to the soul’s demands. That is why, in my theory, the brain expanded in the first place – it could not respond to the soul’s new demands because the existing capacity for response through complexification had reached its limit. In our earlier example, the dualist’s soul demanded implementation of the spear concept, and the brain had to expand to handle it; in your example it demanded implementation of the violin concept, and it was handled by complexification.
DAVID: I don't see a convergence. Violin playing is a sideshow from the real advances. Only you think the brain can enlarge itself. All it can do from the evidence is complexify itself and shrink. How did your cell committees know to overly enlarge the sapiens brain so it could complexify?
dhw: Violin playing is irrelevant to brain expansion. The only alternative to the brain enlarging itself is your God preprogramming and/or dabbling the expansion, and not everybody believes in God. There are various theories (random mutations, diet, discovery of fire) – ask any atheist. The evidence does indeed show that the brain can complexify itself, and so it is not unreasonable to propose that the same autonomous mechanism also engineered expansion.
A false analogy. Complexification comes from specific developments of use and is guided to change by the specific quality of that new usage, i.e., memorizing, repeated new muscular coordinated motions, developing new concepts, etc. In expansion what guides which areas are to enlarged as required for new circumstances and invented new uses? This requires foresight of what is intended. How would an autonomous mechanism know what to create? I see intentionality and you are still back at chance a la' Darwin.
dhw: Your agreement that the brain RESPONDS to the new demands made by the dualist’s soul (as opposed to being changed in advance of new demands) is the breakthrough in our discussions.
False assumption. My point is the overly large brain has a mechanism to adapt to new use, and then shrink as a result. What enlarged the brain primarily is at all explained by new complexification
dhw: Your response still hasn’t explained why your God would have produced a bigger brain than necessary, but my theory faces no such problem – complexification is so efficient that certain cells became redundant. My proposal does not, however, exclude your God. As with the rest of evolution, it allows for him to be the inventor of the whole system whereby cells/cells communities use their intelligence to respond to different requirements.DAVID: The cell intelligence is seen in massive automatic molecular reactions God gave them.
dhw: That's your theory. And you still haven’t explained why you think your God made the sapiens brain bigger than necessary.
I have. It allows for new usages and complexification for brain efficiency as it shrinks. It also introduces the reduction in energy required, since the brain uses so much energy.
DAVID: Each new hominin. homo species with larger skull appeared suddenly after hundreds of thousands of yearsdhw: And do we have fossils from all of those hundreds of thousands of years? Do you think the switch to large pelvises happened overnight? If not, how long do you think it might have taken?
DAVID: All we have is gaps, and Gould felt they were important. In questioning gap size you are constantly avoiding that big pelvis must be simultaneous with big baby head appearance. Disagree?
dhw: I am suggesting that for a period of time, there would have been lots of casualties until the big pelvis WAS "simultaneous" with the big baby head! That is why I asked you whether you thought the switch to large pelvises happened overnight, and if not, how long you thought it might have taken. You still haven’t answered.
Do you have any idea how long your weird catch-up theory would take? Both attempting dead mothers and dead babies and nothing else? Much easier to accept the theory that it all occurred through simultaneous design by God, the designer.
Brain expansion: Specific human gene found
by David Turell , Thursday, June 18, 2020, 21:20 (1617 days ago) @ David Turell
It has been tested in monkeys and enlarged their cortex:
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-human-brain-size-gene-triggers.html
"The expansion of the human brain during evolution, specifically of the neocortex, is linked to cognitive abilities such as reasoning and language. A certain gene called ARHGAP11B that is only found in humans triggers brain stem cells to form more stem cells, a prerequisite for a bigger brain. Past studies have shown that ARHGAP11B, when expressed in mice and ferrets to unphysiologically high levels, causes an expanded neocortex, but its relevance for primate evolution has been unclear.
"Researchers at the Max Planck Institute... now show that this human-specific gene, when expressed to physiological levels, causes an enlarged neocortex in the common marmoset, a New World monkey. This suggests that the ARHGAP11B gene may have caused neocortex expansion during human evolution.
"The human neocortex, the evolutionarily youngest part of the cerebral cortex, is about three times bigger than that of the closest human relatives, chimpanzees, and its folding into wrinkles increased during evolution to fit inside the restricted space of the skull. A key question for scientists is how the human neocortex became so big. In a 2015 study, the research group of Wieland Huttner, a founding director of the MPI-CBG, found that under the influence of the human-specific gene ARHGAP11B, mouse embryos produced many more neural progenitor cells and could even undergo folding of their normally unfolded neocortex. The results suggested that the gene ARHGAP11B plays a key role in the evolutionary expansion of the human neocortex.
"The human-specific gene ARHGAP11B arose through a partial duplication of the ubiquitous gene ARHGAP11A approximately five million years ago along the evolutionary lineage leading to Neanderthals, Denisovans, and present-day humans, and after this lineage had segregated from that leading to the chimpanzee. In a follow-up study in 2016, the research group of Wieland Huttner uncovered a surprising reason why the ARHGAP11B protein contains a sequence of 47 amino acids that is human-specific, not found in the ARHGAP11A protein, and essential for ARHGAP11B's ability to increase brain stem cells.
"Specifically, a single C-to-G base substitution found in the ARHGAP11B gene leads to the loss of 55 nucleotides from the ARHGAP11B messenger RNA, which causes a shift in the reading frame resulting in the human-specific, functionally critical 47 amino acid sequence. This base substitution probably happened much later than when this gene arose about 5 million years ago, anytime between 1.5 million and 500,000 years ago. Such point mutations are not rare, but in the case of ARHGAP11B its advantages of forming a bigger brain seem to have immediately influenced human evolution.
***
"However, it has been unclear until now if the human-specific gene ARHGAP11B would also cause an enlarged neocortex in non-human primates. (my bold)
***
"They generated transgenic common marmosets, a New World monkey, that expressed the human-specific gene ARHGAP11B, which they normally do not have, in the developing neocortex.
***
"Michael Heide explains: "We found indeed that the neocortex of the common marmoset brain was enlarged and the brain surface folded. Its cortical plate was also thicker than normal. Furthermore, we could see increased numbers of basal radial glia progenitors in the outer subventricular zone and increased numbers of upper-layer neurons, the neuron type that increases in primate evolution." The researchers had now functional evidence that ARHGAP11B causes an expansion of the primate neocortex."
Comment: We now know what genetic change occurred to push human brain enlargement over five million years ago. In my theory God made the genetic change. His mind knew what would happen. dhw will tell us the brain cells themselves made the change. How did the cells know what they were doing? Did God tell them what to do? Let's leave God out. Note my bold. The code does not tell anyone what will happen when applied. The scientists (with brains) had to put the gene in action to be sure how it might produce more cortex, and we still have no idea how genes produce their results. Now, put God in, as dhw does with his inventive mechanism, and what had to happen? A specific gene change of 47 bases to get the result. That required specific guidance, guidelines as I always insist upon.
Brain expansion: Specific human gene found
QUOTE: A certain gene called ARHGAP11B that is only found in humans triggers brain stem cells to form more stem cells, a prerequisite for a bigger brain.
DAVID: We now know what genetic change occurred to push human brain enlargement over five million years ago. In my theory God made the genetic change. His mind knew what would happen. dhw will tell us the brain cells themselves made the change. How did the cells know what they were doing?
You might as well ask how ants know what they’re doing when they construct complex cities. The principle behind my theory is the same: cells and cell communities are intelligences that cooperate. The brain and all its parts must have originated through the amalgamation of billions of cells – whether God dabbled it or not. The time came when the existing neocortex could not cope with what was required of it, and so its stem cells needed to form more stem cells. Now we know how they did it. Why do you insist that your God could not have given cells the intelligence to work out what they needed to do? Why does he have to tell ants how to build their cities, weaverbirds how to build their nests, stem cells how to add to their number? Back we go to the same question as before: if he could enable the brain cell communities to complexify themselves autonomously when needed, why couldn’t he enable them autonomously to add to their number when needed?
Brain expansion: Specific human gene found
by David Turell , Friday, June 19, 2020, 15:34 (1616 days ago) @ dhw
QUOTE: A certain gene called ARHGAP11B that is only found in humans triggers brain stem cells to form more stem cells, a prerequisite for a bigger brain.
DAVID: We now know what genetic change occurred to push human brain enlargement over five million years ago. In my theory God made the genetic change. His mind knew what would happen. dhw will tell us the brain cells themselves made the change. How did the cells know what they were doing?
dhw: You might as well ask how ants know what they’re doing when they construct complex cities. The principle behind my theory is the same: cells and cell communities are intelligences that cooperate. The brain and all its parts must have originated through the amalgamation of billions of cells – whether God dabbled it or not. The time came when the existing neocortex could not cope with what was required of it, and so its stem cells needed to form more stem cells. Now we know how they did it. Why do you insist that your God could not have given cells the intelligence to work out what they needed to do? Why does he have to tell ants how to build their cities, weaverbirds how to build their nests, stem cells how to add to their number? Back we go to the same question as before: if he could enable the brain cell communities to complexify themselves autonomously when needed, why couldn’t he enable them autonomously to add to their number when needed?
Your comment simply shows that we totally differ in our concepts of God, when you are willing to consider God. As far as I am concerned God runs evolution with purpose.
Brain expansion
DAVID: Only you think the brain can enlarge itself. All it can do from the evidence is complexify itself and shrink. How did your cell committees know to overly enlarge the sapiens brain so it could complexify?
My response is below, but I should have added that you have yourself stated that the pre-sapiens brain must also have complexified before expanding. And why on earth would the excessive enlargement have been necessary for complexification, if complexification was already taking place?
dhw: Am I really alone? The only alternative to the brain enlarging itself is your God preprogramming and/or dabbling the expansion, and not everybody believes in God. There are various theories (random mutations, diet, discovery of fire) – ask any atheist. The evidence does indeed show that the brain can complexify itself, and so it is not unreasonable to propose that the same autonomous mechanism also engineered expansion.
DAVID: A false analogy. Complexification comes from specific developments of use and is guided to change by the specific quality of that new usage, i.e., memorizing, repeated new muscular coordinated motions, developing new concepts, etc. In expansion what guides which areas are to enlarged as required for new circumstances and invented new uses? This requires foresight of what is intended. How would an autonomous mechanism know what to create? I see intentionality and you are still back at chance a la' Darwin.
You have involuntarily confirmed the "analogy". Expansion would have come from specific “developments of use”, i.e. developing new concepts, in the sense of implementing the new concepts invented by your dualist’s soul (or the thinking sections of the materialist’s brain). The areas which expanded would have been those areas that now complexify in implementing new concepts – or more accurately, in meeting new requirements. The autonomous mechanism which now responds to the demands of your dualist’s soul by complexifying would also have responded to the soul of our ancestors, but would have reinforced itself if its existing capacity was unable to cope with a particular new requirement. There is absolutely no chance involved. Nor is there any “foresight of what is intended”. The brain RESPONDS to the requirements of the soul; it does not anticipate them!
dhw: Your agreement that the brain RESPONDS to the new demands made by the dualist’s soul (as opposed to being changed in advance of new demands) is the breakthrough in our discussions.
DAVID: False assumption. My point is the overly large brain has a mechanism to adapt to new use, and then shrink as a result. What enlarged the brain primarily is at all explained by new complexification.
You wrote: “Briefly it gave the bigger brain much more flexibility of response to the soul's new demands.” How is my “assumption” false? Shrinkage, we have agreed ad nauseam, was due to the efficiency of complexification. How does that come to mean that the brain changes in advance of new requirements?
dhw: you still haven’t explained why you think your God made the sapiens brain bigger than necessary.
DAVID: I have. It allows for new usages and complexification for brain efficiency as it shrinks. It also introduces the reduction in energy required, since the brain uses so much energy.
But shrinkage did not allow for new uses! The brain shrank BECAUSE complexification was so efficient. If your God’s object in making the brain bigger than necessary was to save energy by shrinking it, why did he make it bigger than necessary in the first place?
dhw: I am suggesting that for a period of time, there would have been lots of casualties until the big pelvis WAS "simultaneous" with the big baby head! That is why I asked you whether you thought the switch to large pelvises happened overnight, and if not, how long you thought it might have taken. You still haven’t answered.
DAVID: Do you have any idea how long your weird catch-up theory would take? Both attempting dead mothers and dead babies and nothing else? Much easier to accept the theory that it all occurred through simultaneous design by God, the designer.
So you do think the switch to large pelvises happened overnight. A group of homos woke up one morning and found that their brains and skulls and pelvises had suddenly got bigger. I’m afraid I don’t find that “much easier to accept” than the theory that there was a period of transition. But no, I don’t know how long it would have taken. It’s a shame that we don’t have a continuous record of fossils to cover the hundreds of thousands of years between smaller and larger skulls.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Friday, June 19, 2020, 15:25 (1616 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: A false analogy. Complexification comes from specific developments of use and is guided to change by the specific quality of that new usage, i.e., memorizing, repeated new muscular coordinated motions, developing new concepts, etc. In expansion what guides which areas are to enlarged as required for new circumstances and invented new uses? This requires foresight of what is intended. How would an autonomous mechanism know what to create? I see intentionality and you are still back at chance a la' Darwin.
dhw: You have involuntarily confirmed the "analogy". Expansion would have come from specific “developments of use”, i.e. developing new concepts, in the sense of implementing the new concepts invented by your dualist’s soul (or the thinking sections of the materialist’s brain). The areas which expanded would have been those areas that now complexify in implementing new concepts – or more accurately, in meeting new requirements. The autonomous mechanism which now responds to the demands of your dualist’s soul by complexifying would also have responded to the soul of our ancestors, but would have reinforced itself if its existing capacity was unable to cope with a particular new requirement. There is absolutely no chance involved. Nor is there any “foresight of what is intended”. The brain RESPONDS to the requirements of the soul; it does not anticipate them!
You are forgetting stasis of use. A new-sized brain has more cortical neurons but new uses always take time. Where is the push to enlarge you seem to be describing? In your scheme of enlarging, there should be no stasis.
dhw: Your agreement that the brain RESPONDS to the new demands made by the dualist’s soul (as opposed to being changed in advance of new demands) is the breakthrough in our discussions.DAVID: False assumption. My point is the overly large brain has a mechanism to adapt to new use, and then shrink as a result. What enlarged the brain primarily is not at all explained by new complexification.
dhw: You wrote: “Briefly it gave the bigger brain much more flexibility of response to the soul's new demands.” How is my “assumption” false? Shrinkage, we have agreed ad nauseam, was due to the efficiency of complexification. How does that come to mean that the brain changes in advance of new requirements?
See stasis discussion above.
dhw: I am suggesting that for a period of time, there would have been lots of casualties until the big pelvis WAS "simultaneous" with the big baby head! That is why I asked you whether you thought the switch to large pelvises happened overnight, and if not, how long you thought it might have taken. You still haven’t answered.DAVID: Do you have any idea how long your weird catch-up theory would take? Both attempting dead mothers and dead babies and nothing else? Much easier to accept the theory that it all occurred through simultaneous design by God, the designer.
dhw: So you do think the switch to large pelvises happened overnight. A group of homos woke up one morning and found that their brains and skulls and pelvises had suddenly got bigger. I’m afraid I don’t find that “much easier to accept” than the theory that there was a period of transition. But no, I don’t know how long it would have taken. It’s a shame that we don’t have a continuous record of fossils to cover the hundreds of thousands of years between smaller and larger skulls.
All solved if you can see God does it simultaneously. Otherwise no advance, just death
Brain expansion
dhw: The autonomous mechanism which now responds to the demands of your dualist’s soul by complexifying would also have responded to the soul of our ancestors, but would have reinforced itself if its existing capacity was unable to cope with a particular new requirement. There is absolutely no chance involved. Nor is there any “foresight of what is intended”. The brain RESPONDS to the requirements of the soul; it does not anticipate them!
DAVID: You are forgetting stasis of use. A new-sized brain has more cortical neurons but new uses always take time. Where is the push to enlarge you seem to be describing? In your scheme of enlarging, there should be no stasis.
The push for pre-sapiens enlargement came from a requirement which could not be met by the existing capacity for complexification. Once the brain had enlarged, there was comparative stasis in the new “culture” in all instances, including sapiens, and so we can only assume that there were no new requirements, or those that there were could be deal with by complexification. You seem to think that once the brain had expanded, the dualist’s soul should have come up with millions of new ideas. Wrong way round, as usual: it is the soul’s new ideas that would earlier have required complexification and then expansion, and which in the modern brain cause complexification, which in turn is so efficient that it has caused shrinkage. The dualist’s brain does not produce ideas – it responds to the ideas conceived by the soul. (From a materialist’s standpoint, the soul = the thinking part of the brain, which leads to lots of complications best left to discussions on dualism v materialism.)
QUOTE: A certain gene called ARHGAP11B that is only found in humans triggers brain stem cells to form more stem cells, a prerequisite for a bigger brain.
DAVID: We now know what genetic change occurred to push human brain enlargement over five million years ago. In my theory God made the genetic change. His mind knew what would happen. dhw will tell us the brain cells themselves made the change. How did the cells know what they were doing?
dhw: […] Why do you insist that your God could not have given cells the intelligence to work out what they needed to do? Why does he have to tell ants how to build their cities, weaverbirds how to build their nests, stem cells how to add to their number? Back we go to the same question as before: if he could enable the brain cell communities to complexify themselves autonomously when needed, why couldn’t he enable them autonomously to add to their number when needed?
DAVID: Your comment simply shows that we totally differ in our concepts of God, when you are willing to consider God. As far as I am concerned God runs evolution with purpose.
Why do you think that a God who invents a mechanism enabling cells to expand their number autonomously = a God without purpose, whereas a God who invents a mechanism enabling cells to complexify autonomously runs evolution with purpose?
dhw: I am suggesting that for a period of time, there would have been lots of casualties until the big pelvis WAS "simultaneous" with the big baby head! That is why I asked you whether you thought the switch to large pelvises happened overnight, and if not, how long you thought it might have taken. You still haven’t answered.
DAVID: Do you have any idea how long your weird catch-up theory would take? Both attempting dead mothers and dead babies and nothing else? Much easier to accept the theory that it all occurred through simultaneous design by God, the designer.
dhw: So you do think the switch to large pelvises happened overnight. A group of homos woke up one morning and found that their brains and skulls and pelvises had suddenly got bigger. I’m afraid I don’t find that “much easier to accept” than the theory that there was a period of transition. But no, I don’t know how long it would have taken. It’s a shame that we don’t have a continuous record of fossils to cover the hundreds of thousands of years between smaller and larger skulls.
DAVID: All solved if you can see God does it simultaneously. Otherwise no advance, just death.
The only observable parallel we have is modern adaptations, from bacteria combating new medications to fish learning to live in polluted waters. Many die before the adaptation is complete. But of course you are welcome to believe that your God did an overnight operation on all those ancient homos’ brains, skulls and pelvises. What a shock they must have had when they woke up next morning!
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, June 20, 2020, 19:23 (1615 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: You are forgetting stasis of use. A new-sized brain has more cortical neurons but new uses always take time. Where is the push to enlarge you seem to be describing? In your scheme of enlarging, there should be no stasis.
dhw: The push for pre-sapiens enlargement came from a requirement which could not be met by the existing capacity for complexification. Once the brain had enlarged, there was comparative stasis in the new “culture” in all instances, including sapiens, and so we can only assume that there were no new requirements, or those that there were could be deal with by complexification. You seem to think that once the brain had expanded, the dualist’s soul should have come up with millions of new ideas. Wrong way round, as usual: it is the soul’s new ideas that would earlier have required complexification and then expansion, and which in the modern brain cause complexification, which in turn is so efficient that it has caused shrinkage. The dualist’s brain does not produce ideas – it responds to the ideas conceived by the soul.
The bold is correct in my view. Our obvious difference is you think the soul can come up with concepts without using a brain during life, and therefore is able to push the brain to a new size so the brain can accommodate the drive for new thought. Obviously I think all of your paragraph is backwards, just as you claim about my thoughts. The red sentence is previously covered. We both agree to a stasis period but interpret it differently: you think a tidal wave of unrealized soul concepts forces expansion. My question is, as above, if that is true why does the appearance of those new concepts take so long?
dhw: […] Why do you insist that your God could not have given cells the intelligence to work out what they needed to do? Why does he have to tell ants how to build their cities, weaverbirds how to build their nests, stem cells how to add to their number? Back we go to the same question as before: if he could enable the brain cell communities to complexify themselves autonomously when needed, why couldn’t he enable them autonomously to add to their number when needed?
DAVID: Your comment simply shows that we totally differ in our concepts of God, when you are willing to consider God. As far as I am concerned God runs evolution with purpose.
dhw: Why do you think that a God who invents a mechanism enabling cells to expand their number autonomously = a God without purpose, whereas a God who invents a mechanism enabling cells to complexify autonomously runs evolution with purpose?
Binary fission is the standard automatic way cells reproduce and multiply, without change in the cells or their functions. True evolution requires change and controls.
dhw: So you do think the switch to large pelvises happened overnight. A group of homos woke up one morning and found that their brains and skulls and pelvises had suddenly got bigger. I’m afraid I don’t find that “much easier to accept” than the theory that there was a period of transition. But no, I don’t know how long it would have taken. It’s a shame that we don’t have a continuous record of fossils to cover the hundreds of thousands of years between smaller and larger skulls.DAVID: All solved if you can see God does it simultaneously. Otherwise no advance, just death.
dhw: The only observable parallel we have is modern adaptations, from bacteria combating new medications to fish learning to live in polluted waters. Many die before the adaptation is complete. But of course you are welcome to believe that your God did an overnight operation on all those ancient homos’ brains, skulls and pelvises. What a shock they must have had when they woke up next morning!
Those examples you give are gradual adaptations over time, involving paired problems, as bacteria and new drug. In causing a gap in species we have three contributors, Mom's new pelvis shape, Dad's sperm input and Baby's bigger head, and in the gap from apes, the additional requirements for upright posture. Why don't you consider the problem of the whole continuum of evolution instead of bits and pieces? It is entirely obvious adaptation doesn't work. You can't have several adaptations going on at the same time and rate without careful coordination.
Brain expansion
dhw: The push for pre-sapiens enlargement came from a requirement which could not be met by the existing capacity for complexification. Once the brain had enlarged, there was comparative stasis in the new “culture” in all instances, including sapiens, and so we can only assume that there were no new requirements, or those that there were could be deal with by complexification. You seem to think that once the brain had expanded, the dualist’s soul should have come up with millions of new ideas. Wrong way round, as usual: it is the soul’s new ideas that would earlier have required complexification and then expansion, and which in the modern brain cause complexification, which in turn is so efficient that it has caused shrinkage.The dualist’s brain does not produce ideas – it responds to the ideas conceived by the soul.
DAVID: The bold is correct in my view. Our obvious difference is you think the soul can come up with concepts without using a brain during life, and therefore is able to push the brain to a new size so the brain can accommodate the drive for new thought.
This is a travesty of what I have proposed! The dualist's soul comes up with concepts based on the information provided by the brain, and I don’t even know what you mean by “accommodate the drive for new thought”! The brain implements the concepts that the soul comes up with.
DAVID: Obviously I think all of your paragraph is backwards, just as you claim about my thoughts. The red sentence is previously covered. We both agree to a stasis period but interpret it differently: you think a tidal wave of unrealized soul concepts forces expansion. My question is, as above, if that is true why does the appearance of those new concepts take so long?
Another travesty. Each expansion would have been caused by the fact that the existing brain did not have the complexification capacity to implement a new concept. After each expansion (up to and including sapiens) there was a period of stasis because the dualist's soul did not come up with any new concepts that could not be dealt with by the existing mechanism of complexification. The red sentence obviously has not been covered, since you are again assuming that pre-sapiens and sapiens souls should have come up with millions of new ideas immediately after expansion! Why?
dhw: Why do you think that a God who invents a mechanism enabling cells to expand their number autonomously = a God without purpose, whereas a God who invents a mechanism enabling cells to complexify autonomously runs evolution with purpose?
DAVID: Binary fission is the standard automatic way cells reproduce and multiply, without change in the cells or their functions. True evolution requires change and controls.
How on earth does that prove that God is incapable of inventing a mechanism enabling cells to expand their number, or that to have done so would have been without purpose?
dhw: So you do think the switch to large pelvises happened overnight. […]
DAVID: All solved if you can see God does it simultaneously. Otherwise no advance, just death.
dhw: The only observable parallel we have is modern adaptations, from bacteria combating new medications to fish learning to live in polluted waters. Many die before the adaptation is complete. But of course you are welcome to believe that your God did an overnight operation on all those ancient homos’ brains, skulls and pelvises. What a shock they must have had when they woke up next morning!
DAVID: Those examples you give are gradual adaptations over time, involving paired problems, as bacteria and new drug. In causing a gap in species we have three contributors, Mom's new pelvis shape, Dad's sperm input and Baby's bigger head, and in the gap from apes, the additional requirements for upright posture. Why don't you consider the problem of the whole continuum of evolution instead of bits and pieces? It is entirely obvious adaptation doesn't work. You can't have several adaptations going on at the same time and rate without careful coordination.
It is you who divided the process up into bits and pieces: brain, skull, pelvis. And it is obvious that adaptation did work! The brain expanded, the skull expanded to accommodate the brain, and the pelvis expanded to accommodate the larger skull! In all adaptations, the relevant parts of the body require “careful coordination” or intelligent cooperation. You have your God dabbling with a group of homos, simultaneously expanding their brains, skulls and pelvises overnight. I suggest a more gradual process, no doubt with casualties (and a lot of pain) on the way, as the pelvis responds to the need for expansion until eventually and naturally only the larger pelvis survives. We cannot reasonably expect to find fossils recording every stage of transition. Why do you find this hypothesis less convincing than your own?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, June 21, 2020, 17:47 (1614 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: The push for pre-sapiens enlargement came from a requirement which could not be met by the existing capacity for complexification. Once the brain had enlarged, there was comparative stasis in the new “culture” in all instances, including sapiens, and so we can only assume that there were no new requirements, or those that there were could be deal with by complexification. You seem to think that once the brain had expanded, the dualist’s soul should have come up with millions of new ideas. Wrong way round, as usual: it is the soul’s new ideas that would earlier have required complexification and then expansion, and which in the modern brain cause complexification, which in turn is so efficient that it has caused shrinkage.The dualist’s brain does not produce ideas – it responds to the ideas conceived by the soul.
DAVID: The bold is correct in my view. Our obvious difference is you think the soul can come up with concepts without using a brain during life, and therefore is able to push the brain to a new size so the brain can accommodate the drive for new thought.
dhw: This is a travesty of what I have proposed! The dualist's soul comes up with concepts based on the information provided by the brain, and I don’t even know what you mean by “accommodate the drive for new thought”! The brain implements the concepts that the soul comes up with.
It is the complexity of neuron networks that allows advanced thought.
DAVID: Obviously I think all of your paragraph is backwards, just as you claim about my thoughts. The red sentence is previously covered. We both agree to a stasis period but interpret it differently: you think a tidal wave of unrealized soul concepts forces expansion. My question is, as above, if that is true why does the appearance of those new concepts take so long?dhw: Another travesty. Each expansion would have been caused by the fact that the existing brain did not have the complexification capacity to implement a new concept. After each expansion (up to and including sapiens) there was a period of stasis because the dualist's soul did not come up with any new concepts that could not be dealt with by the existing mechanism of complexification. The red sentence obviously has not been covered, since you are again assuming that pre-sapiens and sapiens souls should have come up with millions of new ideas immediately after expansion! Why?
Your theory implies the ability for immediate new thought, since the brain is under your idea of a command to new thinking. I always refer to long stasis.
dhw: Why do you think that a God who invents a mechanism enabling cells to expand their number autonomously = a God without purpose, whereas a God who invents a mechanism enabling cells to complexify autonomously runs evolution with purpose?DAVID: Binary fission is the standard automatic way cells reproduce and multiply, without change in the cells or their functions. True evolution requires change and controls.
dhw: How on earth does that prove that God is incapable of inventing a mechanism enabling cells to expand their number, or that to have done so would have been without purpose?
It is your invention, not mine. He can do one with guidelines.
dhw: So you do think the switch to large pelvises happened overnight. […]DAVID: All solved if you can see God does it simultaneously. Otherwise no advance, just death.
dhw: The only observable parallel we have is modern adaptations, from bacteria combating new medications to fish learning to live in polluted waters. Many die before the adaptation is complete. But of course you are welcome to believe that your God did an overnight operation on all those ancient homos’ brains, skulls and pelvises. What a shock they must have had when they woke up next morning!
DAVID: Those examples you give are gradual adaptations over time, involving paired problems, as bacteria and new drug. In causing a gap in species we have three contributors, Mom's new pelvis shape, Dad's sperm input and Baby's bigger head, and in the gap from apes, the additional requirements for upright posture. Why don't you consider the problem of the whole continuum of evolution instead of bits and pieces? It is entirely obvious adaptation doesn't work. You can't have several adaptations going on at the same time and rate without careful coordination.
dhw: It is you who divided the process up into bits and pieces: brain, skull, pelvis. And it is obvious that adaptation did work! The brain expanded, the skull expanded to accommodate the brain, and the pelvis expanded to accommodate the larger skull! In all adaptations, the relevant parts of the body require “careful coordination” or intelligent cooperation. You have your God dabbling with a group of homos, simultaneously expanding their brains, skulls and pelvises overnight. I suggest a more gradual process, no doubt with casualties (and a lot of pain) on the way, as the pelvis responds to the need for expansion until eventually and naturally only the larger pelvis survives. We cannot reasonably expect to find fossils recording every stage of transition. Why do you find this hypothesis less convincing than your own?
Simple. All evolution shows is full gaps with complete new forms on arrival. Forget Darwin.
Brain expansion
DAVID: Our obvious difference is you think the soul can come up with concepts without using a brain during life, and therefore is able to push the brain to a new size so the brain can accommodate the drive for new thought.
dhw: This is a travesty of what I have proposed! The dualist's soul comes up with concepts based on the information provided by the brain, and I don’t even know what you mean by “accommodate the drive for new thought”! The brain implements the concepts that the soul comes up with.
DAVID: It is the complexity of neuron networks that allows advanced thought.
You keep using the nebulous word “allows”, and I don’t know why you keep popping in the word “advanced”. Dualists believe there is an immaterial soul which does all the thinking. The complexity of neural networks provides information and material expression and implementation of the soul’s thoughts. Materialists believe that the complex neuron networks do the thinking as well as the expressing and implementing. In my theory, the brain complexifies and in former times expanded IN RESPONSE to the dualist soul’s thinking and it does/did the same IN RESPONSE to the thoughts of the thinking areas of the materialist’s brain – as proven by the fact that the modern brain complexifies IN RESPONSE to new requirements.
DAVID: We both agree to a stasis period but interpret it differently: you think a tidal wave of unrealized soul concepts forces expansion. My question is, as above, if that is true why does the appearance of those new concepts take so long?
dhw: Another travesty. Each expansion would have been caused by the fact that the existing brain did not have the complexification capacity to implement a new concept. After each expansion (up to and including sapiens) there was a period of stasis because the dualist's soul did not come up with any new concepts that could not be dealt with by the existing mechanism of complexification. The red sentence obviously has not been covered, since you are again assuming that pre-sapiens and sapiens souls should have come up with millions of new ideas immediately after expansion! Why?
DAVID: Your theory implies the ability for immediate new thought, since the brain is under your idea of a command to new thinking. I always refer to long stasis.
I don’t know what your first sentence means. Sticking with your dualist’s soul, it can come up with new thoughts at any moment! In pre-sapiens times, these are likely to have been sparked by causes related to survival (though the latest research shows that some of our earlier ancestors were not as restricted as was once believed). If the current system of survival was functioning, there would be a period of stasis until a problem arose or someone had a brilliant idea to make life even better. I also refer to long periods of stasis (think of the lost tribes of the Amazon). What is your point?
dhw: Why do you think that a God who invents a mechanism enabling cells to expand their number autonomously = a God without purpose, whereas a God who invents a mechanism enabling cells to complexify autonomously runs evolution with purpose?
DAVID: It is your invention, not mine. He can do one with guidelines.
Why do you keep restricting your God’s inventiveness? If he can invent an autonomous mechanism for complexification, why must he preprogramme or personally dabble each enlargement – the only guidelines you can offer? And why is autonomous complexification purposeful but autonomous enlargement would be without a purpose?
dhw: You have your God dabbling with a group of homos, simultaneously expanding their brains, skulls and pelvises overnight. I suggest a more gradual process, no doubt with casualties (and a lot of pain) on the way, as the pelvis responds to the need for expansion until eventually and naturally only the larger pelvis survives. We cannot reasonably expect to find fossils recording every stage of transition. Why do you find this hypothesis less convincing than your own?
DAVID: Simple. All evolution shows is full gaps with complete new forms on arrival. Forget Darwin.
Every fossil was once a complete form! And every new fossil find is a sensation, because fossils are so rare. Therefore all the fossil record shows is a few dots instead of a continuous line. Of course there are gaps! Why do you find this so difficult to conceive, and yet you can imagine your God choosing a group of homos and somehow reaching into their brains, skulls and pelvises to engineer an overnight expansion?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Monday, June 22, 2020, 18:29 (1613 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Monday, June 22, 2020, 18:38
DAVID: It is the complexity of neuron networks that allows advanced thought.
dhw: You keep using the nebulous word “allows”, and I don’t know why you keep popping in the word “advanced”. Dualists believe there is an immaterial soul which does all the thinking.
Don't change my definition of dualism to advance your argument! In life the soul can create thought only by using the brain networks and advanced thought requires much more complex networks than in previous brains.
DAVID: We both agree to a stasis period but interpret it differently: you think a tidal wave of unrealized soul concepts forces expansion. My question is, as above, if that is true why does the appearance of those new concepts take so long?
dhw: Another travesty. Each expansion would have been caused by the fact that the existing brain did not have the complexification capacity to implement a new concept. After each expansion (up to and including sapiens) there was a period of stasis because the dualist's soul did not come up with any new concepts that could not be dealt with by the existing mechanism of complexification. The red sentence obviously has not been covered, since you are again assuming that pre-sapiens and sapiens souls should have come up with millions of new ideas immediately after expansion! Why?
DAVID: Your theory implies the ability for immediate new thought, since the brain is under your idea of a command to new thinking. I always refer to long stasis.
dhw: I don’t know what your first sentence means.
I don't know why you have a problem. Your theory, as you present, it is that brain expansion comes from the drive to have new concepts, and it requires a larger more complex brain to allow it. Logically one would expect the new thoughts to appear immediately upon enlargement, but no, we both recognize the delay (stasis).
dhw: Why do you keep restricting your God’s inventiveness? If he can invent an autonomous mechanism for complexification, why must he preprogramme or personally dabble each enlargement – the only guidelines you can offer? And why is autonomous complexification purposeful but autonomous enlargement would be without a purpose?
Complexification obviously comes with guidelines as our oversized brain was used and developed, casting off unnecessary neuron webs. How did our brain know what to safely cast off if not guided?
dhw: You have your God dabbling with a group of homos, simultaneously expanding their brains, skulls and pelvises overnight. I suggest a more gradual process, no doubt with casualties (and a lot of pain) on the way, as the pelvis responds to the need for expansion until eventually and naturally only the larger pelvis survives. We cannot reasonably expect to find fossils recording every stage of transition. Why do you find this hypothesis less convincing than your own?DAVID: Simple. All evolution shows is full gaps with complete new forms on arrival. Forget Darwin.
See the video for today, noting all new species arrived competently designed and fully functional, no Darwain gradualism..
dhw: Every fossil was once a complete form! And every new fossil find is a sensation, because fossils are so rare. Therefore all the fossil record shows is a few dots instead of a continuous line. Of course there are gaps! Why do you find this so difficult to conceive, and yet you can imagine your God choosing a group of homos and somehow reaching into their brains, skulls and pelvises to engineer an overnight expansion?
Your thoughts are fully desperation. The gaps are real and fully recognized as a problem for Darwin thought, which you can't seem to leave behind:
The video. The fist five minutes make the point. Note Eldridge and Gould both agreed about the gaps and invented a weird punctuated equilibrium theory, that was entirely descriptive and of no real value.
Brain expansion
DAVID: It is the complexity of neuron networks that allows advanced thought.
dhw: You keep using the nebulous word “allows”, and I don’t know why you keep popping in the word “advanced”. Dualists believe there is an immaterial soul which does all the thinking.
DAVID: Don't change my definition of dualism to advance your argument! In life the soul can create thought only by using the brain networks and advanced thought requires much more complex networks than in previous brains.
There is no dispute here, and I am changing nothing, unless you disagree that the soul does the thinking. You are simply leaving out what the soul uses the brain for! You keep agreeing that it uses the brain for information and for implementation of its thoughts, whether those thoughts are simple or complex. Obviously more complex thoughts require greater complexities for their implementation! And in the past that would explain why the brain had to expand - because the capacity for complexification was not large enough.
DAVID: Your theory implies the ability for immediate new thought, since the brain is under your idea of a command to new thinking. I always refer to long stasis.
dhw: I don’t know what your first sentence means.
DAVID: I don't know why you have a problem. Your theory, as you present, it is that brain expansion comes from the drive to have new concepts, and it requires a larger more complex brain to allow it. Logically one would expect the new thoughts to appear immediately upon enlargement, but no, we both recognize the delay (stasis).
Totally wrong! My theory is that brain expansion comes from the drive to IMPLEMENT the soul's new concepts, not to HAVE them. In the past these concepts would have been IMPLEMENTED by complexification until the capacity for complexification reached its limit, and so additional cells were required to IMPLEMENT the new concept. Hence expansion. The dualist’s soul can have new thoughts at any time, and complexification and enlargement are a RESPONSE to new thoughts, not the cause. Stasis resulted from the fact that there were no new thoughts that required enlargement - not surprising if homos were able to survive as they were. Even today,the lost tribes of the Amazon have to a large extent prolonged the sapiens period of stasis. This would have ended when certain individual souls thought up new concepts that eventually led to our civilization.
dhw: Why do you keep restricting your God’s inventiveness? If he can invent an autonomous mechanism for complexification, why must he preprogramme or personally dabble each enlargement – the only guidelines you can offer? And why is autonomous complexification purposeful but autonomous enlargement would be without a purpose?
DAVID: Complexification obviously comes with guidelines as our oversized brain was used and developed, casting off unnecessary neuron webs. How did our brain know what to safely cast off if not guided?
You have not answered any of my questions. Nor have you ever explained why your God would have created an oversized brain in the first place. The answer to your own question is that complexification was so efficient that certain cells were not being used, and if something is not used, it will disappear. What is your theory? God created an oversized brain and then stepped in to remove all the cells that were not needed? And would you please answer my questions now.
dhw: You have your God dabbling with a group of homos, simultaneously expanding their brains, skulls and pelvises overnight. I suggest a more gradual process, no doubt with casualties (and a lot of pain) on the way, as the pelvis responds to the need for expansion until eventually and naturally only the larger pelvis survives. We cannot reasonably expect to find fossils recording every stage of transition. Why do you find this hypothesis less convincing than your own?
DAVID: Simple. All evolution shows is full gaps with complete new forms on arrival. Forget Darwin.
DAVID: See the video for today, noting all new species arrived competently designed and fully functional, no Darwain gradualism.
https://youtu.be/aJua-0FpmnI
Thank you for this excellent video. In our context, however, the discussion is not about new species in the sense of totally new organs and phyla. The brain already existed, and expansion did not constitute “novelty”.
dhw: Every fossil was once a complete form! And every new fossil find is a sensation, because fossils are so rare. Therefore all the fossil record shows is a few dots instead of a continuous line. Of course there are gaps! Why do you find this so difficult to conceive, and yet you can imagine your God choosing a group of homos and somehow reaching into their brains, skulls and pelvises to engineer an overnight expansion?
DAVID: Your thoughts are fully desperation. The gaps are real and fully recognized as a problem for Darwin thought, which you can't seem to leave behind:
The video. The first five minutes make the point. Note Eldridge and Gould both agreed about the gaps and invented a weird punctuated equilibrium theory, that was entirely descriptive and of no real value.
As above, you have switched the discussion from the development of an existing organ to the origin of species. I disagree with you about the value of “punctuated equilibrium”, but that is a totally different subject.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, June 23, 2020, 20:08 (1612 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Your theory implies the ability for immediate new thought, since the brain is under your idea of a command to new thinking. I always refer to long stasis.
dhw: I don’t know what your first sentence means.
DAVID: I don't know why you have a problem. Your theory, as you present, it is that brain expansion comes from the drive to have new concepts, and it requires a larger more complex brain to allow it. Logically one would expect the new thoughts to appear immediately upon enlargement, but no, we both recognize the delay (stasis).
dhw: Totally wrong! My theory is that brain expansion comes from the drive to IMPLEMENT the soul's new concepts, not to HAVE them. In the past these concepts would have been IMPLEMENTED by complexification until the capacity for complexification reached its limit, and so additional cells were required to IMPLEMENT the new concept. Hence expansion. The dualist’s soul can have new thoughts at any time, and complexification and enlargement are a RESPONSE to new thoughts, not the cause. Stasis resulted from the fact that there were no new thoughts that required enlargement - not surprising if homos were able to survive as they were.
Same contradiction: your soul wants new concepts to develop, but delays after the adequate new brain is present for them to reach fruition. Why the wait? We differ in the main start to this discussion. You want the soul to have thoughts without a proper sized brain to develop the thoughts. You don't and I do believe the soul in life can only create thoughts by using existing brain circuits. And we disagree constantly about implementation. Design is hard, implementation is easy in my opinion having performed those mechanism many times.
dhw: You have not answered any of my questions. Nor have you ever explained why your God would have created an oversized brain in the first place. The answer to your own question is that complexification was so efficient that certain cells were not being used, and if something is not used, it will disappear. What is your theory? God created an oversized brain and then stepped in to remove all the cells that were not needed? And would you please answer my questions now.
No His complexification mechanism ran on its own.
DAVID: See the video for today, noting all new species arrived competently designed and fully functional, no Darwain gradualism.
dhw: Thank you for this excellent video. In our context, however, the discussion is not about new species in the sense of totally new organs and phyla. The brain already existed, and expansion did not constitute “novelty”.
The point of the video is not your sidestep. Each form arrives completely designed to function completely, nothing left out for the stage reached. No aspect of adaptation found. Gaps are not explained by any natural mechanism we can think of.
dhw: Every fossil was once a complete form! And every new fossil find is a sensation, because fossils are so rare. Therefore all the fossil record shows is a few dots instead of a continuous line. Of course there are gaps! Why do you find this so difficult to conceive, and yet you can imagine your God choosing a group of homos and somehow reaching into their brains, skulls and pelvises to engineer an overnight expansion?DAVID: Your thoughts are fully desperation. The gaps are real and fully recognized as a problem for Darwin thought, which you can't seem to leave behind:
The video. The first five minutes make the point. Note Eldridge and Gould both agreed about the gaps and invented a weird punctuated equilibrium theory, that was entirely descriptive and of no real value.[/i]
dhw: As above, you have switched the discussion from the development of an existing organ to the origin of species. I disagree with you about the value of “punctuated equilibrium”, but that is a totally different subject.
No it isn't. We are arguing about sapiens' brain and how it arrived and why it is in the form it is at arrival.
Brain expansion
dhw: […] Stasis resulted from the fact that there were no new thoughts that required enlargement - not surprising if homos were able to survive as they were.
DAVID: Same contradiction: your soul wants new concepts to develop, but delays after the adequate new brain is present for them to reach fruition. Why the wait?
What delays are you talking about? In my theory, expansion happens when the existing brain does not have the capacity to implement (bring to fruition) a new concept thought up by the soul. The process of implementation leads to the expansion. From then on, there may be no new concepts (stasis) or any new concepts will be implemented through the existing capacity for complexification until once again the capacity proves inadequate, and we have the next expansion. What wait are you talking about?
DAVID: We differ in the main start to this discussion. 1) You want the soul to have thoughts without a proper sized brain to develop the thoughts. 2) You don't and I do believe the soul in life can only create thoughts by using existing brain circuits. 3) And we disagree constantly about implementation. Design is hard, implementation is easy in my opinion having performed those mechanism many times.
I’ve inserted numbers for the sake of brevity: 1) Correct: each expansion is due to the fact that the existing capacity for complexification is not sufficient for the material implementation of a particular new concept. 2) Wrong. Of course the soul has to use existing brain circuits – they provide all the information on which the soul’s original thoughts are based. 3) Implementation includes design. You have clearly forgotten our example, so here it is again for the umpteenth time. Small-brained homo: “Me want kill animal; me go close, me get injured; me need weapon to kill from distance.” THAT is the new concept. Nothing more. From now on, the process of implementation begins: it incorporates every facet of design right from scratch, every calculation, every experiment, every movement: it is not confined to the action of fixing a sharp stone to a stick – which seems to be your definition – because even the idea of a sharp stone fixed to a stick has to be developed from that first thought. The process begins with existing information, but from then on expansion results from the soul using the brain to provide more and more information in an ongoing learning process as the original thought is transformed into a material reality.
dhw: The answer to your own question is that complexification was so efficient that certain cells were not being used, and if something is not used, it will disappear. What is your theory? God created an oversized brain and then stepped in to remove all the cells that were not needed?
DAVID: No His complexification mechanism ran on its own.
Thank you. And if he could create an autonomous complexification mechanism, why do you think he was incapable of creating an autonomous enlargement mechanism?
DAVID: See the video for today, noting all new species arrived competently designed and fully functional, no Darwain gradualism.
https://youtu.be/aJua-0FpmnI
dhw: Thank you for this excellent video. In our context, however, the discussion is not about new species in the sense of totally new organs and phyla. The brain already existed, and expansion did not constitute “novelty”.
DAVID: The point of the video is not your sidestep. Each form arrives completely designed to function completely, nothing left out for the stage reached. No aspect of adaptation found. Gaps are not explained by any natural mechanism we can think of.
The video does not deal with the development of a single organ, but with SPECIATION! Of course every fossilized “form” functioned completely – otherwise it couldn’t have lived, but every “form” in the video means every new species. Every fossilized homo had a brain, but that does not mean each brain was a jump from something that never existed before! Nor does it mean that your God stepped in and dabbled with a group of homos, enlarging their brains, skulls and pelvises overnight.
DAVID: Note Eldridge and Gould both agreed about the gaps and invented a weird punctuated equilibrium theory, that was entirely descriptive and of no real value.
dhw: As above, you have switched the discussion from the development of an existing organ to the origin of species. I disagree with you about the value of “punctuated equilibrium”, but that is a totally different subject.
DAVID: No it isn't. We are arguing about sapiens' brain and how it arrived and why it is in the form it is at arrival.
My whole theory explains how and why it developed from earlier brains. “Punctuated equilibrium” provides a perfect explanation for the stasis that seems to bother you so much. After each expansion, there was little or no development for hundreds of thousands of years. That = equilibrium. Our homos were fine as they were. Then the equilibrium was broken by somebody having a bright idea which the existing brain could not implement – hence the expansion. Repeat until H. sapiens, whose expansion was followed by another period or stasis or equilibrium, and then came more bright ideas (implemented by complexification) to end it. Please explain why this theory is not acceptable to you.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, June 24, 2020, 19:07 (1611 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Same contradiction: your soul wants new concepts to develop, but delays after the adequate new brain is present for them to reach fruition. Why the wait?
dhw: What delays are you talking about? In my theory, expansion happens when the existing brain does not have the capacity to implement (bring to fruition) a new concept thought up by the soul. The process of implementation leads to the expansion.
'Implementation' means the appearance of the new invention at the time the new brain appears. Yet we both agree about a stasis period.
DAVID: We differ in the main start to this discussion. 1) You want the soul to have thoughts without a proper sized brain to develop the thoughts. 2) You don't and I do believe the soul in life can only create thoughts by using existing brain circuits. 3) And we disagree constantly about implementation. Design is hard, implementation is easy in my opinion having performed those mechanism many times.dhw: I’ve inserted numbers for the sake of brevity: 1) Correct: each expansion is due to the fact that the existing capacity for complexification is not sufficient for the material implementation of a particular new concept. 2) Wrong. Of course the soul has to use existing brain circuits – they provide all the information on which the soul’s original thoughts are based. 3) Implementation includes design... The process begins with existing information, but from then on expansion results from the soul using the brain to provide more and more information in an ongoing learning process as the original thought is transformed into a material reality.
Again not my concept: implementation is easy, concept difficult, and in my view the soul cannot think in life without using whatever brain circuits exist, and they must have enough complexity to allow complex concepts.
DAVID: No His complexification mechanism ran on its own.dhw: Thank you. And if he could create an autonomous complexification mechanism, why do you think he was incapable of creating an autonomous enlargement mechanism?
'
I've told you He can with guidelines, which you inexplicably won't accept. Do you think the complexification mechanism is simple to design?
DAVID: The point of the video is not your sidestep. Each form arrives completely designed to function completely, nothing left out for the stage reached. No aspect of adaptation found. Gaps are not explained by any natural mechanism we can think of.
dhw: The video does not deal with the development of a single organ, but with SPECIATION! Of course every fossilized “form” functioned completely – otherwise it couldn’t have lived, but every “form” in the video means every new species.
Exactly the point: each new species is fully formed to function properly, not simple adaptation.
DAVID: Note Eldridge and Gould both agreed about the gaps and invented a weird punctuated equilibrium theory, that was entirely descriptive and of no real value.dhw: As above, you have switched the discussion from the development of an existing organ to the origin of species. I disagree with you about the value of “punctuated equilibrium”, but that is a totally different subject.
DAVID: No it isn't. We are arguing about sapiens' brain and how it arrived and why it is in the form it is at arrival.
dhw: My whole theory explains how and why it developed from earlier brains. “Punctuated equilibrium” provides a perfect explanation for the stasis that seems to bother you so much. After each expansion, there was little or no development for hundreds of thousands of years. That = equilibrium. Our homos were fine as they were. Then the equilibrium was broken by somebody having a bright idea which the existing brain could not implement – hence the expansion. Repeat until H. sapiens, whose expansion was followed by another period or stasis or equilibrium, and then came more bright ideas (implemented by complexification) to end it. Please explain why this theory is not acceptable to you.
Exactly backwards: every new-sized homo brain creates more advanced artifacts. Advanced size and complexity allows advanced inventions to be thought of and produced. Explained over and over. How can 'advanced' ideas force enlargement when the brain complexity does not allow their thought to appear? In life, the soul must use the thought quality of brain it has to create new thought. Proven by artifacts that appear.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, June 24, 2020, 19:09 (1611 days ago) @ David Turell
DAVID: Same contradiction: your soul wants new concepts to develop, but delays after the adequate new brain is present for them to reach fruition. Why the wait?
dhw: What delays are you talking about? In my theory, expansion happens when the existing brain does not have the capacity to implement (bring to fruition) a new concept thought up by the soul. The process of implementation leads to the expansion.
'Implementation' means the appearance of the new invention at the time the new brain appears. Yes, we both agree about a stasis period.
DAVID: We differ in the main start to this discussion. 1) You want the soul to have thoughts without a proper sized brain to develop the thoughts. 2) You don't and I do believe the soul in life can only create thoughts by using existing brain circuits. 3) And we disagree constantly about implementation. Design is hard, implementation is easy in my opinion having performed those mechanism many times.dhw: I’ve inserted numbers for the sake of brevity: 1) Correct: each expansion is due to the fact that the existing capacity for complexification is not sufficient for the material implementation of a particular new concept. 2) Wrong. Of course the soul has to use existing brain circuits – they provide all the information on which the soul’s original thoughts are based. 3) Implementation includes design... The process begins with existing information, but from then on expansion results from the soul using the brain to provide more and more information in an ongoing learning process as the original thought is transformed into a material reality.
Again not my concept: implementation is easy, concept difficult, and in my view the soul cannot think in life without using whatever brain circuits exist, and they must have enough complexity to allow complex concepts.
DAVID: No His complexification mechanism ran on its own.dhw: Thank you. And if he could create an autonomous complexification mechanism, why do you think he was incapable of creating an autonomous enlargement mechanism?
'
I 've told you He can with guidelines, which you inexplicably won't accept. Do you think the complexification mechanism is simple to design?
DAVID: The point of the video is not your sidestep. Each form arrives completely designed to function completely, nothing left out for the stage reached. No aspect of adaptation found. Gaps are not explained by any natural mechanism we can think of.
dhw: The video does not deal with the development of a single organ, but with SPECIATION! Of course every fossilized “form” functioned completely – otherwise it couldn’t have lived, but every “form” in the video means every new species.
Exactly the point: each new species is fully formed to function properly, not simple adaptation, destroying most of Darwin's theory.
DAVID: Note Eldridge and Gould both agreed about the gaps and invented a weird punctuated equilibrium theory, that was entirely descriptive and of no real value.dhw: As above, you have switched the discussion from the development of an existing organ to the origin of species. I disagree with you about the value of “punctuated equilibrium”, but that is a totally different subject.
DAVID: No it isn't. We are arguing about sapiens' brain and how it arrived and why it is in the form it is at arrival.
dhw: My whole theory explains how and why it developed from earlier brains. “Punctuated equilibrium” provides a perfect explanation for the stasis that seems to bother you so much. After each expansion, there was little or no development for hundreds of thousands of years. That = equilibrium. Our homos were fine as they were. Then the equilibrium was broken by somebody having a bright idea which the existing brain could not implement – hence the expansion. Repeat until H. sapiens, whose expansion was followed by another period or stasis or equilibrium, and then came more bright ideas (implemented by complexification) to end it. Please explain why this theory is not acceptable to you.
Exactly backwards: every new-sized homo brain creates more advanced artifacts. Advanced size and complexity allows advanced inventions to be thought of and produced. Explained over and over. How can 'advanced' ideas force enlargement when the brain complexity does not allow their thought to appear? In life, the soul must use the thought quality of brain it has to create new thought. Proven by artifacts that appear.
Brain expansion
DAVID: Same contradiction: your soul wants new concepts to develop, but delays after the adequate new brain is present for them to reach fruition. Why the wait?
dhw: What delays are you talking about? In my theory, expansion happens when the existing brain does not have the capacity to implement (bring to fruition) a new concept thought up by the soul. The process of implementation leads to the expansion.
DAVID: 'Implementation' means the appearance of the new invention at the time the new brain appears. Yet we both agree about a stasis period.
I still don’t understand what contradiction you are talking about. Expansion is caused by the implementation of a concept. I have defined “implementation” as: “every facet of design right from scratch, every calculation, every experiment, every movement.” Maybe this process is gradual, encompassing on-going implementations of concepts, but once the “new brain appears”, it doesn’t expand any more (stasis), because maybe there are no new concepts (stasis), until the process repeats itself thousands of years later.
dhw: The process begins with existing information, but from then on expansion results from the soul using the brain to provide more and more information in an ongoing learning process as the original thought is transformed into a material reality.
DAVID: Again not my concept: implementation is easy, concept difficult, and in my view the soul cannot think in life without using whatever brain circuits exist, and they must have enough complexity to allow complex concepts.
See above for implementation. I keep agreeing that the soul uses existing brain circuits (a) for the information on which concepts are based, and (b) because they are required to implement the concepts. And yes, the circuits must be complex enough – not to “allow” complex concepts but to IMPLEMENT them, and if they are not complex enough to do so, they will need to expand! (The sapiens brain implements concepts through its enhanced and autonomous ability to complexify itself.)
DAVID: His complexification mechanism ran on its own.
dhw: Thank you. And if he could create an autonomous complexification mechanism, why do you think he couldn't create an autonomous enlargement mechanism?
DAVID: I've told you He can with guidelines, which you inexplicably won't accept. Do you think the complexification mechanism is simple to design?
You’ve just said “His complexification mechanism ran on its own”, and now you’re back with your guidelines which = preprogramming or direct dabbling – the exact opposite of “on its own”. If your God designed an autonomous mechanism for complexification, why could he not have designed an autonomous mechanism for expansion? What has “simplicity” got to do with it?
dhw: The video does not deal with the development of a single organ, but with SPECIATION! Of course every fossilized “form” functioned completely – otherwise it couldn’t have lived, but every “form” in the video means every new species.
DAVID: Exactly the point: each new species is fully formed to function properly, not simple adaptation.
You have forgotten the point, which is the ongoing expansion of an existing organ, the brain – not the formation of new species.
DAVID: Note Eldridge and Gould both agreed about the gaps and invented a weird punctuated equilibrium theory, that was entirely descriptive and of no real value.
dhw: […] I disagree with you about the value of “punctuated equilibrium”, but that is a totally different subject.
DAVID: No it isn't. We are arguing about sapiens' brain and how it arrived and why it is in the form it is at arrival.
dhw: My whole theory explains how and why it developed from earlier brains. “Punctuated equilibrium” provides a perfect explanation for the stasis that seems to bother you so much. [I went on to explain precisely how it did so.]
DAVID: Exactly backwards: every new-sized homo brain creates more advanced artifacts. Advanced size and complexity allows advanced inventions to be thought of and produced. Explained over and over. How can 'advanced' ideas force enlargement when the brain complexity does not allow their thought to appear? In life, the soul must use the thought quality of brain it has to create new thought. Proven by artifacts that appear.
I explained the relevance of punctuated equilibrium to stasis, and you have changed the subject back to enlargement and all the points which I have explained “over and “over”. New thoughts appear using EXISTING brain complexity (the spear example). And what on earth is “the thought quality of brain”? Once and for all: in dualism the soul does the thinking. Yes or no? It uses the brain for information and for implementation as defined above. Yes or no? In my theory, the original thought appears in the old smaller brain using existing information, and implementation as defined above forces enlargement. The new artefact and the expanded brain naturally “appear” at the same time. From then on, the soul can produce its new concepts from existing information provided by the brain, and the brain will implement them using its existing complexities, until the next “crisis”, when existing complexities cannot implement another new concept. Hence another expansion. Only when we reach sapiens are the brain’s complexities sufficient to cope with all new concepts.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, June 25, 2020, 18:51 (1610 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Same contradiction: your soul wants new concepts to develop, but delays after the adequate new brain is present for them to reach fruition. Why the wait?
dhw: What delays are you talking about? In my theory, expansion happens when the existing brain does not have the capacity to implement (bring to fruition) a new concept thought up by the soul. The process of implementation leads to the expansion.
DAVID: 'Implementation' means the appearance of the new invention at the time the new brain appears. Yet we both agree about a stasis period.
dhw: I still don’t understand what contradiction you are talking about
Fully explained. Your theory demands expansion from force of a new concept, as I understand it. Which logically brings up the contradiction, why stasis after forced expansion?
DAVID: His complexification mechanism ran on its own.dhw: Thank you. And if he could create an autonomous complexification mechanism, why do you think he couldn't create an autonomous enlargement mechanism?
DAVID: I've told you He can with guidelines, which you inexplicably won't accept. Do you think the complexification mechanism is simple to design?
dhw: You’ve just said “His complexification mechanism ran on its own”, and now you’re back with your guidelines which = preprogramming or direct dabbling – the exact opposite of “on its own”. If your God designed an autonomous mechanism for complexification, why could he not have designed an autonomous mechanism for expansion? What has “simplicity” got to do with it?
I didn't say the complexification was simple. The extra neuron circuits had clear guidelines for the necessary changes. Guidelines work. The over-expansion was necessary.
dhw: The video does not deal with the development of a single organ, but with SPECIATION! Of course every fossilized “form” functioned completely – otherwise it couldn’t have lived, but every “form” in the video means every new species.DAVID: Exactly the point: each new species is fully formed to function properly, not simple adaptation.
dhw: You have forgotten the point, which is the ongoing expansion of an existing organ, the brain – not the formation of new species.
You've forgotten. Each bigger brain is in a new species. Brain don't enlarge in a vacuum.
dhw: My whole theory explains how and why it developed from earlier brains. “Punctuated equilibrium” provides a perfect explanation for the stasis that seems to bother you so much. [I went on to explain precisely how it did so.]DAVID: Exactly backwards: every new-sized homo brain creates more advanced artifacts. Advanced size and complexity allows advanced inventions to be thought of and produced. Explained over and over. How can 'advanced' ideas force enlargement when the brain complexity does not allow their thought to appear? In life, the soul must use the thought quality of brain it has to create new thought. Proven by artifacts that appear.
dhw: I explained the relevance of punctuated equilibrium to stasis, and you have changed the subject back to enlargement and all the points which I have explained “over and “over”. New thoughts appear using EXISTING brain complexity (the spear example). And what on earth is “the thought quality of brain”? Once and for all: in dualism the soul does the thinking. Yes or no? It uses the brain for information and for implementation as defined above. Yes or no?
Yes and no. Please add, in life, the soul must use in its companion brain to create thought, the complexity dependent upon presently existing brain capacity for complex thought.
dhw: In my theory, the original thought appears in the old smaller brain using existing information, and implementation as defined above forces enlargement. The new artefact and the expanded brain naturally “appear” at the same time. From then on, the soul can produce its new concepts from existing information provided by the brain, and the brain will implement them using its existing complexities, until the next “crisis”, when existing complexities cannot implement another new concept. Hence another expansion. Only when we reach sapiens are the brain’s complexities sufficient to cope with all new concepts.
Restating your theory doesn't mean I accept it. I know it so well I could probably write it down for you. Does new-sized brain and artifact appear simultaneously? What happened to stasis? That is the gross weakness of your idea.
Brain expansion
DAVID: Same contradiction: your soul wants new concepts to develop, but delays after the adequate new brain is present for them to reach fruition. Why the wait?
dhw: What delays are you talking about? In my theory, expansion happens when the existing brain does not have the capacity to implement (bring to fruition) a new concept thought up by the soul. The process of implementation leads to the expansion.
DAVID: 'Implementation' means the appearance of the new invention at the time the new brain appears. Yet we both agree about a stasis period.
dhw: I still don’t understand what contradiction you are talking about.
DAVID: Fully explained. Your theory demands expansion from force of a new concept, as I understand it. Which logically brings up the contradiction, why stasis after forced expansion?
Because, as you agreed on the other thread, stasis means nobody came up with any new ideas. What does this contradict? Do you think the implementation of a concept through expansion must automatically lead to new concepts? Why? Yet again, it is the dualist’s soul, not the brain that comes up with concepts.
DAVID: His complexification mechanism ran on its own.
dhw: Thank you. And if he could create an autonomous complexification mechanism, why do you think he couldn't create an autonomous enlargement mechanism?
DAVID: I've told you He can with guidelines, which you inexplicably won't accept. Do you think the complexification mechanism is simple to design?
dhw: You’ve just said “His complexification mechanism ran on its own”, and now you’re back with your guidelines which = preprogramming or direct dabbling – the exact opposite of “on its own”. If your God designed an autonomous mechanism for complexification, why could he not have designed an autonomous mechanism for expansion? What has “simplicity” got to do with it?
DAVID: I didn't say the complexification was simple.
You asked if I thought the complexification was simple to design. I don’t understand the relevance of the question.
DAVID: The extra neuron circuits had clear guidelines for the necessary changes. Guidelines work.
If by that you mean that the extra neuron circuits would have come into being to serve a specific purpose, of course I agree. They would provide the means of implementing the concept which existing neurons could not manage. That is how cell communities work: they RESPOND to new requirements. How does this answer my bolded question above?
DAVID: The over-expansion was necessary.
For what? Your theory has God dabbling more neurons than necessary and then you have the complexification system removing the superfluous ones “on its own”. What a mess! Why can’t you stick to our earlier agreement? In the sapiens brain, complexification took over from expansion and proved so efficient that certain cells were no longer needed.
dhw: The video does not deal with the development of a single organ, but with SPECIATION! Of course every fossilized “form” functioned completely – otherwise it couldn’t have lived, but every “form” in the video means every new species.
DAVID: Exactly the point: each new species is fully formed to function properly, not simple adaptation.
dhw: You have forgotten the point, which is the ongoing expansion of an existing organ, the brain – not the formation of new species.
DAVID: You've forgotten. Each bigger brain is in a new species. Brain don't enlarge in a vacuum.
You are playing around with the word “species”. The different homos and their brains were not brand new life forms with no known antecedent, and you’ve answered your own question. Brains don’t enlarge in a vacuum, they enlarge from brains that already exist. The expanded brain is bigger than the previous brain. It is not a new species!
dhw: New thoughts appear using EXISTING brain complexity (the spear example). And what on earth is “the thought quality of brain”? Once and for all: in dualism the soul does the thinking. Yes or no? It uses the brain for information and for implementation as defined above. Yes or no?
DAVID: Yes and no. Please add, in life, the soul must use in its companion brain to create thought, the complexity dependent upon presently existing brain capacity for complex thought.
I have explained precisely HOW the soul uses the brain. The complexity of thought does not depend on existing brain capacity for THOUGHT. The dualist’s brain does not do the thinking! Stop muddying the waters!
DAVID: Does new-sized brain and artifact appear simultaneously? What happened to stasis? That is the gross weakness of your idea.
Yes, the new-sized brain and the new artefact appear simultaneously, because the artefact can only appear when the brain has finished expanding sufficiently to produce it. What is your problem with stasis? The new-sized brain has implemented the concept. That does not mean that our homo now has to think up lots and lots of new concepts! We have agreed: stasis means “nobody came up with any new ideas”. There is no mystery here. My theory is all the stronger for the fact that you can’t seem to find any other weakness!
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Friday, June 26, 2020, 19:34 (1609 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Fully explained. Your theory demands expansion from force of a new concept, as I understand it. Which logically brings up the contradiction, why stasis after forced expansion?
dhw: Because, as you agreed on the other thread, stasis means nobody came up with any new ideas. What does this contradict? Do you think the implementation of a concept through expansion must automatically lead to new concepts? Why? Yet again, it is the dualist’s soul, not the brain that comes up with concepts.
But as I view it the brain must be complex enough to allow the new concepts. See the other thread.
DAVID: The extra neuron circuits had clear guidelines for the necessary changes. Guidelines work.
dhw: Your theory has God dabbling more neurons than necessary and then you have the complexification system removing the superfluous ones “on its own”. What a mess! Why can’t you stick to our earlier agreement? In the sapiens brain, complexification took over from expansion and proved so efficient that certain cells were no longer needed.
Not a mess. Full capacity for the new uses that would come. The new uses were anticipated. The bold is correct in my view. That doesn't disturb my logic.
dhw: You have forgotten the point, which is the ongoing expansion of an existing organ, the brain – not the formation of new species.
DAVID: You've forgotten. Each bigger brain is in a new species. Brain don't enlarge in a vacuum.
dhw: You are playing around with the word “species”. The different homos and their brains were not brand new life forms with no known antecedent, and you’ve answered your own question. Brains don’t enlarge in a vacuum, they enlarge from brains that already exist. The expanded brain is bigger than the previous brain. It is not a new species!
The change from habilis to erectus is not a new development, and a new species. New sized brain, new skull size, new mother's pelvis and this not species change? You are grasping.
dhw: New thoughts appear using EXISTING brain complexity (the spear example). And what on earth is “the thought quality of brain”? Once and for all: in dualism the soul does the thinking. Yes or no? It uses the brain for information and for implementation as defined above. Yes or no?DAVID: Yes and no. Please add, in life, the soul must use in its companion brain to create thought, the complexity dependent upon presently existing brain capacity for complex thought.
dhw: I have explained precisely HOW the soul uses the brain. The complexity of thought does not depend on existing brain capacity for THOUGHT. The dualist’s brain does not do the thinking! Stop muddying the waters!
I'm not allowed to follow my theory, but only yours counts? The opposite of the bold is exactly my theory and you know it. The soul, in life, must use the existing complex brain neuronal networks to think. More advanced networks, more advanced thought allowed.
DAVID: Does new-sized brain and artifact appear simultaneously? What happened to stasis? That is the gross weakness of your idea.dhw: Yes, the new-sized brain and the new artefact appear simultaneously, because the artefact can only appear when the brain has finished expanding sufficiently to produce it. What is your problem with stasis? The new-sized brain has implemented the concept. That does not mean that our homo now has to think up lots and lots of new concepts! We have agreed: stasis means “nobody came up with any new ideas”. There is no mystery here. My theory is all the stronger for the fact that you can’t seem to find any other weakness!
My explanation of 'stasis' from the other thread applies:
"Stasis does not really apply to you or me. The input in childhood is continuous from everyone and everything that surrounds us. That did not exist in the time frame the author discussed before language really exited. The sapiens brain of 315,000 ya undoubtedly looked and could have acted much like ours, was larger by 200 cc, and yet not used in the way you describe for yourself or me. As we've noted much input by many thinking folks over centuries has created the context of our awareness. It impinges upon us the moment we appear, and is sopped up quickly and constantly by a sponge-like childhood brain.
"My phrase 'learning to use it' implies the additive work done by successive humans over centuries and generations of us. They did the work. We receive the gift of that."
Think your theory is strong?
Brain expansion
DAVID: Your theory demands expansion from force of a new concept, as I understand it. Which logically brings up the contradiction, why stasis after forced expansion?
dhw: Because, as you agreed on the other thread, stasis means nobody came up with any new ideas. What does this contradict? Do you think the implementation of a concept through expansion must automatically lead to new concepts? Why? Yet again, it is the dualist’s soul, not the brain that comes up with concepts.
DAVID: But as I view it the brain must be complex enough to allow the new concepts.
Once again you use the word “allow”. If the dualist’s soul does the thinking, you can certainly argue that it can only use the information given to it by the brain, which must also be complex enough to implement it. How on earth does that come to mean that once the brain has expanded, there should be no stasis and the soul should immediately come up with new ideas? There is no contradiction!
DAVID: The extra neuron circuits had clear guidelines for the necessary changes. Guidelines work.
dhw: Your theory has God dabbling more neurons than necessary and then you have the complexification system removing the superfluous ones “on its own”. What a mess! Why can’t you stick to our earlier agreement? In the sapiens brain, complexification took over from expansion and proved so efficient that certain cells were no longer needed.
DAVID: Not a mess. Full capacity for the new uses that would come. The new uses were anticipated. The bold is correct in my view. That doesn't disturb my logic.
The new brain-size would indeed have full capacity for the new uses, because complexification would take over. What do you mean by the new uses were anticipated? God looked into his crystal ball and knew that humans would one day produce Shakespeare and Einstein and rockets to Mars? That still doesn’t solve the mystery of why, according to you, he dabbled the unnecessary degree of expansion and then left it to autonomous complexification to get rid of the unnecessary bits and pieces. THAT is the illogical mess!
dhw: You have forgotten the point, which is the ongoing expansion of an existing organ, the brain – not the formation of new species. […]
DAVID: The change from habilis to erectus is not a new development, and a new species. New sized brain, new skull size, new mother's pelvis and this not species change? You are grasping.
The video does not deal with new sizes of organs but with species that have no apparent antecedents. A bigger sized organ is not a new organ or a new species. It is you who are grasping.
dhw: New thoughts appear using EXISTING brain complexity (the spear example). And what on earth is “the thought quality of brain”? Once and for all: in dualism the soul does the thinking. Yes or no? It uses the brain for information and for implementation as defined above. Yes or no?
DAVID: Yes and no. Please add, in life, the soul must use in its companion brain to create thought, the complexity dependent upon presently existing brain capacity for complex thought.
dhw: I have explained precisely HOW the soul uses the brain. The complexity of thought does not depend on existing brain capacity for THOUGHT. The dualist’s brain does not do the thinking! Stop muddying the waters!
DAVID: I'm not allowed to follow my theory, but only yours counts? The opposite of the bold is exactly my theory and you know it. The soul, in life, must use the existing complex brain neuronal networks to think. More advanced networks, more advanced thought allowed.
You are juggling with words again. Yes, the dualist’s soul uses the information provided by the existing brain in order to do its thinking. But the existing brain does not have a capacity FOR THOUGHT – its functions, as we have agreed over and over again, are to provide information and to implement (defined earlier) the soul’s thoughts. Your addition to this implies that the brain thinks (the brain’s “capacity for complex thought and earlier "the thought quality of brain"). If you believe that the brain thinks, you are a materialist, and you may well be right. So tell us outright: do you believe the soul does the thinking? Or do you believe that the brain also thinks?
DAVID: Does new-sized brain and artifact appear simultaneously? What happened to stasis? That is the gross weakness of your idea.
dhw: Yes, the new-sized brain and the new artefact appear simultaneously, because the artefact can only appear when the brain has finished expanding sufficiently to produce it. What is your problem with stasis? The new-sized brain has implemented the concept. That does not mean that our homo now has to think up lots and lots of new concepts! We have agreed: stasis means “nobody came up with any new ideas”. There is no mystery here. My theory is all the stronger for the fact that you can’t seem to find any other weakness!
DAVID: My explanation of 'stasis' from the other thread applies.
Dealt with on the other thread.
DAVID: Think your theory is strong?
If your only objection is that you believe a new-sized brain ought to come up immediately with lots of new ideas, then yes indeed. Do you really believe that as soon as the brain expanded, mothers should have produced a load of Shakespeares and Einsteins?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, June 27, 2020, 18:37 (1608 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: If the dualist’s soul does the thinking, you can certainly argue that it can only use the information given to it by the brain, which must also be complex enough to implement it. How on earth does that come to mean that once the brain has expanded, there should be no stasis and the soul should immediately come up with new ideas? There is no contradiction!
The full implication of your theory is that the old brain has a new idea but a newly enlarged brain must appear to implement it. Why a delay of stasis? I am not misquoting or misunderstanding. From Thursday :
dhw: "In my theory, the original thought appears in the old smaller brain using existing information, and implementation as defined above forces enlargement. The new artefact and the expanded brain naturally “appear” at the same time."
dhw: I have explained precisely HOW the soul uses the brain. The complexity of thought does not depend on existing brain capacity for THOUGHT. The dualist’s brain does not do the thinking! Stop muddying the waters!
DAVID: I'm not allowed to follow my theory, but only yours counts? The opposite of the bold is exactly my theory and you know it. The soul, in life, must use the existing complex brain neuronal networks to think. More advanced networks, more advanced thought allowed.dhw: You are juggling with words again. Yes, the dualist’s soul uses the information provided by the existing brain in order to do its thinking. But the existing brain does not have a capacity FOR THOUGHT – its functions, as we have agreed over and over again, are to provide information and to implement (defined earlier) the soul’s thoughts.
Again totally twisting my thoughts. To repeat: in life the soul must use the brain's neuronal circuits to think and create original thought. Only in death can the soul do it separately.
dhw: Your addition to this implies that the brain thinks (the brain’s “capacity for complex thought and earlier "the thought quality of brain"). If you believe that the brain thinks, you are a materialist, and you may well be right. So tell us outright: do you believe the soul does the thinking? Or do you believe that the brain also thinks?
Why repeat distortions I have denied over and over? I am a dualist, not a materialist, and I do not accept your style of dualist theory. See above statement.
Brain expansion
dhw: If the dualist’s soul does the thinking, you can certainly argue that it can only use the information given to it by the brain, which must also be complex enough to implement it.
dhw: How on earth does that come to mean that once the brain has expanded, there should be no stasis and the soul should immediately come up with new ideas? There is no contradiction!
DAVID: The full implication of your theory is that the old brain has a new idea but a newly enlarged brain must appear to implement it. Why a delay of stasis? I am not misquoting or misunderstanding. From Thursday :
dhw: "In my theory, the original thought appears in the old smaller brain using existing information, and implementation as defined above forces enlargement. The new artefact and the expanded brain naturally “appear” at the same time."
The only delay is the period of time it takes for implementation! That is not "stasis"! Implementing the new concept is the process which expands the brain, and at the end of that process of expansion, the new concept has taken on its material form – the artefact. Stasis is the period of time (thousands of years) that follows this act of expansion, because either there are no new big ideas, or whatever ideas there are can be implemented by the existing brain.
dhw: […] the dualist’s soul uses the information provided by the existing brain in order to do its thinking. But the existing brain does not have a capacity FOR THOUGHT – its functions, as we have agreed over and over again, are to provide information and to implement (defined earlier) the soul’s thoughts.
DAVID: Again totally twisting my thoughts. To repeat: in life the soul must use the brain's neuronal circuits to think and create original thought. Only in death can the soul do it separately.
There is no twisting. We agree (though I’ll stay neutral on the question of an afterlife.) But I specify HOW the soul uses the brain, whereas you come up with confusing expressions, as quoted here:
dhw: Your addition to this implies that the brain thinks (the brain’s “capacity for complex thought" and earlier "the thought quality of brain"). If you believe that the brain thinks, you are a materialist, and you may well be right. So tell us outright: do you believe the soul does the thinking? Or do you believe that the brain also thinks?
DAVID: Why repeat distortions I have denied over and over? I am a dualist, not a materialist, and I do not accept your style of dualist theory. See above statement.
You have already accepted it, but insisted on an addition to which I have objected. Here is the exchange:
dhw: In dualism the soul does the thinking. Yes or no? It uses the brain for information and for implementation as defined above. Yes or no?
DAVID: Yes and no. Please add, in life, the soul must use its companion brain to create thought, the complexity dependent upon presently existing brain capacity for complex thought.[/b]
I do not accept that dualism endows the brain with a capacity for thought. Otherwise you have repeatedly accepted my own “style of dualist theory”.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, June 28, 2020, 20:54 (1607 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: The full implication of your theory is that the old brain has a new idea but a newly enlarged brain must appear to implement it. Why a delay of stasis? I am not misquoting or misunderstanding. From Thursday :
dhw: "In my theory, the original thought appears in the old smaller brain using existing information, and implementation as defined above forces enlargement. The new artefact and the expanded brain naturally “appear” at the same time."dhw: The only delay is the period of time it takes for implementation! That is not "stasis"! Implementing the new concept is the process which expands the brain, and at the end of that process of expansion, the new concept has taken on its material form – the artefact. Stasis is the period of time (thousands of years) that follows this act of expansion, because either there are no new big ideas, or whatever ideas there are can be implemented by the existing brain.
We have no idea when the idea appears or the manufacture of the new implement is performed. In archaeological dig both are found together. So all that can be said is the artifact is related to and the result of the newly-size brain. Any presumption after that is all invention. The only brain we know shrinks with heavy use.
dhw: […] the dualist’s soul uses the information provided by the existing brain in order to do its thinking. But the existing brain does not have a capacity FOR THOUGHT – its functions, as we have agreed over and over again, are to provide information and to implement (defined earlier) the soul’s thoughts.DAVID: Again totally twisting my thoughts. To repeat: in life the soul must use the brain's neuronal circuits to think and create original thought. Only in death can the soul do it separately.
dhw: There is no twisting. We agree (though I’ll stay neutral on the question of an afterlife.) But I specify HOW the soul uses the brain, whereas you come up with confusing expressions, as quoted here:
dhw: Your addition to this implies that the brain thinks (the brain’s “capacity for complex thought" and earlier "the thought quality of brain"). If you believe that the brain thinks, you are a materialist, and you may well be right. So tell us outright: do you believe the soul does the thinking? Or do you believe that the brain also thinks?DAVID: Why repeat distortions I have denied over and over? I am a dualist, not a materialist, and I do not accept your style of dualist theory. See above statement.
dhw: You have already accepted it, but insisted on an addition to which I have objected. Here is the exchange:
dhw: In dualism the soul does the thinking. Yes or no? It uses the brain for information and for implementation as defined above. Yes or no?DAVID: Yes and no. Please add, in life, the soul must use its companion brain to create thought, the complexity dependent upon presently existing brain capacity for complex thought.[/b]
dhw: I do not accept that dualism endows the brain with a capacity for thought. Otherwise you have repeatedly accepted my own “style of dualist theory”.
I didn't say or believe what is in the bold. What I state is the soul must use the brain's neuronal networks in order to have/create thoughts while in life and attached to/part of the living person. My position is quite clear. Again, it is only in death or NDE that the soul thinks on its own. Same repeat after repeat. What isn't clear?
Brain expansion
DAVID: Your discussion of stasis is the antithesis of your theory that brains grow because of the need for implementation of an idea held by the previous brain.
dhw: Small brain produces big new idea. Brain expands in order to implement big new idea. No more big new ideas for thousands of years. Brain does not expand for thousands of years. That is stasis. Where’s the antithesis?
DAVID: But the problem with your idea is that brains do expand followed by long periods of stasis. Then the product of the new idea's product that you think causes the expansion shows up. Why the delay if the idea is what drives expansion?
The product of the idea doesn’t show up after a long period of stasis! There is no delay. You have very obligingly answered for me:
DAVID: We have no idea when the idea appears or the manufacture of the new implement is performed. In archaeological dig both are found together. So all that can be said is the artifact is related to and the result of the newly-size brain.
Precisely: they are found together, and the artefact is the result of the newly expanded brain. Then comes stasis. Thank you.
DAVID: I am a dualist, not a materialist, and I do not accept your style of dualist theory.
dhw: You have already accepted it, but insisted on an addition to which I have objected. Here is the exchange:
dhw: In dualism the soul does the thinking. Yes or no? It uses the brain for information and for implementation as defined above. Yes or no?
DAVID: Yes and no. Please add, in life, the soul must use its companion brain to create thought, the complexity dependent upon presently existing brain capacity for complex thought.
dhw: I do not accept that dualism endows the brain with a capacity for thought. Otherwise you have repeatedly accepted my own “style of dualist theory”.
DAVID: I didn't say or believe what is in the bold.
I have quoted you!
DAVID: What I state is the soul must use the brain's neuronal networks in order to have/create thoughts while in life and attached to/part of the living person.
Yes, we agree! And I have explained how the soul uses the brain, and you have agreed. But you added “brain capacity for complex thought”. If you now wish to withdraw that, please say so and we can shake hands.
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DAVID: What I have described is species learn to use what they are given, and it applies to body as well as brain. Consider gymnastics as a recently developed sport, and the newly seen extreme varieties of maneuvers.
dhw: We consciously perform actions in order to use our bodies in specific ways. We can also consciously perform actions in order to train parts of the brain – e.g. memory exercises. However, when we come up with new ideas and concepts, we are not consciously trying to complexify (or expand) particular areas of our brain! We don’t even know what is going on in our brain! That is why I am flummoxed by the expression “learning to use the brain”, although in some weird way you seem to think your God expanded the sapiens brain so that we would hang around for thousands of years doing nothing with it until in some weird way we learned what we could do with it. When you come up with your theories of evolution and God in control but not in control, do you tell yourself: “Now I am learning to use my cortex and my cerebellum”?
DAVID: Silly comments. I'm well past the stasis for homo sapiens and so are you. 315,000 years ago in Morocco, they had a bigger brain, but did not know how to use it in full capacity as we do now and our forebears learned to do over time, and our teachers and parents and others taught you and I to do now. Unapproached, uncontacted, tribes in the Amazon still aren't using all of their brain capacity. I am analogically comparing the brain to learning piano playing, using an instrument, not a concept difficult to comprehend.
Mystery: in your theory, your God expanded the brain approx 280,000 years before H. sapiens made any significant progress. For some reason, you seem to think this denotes planning, and I asked what was his purpose for the period of stasis. You answered that it was for us to “learn to use the brain”. I don’t understand how you learn to use the brain by doing nothing special for 280,000 years. Stasis has followed every expansion, and I used the Amazon tribes as examples of stasis continuing even now. Learning to play the piano does not mean learning to use the brain. We use our brain in order to gather information and to implement our thoughts. We don't consciously make all the connections and complexify it! And there is nobody on earth who can use the brain to full capacity, because there is nobody on earth who can know everything there is to know or implement every thought that can be implemented.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Monday, June 29, 2020, 18:16 (1606 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: We have no idea when the idea appears or the manufacture of the new implement is performed. In archaeological dig both are found together. So all that can be said is the artifact is related to and the result of the newly-size brain.
dhw: Precisely: they are found together, and the artefact is the result of the newly expanded brain. Then comes stasis. Thank you.
Again distorting. You and I have no idea when stasis occurs related to anciently produced new artifact. We know in sapiens the stasis from 315,000 years ago to 50-70,000 years ago.
DAVID: I didn't say or believe what is in the bold.I have quoted you!
DAVID: What I state is the soul must use the brain's neuronal networks in order to have/create thoughts while in life and attached to/part of the living person.
dhw: Yes, we agree! And I have explained how the soul uses the brain, and you have agreed. But you added “brain capacity for complex thought”. If you now wish to withdraw that, please say so and we can shake hands.
My position: Advanced thought by the soul requires the brain to have advanced neuronal webs
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DAVID: What I have described is species learn to use what they are given, and it applies to body as well as brain. Consider gymnastics as a recently developed sport, and the newly seen extreme varieties of maneuvers.dhw: We consciously perform actions in order to use our bodies in specific ways. We can also consciously perform actions in order to train parts of the brain – e.g. memory exercises. However, when we come up with new ideas and concepts, we are not consciously trying to complexify (or expand) particular areas of our brain! We don’t even know what is going on in our brain! That is why I am flummoxed by the expression “learning to use the brain”, although in some weird way you seem to think your God expanded the sapiens brain so that we would hang around for thousands of years doing nothing with it until in some weird way we learned what we could do with it. When you come up with your theories of evolution and God in control but not in control, do you tell yourself: “Now I am learning to use my cortex and my cerebellum”?
DAVID: Silly comments. I'm well past the stasis for homo sapiens and so are you. 315,000 years ago in Morocco, they had a bigger brain, but did not know how to use it in full capacity as we do now and our forebears learned to do over time, and our teachers and parents and others taught you and I to do now. Unapproached, uncontacted, tribes in the Amazon still aren't using all of their brain capacity. I am analogically comparing the brain to learning piano playing, using an instrument, not a concept difficult to comprehend.
dhw: Mystery: in your theory, your God expanded the brain approx 280,000 years before H. sapiens made any significant progress. For some reason, you seem to think this denotes planning, and I asked what was his purpose for the period of stasis. You answered that it was for us to “learn to use the brain”. I don’t understand how you learn to use the brain by doing nothing special for 280,000 years. Stasis has followed every expansion, and I used the Amazon tribes as examples of stasis continuing even now. Learning to play the piano does not mean learning to use the brain. We use our brain in order to gather information and to implement our thoughts. We don't consciously make all the connections and complexify it! And there is nobody on earth who can use the brain to full capacity, because there is nobody on earth who can know everything there is to know or implement every thought that can be implemented.
It is your mystery alone. Of course we are still expanding our use of the brain. As for 315,000 years ago, they were using it at a simple level and bit by bit learned to use it for more complex activities. As for length of time, it is consistent with what we know about all of evolution and the time it took. I don't worry about God's reasons or His purposes. That is always your issue. As for the piano, I've learned to play as a child. You have no idea of the finger coordination that is a brain-learned process as well as the timing of the rhythm.
Brain expansion
DAVID: We have no idea when the idea appears or the manufacture of the new implement is performed. In archaeological dig both are found together. So all that can be said is the artifact is related to and the result of the newly-size brain. (dhw's bold)
dhw: Precisely: they are found together, and the artefact is the result of the newly expanded brain. Then comes stasis. Thank you.
DAVID: Again distorting. You and I have no idea when stasis occurs related to anciently produced new artifact. We know in sapiens the stasis from 315,000 years ago to 50-70,000 years ago.
We know that for hundreds of thousands of years, australopithecus, habilis, erectus & Co hung around without making much progress with their bigger brains. If we don’t know precisely when the artefacts were produced, then it is perfectly possible that the very first of them was the CAUSE of the expanded brain (i.e. marked their beginning). Then of course they would have continued to produce them from that moment onwards.
DAVID: I didn't say or believe what is in the bold.
I have quoted you!
DAVID: What I state is the soul must use the brain's neuronal networks in order to have/create thoughts while in life and attached to/part of the living person.
dhw: Yes, we agree! And I have explained how the soul uses the brain, and you have agreed. But you added “brain capacity for complex thought”. If you now wish to withdraw that, please say so and we can shake hands.
DAVID: My position: Advanced thought by the soul requires the brain to have advanced neuronal webs.
Agreed. Otherwise, the soul would not have the information needed for its thoughts and would not be able to implement its thoughts. This does not mean that the brain has a capacity for thought, complex or otherwise.
dhw: Mystery: in your theory, your God expanded the brain approx 280,000 years before H. sapiens made any significant progress. For some reason, you seem to think this denotes planning, and I asked what was his purpose for the period of stasis. You answered that it was for us to “learn to use the brain”. I don’t understand how you learn to use the brain by doing nothing special for 280,000 years. Stasis has followed every expansion, and I used the Amazon tribes as examples of stasis continuing even now. Learning to play the piano does not mean learning to use the brain. We use our brain in order to gather information and to implement our thoughts. We don't consciously make all the connections and complexify it! And there is nobody on earth who can use the brain to full capacity, because there is nobody on earth who can know everything there is to know or implement every thought that can be implemented.
DAVID: It is your mystery alone. Of course we are still expanding our use of the brain.
Yes indeed. The mystery is why, as you claim, your God expanded the brain 315,000 years ago but sapiens didn’t make much progress for approx. 280,000 years (= stasis). You claim that this was so that sapiens could “learn to use the brain”. I don’t understand how you can learn to use the brain by doing nothing, and I didn’t understand what you meant by “learning” to use it anyway. However, see below, as your piano example has made me change my mind to a degree.
DAVID: As for 315,000 years ago, they were using it at a simple level and bit by bit learned to use it for more complex activities.
I thought your point was that they didn’t start to use it until there was a sudden explosion of new activity that led to civilization as we know it. Hence 280,000 years of “stasis”.
DAVID: As for length of time, it is consistent with what we know about all of evolution and the time it took. I don't worry about God's reasons or His purposes. That is always your issue.
You inform us of your interpretation of your God’s reasons or purposes, and prefer not to worry about the illogicality of your interpretation.
DAVID: As for the piano, I've learned to play as a child. You have no idea of the finger coordination that is a brain-learned process as well as the timing of the rhythm.
I also play the piano and am totally aware of the coordination required, as my brain implements the “thoughts” of the music and directs my fingers accordingly. But you are right: there are many such activities that do require a conscious use of the brain’s abilities through specific forms of learning/training, although most of the time our use of them is unconscious. I’ll withdraw my objection to the term, and thank you for the example. However, this still doesn’t solve the mystery of why your God gave sapiens his big brain BEFORE it was needed, and how sapiens was able to learn to use it by doing nothing.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, June 30, 2020, 18:44 (1605 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Again distorting. You and I have no idea when stasis occurs related to anciently produced new artifact. We know in sapiens the stasis from 315,000 years ago to 50-70,000 years ago.
dhw: We know that for hundreds of thousands of years, australopithecus, habilis, erectus & Co hung around without making much progress with their bigger brains. If we don’t know precisely when the artefacts were produced, then it is perfectly possible that the very first of them was the CAUSE of the expanded brain (i.e. marked their beginning). Then of course they would have continued to produce them from that moment onwards.
The usual 'anything is possible' interpretation, but a change from the past approach in a way. Your past thought was that a design/ concept originated in a smaller brain which then enlarged only when the concept was manufactured using the new brain. But you are now accepting a bigger brain appears first followed by long stasis. So I raise the same question I've had. If the idea exists, why the stasis?
DAVID: What I state is the soul must use the brain's neuronal networks in order to have/create thoughts while in life and attached to/part of the living person.
dhw: Yes, we agree! And I have explained how the soul uses the brain, and you have agreed. But you added “brain capacity for complex thought”. If you now wish to withdraw that, please say so and we can shake hands.
DAVID: My position: Advanced thought by the soul requires the brain to have advanced neuronal webs.dhw: Agreed. Otherwise, the soul would not have the information needed for its thoughts and would not be able to implement its thoughts. This does not mean that the brain has a capacity for thought, complex or otherwise.
The bold is your misunderstanding. We both agree, The brain cannot think without the soul.
DAVID: As for 315,000 years ago, they were using it at a simple level and bit by bit learned to use it for more complex activities.dhw: I thought your point was that they didn’t start to use it until there was a sudden explosion of new activity that led to civilization as we know it. Hence 280,000 years of “stasis”.
The has been a recent explosion, starting with more complete language, but socializing and other concepts were added slowly before that.
DAVID: As for length of time, it is consistent with what we know about all of evolution and the time it took. I don't worry about God's reasons or His purposes. That is always your issue.dhw: You inform us of your interpretation of your God’s reasons or purposes, and prefer not to worry about the illogicality of your interpretation.
Illogicality is something you have problems with. I don't and am content with my theories.
DAVID: As for the piano, I've learned to play as a child. You have no idea of the finger coordination that is a brain-learned process as well as the timing of the rhythm.dhw: I also play the piano and am totally aware of the coordination required, as my brain implements the “thoughts” of the music and directs my fingers accordingly. But you are right: there are many such activities that do require a conscious use of the brain’s abilities through specific forms of learning/training, although most of the time our use of them is unconscious. I’ll withdraw my objection to the term, and thank you for the example. However, this still doesn’t solve the mystery of why your God gave sapiens his big brain BEFORE it was needed, and how sapiens was able to learn to use it by doing nothing.
You've just agreed we didn't 'do nothing' but slowly added some concepts until the language developed and concepts exploded. We know the brain was oversized, but my explanation is that the extra neuron circuits allowed for a well-designed complexification. God gave us free will and I don't think He knew exactly how we would develop our use of the brain. As an example, we invented our complex language. He did not give it to us, but all the parts of the brain we use in speaking, reading, and writing were there for us to incorporate them.
Brain expansion
dhw: We know that for hundreds of thousands of years, australopithecus, habilis, erectus & Co hung around without making much progress with their bigger brains. If we don’t know precisely when the artefacts were produced, then it is perfectly possible that the very first of them was the CAUSE of the expanded brain (i.e. marked their beginning). Then of course they would have continued to produce them from that moment onwards.
DAVID: The usual 'anything is possible' interpretation, but a change from the past approach in a way. Your past thought was that a design/ concept originated in a smaller brain which then enlarged only when the concept was manufactured using the new brain. But you are now accepting a bigger brain appears first followed by long stasis. So I raise the same question I've had. If the idea exists, why the stasis?
There is no change, but simply a continued muddling of my theory on your part. Once more: small brain comes up with new big idea. Brain expands through implementation of idea. Artefact and expanded brain appear simultaneously because it was the process of designing and manufacturing the original concept that CAUSED the bigger brain! After that, plenty more artefacts but no more “big ideas” whose implementation demands greater capacity, and so there is a period of stasis. I don’t know why you find this so difficult to understand.
DAVID: What I state is the soul must use the brain's neuronal networks in order to have/create thoughts while in life and attached to/part of the living person.
dhw: Yes, we agree! And I have explained how the soul uses the brain, and you have agreed. But you added “brain capacity for complex thought”. If you now wish to withdraw that, please say so and we can shake hands.
DAVID: My position: Advanced thought by the soul requires the brain to have advanced neuronal webs.
dhw: Agreed. Otherwise, the soul would not have the information needed for its thoughts and would not be able to implement its thoughts. This does not mean that the brain has a capacity for thought, complex or otherwise.
DAVID: The bold is your misunderstanding. We both agree, The brain cannot think without the soul.
We emphatically disagree! The dualist’s brain does not do the thinking! The soul does the thinking, and uses the brain, as above.
DAVID: As for 315,000 years ago, they were using it at a simple level and bit by bit learned to use it for more complex activities.
dhw: So were there 280,000 years of “stasis” or not?
DAVID: The has been a recent explosion, starting with more complete language, but socializing and other concepts were added slowly before that.
As I understood it, your theory was that your God expanded the sapiens brain, but it took sapiens 280,000 years to “learn to use it”. Please tell us how early sapiens differed in socializing and "other concepts" from erectus, and also what you think caused the recent explosion. And please tell us what is the point you are trying to make.
dhw: […] this still doesn’t solve the mystery of why your God gave sapiens his big brain BEFORE it was needed, and how sapiens was able to learn to use it by doing nothing.
DAVID: You've just agreed we didn't 'do nothing' but slowly added some concepts until the language developed and concepts exploded.
No I haven’t. You just told us that!
DAVID: We know the brain was oversized, but my explanation is that the extra neuron circuits allowed for a well-designed complexification.
The extra neurons proved to be unnecessary! Complexification worked without them, which is why they disappeared.
DAVID: God gave us free will and I don't think He knew exactly how we would develop our use of the brain. As an example, we invented our complex language. He did not give it to us, but all the parts of the brain we use in speaking, reading, and writing were there for us to incorporate them.
I’m quite happy with the concept of a God who doesn’t know what’s coming. It actually forms part of my own theory of evolution generally, if you remember. And it fits in nicely with your perfect God who can’t create a perfect system, or with my God who deliberately creates an imperfect system. All rather “humanizing”, but as you rightly say, God probably has patterns of thought similar to ours. I don’t know how this explains his giving us more neurons than we needed. And how about when he expanded the brains of all our predecessors? Do you think he knew or didn’t know they would produce their various tools and weapons? I must say I've lost the thread of this discussion, so I eagerly await an explanation of the point you are trying to make.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, July 01, 2020, 18:05 (1604 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: The usual 'anything is possible' interpretation, but a change from the past approach in a way. Your past thought was that a design/ concept originated in a smaller brain which then enlarged only when the concept was manufactured using the new brain. But you are now accepting a bigger brain appears first followed by long stasis. So I raise the same question I've had. If the idea exists, why the stasis?
dhw: There is no change, but simply a continued muddling of my theory on your part. Once more: small brain comes up with new big idea. Brain expands through implementation of idea. Artefact and expanded brain appear simultaneously because it was the process of designing and manufacturing the original concept that CAUSED the bigger brain! After that, plenty more artefacts but no more “big ideas” whose implementation demands greater capacity, and so there is a period of stasis. I don’t know why you find this so difficult to understand.
I've understood your fantasy. The brain expands with no stasis, makes its new idea and then goes to sleep for some time for a delayed stasis. The only problem for you is the history we know of sapiens. The Moroccan 315,000 yo fossils did not come with new artifacts. Then nothing for 250,000 years.
DAVID: The bold is your misunderstanding. We both agree, The brain cannot think without the soul.dhw: We emphatically disagree! The dualist’s brain does not do the thinking! The soul does the thinking, and uses the brain, as above.
I've said the same thing in different words. Brain 'thinking' is soul driven. Brain cannot think without the soul using it.
dhw: […] this still doesn’t solve the mystery of why your God gave sapiens his big brain BEFORE it was needed, and how sapiens was able to learn to use it by doing nothing.DAVID: We know the brain was oversized, but my explanation is that the extra neuron circuits allowed for a well-designed complexification.
dhw: The extra neurons proved to be unnecessary! Complexification worked without them, which is why they disappeared.
Already answered:
DAVID: God gave us free will and I don't think He knew exactly how we would develop our use of the brain. As an example, we invented our complex language. He did not give it to us, but all the parts of the brain we use in speaking, reading, and writing were there for us to incorporate them.
dhw: I’m quite happy with the concept of a God who doesn’t know what’s coming. It actually forms part of my own theory of evolution generally, if you remember. And it fits in nicely with your perfect God who can’t create a perfect system, or with my God who deliberately creates an imperfect system. All rather “humanizing”, but as you rightly say, God probably has patterns of thought similar to ours. I don’t know how this explains his giving us more neurons than we needed. And how about when he expanded the brains of all our predecessors? Do you think he knew or didn’t know they would produce their various tools and weapons? I must say I've lost the thread of this discussion, so I eagerly await an explanation of the point you are trying to make.
You seem to have forgotten free will. I don't, as above, think God knows exactly what we will come up with as time passes. The bold, as you keep deliberately repeating, is wrong. God thinks logically as we do, but nothing more in terms of humanized desires on His part. Complexification, as a brain plasticity process, needed extra neuron networks for careful tailoring as sapiens developed various uses and concepts. Allows for unexpected use developments.
Brain expansion
DAVID: The usual 'anything is possible' interpretation, but a change from the past approach in a way. Your past thought was that a design/ concept originated in a smaller brain which then enlarged only when the concept was manufactured using the new brain. But you are now accepting a bigger brain appears first followed by long stasis. So I raise the same question I've had. If the idea exists, why the stasis?
dhw: There is no change, but simply a continued muddling of my theory on your part. Once more: small brain comes up with new big idea. Brain expands through implementation of idea. Artefact and expanded brain appear simultaneously because it was the process of designing and manufacturing the original concept that CAUSED the bigger brain! After that, plenty more artefacts but no more “big ideas” whose implementation demands greater capacity, and so there is a period of stasis. I don’t know why you find this so difficult to understand.
DAVID: I've understood your fantasy. The brain expands with no stasis, makes its new idea and then goes to sleep for some time for a delayed stasis. The only problem for you is the history we know of sapiens. The Moroccan 315,000 yo fossils did not come with new artifacts. Then nothing for 250,000 years.
I really don’t know what you mean now by stasis. We agreed that it was a period in which there were no new developments. What on earth is a “delayed stasis”? Every expansion has been followed by a period in which there were no new developments. Why is that so difficult to understand? The spear (artefact) was a simplified example merely to illustrate how I think the process might work. In general terms: just as the modern brain complexifies IN RESPONSE to new requirements, the earlier brain would have expanded IN RESPONSE to new requirements. I have no idea what these requirements might have been, and I have no idea how long the process would have taken. Nor have you and nor has anyone. But artefacts are the only solid evidence of progress that we have. I’m afraid I still find this more convincing than your own theory that one night your God stepped in and a particular group of homos woke up next morning to find they’d got bigger brains, skulls and pelvises.
DAVID: ... We both agree, The brain cannot think without the soul.
dhw: We emphatically disagree! The dualist’s brain does not do the thinking! The soul does the thinking, and uses the brain, as above.
DAVID: I've said the same thing in different words. Brain 'thinking' is soul driven. Brain cannot think without the soul using it.
You have said the opposite using the same words. I say the dualist’s brain does not think, but the dualist’s soul cannot think without using the brain. (We’d better not start delving into the problem of the afterlife here.)
dhw: […] this still doesn’t solve the mystery of why your God gave sapiens his big brain BEFORE it was needed, and how sapiens was able to learn to use it by doing nothing.
DAVID: God gave us free will and I don't think He knew exactly how we would develop our use of the brain. As an example, we invented our complex language. He did not give it to us, but all the parts of the brain we use in speaking, reading, and writing were there for us to incorporate them.
dhw: […] I don’t know how this explains his giving us more neurons than we needed. And how about when he expanded the brains of all our predecessors? Do you think he knew or didn’t know they would produce their various tools and weapons? I must say I've lost the thread of this discussion, so I eagerly await an explanation of the point you are trying to make.
DAVID: You seem to have forgotten free will. I don't, as above, think God knows exactly what we will come up with as time passes.
Yet more limitations to this once all-powerful, all-knowing and perfect God of yours. But I’m pleased at your conversion to the possibility of a God who doesn’t know it all. In my theory he deliberately created a life system that would be unpredictable. How boring it would all be if he knew exactly what was coming! You now have a choice: he didn’t know what was coming because he has limitations or he didn’t know what was coming because he didn’t WANT to know what was coming.
DAVID: God thinks logically as we do, but nothing more in terms of humanized desires on His part.
See your theory of evolution, and the fact that you don’t know why he chose the method you impose on him for achieving the purpose you impose on him. So how do you know he thinks logically as we do? (But you have agreed that in all my alternatives, he DOES think logically as we do, but according to you, that "humanizes him", and although according to you he probably has thought patterns similar to ours, we mustn't think he does.)
DAVID: Complexification, as a brain plasticity process, needed extra neuron networks for careful tailoring as sapiens developed various uses and concepts. Allows for unexpected use developments.
Yes, complexification replaced expansion in response to new uses and concepts. But according to you, 315,000 years ago your God gave us extra neural networks that were NOT needed, and so we autonomously got rid of them. What is your point?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, July 02, 2020, 19:14 (1603 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I've understood your fantasy. The brain expands with no stasis, makes its new idea and then goes to sleep for some time for a delayed stasis. The only problem for you is the history we know of sapiens. The Moroccan 315,000 yo fossils did not come with new artifacts. Then nothing for 250,000 years.
dhw: I really don’t know what you mean now by stasis. We agreed that it was a period in which there were no new developments. What on earth is a “delayed stasis”? Every expansion has been followed by a period in which there were no new developments. Why is that so difficult to understand? ... But artefacts are the only solid evidence of progress that we have.
We both agree to a period of stasis with no new artifacts. Apply your theory to sapiens only and we have fossil sapiens at many stages of past history with no new artifacts evident, where is the implementation of the 'idea that made the sapiens brain enlargement?
DAVID: ... We both agree, The brain cannot think without the soul.
dhw: We emphatically disagree! The dualist’s brain does not do the thinking! The soul does the thinking, and uses the brain, as above.
DAVID: I've said the same thing in different words. Brain 'thinking' is soul driven. Brain cannot think without the soul using it.
dhw: You have said the opposite using the same words. I say the dualist’s brain does not think, but the dualist’s soul cannot think without using the brain. (We’d better not start delving into the problem of the afterlife here.)
Same meaning, different way of describing.
DAVID: God gave us free will and I don't think He knew exactly how we would develop our use of the brain. As an example, we invented our complex language. He did not give it to us, but all the parts of the brain we use in speaking, reading, and writing were there for us to incorporate them.
dhw: […] I don’t know how this explains his giving us more neurons than we needed. And how about when he expanded the brains of all our predecessors? Do you think he knew or didn’t know they would produce their various tools and weapons? I must say I've lost the thread of this discussion, so I eagerly await an explanation of the point you are trying to make.DAVID: You seem to have forgotten free will. I don't, as above, think God knows exactly what we will come up with as time passes.
dhw: Yet more limitations to this once all-powerful, all-knowing and perfect God of yours. But I’m pleased at your conversion to the possibility of a God who doesn’t know it all. In my theory he deliberately created a life system that would be unpredictable. How boring it would all be if he knew exactly what was coming! You now have a choice: he didn’t know what was coming because he has limitations or he didn’t know what was coming because he didn’t WANT to know what was coming.
More humanizing. God doesn't get bored. And I don't think He knows exactly what we will do in the future as individuals or groups. I'm sorry my view of God's perfection doesn't meet yours?
DAVID: God thinks logically as we do, but nothing more in terms of humanized desires on His part.dhw: See your theory of evolution, and the fact that you don’t know why he chose the method you impose on him for achieving the purpose you impose on him. So how do you know he thinks logically as we do? (But you have agreed that in all my alternatives, he DOES think logically as we do, but according to you, that "humanizes him", and although according to you he probably has thought patterns similar to ours, we mustn't think he does.)
The bold is the usual distortion of my thoughts: we and He use the same logical methods. We cannot know His reasons for His choices, but can guess. We can guess if you wish, but what does it prove?
DAVID: Complexification, as a brain plasticity process, needed extra neuron networks for careful tailoring as sapiens developed various uses and concepts. Allows for unexpected use developments.dhw: Yes, complexification replaced expansion in response to new uses and concepts. But according to you, 315,000 years ago your God gave us extra neural networks that were NOT needed, and so we autonomously got rid of them. What is your point?
Explained above and previously very adequately. Obviously planning for our new uses with extra plasticity.
Brain expansion
DAVID: I've understood your fantasy. The brain expands with no stasis, makes its new idea and then goes to sleep for some time for a delayed stasis. The only problem for you is the history we know of sapiens. The Moroccan 315,000 yo fossils did not come with new artifacts. Then nothing for 250,000 years.
dhw: I really don’t know what you mean now by stasis. We agreed that it was a period in which there were no new developments. What on earth is a “delayed stasis”? Every expansion has been followed by a period in which there were no new developments. Why is that so difficult to understand? ... But artefacts are the only solid evidence of progress that we have.
DAVID: We both agree to a period of stasis with no new artifacts. Apply your theory to sapiens only and we have fossil sapiens at many stages of past history with no new artifacts evident, where is the implementation of the 'idea that made the sapiens brain italenlargement?
First we have nothing for 250,000 years (= stasis), and then we have many stages with nothing, as if there WAS something in between. Please make up your mind. You have left out my statement that nobody knows what requirements the pre-sapiens brain was responding to, and now you’re asking me to tell you! The 315,000-year-old Moroccan fossils were accompanied by their artefacts, but I can’t insist that it was their implementation that caused the expansion. Nor can you insist that expansion took place overnight, with your God stepping in to do a dabble with the brains, skulls and pelvises. What is your point?
dhw: The dualist’s brain does not do the thinking! The soul does the thinking, and uses the brain...
DAVID: I've said the same thing in different words. Brain 'thinking' is soul driven. Brain cannot think without the soul using it.
dhw: You have said the opposite using the same words. I say the dualist’s brain does not think, but the dualist’s soul cannot think without using the brain. (….)
DAVID: Same meaning, different way of describing.
“The brain cannot think without the soul using it” means that the brain CAN think if the soul uses it. The dualist’s brain does not think. It is the soul that thinks. Please stop messing around with words.
DAVID: You seem to have forgotten free will. I don't, as above, think God knows exactly what we will come up with as time passes.
dhw: […] I’m pleased at your conversion to the possibility of a God who doesn’t know it all. In my theory he deliberately created a life system that would be unpredictable. How boring it would all be if he knew exactly what was coming! You now have a choice: he didn’t know what was coming because he has limitations or he didn’t know what was coming because he didn’t WANT to know what was coming.
DAVID: More humanizing. God doesn't get bored. And I don't think He knows exactly what we will do in the future as individuals or groups. I'm sorry my view of God's perfection doesn't meet yours?
I simply asked you to make a choice between his not knowing and his not wanting to know. You now have a God who creates a system full of errors, tries in vain to stop some of them, and doesn’t know what is coming. Please drop the word “perfection”, which is far too vague. Your previously all-powerful, all-controlling, all-knowing God is now revealed to have limited powers, control and knowledge, but somehow this makes him LESS human than a God who knows exactly what he is doing (e.g. deliberate creation of error-strewn system) or who experiments in order to create what he wants to create!
dhw: […] you have agreed that in all my alternatives, he DOES think logically as we do, but according to you, that "humanizes him", and although according to you he probably has thought patterns similar to ours, we mustn't think he does.
DAVID: The bold is the usual distortion of my thoughts: we and He use the same logical methods. We cannot know His reasons for His choices, but can guess. We can guess if you wish, but what does it prove?
What “logical methods”? If I have a single goal to create one thing and the means of achieving it, I will use the means of achieving it. That is my logic. How is that the same logical method as having a single goal to create one thing and the means of achieving it, but not achieving it until after creating millions of other unrelated things?
dhw: …complexification replaced expansion in response to new uses and concepts. But according to you, 315,000 years ago your God gave us extra neural networks that were NOT needed, and so we autonomously got rid of them. What is your point?
DAVID: […] Obviously planning for our new uses with extra plasticity.
Why specially design unnecessary networks which can be discarded? Why not design the right amount of plasticity in the first place? Yet another example of the various weaknesses you are now finding in your previously all-powerful, all-controlling, all-knowing God?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Friday, July 03, 2020, 19:48 (1602 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: We both agree to a period of stasis with no new artifacts. Apply your theory to sapiens only and we have fossil sapiens at many stages of past history with no new artifacts evident, where is the implementation of the 'idea that made the sapiens brain initiate enlargement?
dhw: First we have nothing for 250,000 years (= stasis), and then we have many stages with nothing, as if there WAS something in between. Please make up your mind.
Life went on for 250,000 years with little changed. That is true stasis.
dhw: You have left out my statement that nobody knows what requirements the pre-sapiens brain was responding to, and now you’re asking me to tell you! The 315,000-year-old Moroccan fossils were accompanied by their artefacts, but I can’t insist that it was their implementation that caused the expansion. Nor can you insist that expansion took place overnight, with your God stepping in to do a dabble with the brains, skulls and pelvises. What is your point?
I left out your bold because I don't accept it. You are now struggling to find evidence for your brain growth theory, while we discuss sapiens. I state we had to learn to use our newly given brain. God steps in, which you don't accept.
DAVID: Same meaning, different way of describing.dhw: “The brain cannot think without the soul using it” means that the brain CAN think if the soul uses it. The dualist’s brain does not think. It is the soul that thinks. Please stop messing around with words.
Finally clearly stated. Which implies my rule: brain complexity level allows soul thought complexity level.
dhw: I simply asked you to make a choice between his not knowing and his not wanting to know. You now have a God who creates a system full of errors, tries in vain to stop some of them, and doesn’t know what is coming. Please drop the word “perfection”, which is far too vague. Your previously all-powerful, all-controlling, all-knowing God is now revealed to have limited powers, control and knowledge, but somehow this makes him LESS human than a God who knows exactly what he is doing (e.g. deliberate creation of error-strewn system) or who experiments in order to create what he wants to create!
Again, your problem about your humanized God. Repeat: there is no God who can make biologic living systems run perfectly. Accept it. I have and it does't change my views of God.
dhw: […] you have agreed that in all my alternatives, he DOES think logically as we do, but according to you, that "humanizes him", and although according to you he probably has thought patterns similar to ours, we mustn't think he does.DAVID: The bold is the usual distortion of my thoughts: we and He use the same logical methods. We cannot know His reasons for His choices, but can guess. We can guess if you wish, but what does it prove?
dhw: What “logical methods”? If I have a single goal to create one thing and the means of achieving it, I will use the means of achieving it. That is my logic. How is that the same logical method as having a single goal to create one thing and the means of achieving it, but not achieving it until after creating millions of other unrelated things?
The bold is a perfect example of your human thinking applied to God. Thank you. Makes my point.
dhw: …complexification replaced expansion in response to new uses and concepts. But according to you, 315,000 years ago your God gave us extra neural networks that were NOT needed, and so we autonomously got rid of them. What is your point?DAVID: […] Obviously planning for our new uses with extra plasticity.
dhw: Why specially design unnecessary networks which can be discarded? Why not design the right amount of plasticity in the first place? Yet another example of the various weaknesses you are now finding in your previously all-powerful, all-controlling, all-knowing God?
No weakness. Your confusion. The plasticity system is perfectly designed to make use of the extra networks to end up with a tailored brain that fits exactly the uses we find to put it to. This again shows you have forgotten we have free will and God doesn't know exactly how we will use it. I don't view this as a defect in my God.
Brain expansion
DAVID: We both agree to a period of stasis with no new artifacts. Apply your theory to sapiens only and we have fossil sapiens at many stages of past history with no new artifacts evident, where is the implementation of the 'idea that made the sapiens brain initiate enlargement?
dhw: First we have nothing for 250,000 years (= stasis), and then we have many stages with nothing, as if there WAS something in between. Please make up your mind.
DAVID: Life went on for 250,000 years with little changed. That is true stasis.
Thank you for withdrawing your earlier statement above that there were many “stages”. At least we now agree on the sapiens “stasis” we are talking about.
dhw: You have left out my statement that nobody knows what requirements the pre-sapiens brain was responding to, and now you’re asking me to tell you! The 315,000-year-old Moroccan fossils were accompanied by their artefacts, but I can’t insist that it was their implementation that caused the expansion. Nor can you insist that expansion took place overnight, with your God stepping in to do a dabble with the brains, skulls and pelvises. What is your point?
DAVID: I left out your bold because I don't accept it. You are now struggling to find evidence for your brain growth theory, while we discuss sapiens. I state we had to learn to use our newly given brain. God steps in, which you don't accept.
You asked me to tell you what caused the sapiens expansion. I had already told you that nobody knows. What evidence do you have that your God stepped in and overnight expanded the brains, skulls and pelvises of a certain group of homos? The only evidence I do have for my theory is that the sapiens brain has stopped expanding and RESPONDS to new requirements by complexifying. It does not complexify in anticipation of new requirements. I see no reason why earlier brains should not have done the same, but when the capacity for complexification proved inadequate, the cell communities responded by adding to their number. The same process of RESPONSE to new requirements, just as organisms in general RESPOND to new requirements, as opposed to being fiddled with in anticpation of new requirements.
dhw: “The brain cannot think without the soul using it” means that the brain CAN think if the soul uses it. The dualist’s brain does not think. It is the soul that thinks. Please stop messing around with words.
DAVID: Finally clearly stated. Which implies my rule: brain complexity level allows soul thought complexity level.
At least you have finally dropped your insistence that the brain thinks. I cannot for the life of me understand why you don’t just accept that the dualist’s soul does the thinking and uses the brain for information and for implementation of its thoughts. I do not find this latest “rule” clear at all. Thought and complexification are an ongoing, interactive process. Implementation of the dualist’s soul’s thought causes complexification of the brain. The new complexifications will now contain new information which may lead to the soul having new thoughts. Your “rule” leaves out half of the process – and it is the half that takes us back to the possible cause of brain expansion: namely, the fact that the brain RESPONDS to new requirements.
dhw (on the subject of brain shrinkage): Why specially design unnecessary networks which can be discarded? Why not design the right amount of plasticity in the first place? Yet another example of the various weaknesses you are now finding in your previously all-powerful, all-controlling, all-knowing God?
DAVID: No weakness. Your confusion. The plasticity system is perfectly designed to make use of the extra networks to end up with a tailored brain that fits exactly the uses we find to put it to.
But according to you, your God plonked the extra, superfluous networks into sapiens’ brain! They were NOT used, and that is why they disappeared and the brain shrank!
DAVID: This again shows you have forgotten we have free will and God doesn't know exactly how we will use it. I don't view this as a defect in my God.
So he just didn’t know he was giving us too many networks. Oops! And on the other thread you have him deliberately planning to kill old people, but oops! his system accidentally kills young people too, though in this case he knew it would because he provided safeguards but oops! some of them don’t work. Add all this to a God whose only purpose is to design H. sapiens and who inexplicably proceeds not to design H. sapiens till he’s designed millions of other non-human life forms, and we have a God truly unrecognizable from the all-powerful, all-knowing and always-in-control one you used to tell us about. Now I seem to stand alone in suggesting that he knew exactly what he wanted and did it!
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, July 04, 2020, 20:00 (1601 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: The only evidence I do have for my theory is that the sapiens brain has stopped expanding and RESPONDS to new requirements by complexifying. It does not complexify in anticipation of new requirements. I see no reason why earlier brains should not have done the same, but when the capacity for complexification proved inadequate, the cell communities responded by adding to their number. The same process of RESPONSE to new requirements, just as organisms in general RESPOND to new requirements, as opposed to being fiddled with in anticpation of new requirements.
An excellent presentation of your natural materialistic theory. My faith tells me God expanded the brains at each stage of homo evolution.
dhw: “The brain cannot think without the soul using it” means that the brain CAN think if the soul uses it. The dualist’s brain does not think. It is the soul that thinks. Please stop messing around with words.
DAVID: Finally clearly stated. Which implies my rule: brain complexity level allows soul thought complexity level.
dhw: At least you have finally dropped your insistence that the brain thinks. I cannot for the life of me understand why you don’t just accept that the dualist’s soul does the thinking and uses the brain for information and for implementation of its thoughts...Your “rule” leaves out half of the process – and it is the half that takes us back to the possible cause of brain expansion: namely, the fact that the brain RESPONDS to new requirements.
I am at totally different poles apart from you. Restated for the umpteenth time. The soul uses the brain to think. The brain is just a mechanism for thought, which means the level of the soul's complexity of thought depends on the complexity of neuronal networks in the physical brain. The bold is a limitation you place on the soul/brain working relationship, which I do not accept. Yes, the brain offers information, but production of complex thought depends upon what the brain offers for use.
dhw (on the subject of brain shrinkage): Why specially design unnecessary networks which can be discarded? Why not design the right amount of plasticity in the first place? Yet another example of the various weaknesses you are now finding in your previously all-powerful, all-controlling, all-knowing God?DAVID: No weakness. Your confusion. The plasticity system is perfectly designed to make use of the extra networks to end up with a tailored brain that fits exactly the uses we find to put it to.
dhw: But according to you, your God plonked the extra, superfluous networks into sapiens’ brain! They were NOT used, and that is why they disappeared and the brain shrank!
The usual twisted interpretation of my thoughts, which never advances discussion. Simply as above, extra circuits allowed for plasticity to modify our brain for the uses to which we would put it. Purposefully placed by God.
DAVID: This again shows you have forgotten we have free will and God doesn't know exactly how we will use it. I don't view this as a defect in my God.
dhw: So he just didn’t know he was giving us too many networks. Oops!
Same distortion. Quit it!! I've said God knew we would put it into multiple uses and wanted us to do the modification ourselves by the plasticity mechanism He gave our brain.
dhw: Add all this to a God whose only purpose is to design H. sapiens and who inexplicably proceeds not to design H. sapiens till he’s designed millions of other non-human life forms, and we have a God truly unrecognizable from the all-powerful, all-knowing and always-in-control one you used to tell us about. Now I seem to stand alone in suggesting that he knew exactly what he wanted and did it!
I love it! I fully agree with the bold!!! And He is quite all-powerful. After all, He started the universe, evolved it to create a massive Milky Way which then, under His guidance produced an Earth perfect for life, which He then invented, warts and all!!! Fuss over the warts. He is still God. Look what He has produced. But no, all you look for are the negatives, which allow you to deny Him. There are so many positives which 'prove His existence beyond a reasonable doubt' (Adler).
Brain expansion
dhw: The only evidence I do have for my theory is that the sapiens brain has stopped expanding and RESPONDS to new requirements by complexifying. It does not complexify in anticipation of new requirements. I see no reason why earlier brains should not have done the same, but when the capacity for complexification proved inadequate, the cell communities responded by adding to their number. The same process of RESPONSE to new requirements, just as organisms in general RESPOND to new requirements, as opposed to being fiddled with in anticpation of new requirements.
DAVID: An excellent presentation of your natural materialistic theory. My faith tells me God expanded the brains at each stage of homo evolution.
Thank you for the praise. My theory does not exclude God, and the fact that you have faith in your own explanation (God changes organisms in anticipation of new requirements, and steps in to expand particular groups of brains, skulls and pelvises overnight) offers neither logic nor evidence to back it up.
dhw: The dualist’s brain does not think. It is the soul that thinks. Please stop messing around with words.
DAVID: Finally clearly stated. Which implies my rule: brain complexity level allows soul thought complexity level.
dhw: At least you have finally dropped your insistence that the brain thinks. I cannot for the life of me understand why you don’t just accept that the dualist’s soul does the thinking and uses the brain for information and for implementation of its thoughts...Your “rule” leaves out half of the process – and it is the half that takes us back to the possible cause of brain expansion: namely, the fact that the brain RESPONDS to new requirements.
DAVID: I am at totally different poles apart from you. Restated for the umpteenth time. The soul uses the brain to think.
I am the one who has restated that umpteen times. You are the one who makes the dualist’s brain think: “the brain cannot think without the soul using it”, “the brain’s capacity for complex thought”, “the thought quality of brain”.
DAVID: The brain is just a mechanism for thought, which means the level of the soul's complexity of thought depends on the complexity of neuronal networks in the physical brain. The bold is a limitation you place on the soul/brain working relationship, which I do not accept. Yes, the brain offers information, but production of complex thought depends upon what the brain offers for use.
What does this mean? The dualist’s brain offers information for the soul to use, and so of course the soul’s thoughts depend on what information it has. That does not mean the brain thinks or has a capacity for thought. And the soul also depends on the brain for implementation of its thoughts. What else does the dualist’s brain do? Please tell us.
DAVID: (re brain shrinkage) No weakness. Your confusion. The plasticity system is perfectly designed to make use of the extra networks to end up with a tailored brain that fits exactly the uses we find to put it to.
dhw: But according to you, your God plonked the extra, superfluous networks into sapiens’ brain! They were NOT used, and that is why they disappeared and the brain shrank!
[…]
DAVID: This again shows you have forgotten we have free will and God doesn't know exactly how we will use it. I don't view this as a defect in my God.
dhw: So he just didn’t know he was giving us too many networks. Oops!
DAVID: Same distortion. Quit it!! I've said God knew we would put it into multiple uses and wanted us to do the modification ourselves by the plasticity mechanism He gave our brain.
I get it now. He deliberately gave us more new networks than we required, so that we would say to ourselves: “I don’t need these extra networks, so I’ll get rid of them”. God testing us, perhaps? But actually “we” don’t consciously, of our own free will, complexify or expand or shrink our brains. That is done by the cell communities of which our brains consist. And apparently they are able to complexify themselves and reduce their numbers autonomously, but for some unknown reason your God did not give them the power to autonomously add to their numbers.
Xxxxxxx
Under “energy requirements”:
DAVID: It can be assumed each expansion of the brain was accompanied by a proportionate increase in caloric requirement. This means not only had there to be several simultaneous bony changes but also an adjustment in the division of caloric energy usage and an increase in calorie intake. I doubt this all could be naturally coordinated by chance evolution and had to be designed.
I would suggest that since cells are living organisms that require sustenance, the larger the community, the more sustenance would be required. I really don’t know why this should be regarded as a special problem or how chance versus design enters the argument, but I agree that the complexities of the cell provide the best possible evidence for design
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, July 05, 2020, 21:39 (1600 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Thank you for the praise. My theory does not exclude God, and the fact that you have faith in your own explanation (God changes organisms in anticipation of new requirements, and steps in to expand particular groups of brains, skulls and pelvises overnight) offers neither logic nor evidence to back it up.
I'm at a different level of discussion since I sincerely believe God is the designer. Neither you nor I can offer precise factual evidence. You don't accept the logic I use to conclude God exists and acts.
DAVID: The brain is just a mechanism for thought, which means the level of the soul's complexity of thought depends on the complexity of neuronal networks in the physical brain. The bold is a limitation you place on the soul/brain working relationship, which I do not accept. Yes, the brain offers information, but production of complex thought depends upon what the brain offers for use.
dhw: What does this mean? The dualist’s brain offers information for the soul to use, and so of course the soul’s thoughts depend on what information it has. That does not mean the brain thinks or has a capacity for thought. And the soul also depends on the brain for implementation of its thoughts. What else does the dualist’s brain do? Please tell us.
The bold is a version of my dualist theory, without the proviso that the level of complexity of the soul's thinking is limited by the complexity of the brain the soul is using. A more complex brain allows more complex soul thought. Compare erectus thought to sapiens' thought as shown by artifact complexity levels.
DAVID: This again shows you have forgotten we have free will and God doesn't know exactly how we will use it. I don't view this as a defect in my God.dhw: So he just didn’t know he was giving us too many networks. Oops!
DAVID: Same distortion. Quit it!! I've said God knew we would put it into multiple uses and wanted us to do the modification ourselves by the plasticity mechanism He gave our brain.
dhw: I get it now. He deliberately gave us more new networks than we required,...But actually “we” don’t consciously, of our own free will, complexify or expand or shrink our brains. That is done by the cell communities of which our brains consist. And apparently they are able to complexify themselves and reduce their numbers autonomously, but for some unknown reason your God did not give them the power to autonomously add to their numbers.
Our brain has adding ability especially in the hippocampus areas. You've forgotten recent entries of recent discoveries. Are you inventing another God error, to denigrate God? Of course our neurons know how to complexify. God gave astrocytes and neurons the ability.
XxxxxxxUnder “energy requirements”:
DAVID: It can be assumed each expansion of the brain was accompanied by a proportionate increase in caloric requirement. This means not only had there to be several simultaneous bony changes but also an adjustment in the division of caloric energy usage and an increase in calorie intake. I doubt this all could be naturally coordinated by chance evolution and had to be designed.
dhw: I would suggest that since cells are living organisms that require sustenance, the larger the community, the more sustenance would be required. I really don’t know why this should be regarded as a special problem or how chance versus design enters the argument, but I agree that the complexities of the cell provide the best possible evidence for design.
Again skipped over all the triple bony change requirements that dictate the need for design and note the human digestive tract made new adaptations for the energy need as compared to apes:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/04/eating-meat-led-to-smaller-stomachs-bigg...
I remember reproducing this theory before.
Brain expansion
dhw: My theory does not exclude God, and the fact that you have faith in your own explanation (God changes organisms in anticipation of new requirements, and steps in to expand particular groups of brains, skulls and pelvises overnight) offers neither logic nor evidence to back it up.
DAVID: I'm at a different level of discussion since I sincerely believe God is the designer. Neither you nor I can offer precise factual evidence. You don't accept the logic I use to conclude God exists and acts.
I have just said that my theory does not exclude God! The discussion has nothing whatsoever to do with whether your designer God exists; it concerns how the process of expansion works – or in your terms, how God acts.
dhw: The dualist’s brain offers information for the soul to use, and so of course the soul’s thoughts depend on what information it has. That does not mean the brain thinks or has a capacity for thought. And the soul also depends on the brain for implementation of its thoughts. What else does the dualist’s brain do? Please tell us.
DAVID: The bold is a version of my dualist theory, without the proviso that the level of complexity of the soul's thinking is limited by the complexity of the brain the soul is using. A more complex brain allows more complex soul thought. Compare erectus thought to sapiens' thought as shown by artifact complexity levels.
After at last dropping your insistence that the brain thinks, you insist on a proviso which ignores the subject of this thread, the brain’s expansion! I explained all this in my post of last Saturday: “Thought and complexification are an ongoing, interactive process. Implementation of the dualist’s soul’s thought causes complexification of the brain. The new complexifications will now contain new information which may lead to the soul having new thoughts. Your “rule” leaves out half of the process – and it is the half that takes us back to the possible cause of brain expansion: namely, the fact that the brain RESPONDS to new requirements”. Once again: pre-erectus’s brain expanded through implementing new concepts. Its new complexities provided new information, which in turn could lead to new ideas, and these complexities proved adequate to cope with new ideas until the next “big idea” required another expansion. Enter sapiens. All based on the proven fact that the brain RESPONDS to requirements. It does not change in anticipation of new requirements.
DAVID (re shrinkage): This again shows you have forgotten we have free will and God doesn't know exactly how we will use it. I don't view this as a defect in my God.
dhw: So he just didn’t know he was giving us too many networks. Oops!
DAVID: Same distortion. Quit it!! I've said God knew we would put it into multiple uses and wanted us to do the modification ourselves by the plasticity mechanism He gave our brain.
dhw: I get it now. He deliberately gave us more new networks than we required,...But actually “we” don’t consciously, of our own free will, complexify or expand or shrink our brains. That is done by the cell communities of which our brains consist. And apparently they are able to complexify themselves and reduce their numbers autonomously, but for some unknown reason your God did not give them the power to autonomously add to their numbers.
DAVID: Our brain has adding ability especially in the hippocampus areas. You've forgotten recent entries of recent discoveries. Are you inventing another God error, to denigrate God? Of course our neurons know how to complexify. God gave astrocytes and neurons the ability.
Thank you. We now have the modern brain autonomously complexifying and expanding (= “with adding ability”), so why do you insist that past expansions had to be dabbled by your God? As regards “errors”, it is you who insist that your God gave us more new networks than we needed! I merely asked why, and you came up with the idea that he wanted us to do the shrinking. I’m amazed at your insights into your God’s mind.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Monday, July 06, 2020, 17:49 (1599 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: The dualist’s brain offers information for the soul to use, and so of course the soul’s thoughts depend on what information it has. That does not mean the brain thinks or has a capacity for thought. And the soul also depends on the brain for implementation of its thoughts. What else does the dualist’s brain do? Please tell us.
DAVID: The bold is a version of my dualist theory, without the proviso that the level of complexity of the soul's thinking is limited by the complexity of the brain the soul is using. A more complex brain allows more complex soul thought. Compare erectus thought to sapiens' thought as shown by artifact complexity levels.
dhw: After at last dropping your insistence that the brain thinks, you insist on a proviso which ignores the subject of this thread, the brain’s expansion! I explained all this in my post of last Saturday: “Thought and complexification are an ongoing, interactive process. Implementation of the dualist’s soul’s thought causes complexification of the brain. The new complexifications will now contain new information which may lead to the soul having new thoughts. Your “rule” leaves out half of the process – and it is the half that takes us back to the possible cause of brain expansion: namely, the fact that the brain RESPONDS to new requirements”... It does not change in anticipation of new requirements.
Once again you are describing a complexification process that shrinks the brain, to justify a 'natural expansion' process. The only facts we have is larger brains produce improved artifacts. But in sapiens the improved artifacts appear many, many centuries after the larger brain appears. The sapiens brain demonstrates delayed implementation. No timing fits your theory.
DAVID (re shrinkage): This again shows you have forgotten we have free will and God doesn't know exactly how we will use it. I don't view this as a defect in my God.
dhw: I get it now. He deliberately gave us more new networks than we required,...But actually “we” don’t consciously, of our own free will, complexify or expand or shrink our brains. That is done by the cell communities of which our brains consist. And apparently they are able to complexify themselves and reduce their numbers autonomously, but for some unknown reason your God did not give them the power to autonomously add to their numbers.
DAVID: Our brain has adding ability especially in the hippocampus areas. You've forgotten recent entries of recent discoveries. Are you inventing another God error, to denigrate God? Of course our neurons know how to complexify. God gave astrocytes and neurons the ability.
dhw: Thank you. We now have the modern brain autonomously complexifying and expanding (= “with adding ability”), so why do you insist that past expansions had to be dabbled by your God? As regards “errors”, it is you who insist that your God gave us more new networks than we needed! I merely asked why, and you came up with the idea that he wanted us to do the shrinking. I’m amazed at your insights into your God’s mind.
You obviously don't try to think clearly about God's work. I look at the facts and interpret what I see as logical reasons."We" didn't do the shrinking. God gave us a brain that had the designed-in mechanism for shrinkage by plasticity, thus allowing us to tailor our brains for every new use. That concept neatly explains what happened, but all you do is end up puzzled. Do our brains have plasticity or not? I view the design as clever, anticipating use by free-will humans with consciousness. I know I cannot get into God's mind, but a little reasonable thought arrives at reasonable reasons. Sorry you are blind to them.
Brain expansion: the obstetric dilemma
by David Turell , Monday, July 06, 2020, 23:49 (1599 days ago) @ David Turell
A real problem for hominin and homo species at every level of development, and is still present:
The Obstetric Dilemma: An Ancient Game of Russian Roulette, or a Variable Dilemma Sensitive to Ecology?
"ABSTRACT: The difficult birth process of humans, often described as the ‘‘obstetric dilemma,’’ is commonly assumed to reflect antagonistic selective pressures favoring neonatal encephalization and maternal bipedal locomotion. However, cephalo-pelvic disproportion is not exclusive to humans, and is present in some primate species of smaller body size. The fossil record indicates mosaic evolution of the obstetric dilemma, involving a number of different evolutionary processes, and it appears to have shifted in magnitude between Australopithecus, Pleistocene Homo, and recent human populations. Most attention to date has focused on its generic nature, rather than on its variability between populations. We reevaluate the nature of the human obstetric dilemma using updated hominin and primate literature, and then consider the contribution of phenotypic plasticity to variability in its magnitude. Both maternal pelvic dimensions and fetal growth patterns are sensitive to ecological factors such as diet and the thermal environment. Neonatal head girth has low plasticity, whereas neonatal mass and maternal stature have higher plasticity. Secular trends in body size may therefore exacerbate or decrease the obstetric dilemma. The emergence of agriculture may have exacerbated the dilemma, by decreasing maternal stature and increasing neonatal growth and adiposity due to dietary shifts. Paleodemographic comparisons between foragers and agriculturalists suggest that foragers have considerably lower rates of perinatal mortality. In contemporary populations, maternal stature remains strongly associated with perinatal mortality in many populations. Long-term improvements in nutrition across future generations may relieve the dilemma, but in the meantime, variability in its magnitude is likely to persist. (my bold)
"The notion that maternal pelvic dimensions are subject to powerful competing demands from reproduction and locomotion is widely accepted in the biomedical and anthropological literature. The maternal pelvis is frequently considered to be subject to two counteracting evolutionary forces: decreased height and increased mediolateral breadth in order to optimize the biomechanics of locomotion, and increased anteroposterior dimensions in order to enable birth of the unusually encephalized human infant. The compromise imposed by these antagonistic demands manifests as a difficult passage of the fetal head through the birth canal, resulting in the birth process being a more complex and lengthy procedure in humans than in closely related species of ape. The antagonistic interaction of bipedalism and encephalization has been assumed to have followed the emergence of the large Homo brain within the last 2 million years. (my bold)
"In addition to shaping the unusual mechanism of birth, however, the ‘‘tug-of-war’’ exerted on maternal pelvic dimensions by bipedalism and encephalization is widely assumed to have increased the risks of delivery. Krogman (1951) described human birth as a ‘‘scar’’ of our evolutionary history, while Washburn (1960) coined the term ‘‘obstetric dilemma,’’ which has been widely used subsequently."
Comment: This obstetric dilemma is a major evolutionary issue as this review makes quite clear, and even has major obstetric importance today. I don't believe dhw's 'smart cooperating' cells could solve the problems by themselves, but God could easily. This is the website source in one of my accounts. I don't know if it will allow a download of the whole huge article to read it all:
https://www.academia.edu/2123423/The_Obstetric_Dilemma_An_Ancient_Game_of_Russian_Roule...
Brain expansion: the obstetric dilemma
by David Turell , Friday, May 07, 2021, 20:56 (1294 days ago) @ David Turell
Even an early form like Lucy may have had problems before the giant brain appeared:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4451168/Ancient-human-ancestor-Lucy-nee...
"She is one of mankind's oldest and best preserved ancestors and is more than three million years old.
"And now new research suggests that 'Lucy', along with others in her species, may have needed a midwife to give birth, due to the shape of her pelvis.
***
"Researchers from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire were studying how Lucy and her relatives would have given birth, and found that it would have been in a manner in between that of chimpanzees and humans.
"While there are no known fossils of any newborn australopiths, the researchers modelled the shape and size of an infant's head by assuming it had the same dimensions as a large baby chimpanzee.
"They also estimated the width of an australopith baby's shoulder by looking at the relationship between the shoulder widths of adult and newborn primates such as humans, chimps, gorillas, orangutans and gibbons, and by examining the width of Lucy's shoulders.
"The models indicate that, as happens in humans, a baby australopith would have entered the birth canal sideways.
"But the researchers also suggested that an infant australopith would have had to tilt only slightly to make way for its shoulders as its head slid down the birth canal, instead of its head rotating 90 degrees as happens with human babies during childbirth.
"These findings suggest that there was a tight fit between the infant and its birth canal,.
"This mean Lucy might have had some difficulties during labour - just like modern humans.
***
"Modern humans give birth in a very different way to their primate relatives.
This is most likely due to the large size of the human head and the way a woman's pelvis is positioned for upright walking.
"Human babies fit snugly inside the birth canal, meaning that women often require assistance during delivery.
"But other female apes do not have this problem, meaning that instead, 'mothers can just reach down and assist with their own births,' Dr DeSilva said."
Comment: The dilemma refers to this problem. In evolving our big brain with a pelvis that supports upright walking, the mother's pelvis bony outlet had to enlarge at the same time a bigger brained fetus appeared. And this also involves the Dad's DNA input. Lucy's problems point this out. A baby 'Lucy' brain was very small but the newly shaped walking pelvis presented trouble. Our evolution had to be guided by a designing mind, God, as our bigger brain kept evolving bigger and bigger. Three different DNA's contribute to a three-way evolutionary input.
Brain expansion: the obstetric dilemma
by David Turell , Saturday, October 30, 2021, 21:57 (1118 days ago) @ David Turell
New measurements to evaluate the evolutionary problems:
https://phys.org/news/2021-10-humans-birth-canal.html
"The relatively narrow human birth canal presumably evolved as a "compromise" between its abilities for parturition, support of the inner organs, and upright walking. But not only the size of the birth canal, also its complex, "twisted" shape is an evolutionary puzzle. Katya Stansfield from the University of Vienna and her co-authors have published a study in BMC Biology presenting new insights into why the human birth canal evolved to have this complex shape. They suggest that the longitudinally oval shape of the lower birth canal is beneficial for the stability of the pelvic floor muscles.
***
"In most women, the upper part, or inlet, of the birth canal has a round or transversely (left-to-right) oval shape, which is considered ideal for parturition, but it is unknown why the lower part of the birth canal has a pronounced longitudinally (front-to-back) oval shape. This twisted shape typically requires the Baby to rotate when passing through the narrow birth canal, which further increases the risk of birth complications.
"In comparison with humans, apes have a relatively easy birth pattern that does not require rotation of the baby thanks to the longitudinally oval shape of the birth canal both at its inlet and the outlet. "For giving birth, it would be much easier to have a uniformly shaped birth canal also in our species," says Katya Stansfield, a specialist in biomechanics. Instead, the twisted human shape requires a complex, rotational birth mechanism: The baby needs to rotate to align the longest dimension of its head with the widest dimension of each plane of the birth canal. Misalignment can lead to obstructed labor and result in health risks for both mother and baby.
***
"'Our results demonstrate that the longitudinally oval lower birth canal is beneficial in terms of stability," says Katya Stansfield. "However, this outcome prompted us to ask why the pelvic inlet in humans is not also elongated longitudinally," elaborates Barbara Fischer, an evolutionary biologist.
"Traditionally, it has been assumed that the transverse dimension of the human pelvis is constrained by the efficiency of upright locomotion. "We argue that the transverse elongation of the pelvic inlet has evolved because of the limits on the front-to-back diameter in humans imposed by balancing upright posture, rather than by the efficiency of the bipedal locomotion," says Philipp Mitteroecker, who was also involved in this study. A longitudinally deeper inlet would require greater pelvic tilt and lumbar lordosis, which would compromise spine health and the stability of upright posture. These different requirements of the pelvic inlet and outlet likely have led to the evolution of a twisted birth canal, requiring human babies to rotate during birth."
Comment: I've discussed these problems before. The human female pelvis is far from ape-like to accommodate big brain birth and upright posture. How did this develop in a chance evolutionary scenario? Not likely. There are several players involved: Mom, Pop and baby DNA all adjusting on their own, unless a designer is at work.
Brain expansion
dhw: After at last dropping your insistence that the brain thinks, you insist on a proviso which ignores the subject of this thread, the brain’s expansion! I explained all this in my post of last Saturday: “Thought and complexification are an ongoing, interactive process. Implementation of the dualist’s soul’s thought causes complexification of the brain. The new complexifications will now contain new information which may lead to the soul having new thoughts. Your “rule” leaves out half of the process – and it is the half that takes us back to the possible cause of brain expansion: namely, the fact that the brain RESPONDS to new requirements”... It does not change in anticipation of new requirements.
DAVID: Once again you are describing a complexification process that shrinks the brain, to justify a 'natural expansion' process. The only facts we have is larger brains produce improved artifacts. But in sapiens the improved artifacts appear many, many centuries after the larger brain appears. The sapiens brain demonstrates delayed implementation. No timing fits your theory.
At least three times now I have drawn your attention in bold to my statement: “nobody knows what requirements the pre-sapiens brain was responding to…The 315,000-year old Moroccan fossils were accompanied by their artefacts, but I can’t insist that it was their implementation that caused the expansion.”
DAVID (re shrinkage): This again shows you have forgotten we have free will and God doesn't know exactly how we will use it. I don't view this as a defect in my God.
dhw: I get it now. He deliberately gave us more new networks than we required,...But actually “we” don’t consciously, of our own free will, complexify or expand or shrink our brains. That is done by the cell communities of which our brains consist. And apparently they are able to complexify themselves and reduce their numbers autonomously, but for some unknown reason your God did not give them the power to autonomously add to their numbers.[/i
DAVID: [i]Our brain has adding ability especially in the hippocampus areas. You've forgotten recent entries of recent discoveries. Are you inventing another God error, to denigrate God? Of course our neurons know how to complexify. God gave astrocytes and neurons the ability.
dhw: Thank you. We now have the modern brain autonomously complexifying and expanding (= “with adding ability”), so why do you insist that past expansions had to be dabbled by your God? As regards “errors”, it is you who insist that your God gave us more new networks than we needed! I merely asked why, and you came up with the idea that he wanted us to do the shrinking. I’m amazed at your insights into your God’s mind.
DAVID: You obviously don't try to think clearly about God's work. I look at the facts and interpret what I see as logical reasons."We" didn't do the shrinking. God gave us a brain that had the designed-in mechanism for shrinkage by plasticity, thus allowing us to tailor our brains for every new use.
You have conveniently left out your own comment: that God “wanted us to do the modification ourselves by the plasticity mechanism He gave our brain”. It was I who told you that “we” didn’t do the shrinking, and yes the brain has a possibly God-given mechanism (I call it cellular intelligence) for changing itself, whether by expansion, complexification or shrinkage, as you’ve explained above – now bolded.
DAVID: That concept neatly explains what happened, but all you do is end up puzzled.
My concept certainly does, and I don’t find it puzzling at all. I am only puzzled by your idea that God fiddles with brains, skulls and pelvises overnight, and also gave us more neural networks than we needed.
DAVID: Do our brains have plasticity or not? I view the design as clever, anticipating use by free-will humans with consciousness. I know I cannot get into God's mind, but a little reasonable thought arrives at reasonable reasons. Sorry you are blind to them.
Yes, our brains have plasticity. And I have no idea what free will has to do with the expansion of the brain, since “we” do not consciously organize complexification, expansion or shrinkage. I don’t know what reasonable thought has led you to conclude that God did a dabble for each expansion although he gave the modern brain its own autonomous mechanism for complexification and shrinkage and adding ability.
Under “brain complexity”: "A lot of people don't realize that the brain is made up not just of nerve cells, but also cells that keep the brain healthy, and even the space in between cells is packed with fascinating interactions."
A nice way of describing the cooperation of cell communities which lies at the heart of Shapiro’s and Talbott’s and my own proposal concerning how evolution works, including that of the brain.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, July 07, 2020, 18:48 (1598 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: At least three times now I have drawn your attention in bold to my statement: “nobody knows what requirements the pre-sapiens brain was responding to…The 315,000-year old Moroccan fossils were accompanied by their artefacts, but I can’t insist that it was their implementation that caused the expansion.”
The Moroccan fossils did not have any newly advanced artifacts, which destroys your theory of expansion by implementation. thank you for the admission.
DAVID: You obviously don't try to think clearly about God's work. I look at the facts and interpret what I see as logical reasons."We" didn't do the shrinking. God gave us a brain that had the designed-in mechanism for shrinkage by plasticity, thus allowing us to tailor our brains for every new use.dhw: You have conveniently left out your own comment: that God “wanted us to do the modification ourselves by the plasticity mechanism He gave our brain”. It was I who told you that “we” didn’t do the shrinking, and yes the brain has a possibly God-given mechanism (I call it cellular intelligence) for changing itself, whether by expansion, complexification or shrinkage,
DAVID: That concept neatly explains what happened, but all you do is end up puzzled.
dhw: My concept certainly does, and I don’t find it puzzling at all. I am only puzzled by your idea that God fiddles with brains, skulls and pelvises overnight, and also gave us more neural networks than we needed.
Fully explained and you seem to accept it above in bold. I agree 'we didn't do it',the brain did it with God's implanted mechanism.
DAVID: Do our brains have plasticity or not? I view the design as clever, anticipating use by free-will humans with consciousness. I know I cannot get into God's mind, but a little reasonable thought arrives at reasonable reasons. Sorry you are blind to them.dhw: Yes, our brains have plasticity. And I have no idea what free will has to do with the expansion of the brain, since “we” do not consciously organize complexification, expansion or shrinkage. I don’t know what reasonable thought has led you to conclude that God did a dabble for each expansion although he gave the modern brain its own autonomous mechanism for complexification and shrinkage and adding ability.
Simple: God runs evolution and its history tells us what He decided to do.
Under “brain complexity”: "A lot of people don't realize that the brain is made up not just of nerve cells, but also cells that keep the brain healthy, and even the space in between cells is packed with fascinating interactions."dhw: A nice way of describing the cooperation of cell communities which lies at the heart of Shapiro’s and Talbott’s and my own proposal concerning how evolution works, including that of the brain.
My counter thought is the cells all perform under God-given instructions.
Brain expansion
dhw: At least three times now I have drawn your attention in bold to my statement: “nobody knows what requirements the pre-sapiens brain was responding to…The 315,000-year old Moroccan fossils were accompanied by their artefacts, but I can’t insist that it was their implementation that caused the expansion.”
DAVID: The Moroccan fossils did not have any newly advanced artifacts, which destroys your theory of expansion by implementation. thank you for the admission.
For approximately the fourth bolded time, nobody knows what the requirements were. We took artefacts as an example because they are the only material evidence we have. Do you really expect me to know precisely what events, discoveries, concepts preceded each expansion over the last two million-plus years?
dhw: You have conveniently left out your own comment: that God “wanted us to do the modification ourselves by the plasticity mechanism He gave our brain”. It was I who told you that “we” didn’t do the shrinking, and yes the brain has a possibly God-given mechanism (I call it cellular intelligence) for changing itself, whether by expansion, complexification or shrinkage.
DAVID: That concept neatly explains what happened, but all you do is end up puzzled.
dhw: My concept certainly does, and I don’t find it puzzling at all. I am only puzzled by your idea that God fiddles with brains, skulls and pelvises overnight, and also gave us more neural networks than we needed.
DAVID: Fully explained and you seem to accept it above in bold. I agree 'we didn't do it', the brain did it with God's implanted mechanism.
Excellent. That is the theistic version of my theory: God implanted the mechanism of cellular intelligence, which autonomously engineered/engineers expansion, complexification and shrinkage. Agreement at last. Goodbye to divine dabbling. Except that you insist on continuing the argument as if you hadn’t agreed.
DAVID: Do our brains have plasticity or not? I view the design as clever, anticipating use by free-will humans with consciousness. I know I cannot get into God's mind, but a little reasonable thought arrives at reasonable reasons. Sorry you are blind to them.
dhw: Yes, our brains have plasticity. And I have no idea what free will has to do with the expansion of the brain, since “we” do not consciously organize complexification, expansion or shrinkage. I don’t know what reasonable thought has led you to conclude that God did a dabble for each expansion although he gave the modern brain its own autonomous mechanism for complexification and shrinkage and “adding ability”.
DAVID: Simple: God runs evolution and its history tells us what He decided to do.
History tells us that the brain expanded, and you have agreed that the modern brain has a mechanism for autonomous expansion, complexification and shrinkage. It is therefore not unreasonable to propose that the ancient brain had the same mechanism, though shrinkage did not apply because expansion was the necessary new development.
Under “brain complexity”: "A lot of people don't realize that the brain is made up not just of nerve cells, but also cells that keep the brain healthy, and even the space in between cells is packed with fascinating interactions."
dhw: A nice way of describing the cooperation of cell communities which lies at the heart of Shapiro’s and Talbott’s and my own proposal concerning how evolution works, including that of the brain.
DAVID: My counter thought is the cells all perform under God-given instructions.
So have you now abandoned the divine dabbling theory and gone back to your 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for every evolutionary change past, present and future?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, July 08, 2020, 18:58 (1597 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: The Moroccan fossils did not have any newly advanced artifacts, which destroys your theory of expansion by implementation. thank you for the admission.
dhw: For approximately the fourth bolded time, nobody knows what the requirements were. We took artefacts as an example because they are the only material evidence we have. Do you really expect me to know precisely what events, discoveries, concepts preceded each expansion over the last two million-plus years?
Right. All we have is timed fossils and timed artifacts. As for your bold, God speciates and our brain is His creation.. I expect nothing from you except to accept the facts about sapiens over the past 315,00 years. Little happened until the past 50-70,000 years. Big brain followed by little new uses (stasis as we have defined it).
dhw: I am only puzzled by your idea that God fiddles with brains, skulls and pelvises overnight, and also gave us more neural networks than we needed.
To allow us to develop our own uses on our own, He gave us extra neuron networks and put automatic plasticity and complexification processes in our brain to handle the changes. Common sense interpretation of what God did.
DAVID: Fully explained and you seem to accept it above in bold. I agree 'we didn't do it', the brain did it with God's implanted mechanism.dhw: Excellent. That is the theistic version of my theory: God implanted the mechanism of cellular intelligence, which autonomously engineered/engineers expansion, complexification and shrinkage. Agreement at last. Goodbye to divine dabbling. Except that you insist on continuing the argument as if you hadn’t agreed.
I haven't agreed at all. The mechanisms in the brain follow specific informational instructions from God.
dhw: Yes, our brains have plasticity. And I have no idea what free will has to do with the expansion of the brain, since “we” do not consciously organize complexification, expansion or shrinkage. I don’t know what reasonable thought has led you to conclude that God did a dabble for each expansion although he gave the modern brain its own autonomous mechanism for complexification and shrinkage and “adding ability”.
Our brain is the endpoint of evolution. No need for further changes
DAVID: Simple: God runs evolution and its history tells us what He decided to do.dhw: History tells us that the brain expanded, and you have agreed that the modern brain has a mechanism for autonomous expansion, complexification and shrinkage. It is therefore not unreasonable to propose that the ancient brain had the same mechanism, though shrinkage did not apply because expansion was the necessary new development.
Where did our 'autonomous brain expansion' come from? We can make some new neurons in the hippocampus but our brain has shrunk over time. Never expanded and never will. As above, no further evolution expected.
dhw: Under “brain complexity”: "A lot of people don't realize that the brain is made up not just of nerve cells, but also cells that keep the brain healthy, and even the space in between cells is packed with fascinating interactions."
dhw: A nice way of describing the cooperation of cell communities which lies at the heart of Shapiro’s and Talbott’s and my own proposal concerning how evolution works, including that of the brain.
DAVID: My counter thought is the cells all perform under God-given instructions.
dhw: So have you now abandoned the divine dabbling theory and gone back to your 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for every evolutionary change past, present and future?
How God offers the instructions is always debatable. How do you think God does it?
Brain expansion
DAVID: The Moroccan fossils did not have any newly advanced artifacts, which destroys your theory of expansion by implementation. thank you for the admission.
dhw: For approximately the fourth bolded time, nobody knows what the requirements were. We took artefacts as an example because they are the only material evidence we have. Do you really expect me to know precisely what events, discoveries, concepts preceded each expansion over the last two million-plus years?
DAVID: Right. All we have is timed fossils and timed artifacts. As for your bold, God speciates and our brain is His creation.. I expect nothing from you except to accept the facts about sapiens over the past 315,00 years. Little happened until the past 50-70,000 years. Big brain followed by little new uses (stasis as we have defined it).
Of course I accept the above facts, though I don’t know why you bring in your God's speciating. How do the facts contradict my theory? Brain expands 315,000 years ago – cause of expansion unknown – after which there is a long period of stasis caused by the fact that there are no new “big ideas”. Not for the first time, please tell us what is your point?
dhw: I am only puzzled by your idea that God fiddles with brains, skulls and pelvises overnight, and also gave us more neural networks than we needed.
DAVID: To allow us to develop our own uses on our own, He gave us extra neuron networks and put automatic plasticity and complexification processes in our brain to handle the changes. Common sense interpretation of what God did.
And I suggest that if he exists he gave all cells the intelligence to “develop their own uses on their own”. In the context of the brain, we have agreed that plasticity and complexification did not begin with sapiens! And according to you, God gave us MORE extra neuron networks than we needed because he wanted “us” to get rid of them, although what got rid of them was not “us” (see below) but an autonomous mechanism for expansion, complexification and shrinkage.
DAVID: I agree 'we didn't do it', the brain did it with God's implanted mechanism.
dhw: Excellent. That is the theistic version of my theory: God implanted the mechanism of cellular intelligence, which autonomously engineered/engineers expansion, complexification and shrinkage. Agreement at last. Goodbye to divine dabbling. Except that you insist on continuing the argument as if you hadn’t agreed.
DAVID: I haven't agreed at all. The mechanisms in the brain follow specific informational instructions from God.
If the brain was following his specific instructions, perhaps you should tell us what they relate to, since you have now agreed that all three processes of expansion, complexification and shrinkage take place autonomously in the modern brain.
dhw: I don’t know what reasonable thought has led you to conclude that God did a dabble for each expansion although he gave the modern brain its own autonomous mechanism for complexification and shrinkage and “adding ability”.
DAVID: Our brain is the endpoint of evolution. No need for further changes.
Changes are taking place all the time. It is only overall expansion that appears to have stopped and has been replaced by enhanced complexification. Once more, if the modern brain has the autonomous ability to complexify and expand some of its parts, why could it not have done so pre-sapiens?
DAVID: Where did our 'autonomous brain expansion' come from? We can make some new neurons in the hippocampus but our brain has shrunk over time. Never expanded and never will. As above, no further evolution expected.
Our “autonomous brain expansion” would have come from the same source as all autonomous changes in brains and in every other organ and organism throughout life’s history: the perhaps God-given intelligence of the cell communities of which they are all comprised. The alternatives to this theory are random mutations, which we both reject, or a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for every single undabbled change in the whole history of evolution. See below.
Under “brain complexity”: QUOTE: "A lot of people don't realize that the brain is made up not just of nerve cells, but also cells that keep the brain healthy, and even the space in between cells is packed with fascinating interactions."
dhw: A nice way of describing the cooperation of cell communities which lies at the heart of Shapiro’s and Talbott’s and my own proposal concerning how evolution works, including that of the brain.
DAVID: My counter thought is the cells all perform under God-given instructions.
dhw: So have you now abandoned the divine dabbling theory and gone back to your 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for every evolutionary change past, present and future?
DAVID: How God offers the instructions is always debatable. How do you think God does it?
You have only offered us the computer programme and dabbling. If you find these hypotheses as far-fetched as I do, it’s up to you to provide alternatives. Mine is that he does NOT offer instructions for every life form, natural wonder etc. in the history of life, but – theistic version – has created the mechanism (cellular intelligence) that enables all organisms “to develop their own uses on their own”, as you so aptly phrased it.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, July 09, 2020, 21:45 (1596 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Right. All we have is timed fossils and timed artifacts. As for your bold, God speciates and our brain is His creation.. I expect nothing from you except to accept the facts about sapiens over the past 315,00 years. Little happened until the past 50-70,000 years. Big brain followed by little new uses (stasis as we have defined it).
dhw: Of course I accept the above facts, though I don’t know why you bring in your God's speciating. How do the facts contradict my theory? Brain expands 315,000 years ago – cause of expansion unknown – after which there is a long period of stasis caused by the fact that there are no new “big ideas”. Not for the first time, please tell us what is your point?
Long stasis in sapiens denies your idea that a new idea caused the expansion. Where is the new artifact?
dhw: I am only puzzled ... [why He]gave us more neural networks than we needed.DAVID: To allow us to develop our own uses on our own, He gave us extra neuron networks and put automatic plasticity and complexification processes in our brain to handle the changes. Common sense interpretation of what God did.
dhw: And I suggest that if he exists he gave all cells the intelligence to “develop their own uses on their own”. In the context of the brain, we have agreed that plasticity and complexification did not begin with sapiens! And according to you, God gave us MORE extra neuron networks than we needed because he wanted “us” to get rid of them, although what got rid of them was not “us” (see below) but an autonomous mechanism for expansion, complexification and shrinkage.
DAVID: I agree 'we didn't do it', the brain did it with God's implanted mechanism.
dhw: Excellent. That is the theistic version of my theory: God implanted the mechanism of cellular intelligence, which autonomously engineered/engineers expansion, complexification and shrinkage. Agreement at last. Goodbye to divine dabbling. Except that you insist on continuing the argument as if you hadn’t agreed.
DAVID: I haven't agreed at all. The mechanisms in the brain follow specific informational instructions from God.
dhw: If the brain was following his specific instructions, perhaps you should tell us what they relate to, since you have now agreed that all three processes of expansion, complexification and shrinkage take place autonomously in the modern brain.
Strange question. Two processes follow implanted instructions. Our brain shrinks, not expands. I realize I misread your answer above. I've told you previously the brain does not expand but it can add some neurons.
DAVID: Our brain is the endpoint of evolution. No need for further changes.dhw: Changes are taking place all the time. It is only overall expansion that appears to have stopped and has been replaced by enhanced complexification. Once more, if the modern brain has the autonomous ability to complexify and expand some of its parts, why could it not have done so pre-sapiens?
I'm sure God does it. Based on our brain the new cortex is somewhat oversized to allow plasticity and complexity from use. I don't think our arrival was that different from the past enlargements.
Under “brain complexity”: QUOTE: "A lot of people don't realize that the brain is made up not just of nerve cells, but also cells that keep the brain healthy, and even the space in between cells is packed with fascinating interactions."dhw: A nice way of describing the cooperation of cell communities which lies at the heart of Shapiro’s and Talbott’s and my own proposal concerning how evolution works, including that of the brain.
DAVID: My counter thought is the cells all perform under God-given instructions.
dhw: So have you now abandoned the divine dabbling theory and gone back to your 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for every evolutionary change past, present and future?
DAVID: How God offers the instructions is always debatable. How do you think God does it?
dhw: You have only offered us the computer programme and dabbling. If you find these hypotheses as far-fetched as I do, it’s up to you to provide alternatives. Mine is that he does NOT offer instructions for every life form, natural wonder etc. in the history of life, but – theistic version – has created the mechanism (cellular intelligence) that enables all organisms “to develop their own uses on their own”, as you so aptly phrased it.
And, as before, I think God runs a tight ship, and if He allowed self-inventions, they would be under strict guidelines. My view of God is not your view when you attempt to describe Him.
Brain expansion
DAVID: Long stasis in sapiens denies your idea that a new idea caused the expansion. Where is the new artifact?
For the umpteenth time: nobody knows what the requirements were. We took artefacts as an example because they are the only material evidence we have. Do you really expect me to know precisely what events, discoveries, concepts preceded each expansion over the last two million-plus years? Stasis followed every expansion, so there could not have been any new event, discovery, concept that exceeded the existing capacity for complexification.
dhw: I am only puzzled ... [why He]gave us more neural networks than we needed.
DAVID: To allow us to develop our own uses on our own, He gave us extra neuron networks and put automatic plasticity and complexification processes in our brain to handle the changes. Common sense interpretation of what God did.
dhw: And I suggest that if he exists he gave all cells the intelligence to “develop their own uses on their own”. In the context of the brain, we have agreed that plasticity and complexification did not begin with sapiens! And according to you, God gave us MORE extra neuron networks than we needed because he wanted “us” to get rid of them, although what got rid of them was not “us” (see below) but an autonomous mechanism for expansion, complexification and shrinkage.
DAVID: I agree 'we didn't do it', the brain did it with God's implanted mechanism. (dhw's bold)
dhw: Excellent. That is the theistic version of my theory: God implanted the mechanism of cellular intelligence, which autonomously engineered/engineers expansion, complexification and shrinkage. Agreement at last. Goodbye to divine dabbling. Except that you insist on continuing the argument as if you hadn’t agreed.
DAVID: I haven't agreed at all. The mechanisms in the brain follow specific informational instructions from God.
dhw: If the brain was following his specific instructions, perhaps you should tell us what they relate to, since you have now agreed that all three processes of expansion, complexification and shrinkage take place autonomously in the modern brain.
DAVID: Strange question. Two processes follow implanted instructions. Our brain shrinks, not expands. I realize I misread your answer above. I've told you previously the brain does not expand but it can add some neurons.
You have agreed explicitly that the brain shrank because the efficiency of complexification (an autonomous process) made certain cells redundant. Expansion entails the addition of neurons! The fact that this takes place within the confines of the existing sapiens skull does not alter the fact that the brain can expand itself. Both processes result from the “mechanism” you say your God implanted in the brain (bolded above) – a mechanism which acts autonomously and which I call cellular intelligence.
dhw: Once more, if the modern brain has the autonomous ability to complexify and expand some of its parts, why could it not have done so pre-sapiens?
DAVID: I'm sure God does it. Based on our brain the new cortex is somewhat oversized to allow plasticity and complexity from use. I don't think our arrival was that different from the past enlargements.
I like your last thought. It fits in perfectly with my theory.
DAVID: How God offers the instructions is always debatable. How do you think God does it?
dhw: You have only offered us the computer programme and dabbling. If you find these hypotheses as far-fetched as I do, it’s up to you to provide alternatives. Mine is that he does NOT offer instructions for every life form, natural wonder etc. in the history of life, but – theistic version – has created the mechanism (cellular intelligence) that enables all organisms “to develop their own uses on their own”, as you so aptly phrased it.
DAVID: And, as before, I think God runs a tight ship, and if He allowed self-inventions, they would be under strict guidelines. My view of God is not your view when you attempt to describe Him.
Your strict guidelines entail a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme or direct dabbling for every single life form, natural wonder etc. as above. You have not come up with any alternative, but of course you are free to believe whatever you wish to believe.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Friday, July 10, 2020, 19:51 (1595 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Long stasis in sapiens denies your idea that a new idea caused the expansion. Where is the new artifact?
dhw: For the umpteenth time: nobody knows what the requirements were. We took artefacts as an example because they are the only material evidence we have. Do you really expect me to know precisely what events, discoveries, concepts preceded each expansion over the last two million-plus years? Stasis followed every expansion, so there could not have been any new event, discovery, concept that exceeded the existing capacity for complexification.
You have abandoned your original thought that an idea in a previous brain forced the new expansion as it was implemented by the new brain Progress!!
DAVID: Strange question. Two processes follow implanted instructions. Our brain shrinks, not expands. I realize I misread your answer above. I've told you previously the brain does not expand but it can add some neurons.dhw: You have agreed explicitly that the brain shrank because the efficiency of complexification (an autonomous process) made certain cells redundant. Expansion entails the addition of neurons! The fact that this takes place within the confines of the existing sapiens skull does not alter the fact that the brain can expand itself. Both processes result from the “mechanism” you say your God implanted in the brain (bolded above) – a mechanism which acts autonomously and which I call cellular intelligence.
The addition of some hippocampal neurons has not expanded the brain, similar to past expansions. They are really part of the plasticity and complexification, all of which has only reduced brain size.
dhw: Once more, if the modern brain has the autonomous ability to complexify and expand some of its parts, why could it not have done so pre-sapiens?DAVID: I'm sure God does it. Based on our brain the new cortex is somewhat oversized to allow plasticity and complexity from use. I don't think our arrival was that different from the past enlargements.
I like your last thought. It fits in perfectly with my theory.
DAVID: How God offers the instructions is always debatable. How do you think God does it?
dhw: You have only offered us the computer programme and dabbling. If you find these hypotheses as far-fetched as I do, it’s up to you to provide alternatives. Mine is that he does NOT offer instructions for every life form, natural wonder etc. in the history of life, but – theistic version – has created the mechanism (cellular intelligence) that enables all organisms “to develop their own uses on their own”, as you so aptly phrased it.
DAVID: And, as before, I think God runs a tight ship, and if He allowed self-inventions, they would be under strict guidelines. My view of God is not your view when you attempt to describe Him.
dhw: Your strict guidelines entail a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme or direct dabbling for every single life form, natural wonder etc. as above. You have not come up with any alternative, but of course you are free to believe whatever you wish to believe.
Thank you, and in the other thread I show you that Behe and I both believe in DNA pre-programming. Dabbling would be the gene destruction Behe describes.
Brain expansion
DAVID: Long stasis in sapiens denies your idea that a new idea caused the expansion. Where is the new artifact?
dhw: For the umpteenth time: nobody knows what the requirements were. We took artefacts as an example because they are the only material evidence we have. Do you really expect me to know precisely what events, discoveries, concepts preceded each expansion over the last two million-plus years? Stasis followed every expansion, so there could not have been any new event, discovery, concept that exceeded the existing capacity for complexification.
DAVID: You have abandoned your original thought that an idea in a previous brain forced the new expansion as it was implemented by the new brain Progress!!
How the heck to do you arrive at that conclusion? I am saying that I do not know what new “idea” triggered the expansion! We took the spear as an example, because artefacts are the only concrete evidence we have. The trigger could have been changes in the environment or new discoveries or experiences that forced the existing brain to implement new ideas concerning modes of living. Whatever may have been the new “idea”, it would have arisen originally in the old smaller brain, and its implementation would have exceeded the capacity of that brain’s complexification and so would have necessitated additional cells.
dhw: You have agreed explicitly that the brain shrank because the efficiency of complexification (an autonomous process) made certain cells redundant. Expansion entails the addition of neurons! The fact that this takes place within the confines of the existing sapiens skull does not alter the fact that the brain can expand itself. Both processes result from the “mechanism” you say your God implanted in the brain (bolded above) – a mechanism which acts autonomously and which I call cellular intelligence.
DAVID: The addition of some hippocampal neurons has not expanded the brain, similar to past expansions. They are really part of the plasticity and complexification, all of which has only reduced brain size.
Of course it hasn’t expanded the brain, but it has expanded part of the brain. Addition = expansion. And if there is an autonomous mechanism for small-scale expansion in the modern brain, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the same mechanism caused expansion in the earlier brain, but on a much larger scale.
DAVID: How God offers the instructions is always debatable. How do you think God does it? […]
dhw: […] Your strict guidelines entail a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme or direct dabbling for every single life form, natural wonder etc. as above. You have not come up with any alternative, but of course you are free to believe whatever you wish to believe.
DAVID: Thank you, and in the other thread I show you that Behe and I both believe in DNA pre-programming. Dabbling would be the gene destruction Behe describes.
Have I got this right? You (and Behe?) appear to believe that every single life form, econiche, lifestyle, strategy, natural wonder etc. in the history of life was preprogrammed in the first cells, and in order for each one to emerge separately, your God took out the umpteen million programmes for all the other life forms, econiches, lifestyles, strategies and natural wonders, leaving just the one. If this is wrong, do please explain what you (and Behe?) think your God preprogrammed and what he dabbled.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, July 11, 2020, 20:00 (1594 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: You have abandoned your original thought that an idea in a previous brain forced the new expansion as it was implemented by the new brain. Progress!!
dhw: How the heck to do you arrive at that conclusion? I am saying that I do not know what new “idea” triggered the expansion! We took the spear as an example, because artefacts are the only concrete evidence we have. The trigger could have been changes in the environment or new discoveries or experiences that forced the existing brain to implement new ideas concerning modes of living. Whatever may have been the new “idea”, it would have arisen originally in the old smaller brain, and its implementation would have exceeded the capacity of that brain’s complexification and so would have necessitated additional cells.
Still defending your natural view of expansion. Fine. We clearly disagree. I'll stay with God who decides when in evolution a larger brain will appear. All we know about human brains is they shrink when heavily used, after having enlarged at first in areas that provide the soul with more complex conceptual thinking areas. That is basically where all enlargement takes place from Lucy-likes and onward.
dhw: You have agreed explicitly that the brain shrank because the efficiency of complexification (an autonomous process) made certain cells redundant. Expansion entails the addition of neurons! The fact that this takes place within the confines of the existing sapiens skull does not alter the fact that the brain can expand itself. Both processes result from the “mechanism” you say your God implanted in the brain (bolded above) – a mechanism which acts autonomously and which I call cellular intelligence.DAVID: The addition of some hippocampal neurons has not expanded the brain, similar to past expansions. They are really part of the plasticity and complexification, all of which has only reduced brain size.
dhw: Of course it hasn’t expanded the brain, but it has expanded part of the brain. Addition = expansion. And if there is an autonomous mechanism for small-scale expansion in the modern brain, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the same mechanism caused expansion in the earlier brain, but on a much larger scale.
Skulls and brains shrink is the only example we have in sapiens even if neurons are added in the hippocampus. It is all part of plasticity and complexification. I suspect, as stated before, both processes were present to small degrees in earlier hominin/homo brains, neither of which would enlarge brains.
DAVID: How God offers the instructions is always debatable. How do you think God does it? […]dhw: […] Your strict guidelines entail a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme or direct dabbling for every single life form, natural wonder etc. as above. You have not come up with any alternative, but of course you are free to believe whatever you wish to believe.
DAVID: Thank you, and in the other thread I show you that Behe and I both believe in DNA pre-programming. Dabbling would be the gene destruction Behe describes.
dhw: Have I got this right? You (and Behe?) appear to believe that every single life form, econiche, lifestyle, strategy, natural wonder etc. in the history of life was preprogrammed in the first cells, and in order for each one to emerge separately, your God took out the umpteen million programmes for all the other life forms, econiches, lifestyles, strategies and natural wonders, leaving just the one. If this is wrong, do please explain what you (and Behe?) think your God preprogrammed and what he dabbled.
That is the point of Behe's new book! Why couldn't God program it all in the beginning? He may have programmed the evolution of the Big Bang to the universe we see today, the Milky Way and the Earth all at their beginnings. Then sat back and watched. If something evolved in a way He had not planned, He could then step in and correct it.
Brain expansion
DAVID: You have abandoned your original thought that an idea in a previous brain forced the new expansion as it was implemented by the new brain. Progress!!
dhw: How the heck to do you arrive at that conclusion? I am saying that I do not know what new “idea” triggered the expansion! We took the spear as an example, because artefacts are the only concrete evidence we have. The trigger could have been changes in the environment or new discoveries or experiences that forced the existing brain to implement new ideas concerning modes of living. Whatever may have been the new “idea”, it would have arisen originally in the old smaller brain, and its implementation would have exceeded the capacity of that brain’s complexification and so would have necessitated additional cells.
DAVID: Still defending your natural view of expansion. Fine. We clearly disagree. I'll stay with God who decides when in evolution a larger brain will appear. All we know about human brains is they shrink when heavily used, after having enlarged at first in areas that provide the soul with more complex conceptual thinking areas. That is basically where all enlargement takes place from Lucy-likes and onward.
Of course I’m still defending it. We know that the modern brain stopped expanding (I suggest that this was because further expansion would have required major adjustments to the anatomy), complexifies in response to thought, certain areas expand in response to thought – but not enough to require overall expansion – and certain areas have shrunk because of the enhanced efficiency of complexification, which made those areas redundant. It is therefore perfectly feasible that in former times brains also complexified in response to thought and expanded in response to thought. They would not have shrunk, because the existing capacity for complexification was inadequate to cope with the new thoughts which required implementation.
DAVID: Skulls and brains shrink is the only example we have in sapiens even if neurons are added in the hippocampus. It is all part of plasticity and complexification. I suspect, as stated before, both processes were present to small degrees in earlier hominin/homo brains, neither of which would enlarge brains.
Same again. Yes, it is all part of plasticity, added neurons in the hippocampus are an example of expansion, and we agree that both processes (complexification and expansion) would have been present in earlier brains. But my proposal is that when their capacity for complexification was insufficient, expansion took over. In the modern brain, when greater capacity is required, enhanced complexification has taken over, and – for the umpteenth time – you have agreed that shrinkage is the result of complexification’s increased efficiency. I still don’t know why you think your God could not have given earlier brains the same mechanism for autonomous complexification and expansion as the one you recognize as being present in the modern brain, although you refuse to countenance the possibility that the mechanism might be cellular intelligence.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, July 12, 2020, 19:14 (1593 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Still defending your natural view of expansion. Fine. We clearly disagree. I'll stay with God who decides when in evolution a larger brain will appear. All we know about human brains is they shrink when heavily used, after having enlarged at first in areas that provide the soul with more complex conceptual thinking areas. That is basically where all enlargement takes place from Lucy-likes and onward.
dhw: Of course I’m still defending it. We know that the modern brain stopped expanding (I suggest that this was because further expansion would have required major adjustments to the anatomy), complexifies in response to thought, certain areas expand in response to thought – but not enough to require overall expansion – and certain areas have shrunk because of the enhanced efficiency of complexification, which made those areas redundant. It is therefore perfectly feasible that in former times brains also complexified in response to thought and expanded in response to thought. They would not have shrunk, because the existing capacity for complexification was inadequate to cope with the new thoughts which required implementation.
I agree with you, earlier brains undoubtedly had some degree of plasticity and complexification. Advances in evolution build on previous processes and structures, and the bold is straight from my thinking. In contrast, I view the thought mechanisms for the soul to use for new ideas must appear in a new-sized brain, and then implementation can occur.
DAVID: Skulls and brains shrink is the only example we have in sapiens even if neurons are added in the hippocampus. It is all part of plasticity and complexification. I suspect, as stated before, both processes were present to small degrees in earlier hominin/homo brains, neither of which would enlarge brains.dhw: Same again. Yes, it is all part of plasticity, added neurons in the hippocampus are an example of expansion, and we agree that both processes (complexification and expansion) would have been present in earlier brains. But my proposal is that when their capacity for complexification was insufficient, expansion took over. In the modern brain, when greater capacity is required, enhanced complexification has taken over, and – for the umpteenth time – you have agreed that shrinkage is the result of complexification’s increased efficiency. I still don’t know why you think your God could not have given earlier brains the same mechanism for autonomous complexification and expansion as the one you recognize as being present in the modern brain, although you refuse to countenance the possibility that the mechanism might be cellular intelligence.
I've not changed my ideas and theories. Our major difference is I see God as running evolution. None of sapiens' brain history fits your thoughts. Remember the sapiens brain only began to shrink in the very recent past as we/souls started to use the brain in its full available capacity. The stasis in use becomes very obvious when viewed this way. As for cell intelligence, my view is not changed. They appear to react intelligently because of God's intelligent instructional information they contain.
Brain expansion
dhw: We know that the modern brain stopped expanding (I suggest that this was because further expansion would have required major adjustments to the anatomy), complexifies in response to thought, certain areas expand in response to thought – but not enough to require overall expansion – and certain areas have shrunk because of the enhanced efficiency of complexification, which made those areas redundant. It is therefore perfectly feasible that in former times brains also complexified in response to thought and expanded in response to thought. They would not have shrunk, because the existing capacity for complexification was inadequate to cope with the new thoughts which required implementation.
DAVID: I agree with you, earlier brains undoubtedly had some degree of plasticity and complexification. Advances in evolution build on previous processes and structures, and the bold is straight from my thinking. In contrast, I view the thought mechanisms for the soul to use for new ideas must appear in a new-sized brain, and then implementation can occur.
Your last sentence implies that the dualist’s soul uses material mechanisms to do its thinking, but I was under the impression that the dualist’s soul – while dependent on the material brain for information and the ability to implement its thoughts – was something immaterial (hence its ability to survive the death of the body). If that is correct, it would not need the new-sized brain until the existing (and autonomous) capacity for complexification proved to be inadequate to implement the new thought. Hence expansion through the process of implementation. Once the new brain existed, then the same process would repeat itself if the soul came up with new ideas that exceeded the existing capacity.
dhw: I still don’t know why you think your God could not have given earlier brains the same mechanism for autonomous complexification and expansion as the one you recognize as being present in the modern brain, although you refuse to countenance the possibility that the mechanism might be cellular intelligence.
DAVID: I've not changed my ideas and theories. Our major difference is I see God as running evolution.
By “running” you mean controlling every phase of evolution through preprogramming or direct dabbling. That does not answer my question, since you have agreed that the modern brain autonomously “runs” its own system of complexification, minor enlargement and shrinkage. Why could it not have done so (without shrinkage) in former times?
DAVID: None of sapiens' brain history fits your thoughts. Remember the sapiens brain only began to shrink in the very recent past as we/souls started to use the brain in its full available capacity. The stasis in use becomes very obvious when viewed this way.
Of course the history fits my thoughts! Pre-sapiens brains expanded. Nobody knows why. The idea that they expanded because new concepts, discoveries, experiences required a greater capacity for implementation of the resultant new ideas does not contradict the history – it offers an explanation of the history! Shrinkage (loss of cells) resulted from the increased efficiency of complexification in dealing with new ideas, whereas in the past when complexification was not so efficient, the brain would have required MORE cells – hence expansion. Stasis simply relates to the absence of new ideas and hence of new expansions/complexifications.
DAVID: As for cell intelligence, my view is not changed. They appear to react intelligently because of God's intelligent instructional information they contain.
“Intelligent instructional information” being an impressive-sounding term for programmes - a view which has led you ultimately to the absurd suitcase analogy discussed elsewhere.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Monday, July 13, 2020, 18:36 (1592 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I agree with you, earlier brains undoubtedly had some degree of plasticity and complexification. Advances in evolution build on previous processes and structures, and the bold is straight from my thinking. In contrast, I view the thought mechanisms for the soul to use for new ideas must appear in a new-sized brain, and then implementation can occur.
dhw: Your last sentence implies that the dualist’s soul uses material mechanisms to do its thinking, but I was under the impression that the dualist’s soul – while dependent on the material brain for information and the ability to implement its thoughts – was something immaterial (hence its ability to survive the death of the body). If that is correct, it would not need the new-sized brain until the existing (and autonomous) capacity for complexification proved to be inadequate to implement the new thought. Hence expansion through the process of implementation. Once the new brain existed, then the same process would repeat itself if the soul came up with new ideas that exceeded the existing capacity.
An exact distortion of what I have previously written about my dualism theory: to repeat, in life the soul MUST use the brain mechanisms to develop thought and concepts. In death it is free and on its own to think. My concept of dualism is not yours, ever, and would not fit/allow your view of how expansion might happen naturally. You want natural expansion. I see God as the designer.
dhw: I still don’t know why you think your God could not have given earlier brains the same mechanism for autonomous complexification and expansion as the one you recognize as being present in the modern brain, although you refuse to countenance the possibility that the mechanism might be cellular intelligence.DAVID: I've not changed my ideas and theories. Our major difference is I see God as running evolution.
dhw: By “running” you mean controlling every phase of evolution through preprogramming or direct dabbling. That does not answer my question, since you have agreed that the modern brain autonomously “runs” its own system of complexification, minor enlargement and shrinkage. Why could it not have done so (without shrinkage) in former times?
I've previously stated several times that past smaller less complex brains probably had some form of complexification ability. We cannot know about shrinkage from the fossils.
DAVID: None of sapiens' brain history fits your thoughts. Remember the sapiens brain only began to shrink in the very recent past as we/souls started to use the brain in its full available capacity. The stasis in use becomes very obvious when viewed this way.dhw: Of course the history fits my thoughts! Pre-sapiens brains expanded. Nobody knows why. The idea that they expanded because new concepts, discoveries, experiences required a greater capacity for implementation of the resultant new ideas does not contradict the history – it offers an explanation of the history! Shrinkage (loss of cells) resulted from the increased efficiency of complexification in dealing with new ideas, whereas in the past when complexification was not so efficient, the brain would have required MORE cells – hence expansion. Stasis simply relates to the absence of new ideas and hence of new expansions/complexifications.
We are currently discussing the evidence from sapiens brains and since it doesn't fit your natural theory of expansion you have scurried back to pre-sapiens brains to avoid the problem. Please stick to the subject, sapiens brains and long initial stasis of ideas/artifacts.
DAVID: As for cell intelligence, my view is not changed. They appear to react intelligently because of God's intelligent instructional information they contain.dhw: “Intelligent instructional information” being an impressive-sounding term for programmes - a view which has led you ultimately to the absurd suitcase analogy discussed elsewhere.
Answered in that entry. You use programs like a dirty word. You never like the concept of God's implanted instructions/information. IDer's deal with it at great length.
Brain expansion
DAVID: I agree with you, earlier brains undoubtedly had some degree of plasticity and complexification. Advances in evolution build on previous processes and structures[….] In contrast, I view the thought mechanisms for the soul to use for new ideas must appear in a new-sized brain, and then implementation can occur.
dhw: Your last sentence implies that the dualist’s soul uses material mechanisms to do its thinking, but I was under the impression that the dualist’s soul – while dependent on the material brain for information and the ability to implement its thoughts – was something immaterial (hence its ability to survive the death of the body). If that is correct, it would not need the new-sized brain until the existing (and autonomous) capacity for complexification proved to be inadequate to implement the new thought. Hence expansion through the process of implementation. Once the new brain existed, then the same process would repeat itself if the soul came up with new ideas that exceeded the existing capacity.
DAVID: An exact distortion of what I have previously written about my dualism theory: to repeat, in life the soul MUST use the brain mechanisms to develop thought and concepts. In death it is free and on its own to think.
How is it a distortion? We agree that in life the dualist’s soul MUST use the material brain: its thoughts and concepts depend on the brain for information and for implementation. But the dualist’s soul itself cannot be material if it survives the death of the body/brain! Perhaps it is the term “thought mechanisms” that has caused confusion. Please explain it, please tell us whether the dualist’s soul is or is not material, and please explain why you think the dualist’s soul cannot use existing knowledge to come up with new ideas until the material brain has already provided new knowledge and an enhanced ability to implement the ideas.
DAVID: My concept of dualism is not yours, ever, and would not fit/allow your view of how expansion might happen naturally. You want natural expansion. I see God as the designer.
There is no conflict between “natural expansion” and God the designer, if you assume that God designed Nature! A God who designs a mechanism that enables organs and organisms to design their own development, life style, natural wonder etc. is no less a designer God than one who preprogrammes or dabbles every development etc.
DAVID: Our major difference is I see God as running evolution.
But you have agreed that the modern brain autonomously “runs” its own system of complexification, minor enlargement and shrinkage. Why could it not have done so (without shrinkage) in former times?
DAVID: I've previously stated several times that past smaller less complex brains probably had some form of complexification ability. We cannot know about shrinkage from the fossils.
Not answering my question. If the modern brain controls its complexification and its limited expansion autonomously, why couldn’t the same mechanism have done the same in former times?
DAVID: None of sapiens' brain history fits your thoughts. Remember the sapiens brain only began to shrink in the very recent past as we/souls started to use the brain in its full available capacity. The stasis in use becomes very obvious when viewed this way.
dhw: Of course the history fits my thoughts! […]
DAVID: We are currently discussing the evidence from sapiens brains and since it doesn't fit your natural theory of expansion you have scurried back to pre-sapiens brains to avoid the problem. Please stick to the subject, sapiens brains and long initial stasis of ideas/artifacts.
You are right – my reply concerned the history generally, and not sapiens’ history. My apologies. But I have already given you the answer umpteen times. We do not know what new requirement resulted in the final expansion. But I propose that the sapiens brain stopped expanding because if it had expanded any further, this would have necessitated major changes to the whole anatomy. Instead, complexification took over, apart from minor expansions in particular sections (thus demonstrating the existence of the cells’ autonomous ability to add to their numbers). Shrinkage – loss of cells – was caused by the increased efficiency of complexification, and took place after a long period of stasis during which – as in all other known stages of pre-sapiens expansion – there were no new “big ideas” which required further changes to the brain.
DAVID: As for cell intelligence, my view is not changed. They appear to react intelligently because of God's intelligent instructional information they contain.
dhw: “Intelligent instructional information” being an impressive-sounding term for programmes - a view which has led you ultimately to the absurd suitcase analogy discussed elsewhere.
DAVID: Answered in that entry. You use programs like a dirty word. You never like the concept of God's implanted instructions/information. IDer's deal with it at great length.
Not answered but even more confused in that entry. I don’t use program as a dirty word, but I simply find it impossible to believe that your God would pack the first cells with programs for every single life form etc. See the other entry.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, July 14, 2020, 19:31 (1591 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: An exact distortion of what I have previously written about my dualism theory: to repeat, in life the soul MUST use the brain mechanisms to develop thought and concepts. In death it is free and on its own to think.
dhw: How is it a distortion? We agree that in life the dualist’s soul MUST use the material brain: its thoughts and concepts depend on the brain for information and for implementation. But the dualist’s soul itself cannot be material if it survives the death of the body/brain! Perhaps it is the term “thought mechanisms” that has caused confusion. Please explain it, please tell us whether the dualist’s soul is or is not material, and please explain why you think the dualist’s soul cannot use existing knowledge to come up with new ideas until the material brain has already provided new knowledge and an enhanced ability to implement the ideas.
In life the soul and brain are totally linked. The immaterial soul must use the neuron networks to retrieve memory, to receive sensory information, and to develop abstract thought, which thought can only be as abstractly complex as the neuron networks allow. This fits the slowly advancing of human forms/brain enlargement over time associated with more advanced artifacts.
DAVID: I've previously stated several times that past smaller less complex brains probably had some form of complexification ability. We cannot know about shrinkage from the fossils.
dhw: Not answering my question. If the modern brain controls its complexification and its limited expansion autonomously, why couldn’t the same mechanism have done the same in former times?
Because I think God creates the appearance of evolution to make you fell better about my description of God running evolution
DAVID: We are currently discussing the evidence from sapiens brains and since it doesn't fit your natural theory of expansion you have scurried back to pre-sapiens brains to avoid the problem. Please stick to the subject, sapiens brains and long initial stasis of ideas/artifacts.dhw: You are right – my reply concerned the history generally, and not sapiens’ history. My apologies. But I have already given you the answer umpteen times. We do not know what new requirement resulted in the final expansion. But I propose that the sapiens brain stopped expanding because if it had expanded any further, this would have necessitated major changes to the whole anatomy.
Skull size no problem. Our brain was sizeably bigger (about 150 cc) before the shrinkage, with no anatomic problems. Could be easily added back, if necessary, but isn't. Your anatomic problem is not reasonable.
dhw: Instead, complexification took over, apart from minor expansions in particular sections (thus demonstrating the existence of the cells’ autonomous ability to add to their numbers). Shrinkage – loss of cells – was caused by the increased efficiency of complexification, and took place after a long period of stasis during which – as in all other known stages of pre-sapiens expansion – there were no new “big ideas” which required further changes to the brain.
You have agreed to a stasis period. That destroys your idea that compelling ideas in a previously smaller brain demanded enlargement for implementation. Where is the implied immediate implementation? No where. Delayed for over 200,000 years
DAVID: As for cell intelligence, my view is not changed. They appear to react intelligently because of God's intelligent instructional information they contain.dhw: “Intelligent instructional information” being an impressive-sounding term for programmes - a view which has led you ultimately to the absurd suitcase analogy discussed elsewhere.
DAVID: Answered in that entry. You use programs like a dirty word. You never like the concept of God's implanted instructions/information. IDer's deal with it at great length.
dhw: Not answered but even more confused in that entry. I don’t use program as a dirty word, but I simply find it impossible to believe that your God would pack the first cells with programs for every single life form etc. See the other entry.
We are stuck with Behe's evidence that DNA (Darwin) devolves.
Brain expansion
DAVID: An exact distortion of what I have previously written about my dualism theory: to repeat, in life the soul MUST use the brain mechanisms to develop thought and concepts. In death it is free and on its own to think.
dhw: How is it a distortion? We agree that in life the dualist’s soul MUST use the material brain: its thoughts and concepts depend on the brain for information and for implementation. But the dualist’s soul itself cannot be material if it survives the death of the body/brain! Perhaps it is the term “thought mechanisms” that has caused confusion. Please explain it, please tell us whether the dualist’s soul is or is not material, and please explain why you think the dualist’s soul cannot use existing knowledge to come up with new ideas until the material brain has already provided new knowledge and an enhanced ability to implement the ideas.
DAVID: In life the soul and brain are totally linked. The immaterial soul must use the neuron networks to retrieve memory, to receive sensory information, and to develop abstract thought, which thought can only be as abstractly complex as the neuron networks allow. This fits the slowly advancing of human forms/brain enlargement over time associated with more advanced artifacts.
We agree that the dualist’s immaterial soul must use the material brain, but why is its abstract thought limited to the capacities of the neuron network? Once again you refer to artefacts, and so once again let’s use them as an example. Pre-sapiens wants to kill an animal. He knows that the closer he gets, the more dangerous it is. Why must his neuron network expand before he thinks to himself: maybe I could invent a weapon that would kill the animal from a distance?
dhw: If the modern brain controls its complexification and its limited expansion autonomously, why couldn’t the same mechanism have done the same in former times?
DAVID: Because I think God creates the appearance of evolution to make you fell better about my description of God running evolution
I don’t understand your answer, but I presume it is a cover for your not knowing why the ancient brain could not have had the same mechanism as the modern brain.
DAVID: We are currently discussing the evidence from sapiens brains and since it doesn't fit your natural theory of expansion you have scurried back to pre-sapiens brains to avoid the problem. Please stick to the subject, sapiens brains and long initial stasis of ideas/artifacts.
dhw: You are right – my reply concerned the history generally, and not sapiens’ history. My apologies. But I have already given you the answer umpteen times. We do not know what new requirement resulted in the final expansion. But I propose that the sapiens brain stopped expanding because if it had expanded any further, this would have necessitated major changes to the whole anatomy.
DAVID: Skull size no problem. Our brain was sizeably bigger (about 150 cc) before the shrinkage, with no anatomic problems. Could be easily added back, if necessary, but isn't. Your anatomic problem is not reasonable.
My “anatomical problem” explains why the brain and skull stopped expanding after reaching that size! Once complexification had taken over, the brain eventually shrank because of its efficiency, although according to you, there were also minor expansions. So why would the brain as a whole start expanding again to fill the gap once complexification had proved so efficient? Do you expect it to fill the gap and then revert to complexification because it’s gone back to the size which won’t allow further expansion?
DAVID: You have agreed to a stasis period. That destroys your idea that compelling ideas in a previously smaller brain demanded enlargement for implementation. Where is the implied immediate implementation? No where. Delayed for over 200,000 years.
You seem never to have understood the point I keep bolding. We don’t know what “compelling ideas” demanded enlargement for implementation. We took artefacts as an example, because they are the only concrete evidence we have from the past. The trigger could have been new requirements through local environmental changes, new discoveries, new developments within a social structure. None of us were around at the time, and none of our ancestors knew how to keep a diary! As for stasis, again you persist in ignoring my previous answers. Once the unknown cause had required expansion, there were no new ideas or discoveries or developments that would have required expansion. This applies to pre-sapiens AND to sapiens. There were always periods of stasis. In sapiens’ case, the stasis ended when some clever folk did have new ideas, but for the reason I have given, the brain did not expand – it complexified.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, July 15, 2020, 15:12 (1590 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: In life the soul and brain are totally linked. The immaterial soul must use the neuron networks to retrieve memory, to receive sensory information, and to develop abstract thought, which thought can only be as abstractly complex as the neuron networks allow. This fits the slowly advancing of human forms/brain enlargement over time associated with more advanced artifacts.
dhw: We agree that the dualist’s immaterial soul must use the material brain, but why is its abstract thought limited to the capacities of the neuron network? Once again you refer to artefacts, and so once again let’s use them as an example.
Simple analysis. Bigger more complex brains are related directly to advances in artifact complexity. Complex brain allowed the appearance of more complex thought by the soul.
dhw: I don’t understand your answer, but I presume it is a cover for your not knowing why the ancient brain could not have had the same mechanism as the modern brain.
I assume earlier brains had some degree of complexification.
dhw: You are right – my reply concerned the history generally, and not sapiens’ history. My apologies. But I have already given you the answer umpteen times. We do not know what new requirement resulted in the final expansion. But I propose that the sapiens brain stopped expanding because if it had expanded any further, this would have necessitated major changes to the whole anatomy.DAVID: Skull size no problem. Our brain was sizeably bigger (about 150 cc) before the shrinkage, with no anatomic problems. Could be easily added back, if necessary, but isn't. Your anatomic problem is not reasonable.
dhw: My “anatomical problem” explains why the brain and skull stopped expanding after reaching that size! Once complexification had taken over, the brain eventually shrank because of its efficiency, although according to you, there were also minor expansions. So why would the brain as a whole start expanding again to fill the gap once complexification had proved so efficient? Do you expect it to fill the gap and then revert to complexification because it’s gone back to the size which won’t allow further expansion?
More talk around your original explanation that anatomically the head could get too big!!!
DAVID: You have agreed to a stasis period. That destroys your idea that compelling ideas in a previously smaller brain demanded enlargement for implementation. Where is the implied immediate implementation? No where. Delayed for over 200,000 years.dhw: You seem never to have understood the point I keep bolding. We don’t know what “compelling ideas” demanded enlargement for implementation. We took artefacts as an example, because they are the only concrete evidence we have from the past. The trigger could have been new requirements through local environmental changes, new discoveries, new developments within a social structure. None of us were around at the time, and none of our ancestors knew how to keep a diary! As for stasis, again you persist in ignoring my previous answers. Once the unknown cause had required expansion, there were no new ideas or discoveries or developments that would have required expansion. This applies to pre-sapiens AND to sapiens. There were always periods of stasis. In sapiens’ case, the stasis ended when some clever folk did have new ideas, but for the reason I have given, the brain did not expand – it complexified.
I fully understand your approach. The bold is irrational. We don't have to know which idea did it! Your unknown (natural) cause (in color) was an impelling idea in the earlier brain. Are you now going to retract that theory? It seems so. What drives expansion naturally, if anything. No evidence in sapiens brain history.
Brain expansion
DAVID: In life the soul and brain are totally linked. The immaterial soul must use the neuron networks to retrieve memory, to receive sensory information, and to develop abstract thought, which thought can only be as abstractly complex as the neuron networks allow. This fits the slowly advancing of human forms/brain enlargement over time associated with more advanced artifacts.
dhw: We agree that the dualist’s immaterial soul must use the material brain, but why is its abstract thought limited to the capacities of the neuron network?
DAVID: Simple analysis. Bigger more complex brains are related directly to advances in artifact complexity. Complex brain allowed the appearance of more complex thought by the soul.
I don’t disagree with this. Once the brain has expanded/complexified, then of course it will contain more information for the dualist's soul to work with, and will have developed more skills to enable it to implement the soul’s ideas. But this doesn’t tell us why the brain expanded in the first place, and it doesn’t mean that the dualist’s soul cannot have new thoughts using the existing brain!
dhw: We do not know what new requirement resulted in the final expansion. But I propose that the sapiens brain stopped expanding because if it had expanded any further, this would have necessitated major changes to the whole anatomy.
DAVID: Skull size no problem. Our brain was sizeably bigger (about 150 cc) before the shrinkage, with no anatomic problems. Could be easily added back, if necessary, but isn't. Your anatomic problem is not reasonable. (dhw’s bold)
dhw: My “anatomical problem” explains why the brain and skull stopped expanding after reaching that size! Once complexification had taken over, the brain eventually shrank because of its efficiency, although according to you, there were also minor expansions. So why would the brain as a whole start expanding again to fill the gap once complexification had proved so efficient? Do you expect it to fill the gap and then revert to complexification because it’s gone back to the size which won’t allow further expansion?
DAVID: More talk around your original explanation that anatomically the head could get too big!!!
This is not “talk around” anything! Once more, I propose: the brain stopped expanding because a bigger head would have caused anatomical problems. Complexification took over, and was so efficient that the brain shrank. You want the brain to start expanding again because there is now room for expansion (as I have bolded above). Although there are indeed minor expansions, I am asking you why the brain should abandon its successful method of complexification and revert to expansion though it doesn’t need to.
DAVID: You have agreed to a stasis period. That destroys your idea that compelling ideas in a previously smaller brain demanded enlargement for implementation. Where is the implied immediate implementation? No where. Delayed for over 200,000 years.
dhw: You seem never to have understood the point I keep bolding. We don’t know what “compelling ideas” demanded enlargement for implementation. We took artefacts as an example, because they are the only concrete evidence we have from the past. The trigger could have been new requirements through local environmental changes, new discoveries, new developments within a social structure. None of us were around at the time, and none of our ancestors knew how to keep a diary! As for stasis, again you persist in ignoring my previous answers. Once the unknown cause had required expansion, there were no new ideas or discoveries or developments that would have required expansion. This applies to pre-sapiens AND to sapiens. There were always periods of stasis. In sapiens’ case, the stasis ended when some clever folk did have new ideas, but for the reason I have given, the brain did not expand – it complexified.
DAVID: I fully understand your approach. The bold is irrational. We don't have to know which idea did it! Your unknown (natural) cause (in color) was an impelling idea in the earlier brain. Are you now going to retract that theory? It seems so. What drives expansion naturally, if anything. No evidence in sapiens brain history.
Why is it irrational to say we don’t know the cause of something? Yes, the unknown cause was an impelling idea. Why does that mean I seem to be retracting the theory? We don’t know the cause of speciation, so should we retract the theory of evolution? Nobody knows what drove expansion. Does that mean you are retracting your theory that God did it? All this is a total non sequitur. Sapiens’ brain history offers the evidence that the brain complexifies and expands on a minor scale IN RESPONSE to new requirements. Therefore it is not unreasonable to suppose that the pre-sapiens brain also complexified and expanded IN RESPONSE to new requirements, as opposed to expanding in anticipation of them. But in order to forestall yet more flogging of dead horses, let me repeat: once the brain had expanded, of course it could come up with more new ideas. If it didn’t, there was stasis, both with pre-sapiens and with sapiens.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, July 16, 2020, 21:07 (1589 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: We agree that the dualist’s immaterial soul must use the material brain, but why is its abstract thought limited to the capacities of the neuron network?
DAVID: Simple analysis. Bigger more complex brains are related directly to advances in artifact complexity. Complex brain allowed the appearance of more complex thought by the soul.
dhw: I don’t disagree with this. Once the brain has expanded/complexified, then of course it will contain more information for the dualist's soul to work with, and will have developed more skills to enable it to implement the soul’s ideas. But this doesn’t tell us why the brain expanded in the first place, and it doesn’t mean that the dualist’s soul cannot have new thoughts using the existing brain!
It can have new complex thoughts limited by the complexity of the existing living brain with which it must work. Advances in successive fossil/artifacts tell us this.
DAVID: More talk around your original explanation that anatomically the head could get too big!!!dhw: This is not “talk around” anything! Once more, I propose: the brain stopped expanding because a bigger head would have caused anatomical problems. Complexification took over, and was so efficient that the brain shrank. You want the brain to start expanding again because there is now room for expansion (as I have bolded above). Although there are indeed minor expansions, I am asking you why the brain should abandon its successful method of complexification and revert to expansion though it doesn’t need to.
A non-answer. There was no anatomical problem and wouldn't be, since we know our brain/skull shrunk by 150 cc in the recent past. The bold is weird. I do not expect any new expansion. Your 'minor' expansions are simple local additions of a few new neurons in the hippocampus, nothing more. Making a mountain out of a tiny molehill.
DAVID: You have agreed to a stasis period. That destroys your idea that compelling ideas in a previously smaller brain demanded enlargement for implementation. Where is the implied immediate implementation? No where. Delayed for over 200,000 years.dhw: You seem never to have understood the point I keep bolding. We don’t know what “compelling ideas” demanded enlargement for implementation. We took artefacts as an example, because they are the only concrete evidence we have from the past. The trigger could have been new requirements through local environmental changes, new discoveries, new developments within a social structure. None of us were around at the time, and none of our ancestors knew how to keep a diary! As for stasis, again you persist in ignoring my previous answers. Once the unknown cause had required expansion, there were no new ideas or discoveries or developments that would have required expansion. This applies to pre-sapiens AND to sapiens. There were always periods of stasis. In sapiens’ case, the stasis ended when some clever folk did have new ideas, but for the reason I have given, the brain did not expand – it complexified.
DAVID: I fully understand your approach. The bold is irrational. We don't have to know which idea did it! Your unknown (natural) cause (in color) was an impelling idea in the earlier brain. Are you now going to retract that theory? It seems so. What drives expansion naturally, if anything. No evidence in sapiens brain history.
dhw: Why is it irrational to say we don’t know the cause of something? Yes, the unknown cause was an impelling idea. Why does that mean I seem to be retracting the theory? We don’t know the cause of speciation, so should we retract the theory of evolution? Nobody knows what drove expansion. Does that mean you are retracting your theory that God did it? All this is a total non sequitur. Sapiens’ brain history offers the evidence that the brain complexifies and expands on a minor scale IN RESPONSE to new requirements. Therefore it is not unreasonable to suppose that the pre-sapiens brain also complexified and expanded IN RESPONSE to new requirements, as opposed to expanding in anticipation of them. But in order to forestall yet more flogging of dead horses, let me repeat: once the brain had expanded, of course it could come up with more new ideas. If it didn’t, there was stasis, both with pre-sapiens and with sapiens.
I'll stick with God drives the complexification in evolution and you can hope for natural causes. New requirements (bolded) is pure Darwinism. We will never agree what advances evolution but we both agree design is required, designer unnamed by you.
Brain expansion
dhw: We agree that the dualist’s immaterial soul must use the material brain, but why is its abstract thought limited to the capacities of the neuron network?
DAVID: Simple analysis. Bigger more complex brains are related directly to advances in artifact complexity. Complex brain allowed the appearance of more complex thought by the soul.
dhw: I don’t disagree with this. Once the brain has expanded/complexified, then of course it will contain more information for the dualist's soul to work with, and will have developed more skills to enable it to implement the soul’s ideas. But this doesn’t tell us why the brain expanded in the first place, and it doesn’t mean that the dualist’s soul cannot have new thoughts using the existing brain!
DAVID: It can have new complex thoughts limited by the complexity of the existing living brain with which it must work. Advances in successive fossil/artifacts tell us this.
It is the amount of information the brain makes available that limits the dualist's soul's capacity for thought, but that doesn't mean new thoughts can't arise out of EXISTING information. Each new complexification is the RESULT of thought. Advances in artefacts will result from the thoughts of the dualist’s soul using existing information, and the implementation of the thought will CAUSE complexities. In my theory, it will have CAUSED expansion when the capacity for complexification was exceeded by the requirements of the new thought.
DAVID: More talk around your original explanation that anatomically the head could get too big!!!
dhw: This is not “talk around” anything! Once more, I propose: the brain stopped expanding because a bigger head would have caused anatomical problems. Complexification took over, and was so efficient that the brain shrank. You want the brain to start expanding again because there is now room for expansion […]. Although there are indeed minor expansions, I am asking you why the brain should abandon its successful method of complexification and revert to expansion though it doesn’t need to.
DAVID: A non-answer. There was no anatomical problem and wouldn't be, since we know our brain/skull shrunk by 150 cc in the recent past. The bold is weird. I do not expect any new expansion.
You wrote that the shrinkage “could be easily added back, if necessary, but isn’t. Your anatomical problem is not reasonable.” I don’t see how the non-necessity for 150cc removes the anatomical problem, so let me explain it yet again! We don’t know why our brain stopped expanding, but “reason” should tell you that if it had continued to expand indefinitely, we would have ended up with a head the size of an elephant’s! And you don’t think this would have caused anatomical problems? The brain stopped expanding, complexification took over, and when sapiens had lots of new ideas resulting in lots of complexifications, the latter were so efficient that some of the brain’s cells became redundant. How does this contradict any aspect of my theory?
DAVID: Your 'minor' expansions are simple local additions of a few new neurons in the hippocampus, nothing more. Making a mountain out of a tiny molehill.
I’m pointing out that the autonomous mechanism for expansion is still present. And so it is perfectly possible that in former times, before complexification took over, the same mechanism led to overall expansion.
dhw: […] Sapiens’ brain history offers the evidence that the brain complexifies and expands on a minor scale IN RESPONSE to new requirements. Therefore it is not unreasonable to suppose that the pre-sapiens brain also complexified and expanded IN RESPONSE to new requirements, as opposed to expanding in anticipation of them. But in order to forestall yet more flogging of dead horses, let me repeat: once the brain had expanded, of course it could come up with more new ideas. If it didn’t, there was stasis, both with pre-sapiens and with sapiens.
DAVID: I'll stick with God drives the complexification in evolution and you can hope for natural causes. New requirements (bolded) is pure Darwinism. We will never agree what advances evolution but we both agree design is required, designer unnamed by you.
I'm not “hoping” for anything, but I'm looking for logical answers to our questions. If God exists, then he would have designed the mechanism I am suggesting. Are you denying that the modern brain complexifies and expands on a minor scale IN RESPONSE to new requirements? If you accept that it does, why do you refuse to accept the possibility that it did the same in the past. Whether the theory is “pure Darwinism” or not is irrelevant.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Under "Synapse complexity":
QUOTE: Brains can be viewed as vast ensembles of highly diverse and dynamic synapses that shape and store information as it travels through the networks of neurons that generate and interconnect those synapses. There are more than 100 trillion synapses per human neocortex, and each synapse is itself a highly complex entity, comprising thousands of diverse and cooperative signal-transduction proteins.
One might expand this observation to cells in general. All organs and organisms are “vast ensembles” (I call them “communities”) of interconnecting cells (I use the term “cooperating”), each in itself a highly complex entity. And all of them shape and store information.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, July 18, 2020, 00:36 (1588 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: It is the amount of information the brain makes available that limits the dualist's soul's capacity for thought, but that doesn't mean new thoughts can't arise out of EXISTING information. Each new complexification is the RESULT of thought. Advances in artefacts will result from the thoughts of the dualist’s soul using existing information, and the implementation of the thought will CAUSE complexities. In my theory, it will have CAUSED expansion when the capacity for complexification was exceeded by the requirements of the new thought.
You have again avoided my theory that the soul must use the degree of complexity offered by the neuronal networks in the brain it is using in life to reach the limit of complexity of thought that network allows.
DAVID: There was no anatomical problem and wouldn't be, since we know our brain/skull shrunk by 150 cc in the recent past. I do not expect any new expansion.You wrote that the shrinkage “could be easily added back, if necessary, but isn’t. Your anatomical problem is not reasonable.” I don’t see how the non-necessity for 150cc removes the anatomical problem, so let me explain it yet again! We don’t know why our brain stopped expanding, but “reason” should tell you that if it had continued to expand indefinitely, we would have ended up with a head the size of an elephant’s! And you don’t think this would have caused anatomical problems? The brain stopped expanding, complexification took over, and when sapiens had lots of new ideas resulting in lots of complexifications, the latter were so efficient that some of the brain’s cells became redundant. How does this contradict any aspect of my theory?
'Elephant head' is a ridiculous inventive totally unreasonable concept, based on brain enlargements in known history. I'll stick with God running evolution and enlarging brains and skulls and changing pelvic measurements as necessary and all at once. The necessary enlargements that advanced us to our current stage were a total of 800 cc., about 26 ounces.
DAVID: Your 'minor' expansions are simple local additions of a few new neurons in the hippocampus, nothing more. Making a mountain out of a tiny molehill.dhw: I’m pointing out that the autonomous mechanism for expansion is still present. And so it is perfectly possible that in former times, before complexification took over, the same mechanism led to overall expansion.
'Anything is possible' is a nebulous argument. Our brain dos not expand presently!!! Some neurons( microscopic size) can be produced, nothing of size.
DAVID: I'll stick with God drives the complexification in evolution and you can hope for natural causes. New requirements (bolded) is pure Darwinism. We will never agree what advances evolution but we both agree design is required, designer unnamed by you.
dhw: I'm not “hoping” for anything, but I'm looking for logical answers to our questions. If God exists, then he would have designed the mechanism I am suggesting. Are you denying that the modern brain complexifies and expands on a minor scale IN RESPONSE to new requirements? If you accept that it does, why do you refuse to accept the possibility that it did the same in the past. Whether the theory is “pure Darwinism” or not is irrelevant.
All I am suggesting is that our minds will never meet over this question.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Under "Synapse complexity":QUOTE: Brains can be viewed as vast ensembles of highly diverse and dynamic synapses that shape and store information as it travels through the networks of neurons that generate and interconnect those synapses. There are more than 100 trillion synapses per human neocortex, and each synapse is itself a highly complex entity, comprising thousands of diverse and cooperative signal-transduction proteins.
dhw: One might expand this observation to cells in general. All organs and organisms are “vast ensembles” (I call them “communities”) of interconnecting cells (I use the term “cooperating”), each in itself a highly complex entity. And all of them shape and store information.
I'll add they run their systems by following information in the form of instructions, teh source of which I grant to God.
Brain expansion: an article says a designed endpoint
by David Turell , Saturday, July 18, 2020, 05:23 (1588 days ago) @ David Turell
From a book chapter:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128040423001299?dgcid=raven_sd_r...
Evolution of the Human Brain: Design Without a Designer
Abstract
The evolutionary expansion of the brain is among the most distinctive morphological features of mammals. During the past decades, considerable progress has been made in explaining brain evolution in terms of physical and adaptive principles. The objective of this chapter is to present current perspectives on primate brain evolution, especially in humans, and to examine some of the design principles and operational modes that underlie the brain's information processing capacity. It is shown that local wiring and cortical folding is a simple design principle that enables brains to be more compact and faster with increasing size. Scaling studies and computational models, furthermore, indicate that the functional capacity of the human brain is inherently constrained by its neural architecture and signal processing capacity and that with our brain we have nearly reached the physical limits and evolutionary potential of a neural-based system. ( my bold)
Comment: My thoughts almost exactly. Full content behind paywall.
Brain expansion: an article says designed differently
by David Turell , Saturday, July 18, 2020, 05:41 (1588 days ago) @ David Turell
Our brain is not only much bigger than apes, it is designed very differently and cannot be considered an expected advance from previous designs:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627314000105?dgcid=raven_sd_reco...
"Programmed to be Human?
"Pletikos et al. (2014) demonstrate in this issue of Neuron that the human neocortex has an “hourglass” temporal gene expression pattern with robust and dynamic transcriptome differences during the prenatal and adolescent/adult periods. Similar changes are not observed in the nonhuman primate—is this what makes us human?
"Perhaps the biggest marvel of nature is the development of the human brain. It is estimated that an average human brain has ∼86 billion neurons, >100 trillion synapses, and >100,000 miles of myelin-covered nerve fibers (Pakkenberg and Gundersen, 1997, Pakkenberg et al., 2003). The final organization of this immensely complex structure is dependent on merely 20,000 protein-encoding genes, 23 pairs of chromosomes, and four nucleotide bases. Yet, the final product of development, the human brain, is a tridimensional jigsaw puzzle, made up by thousands of different kinds of projection neurons, local circuit neurons, and glial cells. They are arranged in elaborate neural networks, serve special functions, and lead to a unique condition of being human. The anatomical, neurochemical, and physiological differences across the different brain regions are tremendously complex, and the patterning and development of such an intricate system has been the focus of intense research endeavors for more than a century.
"A particular characteristic of neocortical tissue is the precise specification and coordinated development of brain regions. Although this basic neocortical map is shared among mammals, there are multiple, unique organizational differences that are a hallmark of the human brain.
***
"These patterns of gene expressions were, at least partially, unique to the human brain, as quantitative PCR studies revealed that the interareal expression pattern of a set of selected genes was not very well correlated between the healthy human and the nonhuman primate brains. This raised the possibility that the developmental program responsible for the precise patterning of the brain is species specific. In other words, individual transcripts appear to act as common building blocks of the brain and it is their species-specific regulation that makes the brain of any species, including humans, unique. (my bold)
***
"Thanks to early seminal work by Broca, Wernicke, Sperry, and Geschwind, it is clear that the functional differences between the left and the right brain are even more striking than the anatomical differences (Hugdahl, 2005). For example, speech is a clearly lateralized, uniquely human process, and handedness is also a hemisphere-encoded process...The symmetric interareal transcriptome in this study from the Šestan group will spur the field to identify the factors that establish this critical feature of the human neocortex.
***
"After all, we are a unique species, and for understanding our own individual phenotypic variability, we must first decipher what is specific about Homo sapiens."
Comment: This article and the previous one sound almost like ID sourced material or commentary from Adler. The size and organization of our brain is a giant leap from the previous brains from which we were evolved. A typical non-Darwinian gap in the evolution story .
Brain expansion
dhw: It is the amount of information the brain makes available that limits the dualist's soul's capacity for thought, but that doesn't mean new thoughts can't arise out of EXISTING information. Each new complexification is the RESULT of thought. Advances in artefacts will result from the thoughts of the dualist’s soul using existing information, and the implementation of the thought will CAUSE complexities. In my theory, it will have CAUSED expansion when the capacity for complexification was exceeded by the requirements of the new thought.
DAVID: You have again avoided my theory that the soul must use the degree of complexity offered by the neuronal networks in the brain it is using in life to reach the limit of complexity of thought that network allows.
You have again fudged the argument. Yes, the dualist’s soul uses the existing networks' complexities for the information they provide, and for implementation of its thoughts. And yes, these two functions are limited. But the dualist can have new thoughts using the existing information (the spear example, extending right through to – and including – sapiens), and the implementation of these new thoughts will require further complexities. However, if the existing networks are not sufficient to implement the new thoughts, the brain will require additional networks – hence pre-sapiens expansion.
DAVID: There was no anatomical problem […]
dhw: We don’t know why our brain stopped expanding, but “reason” should tell you that if it had continued to expand indefinitely, we would have ended up with a head the size of an elephant’s! And you don’t think this would have caused anatomical problems?
DAVID: 'Elephant head' is a ridiculous inventive totally unreasonable concept, based on brain enlargements in known history.
Nobody knows why the sapiens brain stopped expanding and complexification took over. I have offered you an explanation!
DAVID: I'll stick with God running evolution and enlarging brains and skulls and changing pelvic measurements as necessary and all at once. The necessary enlargements that advanced us to our current stage were a total of 800 cc., about 26 ounces.
Thank you for the information. How does that explain why the sapiens brain stopped expanding?
DAVID: Your 'minor' expansions are simple local additions of a few new neurons in the hippocampus, nothing more. Making a mountain out of a tiny molehill.
dhw: I’m pointing out that the autonomous mechanism for expansion is still present. And so it is perfectly possible that in former times, before complexification took over, the same mechanism led to overall expansion.
DAVID: 'Anything is possible' is a nebulous argument. Our brain dos not expand presently!!! Some neurons( microscopic size) can be produced, nothing of size.
The argument itself is not nebulous but absolutely concrete. If there are vestiges of an autonomous expansion process, the same process may have played a major role in former times. The fact that it is an unproven theory does not make it any more nebulous than the theory that there is a God, or that one morning a group of homos woke up to find that God had enlarged their brains, skulls and pelvises “all at once”.
QUOTE: It is shown that local wiring and cortical folding is a simple design principle that enables brains to be more compact and faster with increasing size. Scaling studies and computational models, furthermore, indicate that the functional capacity of the human brain is inherently constrained by its neural architecture and signal processing capacity and that with our brain we have nearly reached the physical limits and evolutionary potential of a neural-based system. (DAVID'S bold)
DAVID: My thoughts almost exactly.
And for the record, I also agree.
QUOTES: Our brain is not only much bigger than apes, it is designed very differently and cannot be considered an expected advance from previous designs:
Similar changes are not observed in the nonhuman primate—is this what makes us human?
...interareal expression pattern of a set of selected genes was not very well correlated between the healthy human and the nonhuman primate brains. (dhw's bolds)
DAVID: This article and the previous one sound almost like ID sourced material or commentary from Adler. The size and organization of our brain is a giant leap from the previous brains from which we were evolved. A typical non-Darwinian gap in the evolution story.
I don’t have any problem with the argument that our brain is a giant leap. Please note that the leap described here is from nonhuman primate brains. Of course there is also a giant leap from early human to modern human, but apart from the size, we don’t know exactly what differences there were. We both agree that plasticity and complexification must already have been a feature.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, July 18, 2020, 22:52 (1587 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: You have again avoided my theory that the soul must use the degree of complexity offered by the neuronal networks in the brain it is using in life to reach the limit of complexity of thought that network allows.
dhw:You have again fudged the argument. Yes, the dualist’s soul uses the existing networks' complexities for the information they provide, and for implementation of its thoughts. And yes, these two functions are limited. But the dualist can have new thoughts using the existing information (the spear example, extending right through to – and including – sapiens), and the implementation of these new thoughts will require further complexities. However, if the existing networks are not sufficient to implement the new thoughts, the brain will require additional networks – hence pre-sapiens expansion.
I've fudged nothing. In my view each earlier form of hominin/homo brain allowed the soul to invent new thoughts/concepts only to the level the complexity of the brain allows to develop. Steady advance of artifacts with the fossils prove the point.
DAVID: I'll stick with God running evolution and enlarging brains and skulls and changing pelvic measurements as necessary and all at once. The necessary enlargements that advanced us to our current stage were a total of 800 cc., about 26 ounces.dhw: Thank you for the information. How does that explain why the sapiens brain stopped expanding?
The brain we got was so adequate it shrunk 150 cc when active use appeared.
DAVID: 'Anything is possible' is a nebulous argument. Our brain dos not expand presently!!! Some neurons( microscopic size) can be produced, nothing of size.dhw: The argument itself is not nebulous but absolutely concrete. If there are vestiges of an autonomous expansion process, the same process may have played a major role in former times. The fact that it is an unproven theory does not make it any more nebulous than the theory that there is a God, or that one morning a group of homos woke up to find that God had enlarged their brains, skulls and pelvises “all at once”.
I'll stick with God and the evidence I have.
QUOTE: It is shown that local wiring and cortical folding is a simple design principle that enables brains to be more compact and faster with increasing size. Scaling studies and computational models, furthermore, indicate that the functional capacity of the human brain is inherently constrained by its neural architecture and signal processing capacity and that with our brain we have nearly reached the physical limits and evolutionary potential of a neural-based system. (DAVID'S bold)DAVID: My thoughts almost exactly.
dhw: And for the record, I also agree.
Great.
QUOTES: Our brain is not only much bigger than apes, it is designed very differently and cannot be considered an expected advance from previous designs:Similar changes are not observed in the nonhuman primate—is this what makes us human?
...interareal expression pattern of a set of selected genes was not very well correlated between the healthy human and the nonhuman primate brains. (dhw's bolds)
DAVID: This article and the previous one sound almost like ID sourced material or commentary from Adler. The size and organization of our brain is a giant leap from the previous brains from which we were evolved. A typical non-Darwinian gap in the evolution story.
dhw: I don’t have any problem with the argument that our brain is a giant leap. Please note that the leap described here is from nonhuman primate brains. Of course there is also a giant leap from early human to modern human, but apart from the size, we don’t know exactly what differences there were. We both agree that plasticity and complexification must already have been a feature.
Agree. Wow~! Twice.
Brain expansion
DAVID: You have again avoided my theory that the soul must use the degree of complexity offered by the neuronal networks in the brain it is using in life to reach the limit of complexity of thought that network allows.
dhw: You have again fudged the argument. Yes, the dualist’s soul uses the existing networks' complexities for the information they provide, and for implementation of its thoughts. And yes, these two functions are limited. But the dualist can have new thoughts using the existing information (the spear example, extending right through to – and including – sapiens), and the implementation of these new thoughts will require further complexities. However, if the existing networks are not sufficient to implement the new thoughts, the brain will require additional networks – hence pre-sapiens expansion.
DAVID: I've fudged nothing. In my view each earlier form of hominin/homo brain allowed the soul to invent new thoughts/concepts only to the level the complexity of the brain allows to develop. Steady advance of artifacts with the fossils prove the point.
You are fudging the distinction between thoughts/concepts and their implementation! The dualist’s brain, as you have agreed, has two functions: 1) provide information; 2) implement the concept. The dualist’s soul can think of a new concept using existing information. But what you call the “development” of the new concept depends on the brain’s level of complexity. (Spear example: old brain thinks of weapon to kill from a distance; process of development from this idea to the finished article – the artefact – requires addition to existing capacity for complexification, as brain responds to new requirements. Development or implementation leads to expansion.) Steady advance of artefacts accompanying brain expansion “proves the point”. But a) new artefacts are only one possible cause, and b) the new brain could go on to produce further advances without requiring further expansion.
DAVID: I'll stick with God running evolution and enlarging brains and skulls and changing pelvic measurements as necessary and all at once. The necessary enlargements that advanced us to our current stage were a total of 800 cc., about 26 ounces.
dhw: Thank you for the information. How does that explain why the sapiens brain stopped expanding?
DAVID: The brain we got was so adequate it shrunk 150 cc when active use appeared.
When you say the brain we “got”, you mean the brain God “all at once” gave to a particular group of homos at the same time as he expanded their skulls and pelvises. But for some reason, he made the brains bigger than necessary.
DAVID: 'Anything is possible' is a nebulous argument. Our brain dos not expand presently!!! Some neurons( microscopic size) can be produced, nothing of size.
dhw: The argument itself is not nebulous but absolutely concrete. If there are vestiges of an autonomous expansion process, the same process may have played a major role in former times. The fact that it is an unproven theory does not make it any more nebulous than the theory that there is a God, or that one morning a group of homos woke up to find that God had enlarged their brains, skulls and pelvises “all at once”.
DAVID: I'll stick with God and the evidence I have.
What evidence do you have that your God stepped in etc. as above?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, July 19, 2020, 21:32 (1586 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I've fudged nothing. In my view each earlier form of hominin/homo brain allowed the soul to invent new thoughts/concepts only to the level the complexity of the brain allows to develop. Steady advance of artifacts with the fossils prove the point.
dhw: You are fudging the distinction between thoughts/concepts and their implementation! The dualist’s brain, as you have agreed, has two functions: 1) provide information; 2) implement the concept. The dualist’s soul can think of a new concept using existing information. But what you call the “development” of the new concept depends on the brain’s level of complexity.
What you call fudging is complete denial of my concept that the level of complexity of thought by the soul is limited by the available complexity of available neuron networks to allow advanced abstractions/concepts.
dhw: (Spear example: old brain thinks of weapon to kill from a distance; process of development from this idea to the finished article – the artefact – requires addition to existing capacity for complexification, as brain responds to new requirements. Development or implementation leads to expansion.) Steady advance of artefacts accompanying brain expansion “proves the point”. But a) new artefacts are only one possible cause, and b) the new brain could go on to produce further advances without requiring further expansion.'
Same old idea that a new idea drives complexity and also enlargement to happen/appear. As far as I have presented my arguments, the history of sapiens does not support your view.
DAVID: I'll stick with God running evolution and enlarging brains and skulls and changing pelvic measurements as necessary and all at once. The necessary enlargements that advanced us to our current stage were a total of 800 cc., about 26 ounces.dhw: Thank you for the information. How does that explain why the sapiens brain stopped expanding?
DAVID: The brain we got was so adequate it shrunk 150 cc when active use appeared.
dhw: When you say the brain we “got”, you mean the brain God “all at once” gave to a particular group of homos at the same time as he expanded their skulls and pelvises. But for some reason, he made the brains bigger than necessary.
I've explained that, remember? The extra neuron networks and the process of plasticity allowed us to tailor our brains for our purposeful uses as they developed over time (290,000
=/- years. With the thinking capacity given, God knew we would use it in many new ways light-years in advance of prior species.
DAVID: 'Anything is possible' is a nebulous argument. Our brain dos not expand presently!!! Some neurons( microscopic size) can be produced, nothing of size.dhw: The argument itself is not nebulous but absolutely concrete. If there are vestiges of an autonomous expansion process, the same process may have played a major role in former times. The fact that it is an unproven theory does not make it any more nebulous than the theory that there is a God, or that one morning a group of homos woke up to find that God had enlarged their brains, skulls and pelvises “all at once”.
DAVID: I'll stick with God and the evidence I have.
dhw: What evidence do you have that your God stepped in etc. as above?
Just as I have no absolute evidence for God, your position is no evidence God does not exist, which created the website.
Brain expansion
DAVID: I've fudged nothing. In my view each earlier form of hominin/homo brain allowed the soul to invent new thoughts/concepts only to the level the complexity of the brain allows to develop. Steady advance of artifacts with the fossils prove the point.
dhw: You are fudging the distinction between thoughts/concepts and their implementation! The dualist’s brain, as you have agreed, has two functions: 1) provide information; 2) implement the concept. The dualist’s soul can think of a new concept using existing information. But what you call the “development” of the new concept depends on the brain’s level of complexity.
DAVID: What you call fudging is complete denial of my concept that the level of complexity of thought by the soul is limited by the available complexity of available neuron networks to allow advanced abstractions/concepts.
More fudge. In what way do the neuron networks “allow” concepts? And what are “advanced” concepts? I have agreed that the dualist’s soul’s ability to IMPLEMENT new concepts is limited by the available complexity of existing networks. (That is why they had to expand.) I do not agree that the dualist’s soul is incapable of coming up with new concepts using the available networks, if that is what your convoluted sentence implies. The example below, which we both used, could hardly be clearer:
dhw: (Spear example: old brain thinks of weapon to kill from a distance; process of development from this idea to the finished article – the artefact – requires addition to existing capacity for complexification, as brain responds to new requirements. Development or implementation leads to expansion.) Steady advance of artefacts accompanying brain expansion “proves the point”. But a) new artefacts are only one possible cause, and b) the new brain could go on to produce further advances without requiring further expansion.'
DAVID: Same old idea that a new idea drives complexity and also enlargement to happen/appear. As far as I have presented my arguments, the history of sapiens does not support your view.
Yes, you have repeated my theory and have offered no reason for rejecting it other than the fact that it is not proven. Meanwhile, I have pointed out umpteen times that the history of sapiens offers us evidence that the brain changes when it implements new requirements (not before it does so), and the process whereby minor enlargements occur within the existing capacity could be taken as an indication that the same process was in operation in former times before the brain stopped expanding and complexification took over. What have you found in the history of sapiens that contradicts my view?
DAVID: I'll stick with God running evolution and enlarging brains and skulls and changing pelvic measurements as necessary and all at once. The necessary enlargements that advanced us to our current stage were a total of 800 cc., about 26 ounces.
dhw: Thank you for the information. How does that explain why the sapiens brain stopped expanding?
DAVID: The brain we got was so adequate it shrunk 150 cc when active use appeared.
dhw: When you say the brain we “got”, you mean the brain God “all at once” gave to a particular group of homos at the same time as he expanded their skulls and pelvises. But for some reason, he made the brains bigger than necessary.
DAVID: I've explained that, remember? The extra neuron networks and the process of plasticity allowed us to tailor our brains for our purposeful uses as they developed over time (290,000=/- years. With the thinking capacity given, God knew we would use it in many new ways light-years in advance of prior species.
Plasticity is what allowed all brains to complexify and early brains to enlarge. I don’t see how your God’s giving his group of homos an overnight injection of an unnecessary 150 cc of brain allowed anything, since whatever was injected minus the 150 ccs would have worked just the same without it.
DAVID: I'll stick with God and the evidence I have.
dhw: What evidence do you have that your God stepped in etc. as above?
DAVID: Just as I have no absolute evidence for God, your position is no evidence God does not exist, which created the website.
This discussion is not about the existence of God, but about how the brain expanded and – ultimately – how evolution works. I have offered you evidence for my theory through the workings of the modern brain. What evidence do you have for your theory?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Monday, July 20, 2020, 17:46 (1585 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: More fudge. I have agreed that the dualist’s soul’s ability to IMPLEMENT new concepts is limited by the available complexity of existing networks. (That is why they had to expand.) I do not agree that the dualist’s soul is incapable of coming up with new concepts using the available networks, if that is what your convoluted sentence implies. The example below, which we both used, could hardly be clearer:
dhw: (Spear example: old brain thinks of weapon to kill from a distance; process of development from this idea to the finished article – the artefact – requires addition to existing capacity for complexification, as brain responds to new requirements. Development or implementation leads to expansion.) Steady advance of artefacts accompanying brain expansion “proves the point”. But a) new artefacts are only one possible cause, and b) the new brain could go on to produce further advances without requiring further expansion.'
DAVID: Same old idea that a new idea drives complexity and also enlargement to happen/appear. As far as I have presented my arguments, the history of sapiens does not support your view.
dhw: Yes, you have repeated my theory and have offered no reason for rejecting it other than the fact that it is not proven. Meanwhile, I have pointed out umpteen times that the history of sapiens offers us evidence that the brain changes when it implements new requirements (not before it does so), and the process whereby minor enlargements occur within the existing capacity could be taken as an indication that the same process was in operation in former times before the brain stopped expanding and complexification took over. What have you found in the history of sapiens that contradicts my view?
I'll repeat your proposal. Older smaller less complex brain thinks of new tool (artifact) concept, but can't produce it until a new larger brain implements the idea. Correct that statement, but that is my interpretation of your theory. The sapiens history does not support it. Just stasis for 270,000 +/- years after arrival of new brain. Why stasis if a new idea is driving expansion? Implementation should be quick if under your idea of driving the expansion.
DAVID: I'll stick with God running evolution and enlarging brains and skulls and changing pelvic measurements as necessary and all at once. The necessary enlargements that advanced us to our current stage were a total of 800 cc., about 26 ounces.dhw: Thank you for the information. How does that explain why the sapiens brain stopped expanding?
DAVID: The brain we got was so adequate it shrunk 150 cc when active use appeared.
dhw: When you say the brain we “got”, you mean the brain God “all at once” gave to a particular group of homos at the same time as he expanded their skulls and pelvises. But for some reason, he made the brains bigger than necessary.
DAVID: I've explained that, remember? The extra neuron networks and the process of plasticity allowed us to tailor our brains for our purposeful uses as they developed over time (290,000=/- years. With the thinking capacity given, God knew we would use it in many new ways light-years in advance of prior species.
dhw: Plasticity is what allowed all brains to complexify and early brains to enlarge. I don’t see how your God’s giving his group of homos an overnight injection of an unnecessary 150 cc of brain allowed anything, since whatever was injected minus the 150 ccs would have worked just the same without it.
Plasticity did not cause enlargement, just rearrangement of neuron networks. The extra 150 cc allowed us to self-tailor our brains, a very reasonable supposition.
DAVID: I'll stick with God and the evidence I have.dhw: What evidence do you have that your God stepped in etc. as above?
DAVID: Just as I have no absolute evidence for God, your position is no evidence God does not exist, which created the website.
dhw: This discussion is not about the existence of God, but about how the brain expanded and – ultimately – how evolution works. I have offered you evidence for my theory through the workings of the modern brain. What evidence do you have for your theory?
Yes we debate at the natural level, and I find sapiens brain history does not support your theory about expansion, as above.
Brain expansion
DAVID: Same old idea that a new idea drives complexity and also enlargement to happen/appear. As far as I have presented my arguments, the history of sapiens does not support your view.
dhw: Yes, you have repeated my theory and have offered no reason for rejecting it other than the fact that it is not proven. Meanwhile, I have pointed out umpteen times that the history of sapiens offers us evidence that the brain changes when it implements new requirements (not before it does so), and the process whereby minor enlargements occur within the existing capacity could be taken as an indication that the same process was in operation in former times before the brain stopped expanding and complexification took over. What have you found in the history of sapiens that contradicts my view?
DAVID: I'll repeat your proposal. Older smaller less complex brain thinks of new tool (artifact) concept, but can't produce it until a new larger brain implements the idea. Correct that statement, but that is my interpretation of your theory.
I don't know why you keep trying to rephrase my theory for me, but this is not quite right. Older, smaller, less complex brain thinks of new concept, and the process of implementing the concept causes the same brain to expand.
DAVID: The sapiens history does not support it. Just stasis for 270,000 +/- years after arrival of new brain. Why stasis if a new idea is driving expansion? Implementation should be quick if under your idea of driving the expansion.
The stasis refers to the fact that after the expansion there were NO new ideas that required changes to the brain! Of course implementation of the original brain-changing idea would have been relatively quick: old brain…new idea…brain expands to sapiens size. No more new ideas for 270,000 years. That = stasis. Suddenly there are new ideas, but instead of expanding, the brain implements the new ideas by enhanced complexification. What is your problem?
dhw: Plasticity is what allowed all brains to complexify and early brains to enlarge. I don’t see how your God’s giving his group of homos an overnight injection of an unnecessary 150 cc of brain allowed anything, since whatever was injected minus the 150 ccs would have worked just the same without it.
DAVID: Plasticity did not cause enlargement, just rearrangement of neuron networks. The extra 150 cc allowed us to self-tailor our brains, a very reasonable supposition.
I did not say plasticity CAUSED enlargement! The brain could not expand or complexify without plasticity! What does “self-tailor” mean? Did we use the extra 150 cc or didn’t we? Apparently not, according to you: for 270,000 years there was stasis, and when we came up with our new ideas, the extra 150 cc proved unnecessary and disappeared.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, July 21, 2020, 18:45 (1584 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: I'll repeat your proposal. Older smaller less complex brain thinks of new tool (artifact) concept, but can't produce it until a new larger brain implements the idea. Correct that statement, but that is my interpretation of your theory.
dhw: I don't know why you keep trying to rephrase my theory for me, but this is not quite right. Older, smaller, less complex brain thinks of new concept, and the process of implementing the concept causes the same brain to expand.
Are you now claiming the older smaller brain starts the process of implementation? If that is so, explain sapiens stasis in artifacts for 270,000+/- years. You haven't, and this denies archaeological evidence which always finds new artifacts with bigger brained fossils.
DAVID: The sapiens history does not support it. Just stasis for 270,000 +/- years after arrival of new brain. Why stasis if a new idea is driving expansion? Implementation should be quick if under your idea of driving the expansion.dhw: The stasis refers to the fact that after the expansion there were NO new ideas that required changes to the brain! Of course implementation of the original brain-changing idea would have been relatively quick: old brain…new idea…brain expands to sapiens size. No more new ideas for 270,000 years. That = stasis. Suddenly there are new ideas, but instead of expanding, the brain implements the new ideas by enhanced complexification. What is your problem?
Where are the immediate new artifacts? In your explanation they don't exist, and an enlarged brain is not implementation; a new idea alone does not cause expansion in your original version. Are you changing it?
dhw: Plasticity is what allowed all brains to complexify and early brains to enlarge. I don’t see how your God’s giving his group of homos an overnight injection of an unnecessary 150 cc of brain allowed anything, since whatever was injected minus the 150 ccs would have worked just the same without it.DAVID: Plasticity did not cause enlargement, just rearrangement of neuron networks. The extra 150 cc allowed us to self-tailor our brains, a very reasonable supposition.
dhw: I did not say plasticity CAUSED enlargement! The brain could not expand or complexify without plasticity! What does “self-tailor” mean? Did we use the extra 150 cc or didn’t we? Apparently not, according to you: for 270,000 years there was stasis, and when we came up with our new ideas, the extra 150 cc proved unnecessary and disappeared.
Self-tailoring is obviously refinement of what we were given and we got rid of extra neuron networks, as history tells us, as unnecessary. Very obvious.
Brain expansion
DAVID: I'll repeat your proposal. Older smaller less complex brain thinks of new tool (artifact) concept, but can't produce it until a new larger brain implements the idea. Correct that statement, but that is my interpretation of your theory.
dhw: I don't know why you keep trying to rephrase my theory for me, but this is not quite right. Older, smaller, less complex brain thinks of new concept, and the process of implementing the concept causes the same brain to expand.
DAVID: Are you now claiming the older smaller brain starts the process of implementation? If that is so, explain sapiens stasis in artifacts for 270,000+/- years. You haven't, and this denies archaeological evidence which always finds new artifacts with bigger brained fossils.
I have explained it a dozen times! Firstly, artefacts are the only concrete evidence we have of advances, but other concepts might have been the cause of each expansion. (A way of coping with changes in the environment would be one obvious alternative). Secondly, after whatever concept caused the expansion to sapiens size, there were no new concepts that demanded any change - hence stasis. Prior to sapiens, if new artefacts were found with bigger brained fossils, then maybe it was the creation of the new artefacts (the implementation of a concept thought up by the smaller brain) that caused the brain to become bigger!
DAVID: The sapiens history does not support it. Just stasis for 270,000 +/- years after arrival of new brain. Why stasis if a new idea is driving expansion? Implementation should be quick if under your idea of driving the expansion.
dhw: The stasis refers to the fact that after the expansion there were NO new ideas that required changes to the brain! Of course implementation of the original brain-changing idea would have been relatively quick: old brain…new idea…brain expands to sapiens size. No more new ideas for 270,000 years. That = stasis. Suddenly there are new ideas, but instead of expanding, the brain implements the new ideas by enhanced complexification. What is your problem?
DAVID: Where are the immediate new artifacts? In your explanation they don't exist, and an enlarged brain is not implementation; a new idea alone does not cause expansion in your original version. Are you changing it?
Then it must have been some other new concept whose implementation caused the expansion! See my first response. I don’t understand your next sentence. It is the implementation of the new idea that causes expansion, just as the implementation of new ideas and requirements causes complexification in the sapiens brain.
dhw: Plasticity is what allowed all brains to complexify and early brains to enlarge. I don’t see how your God’s giving his group of homos an overnight injection of an unnecessary 150 cc of brain allowed anything, since whatever was injected minus the 150 ccs would have worked just the same without it.
DAVID: Plasticity did not cause enlargement, just rearrangement of neuron networks. The extra 150 cc allowed us to self-tailor our brains, a very reasonable supposition.
dhw: I did not say plasticity CAUSED enlargement! The brain could not expand or complexify without plasticity! What does “self-tailor” mean? Did we use the extra 150 cc or didn’t we? Apparently not, according to you: for 270,000 years there was stasis, and when we came up with our new ideas, the extra 150 cc proved unnecessary and disappeared.
DAVID: Self-tailoring is obviously refinement of what we were given and we got rid of extra neuron networks, as history tells us, as unnecessary. Very obvious.
I know we got rid of the extra, unnecessary neurons. Did we use them or didn’t we use them? You say we didn’t (there was stasis, and only when we started getting new ideas did the 150 cc disappear), so why do you think your God gave them to us in the first place during that remarkable night when he stepped in to perform simultaneous operations to expand the brains, skulls and pelvises of Mr and Mrs Pre-Sapiens and their tribe?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, July 22, 2020, 20:23 (1583 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Are you now claiming the older smaller brain starts the process of implementation? If that is so, explain sapiens stasis in artifacts for 270,000+/- years. You haven't, and this denies archaeological evidence which always finds new artifacts with bigger brained fossils.
dhw: I have explained it a dozen times! Firstly, artefacts are the only concrete evidence we have of advances, but other concepts might have been the cause of each expansion. (A way of coping with changes in the environment would be one obvious alternative). Secondly, after whatever concept caused the expansion to sapiens size, there were no new concepts that demanded any change - hence stasis. Prior to sapiens, if new artefacts were found with bigger brained fossils, then maybe it was the creation of the new artefacts (the implementation of a concept thought up by the smaller brain) that caused the brain to become bigger!
The only evidence we have is artifacts. As for environment they used caves at first. So no help there, as housing appeared much later for sapiens. I'll stick with Go/d doing the enlarging
DAVID: The sapiens history does not support it. Just stasis for 270,000 +/- years after arrival of new brain. Why stasis if a new idea is driving expansion? Implementation should be quick if under your idea of driving the expansion.dhw: The stasis refers to the fact that after the expansion there were NO new ideas that required changes to the brain! Of course implementation of the original brain-changing idea would have been relatively quick: old brain…new idea…brain expands to sapiens size. No more new ideas for 270,000 years. That = stasis. Suddenly there are new ideas, but instead of expanding, the brain implements the new ideas by enhanced complexification. What is your problem?
DAVID: Where are the immediate new artifacts? In your explanation they don't exist, and an enlarged brain is not implementation; a new idea alone does not cause expansion in your original version. Are you changing it?
dhw: Then it must have been some other new concept whose implementation caused the expansion! See my first response. I don’t understand your next sentence. It is the implementation of the new idea that causes expansion, just as the implementation of new ideas and requirements causes complexification in the sapiens brain.
I realize that implementation requires design and planning and then production, and in my view requires a more complex brain to allow the soul to do that implementation.
dhw: Plasticity is what allowed all brains to complexify and early brains to enlarge. I don’t see how your God’s giving his group of homos an overnight injection of an unnecessary 150 cc of brain allowed anything, since whatever was injected minus the 150 ccs would have worked just the same without it.DAVID: Plasticity did not cause enlargement, just rearrangement of neuron networks. The extra 150 cc allowed us to self-tailor our brains, a very reasonable supposition.
dhw: I did not say plasticity CAUSED enlargement! The brain could not expand or complexify without plasticity! What does “self-tailor” mean? Did we use the extra 150 cc or didn’t we? Apparently not, according to you: for 270,000 years there was stasis, and when we came up with our new ideas, the extra 150 cc proved unnecessary and disappeared.
DAVID: Self-tailoring is obviously refinement of what we were given and we got rid of extra neuron networks, as history tells us, as unnecessary. Very obvious.
I know we got rid of the extra, unnecessary neurons. Did we use them or didn’t we use them? You say we didn’t (there was stasis, and only when we started getting new ideas did the 150 cc disappear), so why do you think your God gave them to us in the first place during that remarkable night when he stepped in to perform simultaneous operations to expand the brains, skulls and pelvises of Mr and Mrs Pre-Sapiens and their tribe?
I'll repeat., again: To allow us to use the brain as we wished so that the eventual brain would exactly fit our uses.
Brain expansion
DAVID: Are you now claiming the older smaller brain starts the process of implementation? If that is so, explain sapiens stasis in artifacts for 270,000+/- years. You haven't, and this denies archaeological evidence which always finds new artifacts with bigger brained fossils.
dhw: I have explained it a dozen times! Firstly, artefacts are the only concrete evidence we have of advances, but other concepts might have been the cause of each expansion (A way of coping with changes in the environment would be one obvious alternative). Secondly, after whatever concept caused the expansion to sapiens size, there were no new concepts that demanded any change - hence stasis. Prior to sapiens, if new artefacts were found with bigger brained fossils, then maybe it was the creation of the new artefacts (the implementation of a concept thought up by the smaller brain) that caused the brain to become bigger!
DAVID: The only evidence we have is artifacts. As for environment they used caves at first. So no help there, as housing appeared much later for sapiens. I'll stick with Go/d doing the enlarging.
I have just said (now bolded) that artefacts are the only concrete evidence we have. Coping with changes in the environment is not confined to living in caves – but it is pointless trying to pinpoint specific events that would have triggered the expansion. NOBODY knows the cause, and so there is no theory that can provide conclusive evidence. And I wonder how many specialists in the field subscribe to your theory of an overnight divine dabble.
dhw: It is the implementation of the new idea that causes expansion, just as the implementation of new ideas and requirements causes complexification in the sapiens brain.
DAVID: I realize that implementation requires design and planning and then production, and in my view requires a more complex brain to allow the soul to do that implementation.
Agreed. And I propose that it is the process of implementation of new ideas and requirements that causes the modern brain to be more complex, and earlier caused it to expand, whereas you presumably agree that implementation causes the modern brain to be more complex, but you propose that in earlier times your God had to step in and dabble the expansion BEFORE the dualist’s soul could come up with new ideas and requirements.
DAVID: Self-tailoring is obviously refinement of what we were given and we got rid of extra neuron networks, as history tells us, as unnecessary. Very obvious.
dhw: I know we got rid of the extra, unnecessary neurons. Did we use them or didn’t we use them? You say we didn’t (there was stasis, and only when we started getting new ideas did the 150 cc disappear), so why do you think your God gave them to us in the first place during that remarkable night when he stepped in to perform simultaneous operations to expand the brains, skulls and pelvises of Mr and Mrs Pre-Sapiens and their tribe?
DAVID: I'll repeat., again: To allow us to use the brain as we wished so that the eventual brain would exactly fit our uses.
So God gave us what we needed plus 150cc extra. We didn’t use the extra (270,000 years of stasis) but it “allowed” us to think what we wanted to think. Perhaps I shouldn’t ask you how our not using it “allowed” thoughts we didn’t have, or thoughts we did have after 270,000 years, when it still wasn’t used and therefore disappeared. Perhaps I should just leave you to think what you want to think. 
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, July 23, 2020, 18:41 (1582 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: The only evidence we have is artifacts. As for environment they used caves at first. So no help there, as housing appeared much later for sapiens. I'll stick with Go/d doing the enlarging.
dhw: I have just said (now bolded) that artefacts are the only concrete evidence we have. Coping with changes in the environment is not confined to living in caves – but it is pointless trying to pinpoint specific events that would have triggered the expansion. NOBODY knows the cause, and so there is no theory that can provide conclusive evidence. And I wonder how many specialists in the field subscribe to your theory of an overnight divine dabble.dhw: It is the implementation of the new idea that causes expansion, just as the implementation of new ideas and requirements causes complexification in the sapiens brain.
DAVID: I realize that implementation requires design and planning and then production, and in my view requires a more complex brain to allow the soul to do that implementation.
dhw: Agreed. And I propose that it is the process of implementation of new ideas and requirements that causes the modern brain to be more complex, and earlier caused it to expand, whereas you presumably agree that implementation causes the modern brain to be more complex, but you propose that in earlier times your God had to step in and dabble the expansion BEFORE the dualist’s soul could come up with new ideas and requirements.
The bold is not a correct interpretation of my view. The larger-than-needed brain allowed us to tailor the already given complexity to our preferred uses of the brain. But certainly, implementation of new ideas, developed by that complex brain, played a large role in the process.
DAVID: Self-tailoring is obviously refinement of what we were given and we got rid of extra neuron networks, as history tells us, as unnecessary. Very obvious.dhw: I know we got rid of the extra, unnecessary neurons. Did we use them or didn’t we use them? You say we didn’t (there was stasis, and only when we started getting new ideas did the 150 cc disappear), so why do you think your God gave them to us in the first place during that remarkable night when he stepped in to perform simultaneous operations to expand the brains, skulls and pelvises of Mr and Mrs Pre-Sapiens and their tribe?
DAVID: I'll repeat., again: To allow us to use the brain as we wished so that the eventual brain would exactly fit our uses.
dhw: So God gave us what we needed plus 150cc extra. We didn’t use the extra (270,000 years of stasis) but it “allowed” us to think what we wanted to think. Perhaps I shouldn’t ask you how our not using it “allowed” thoughts we didn’t have, or thoughts we did have after 270,000 years, when it still wasn’t used and therefore disappeared. Perhaps I should just leave you to think what you want to think.
Your-tongue-in-cheek description gets it!!! New ideas took a long time to appear. The first sapiens were pretty sluggish thinkers, but they finally got the hang of it, but from the beginning they were way beyond apes. 
Brain expansion
DAVID: I realize that implementation requires design and planning and then production, and in my view requires a more complex brain to allow the soul to do that implementation.
dhw: Agreed. And I propose that it is the process of implementation of new ideas and requirements that causes the modern brain to be more complex, and earlier caused it to expand, whereas you presumably agree that implementation causes the modern brain to be more complex, but you propose that in earlier times your God had to step in and dabble the expansion BEFORE the dualist’s soul could come up with new ideas and requirements.
DAVID: The bold is not a correct interpretation of my view. The larger-than-needed brain allowed us to tailor the already given complexity to our preferred uses of the brain. But certainly, implementation of new ideas, developed by that complex brain, played a large role in the process.
This is not a rebuttal of the bold! Do you or do you not agree that the modern brain complexifies when implementing new requirements? Our subject here is why the earlier brain expanded. The modern brain complexifies in response to requirements and even performs minor expansions. I argue that the same process may have been in action before sapiens, though in those times the brain needed greater capacity to cope with requirements, and so it was the mechanism for expansion that came into operation. You argue that the brain expanded BEFORE there were any new requirements. On shrinkage, see below.
[…]
On the subject of why David’s God gave us 150 cc extra brain which we did not need and which therefore disappeared after approx. 270,000 years, resulting in brain shrinkage:
DAVID: I'll repeat., again: To allow us to use the brain as we wished so that the eventual brain would exactly fit our uses.
dhw: So God gave us what we needed plus 150cc extra. We didn’t use the extra (270,000 years of stasis) but it “allowed” us to think what we wanted to think. Perhaps I shouldn’t ask you how our not using it “allowed” thoughts we didn’t have, or thoughts we did have after 270,000 years, when it still wasn’t used and therefore disappeared. Perhaps I should just leave you to think what you want to think.
DAVID: Your-tongue-in-cheek description gets it!!! New ideas took a long time to appear. The first sapiens were pretty sluggish thinkers, but they finally got the hang of it, but from the beginning they were way beyond apes.
Of course human brains were beyond apes, even before sapiens arrived! And we agree that after the initial expansion to sapiens size, there were no new ideas, and so there was a period of stasis. How does that explain why your God gave us 150 cc more brain than we needed so that we could think thoughts we didn’t think, and when we did think the new thoughts, the 150 cc were still useless, so they disappeared?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Friday, July 24, 2020, 21:30 (1581 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Friday, July 24, 2020, 21:39
DAVID: The bold is not a correct interpretation of my view. The larger-than-needed brain allowed us to tailor the already given complexity to our preferred uses of the brain. But certainly, implementation of new ideas, developed by that complex brain, played a large role in the process.
This is not a rebuttal of the bold! Do you or do you not agree that the modern brain complexifies when implementing new requirements? Our subject here is why the earlier brain expanded. The modern brain complexifies in response to requirements and even performs minor expansions. I argue that the same process may have been in action before sapiens, though in those times the brain needed greater capacity to cope with requirements, and so it was the mechanism for expansion that came into operation. You argue that the brain expanded BEFORE there were any new requirements. On shrinkage, see below.
[…]
dhw: On the subject of why David’s God gave us 150 cc extra brain which we did not need and which therefore disappeared after approx. 270,000 years, resulting in brain shrinkage:DAVID: I'll repeat., again: To allow us to use the brain as we wished so that the eventual brain would exactly fit our uses.
dhw: So God gave us what we needed plus 150cc extra. We didn’t use the extra (270,000 years of stasis) but it “allowed” us to think what we wanted to think. Perhaps I shouldn’t ask you how our not using it “allowed” thoughts we didn’t have, or thoughts we did have after 270,000 years, when it still wasn’t used and therefore disappeared. Perhaps I should just leave you to think what you want to think.
DAVID: Your-tongue-in-cheek description gets it!!! New ideas took a long time to appear. The first sapiens were pretty sluggish thinkers, but they finally got the hang of it, but from the beginning they were way beyond apes.
dhw: Of course human brains were beyond apes, even before sapiens arrived! And we agree that after the initial expansion to sapiens size, there were no new ideas, and so there was a period of stasis. How does that explain why your God gave us 150 cc more brain than we needed so that we could think thoughts we didn’t think, and when we did think the new thoughts, the 150 cc were still useless, so they disappeared?
We go 'round and 'round. I'll simply give you what is clear above: 'To allow us to use the brain as we wished so that the eventual brain would exactly fit our uses'. The 150 cc disappeared into new networks of use by the plasticity mechanism and the system worked so well there were redundant areas that could be removed, and we ended up with a tailored brain that fit our needs exactly. Makes perfect sense. When one thinks of God as very purposeful it is rather simple to spot reasons for His actions. Try my method, it works.
Brain expansion
On the subject of expansion:
dhw: Do you or do you not agree that the modern brain complexifies when implementing new requirements? Our subject here is why the earlier brain expanded. The modern brain complexifies in response to requirements and even performs minor expansions. I argue that the same process may have been in action before sapiens, though in those times the brain needed greater capacity to cope with requirements, and so it was the mechanism for expansion that came into operation. You argue that the brain expanded BEFORE there were any new requirements.
As you have not commented on this, I will take it as read that you agree with my summary of our different approaches and have no issue with the logic of my own approach.
On the subject of shrinkage:
DAVID: I'll repeat., again: To allow us to use the brain as we wished so that the eventual brain would exactly fit our uses.
dhw: So God gave us what we needed plus 150cc extra. We didn’t use the extra (270,000 years of stasis) but it “allowed” us to think what we wanted to think. Perhaps I shouldn’t ask you how our not using it “allowed” thoughts we didn’t have, or thoughts we did have after 270,000 years, when it still wasn’t used and therefore disappeared. Perhaps I should just leave you to think what you want to think.
[…]
DAVID: We go 'round and 'round. I'll simply give you what is clear above: 'To allow us to use the brain as we wished so that the eventual brain would exactly fit our uses'.
“Clear”? It makes no sense! Why did he give us more brain than we needed for our uses? We didn’t need the extra brain for thoughts we didn’t have during the 270,000 years of stasis. And when we had our new thoughts, we still didn’t need the extra, so it disappeared. So what wishes did the useless 150 cc fulfil?
DAVID: The 150 cc disappeared into new networks of use by the plasticity mechanism and the system worked so well there were redundant areas that could be removed, and we ended up with a tailored brain that fit our needs exactly. Makes perfect sense.
Yes, it does. But it does not answer the question why your God inserted the redundant areas in the first place.
DAVID: When one thinks of God as very purposeful it is rather simple to spot reasons for His actions. Try my method, it works.
Except that you have not given us a reason. You have merely explained the process that got rid of the redundant areas. Your method of dodging issues never works.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, July 25, 2020, 20:51 (1580 days ago) @ dhw
On the subject of expansion:
dhw: Do you or do you not agree that the modern brain complexifies when implementing new requirements? Our subject here is why the earlier brain expanded. The modern brain complexifies in response to requirements and even performs minor expansions. I argue that the same process may have been in action before sapiens, though in those times the brain needed greater capacity to cope with requirements, and so it was the mechanism for expansion that came into operation. You argue that the brain expanded BEFORE there were any new requirements.
dhw: As you have not commented on this, I will take it as read that you agree with my summary of our different approaches and have no issue with the logic of my own approach.
I always have an issue with your theory if brain expansion. Fully explained many times.
On the subject of shrinkage:DAVID: I'll repeat., again: To allow us to use the brain as we wished so that the eventual brain would exactly fit our uses.
dhw: So God gave us what we needed plus 150cc extra. We didn’t use the extra (270,000 years of stasis) but it “allowed” us to think what we wanted to think. Perhaps I shouldn’t ask you how our not using it “allowed” thoughts we didn’t have, or thoughts we did have after 270,000 years, when it still wasn’t used and therefore disappeared. Perhaps I should just leave you to think what you want to think.
[…]
DAVID: We go 'round and 'round. I'll simply give you what is clear above: 'To allow us to use the brain as we wished so that the eventual brain would exactly fit our uses'.dhw: “Clear”? It makes no sense! Why did he give us more brain than we needed for our uses? We didn’t need the extra brain for thoughts we didn’t have during the 270,000 years of stasis. And when we had our new thoughts, we still didn’t need the extra, so it disappeared. So what wishes did the useless 150 cc fulfil?
Please read carefully what I express, as it makes perfect sense to me. The larger brain allowed us through the mechanism of plasticity to tailor it for our exact future uses. And we did it. London cabbies have thickened areas as a result of our God-given brain mechanisms. How do you explain the oversize?? You haven't ever tried!!! I do all the possible explanations and you never try any, only criticize. What is your thought about it?
DAVID: The 150 cc disappeared into new networks of use by the plasticity mechanism and the system worked so well there were redundant areas that could be removed, and we ended up with a tailored brain that fit our needs exactly. Makes perfect sense.dhw: Yes, it does. But it does not answer the question why your God inserted the redundant areas in the first place.'
What is your explanation? It happened. Mine makes pefect sense to me.
DAVID: When one thinks of God as very purposeful it is rather simple to spot reasons for His actions. Try my method, it works.dhw: Except that you have not given us a reason. You have merely explained the process that got rid of the redundant areas. Your method of dodging issues never works.
Fill the dodge, if so dissatisfied. You never do. My explanation is logical. Tailoring through plasticity.
Brain expansion
On the subject of expansion:
dhw: Do you or do you not agree that the modern brain complexifies when implementing new requirements? Our subject here is why the earlier brain expanded. The modern brain complexifies in response to requirements and even performs minor expansions. I argue that the same process may have been in action before sapiens, though in those times the brain needed greater capacity to cope with requirements, and so it was the mechanism for expansion that came into operation. You argue that the brain expanded BEFORE there were any new requirements.
dhw: As you have not commented on this, I will take it as read that you agree with my summary of our different approaches and have no issue with the logic of my own approach.
DAVID: I always have an issue with your theory if brain expansion. Fully explained many times.
Then please humour me. The modern brain implements thought by means of complexification and small-scale enlargement. Why is it illogical to propose that earlier brains also implemented thought by complexification, but when the brain did not have the capacity to implement thought by complexification, it added new cells, thereby leading to large-scale enlargement?
On the subject of shrinkage, and why David’s God would have given us 150 cc more than we needed.:
DAVID: We go 'round and 'round. I'll simply give you what is clear above: 'To allow us to use the brain as we wished so that the eventual brain would exactly fit our uses'.
dhw: “Clear”? It makes no sense! Why did he give us more brain than we needed for our uses? We didn’t need the extra brain for thoughts we didn’t have during the 270,000 years of stasis. And when we had our new thoughts, we still didn’t need the extra, so it disappeared. What wishes did the useless 150 cc fulfil?
DAVID: Please read carefully what I express, as it makes perfect sense to me. The larger brain allowed us through the mechanism of plasticity to tailor it for our exact future uses. And we did it.
That is the bit I do not understand. I’m sorry if you think I’m being obtuse. Please explain how the excess 150 cc, which stuck around for approx. 270,000 years not being used, “tailored” (whatever that means) our brain for the time when we would think our new thoughts which still wouldn’t use the 150 cc. Once again: If it was never used, why did your God put it there in the first place?
DAVID: London cabbies have thickened areas as a result of our God-given brain mechanisms. How do you explain the oversize?? You haven't ever tried!!! I do all the possible explanations and you never try any, only criticize. What is your thought about it?
It is not “oversize”! It is the size required and then reached for the implementation of ideas. ALL such changes are the result of the brain RESPONDING to new requirements! Cabbies need to memorize routes, and the effort to implement this requirement by doing the abnormal amount of memorizing has resulted in certain areas of the brain acquiring more cells (whereas most requirements are met by complexification). That is the whole principle on which my theory is based, and which I have summarized in the section you did not comment on. What I criticize is your belief that the early brain had to expand BEFORE there were any new requirements (which according to you ought to mean that the cabbies' brain areas thickened BEFORE they could memorize all the routes).
DAVID: The 150 cc disappeared into new networks of use by the plasticity mechanism and the system worked so well there were redundant areas that could be removed, and we ended up with a tailored brain that fit our needs exactly. Makes perfect sense.
dhw: Yes, it does. But it does not answer the question why your God inserted the redundant areas in the first place.'
DAVID: What is your explanation? It happened. Mine makes pefect sense to me.
I do not believe that your God inserted the excess in the first place, although he may have designed the autonomous mechanism that led to the excess. And your “explanation” makes no sense to me, as argued above. My explanation is that whatever caused the expansion to sapiens dimensions did require all the cells. It was only when expansion became impractical, and sapiens began to think his new thoughts, that complexification had to take over from large-scale expansion, and – as we have agreed over and over again – complexification proved so efficient that some of the previously necessary cells became redundant.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, July 26, 2020, 19:32 (1579 days ago) @ dhw
On the subject of expansion:
DAVID: I always have an issue with your theory if brain expansion. Fully explained many times.
dhw: Then please humour me. The modern brain implements thought by means of complexification and small-scale enlargement. Why is it illogical to propose that earlier brains also implemented thought by complexification, but when the brain did not have the capacity to implement thought by complexification, it added new cells, thereby leading to large-scale enlargement?
Entirely possible as a theory, but as you describe it forced by a new idea, I don't find it factually consistent with sapiens history.
On the subject of shrinkage, and why David’s God would have given us 150 cc more than we needed.:DAVID: Please read carefully what I express, as it makes perfect sense to me. The larger brain allowed us through the mechanism of plasticity to tailor it for our exact future uses. And we did it.
dhw: That is the bit I do not understand. I’m sorry if you think I’m being obtuse. Please explain how the excess 150 cc, which stuck around for approx. 270,000 years not being used, “tailored” (whatever that means) our brain for the time when we would think our new thoughts which still wouldn’t use the 150 cc. Once again: If it was never used, why did your God put it there in the first place?
Tailoring as a dress suit analogy. Sightly oversized and cut to to fit your body. The extra neuron webs were used in the plasticity mechanism, some remained as part of the newly deigned brain fitted to our uses and others abandoned as superfluous as we learned to fully use our bbrain which took time as we know.
DAVID: London cabbies have thickened areas as a result of our God-given brain mechanisms. How do you explain the oversize?? You haven't ever tried!!! I do all the possible explanations and you never try any, only criticize. What is your thought about it?dhw: It is not “oversize”! It is the size required and then reached for the implementation of ideas. ALL such changes are the result of the brain RESPONDING to new requirements! Cabbies need to memorize routes, and the effort to implement this requirement by doing the abnormal amount of memorizing has resulted in certain areas of the brain acquiring more cells (whereas most requirements are met by complexification). That is the whole principle on which my theory is based, and which I have summarized in the section you did not comment on. What I criticize is your belief that the early brain had to expand BEFORE there were any new requirements (which according to you ought to mean that the cabbies' brain areas thickened BEFORE they could memorize all the routes).
The sapiens history does not fit your theory in any way. I see no reason to accept it.
DAVID: The 150 cc disappeared into new networks of use by the plasticity mechanism and the system worked so well there were redundant areas that could be removed, and we ended up with a tailored brain that fit our needs exactly. Makes perfect sense.dhw: Yes, it does. But it does not answer the question why your God inserted the redundant areas in the first place.'
DAVID: What is your explanation? It happened. Mine makes pefect sense to me.
dhw: I do not believe that your God inserted the excess in the first place, although he may have designed the autonomous mechanism that led to the excess. And your “explanation” makes no sense to me, as argued above. My explanation is that whatever caused the expansion to sapiens dimensions did require all the cells. It was only when expansion became impractical, and sapiens began to think his new thoughts, that complexification had to take over from large-scale expansion, and – as we have agreed over and over again – complexification proved so efficient that some of the previously necessary cells became redundant.
Well, we are still apart. The sapiens brain was oversized for 270,000+/- years, and although you admit the extra cells were there you cannot give a reason for them, as I have. Further expansion was not impractical, but obviously a bigger brain was never necessary.
Brain expansion
DAVID: I always have an issue with your theory if brain expansion. Fully explained many times.
dhw: Then please humour me. The modern brain implements thought by means of complexification and small-scale enlargement. Why is it illogical to propose that earlier brains also implemented thought by complexification, but when the brain did not have the capacity to implement thought by complexification, it added new cells, thereby leading to large-scale enlargement?
DAVID: Entirely possible as a theory, but as you describe it forced by a new idea, I don't find it factually consistent with sapiens history.
Thank you. The part of sapiens history we know shows complexification and minor expansion as responses to new requirements. This can hardly be regarded as running contrary to the idea that the same processes may have taken place in earlier, pre-sapiens times. But then expansion was the main response to new requirements until the brain had reached its optimal size for the human anatomy, whereupon complexification became the major response.
On the subject of shrinkage, and why David’s God would have given us 150 cc more than we needed:
DAVID: Please read carefully what I express, as it makes perfect sense to me. The larger brain allowed us through the mechanism of plasticity to tailor it for our exact future uses. And we did it.
dhw: That is the bit I do not understand. I’m sorry if you think I’m being obtuse. Please explain how the excess 150 cc, which stuck around for approx. 270,000 years not being used, “tailored” (whatever that means) our brain for the time when we would think our new thoughts which still wouldn’t use the 150 cc. Once again: If it was never used, why did your God put it there in the first place?
DAVID: Tailoring as a dress suit analogy. Sightly oversized and cut to to fit your body. The extra neuron webs were used in the plasticity mechanism, some remained as part of the newly deigned brain fitted to our uses and others abandoned as superfluous as we learned to fully use our brain which took time as we know.
What do you mean by the extra webs were “used” in the plasticity mechanism. Plasticity is simply the quality that allows for change. Thanks to plasticity, the brain is able to complexify and to expand.So what were the redundant cells "used" for if there were no new thoughts? Neither this nor the rest of your answer tells us why your God gave us extra, unnecessary neurons.
DAVID: What is your explanation? It happened. Mine makes pefect sense to me.
dhw: I do not believe that your God inserted the excess in the first place, although he may have designed the autonomous mechanism that led to the excess. And your “explanation” makes no sense to me, as argued above. My explanation is that whatever caused the expansion to sapiens dimensions did require all the cells. It was only when expansion became impractical, and sapiens began to think his new thoughts, that complexification had to take over from large-scale expansion, and – as we have agreed over and over again – complexification proved so efficient that some of the previously necessary cells became redundant.
DAVID: Well, we are still apart. The sapiens brain was oversized for 270,000+/- years, and although you admit the extra cells were there you cannot give a reason for them, as I have. Further expansion was not impractical, but obviously a bigger brain was never necessary.
I have just given you a reason. They were needed and used for the implementation of whatever requirements caused the expansion to sapiens-size. Only after a long period of stasis (270,000 or so years), when new ideas created new requirements, did the efficiency of complexification make those cells redundant. And I don’t know why you think further expansion was not impractical. That means the brain and consequently the head could have gone on expanding indefinitely. Could your body have supported an elephant’s head?
DAVID: London cabbies have thickened areas as a result of our God-given brain mechanisms. How do you explain the oversize?? You haven't ever tried!!! I do all the possible explanations and you never try any, only criticize. What is your thought about it?
dhw: It is not “oversize”! It is the size required and then reached for the implementation of ideas. ALL such changes are the result of the brain RESPONDING to new requirements! Cabbies need to memorize routes, and the effort to implement this requirement by doing the abnormal amount of memorizing has resulted in certain areas of the brain acquiring more cells (whereas most requirements are met by complexification). That is the whole principle on which my theory is based, and which I have summarized in the section you did not comment on. What I criticize is your belief that the early brain had to expand BEFORE there were any new requirements (which according to you ought to mean that the cabbies' brain areas thickened BEFORE they could memorize all the routes).
DAVID: The sapiens history does not fit your theory in any way. I see no reason to accept it.
You asked me to explain the thickened areas of cabbies’ brains, which in fact provide a clear illustration of my theory. You have simply ignored the whole argument, including the findings of modern science concerning how the brain responds to new requirements.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, July 28, 2020, 00:39 (1578 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Tuesday, July 28, 2020, 01:03
DAVID: Entirely possible as a theory, but as you describe it forced by a new idea, I don't find it factually consistent with sapiens history.
dhw: Thank you. The part of sapiens history we know shows complexification and minor expansion as responses to new requirements. This can hardly be regarded as running contrary to the idea that the same processes may have taken place in earlier, pre-sapiens times. But then expansion was the main response to new requirements until the brain had reached its optimal size for the human anatomy, whereupon complexification became the major response.
What happened to 'forced by a new idea'.
DAVID: Tailoring as a dress suit analogy. Sightly oversized and cut to to fit your body. The extra neuron webs were used in the plasticity mechanism, some remained as part of the newly deigned brain fitted to our uses and others abandoned as superfluous as we learned to fully use our brain which took time as we know.dhw: What do you mean by the extra webs were “used” in the plasticity mechanism. Plasticity is simply the quality that allows for change. Thanks to plasticity, the brain is able to complexify and to expand.So what were the redundant cells "used" for if there were no new thoughts? Neither this nor the rest of your answer tells us why your God gave us extra, unnecessary neurons.
Plasticity reshapes webs for more efficient use. It uses whatever exists and extra neurons allow slight enlargement of specific regions. It thickened the London cabbies brain area. We see both much shrinkage and slight growth, but overall the extra cells were discarded after the brain was carefully reconstituted as specialized networks to fit the uses humans found for it, with final overall shrinkage.
DAVID: Well, we are still apart. The sapiens brain was oversized for 270,000+/- years, and although you admit the extra cells were there you cannot give a reason for them, as I have. Further expansion was not impractical, but obviously a bigger brain was never necessary.
dhw: I have just given you a reason. They were needed and used for the implementation of whatever requirements caused the expansion to sapiens-size. Only after a long period of stasis (270,000 or so years), when new ideas created new requirements, did the efficiency of complexification make those cells redundant. And I don’t know why you think further expansion was not impractical. That means the brain and consequently the head could have gone on expanding indefinitely. Could your body have supported an elephant’s head?
Still no answer describing the new idea that drove the enlargement, but then no application for 270,000/+ years. We know of none! Enlargement and then stasis during sapiens appearance on Earth does not fit your favorite theory of ideas forcing enlargement. Is it abandoned?
As for head size, previous hominins size jumps of 200 ccs bothered no one. and we were not in trouble with 150 cc extra. 'Elephant head' is one of your weirdest worries. Considering the sharpness of our brain, never needed. Never would have happened.
DAVID: London cabbies have thickened areas as a result of our God-given brain mechanisms. How do you explain the oversize?? You haven't ever tried!!! I do all the possible explanations and you never try any, only criticize. What is your thought about it?dhw: It is not “oversize”! It is the size required and then reached for the implementation of ideas. ALL such changes are the result of the brain RESPONDING to new requirements! Cabbies need to memorize routes, and the effort to implement this requirement by doing the abnormal amount of memorizing has resulted in certain areas of the brain acquiring more cells (whereas most requirements are met by complexification). That is the whole principle on which my theory is based, and which I have summarized in the section you did not comment on. What I criticize is your belief that the early brain had to expand BEFORE there were any new requirements (which according to you ought to mean that the cabbies' brain areas thickened BEFORE they could memorize all the routes).
DAVID: The sapiens history does not fit your theory in any way. I see no reason to accept it.
dhw: You asked me to explain the thickened areas of cabbies’ brains, which in fact provide a clear illustration of my theory. You have simply ignored the whole argument, including the findings of modern science concerning how the brain responds to new requirements.
I ignore nothing. i wan't asking you about cabbies. We both know the reasons. I confused you. I was asking for your theory about overall expansion, because your original theory seems to have disappeared.
Brain expansion
DAVID: Entirely possible as a theory, but as you describe it forced by a new idea, I don't find it factually consistent with sapiens history.
dhw: Thank you. The part of sapiens history we know shows complexification and minor expansion as responses to new requirements. This can hardly be regarded as running contrary to the idea that the same processes may have taken place in earlier, pre-sapiens times. But then expansion was the main response to new requirements until the brain had reached its optimal size for the human anatomy, whereupon complexification became the major response.
DAVID: What happened to 'forced by a new idea'.
“Forced” is your word, not mine, but in any case my comment above is a response to your claim that my theory is inconsistent with sapiens history. I have shown you that it is not.
On the subject of why David’s God is supposed to have given sapiens 150 cc of brain cells that later disappeared:
DAVID: Plasticity reshapes webs for more efficient use. It uses whatever exists and extra neurons allow slight enlargement of specific regions. It thickened the London cabbies brain area.
No it didn’t. What thickened their brain area was the effort to fulfil the requirement to memorize new routes. Plasticity is what ALLOWS the brain to change. It is not the cause of the change.
DAVID : We see both much shrinkage and slight growth, but overall the extra cells were discarded after the brain was carefully reconstituted as specialized networks to fit the uses humans found for it, with final overall shrinkage.
“Carefully reconstituted”? Sapiens started off with a brain that contained 150 cc of cells that were never used again, and so when he started to implement his new ideas through enhanced complexification, the unnecessary cells disappeared. That doesn’t mean the entire brain was carefully taken apart and put together again in a different form, and it still doesn’t tell us why your God gave us more cells than we needed.
DAVID: The sapiens brain was oversized for 270,000+/- years, and although you admit the extra cells were there you cannot give a reason for them, as I have. Further expansion was not impractical, but obviously a bigger brain was never necessary.
dhw: They were needed and used for the implementation of whatever requirements caused the expansion to sapiens size. Only after a long period of stasis (270,000 or so years), when new ideas created new requirements, did the efficiency of complexification make those cells redundant. And I don’t know why you think further expansion was not impractical. […] Could your body have supported an elephant’s head?
DAVID: Still no answer describing the new idea that drove the enlargement, but then no application for 270,000/+ years. We know of none! Enlargement and then stasis during sapiens appearance on Earth does not fit your favorite theory of ideas forcing enlargement. Is it abandoned?
Once again: my theory is that ALL the enlargements were caused by new requirements that could only be met by additional cells. NOBODY knows what these requirements were! But all expansions, including our own, were followed by periods of stasis, when there were no new ideas that required any further changes! Modern science confirms that the brain changes in response to new requirements and not beforehand. So what theory have I abandoned?
DAVID: As for head size, previous hominins size jumps of 200 ccs bothered no one. and we were not in trouble with 150 cc extra. 'Elephant head' is one of your weirdest worries. [...]
The question here is why the sapiens skull stopped expanding. We weren’t in trouble with the extra 150 cc. because the skull expanded enough to accommodate it. According to you, your God stepped in, and next morning a group of homos woke up with a bigger brain, skull AND pelvis. So why didn’t he just go on expanding brains and skulls and pelvises indefinitely? Maybe he wasn’t too keen on expanding sapiens’ heads to the size of elephants’ heads and having to keep dabbling with pelvises?
DAVID:London cabbies have thickened areas as a result of our God-given brain mechanisms. How do you explain the oversize??
dhw: It is not “oversize”! […] Cabbies need to memorize routes, and the effort to implement this requirement […] has resulted in certain areas of the brain acquiring more cells (whereas most requirements are met by complexification). That is the whole principle on which my theory is based […]
DAVID: The sapiens history does not fit your theory in any way. I see no reason to accept it.
dhw: You asked me to explain the thickened areas of cabbies’ brains (bolded above), which in fact provide a clear illustration of my theory. You have simply ignored the whole argument, including the findings of modern science concerning how the brain responds to new requirements.
DAVID: I ignore nothing. i wan't asking you about cabbies.
Read your own now bolded question.
DAVID: [...] I confused you. I was asking for your theory about overall expansion, because your original theory seems to have disappeared.
My original theory remains exactly the same as it was, and your question about the cabbies serves only to confirm that both complexification and expansion are the RESULT of the brain meeting new requirements. Again: which part of my theory has disappeared?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, July 28, 2020, 19:02 (1577 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: What happened to 'forced by a new idea'.
dhw: “Forced” is your word, not mine, but in any case my comment above is a response to your claim that my theory is inconsistent with sapiens history. I have shown you that it is not.
Your changed theory is consistent, but previously you said an earlier-brained homo had an idea, which idea in order to be implemented had to demand an enlarged brain that naturally appeared:
"Yes, the larger brain would have required more feeding. Yes, once the brain had expanded, it would have been able to design and develop more intelligent and efficient tools. How does this invalidate the proposal that each expansion was triggered by a new concept from the smaller brain? How does it prove that developing and making the FIRST artefacts could not have been the cause of the expansion?" From April (2020-04-04, 14:06)
Quite clear to me and the long stasis in sapiens does not support it .
DAVID : We see both much shrinkage and slight growth, but overall the extra cells were discarded after the brain was carefully reconstituted as specialized networks to fit the uses humans found for it, with final overall shrinkage.
dhw: “Carefully reconstituted”? Sapiens started off with a brain that contained 150 cc of cells that were never used again, and so when he started to implement his new ideas through enhanced complexification, the unnecessary cells disappeared. That doesn’t mean the entire brain was carefully taken apart and put together again in a different form, and it still doesn’t tell us why your God gave us more cells than we needed.
Your assumption that the extra neurons were never used, is not my theory. My point is that many of them were used in the plastic reorganization of our brain to fit our new uses and needs. I assume old and new neurons were discarded as unnecessary after the reorganization.
dhw: Once again: my theory is that ALL the enlargements were caused by new requirements that could only be met by additional cells. NOBODY knows what these requirements were! But all expansions, including our own, were followed by periods of stasis, when there were no new ideas that required any further changes! Modern science confirms that the brain changes in response to new requirements and not beforehand. So what theory have I abandoned?
You have never explained the idea that if a new idea drove brain expansion why the long stasis before implementation in the new brain. I view the drive of a new idea should have continues into an immediate action by the new-sized brain. But it doesn't.
Brain expansion
DAVID: What happened to 'forced by a new idea'.
dhw: “Forced” is your word, not mine, but in any case my comment above is a response to your claim that my theory is inconsistent with sapiens history. I have shown you that it is not.
DAVID: Your changed theory is consistent, but previously you said an earlier-brained homo had an idea, which idea in order to be implemented had to demand an enlarged brain that naturally appeared:
"Yes, the larger brain would have required more feeding. Yes, once the brain had expanded, it would have been able to design and develop more intelligent and efficient tools. How does this invalidate the proposal that each expansion was triggered by a new concept from the smaller brain? How does it prove that developing and making the FIRST artefacts could not have been the cause of the expansion?" From April (2020-04-04, 14:06)
DAVID: Quite clear to me and the long stasis in sapiens does not support it
And later:
DAVID: You have never explained the idea that if a new idea drove brain expansion why the long stasis before implementation in the new brain. I view the drive of a new idea should have continues into an immediate action by the new-sized brain. But it doesn't.
You keep quoting me and then disregarding the quotes! Implementation of the new idea CAUSED the expansion! (But nobody knows what new requirements caused any of the expansions. We simply took the spear as a concrete illustration of the process.) AFTER the new-sized brain had come into existence through the implementation of the new “big” concept, for thousands of years there were no new “big” concepts that would have demanded any further changes to the now bigger brain. Hence stasis. That applies to all the expansions. But when sapiens’ new ideas did come along, they were implemented through complexification (and only minor expansions). The theory is supported by the known fact that the modern brain changes (complexifies and expands on a minor scale) IN RESPONSE to new requirements. It does not complexify or expand in anticipation of new requirements. Now please tell me what has changed in my theory.
DAVID (re shrinkage): Your assumption that the extra neurons were never used, is not my theory. My point is that many of them were used in the plastic reorganization of our brain to fit our new uses and needs. I assume old and new neurons were discarded as unnecessary after the reorganization.
No, my assumption is that the extra neurons WERE used to implement whatever caused the initial expansion, but were not needed subsequently, when eventually complexification took over from expansion. I really don’t know why you think the whole brain had to be reorganized. In what way? Do you think the cerebellum became the cerebrum, or what? I would assume that all the different areas remained the same, but some of them simply discarded cells that were no longer needed. Too simple for you?
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Wednesday, July 29, 2020, 19:36 (1576 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Your changed theory is consistent, but previously you said an earlier-brained homo had an idea, which idea in order to be implemented had to demand an enlarged brain that naturally appeared:
dhw: "Yes, the larger brain would have required more feeding. Yes, once the brain had expanded, it would have been able to design and develop more intelligent and efficient tools. How does this invalidate the proposal that each expansion was triggered by a new concept from the smaller brain? How does it prove that developing and making the FIRST artefacts could not have been the cause of the expansion?" From April (2020-04-04, 14:06)
DAVID: Quite clear to me and the long stasis in sapiens does not support it
dhw: And later:
DAVID: You have never explained the idea that if a new idea drove brain expansion why the long stasis before implementation in the new brain. I view the drive of a new idea should have continues into an immediate action by the new-sized brain. But it doesn't.
dhw: You keep quoting me and then disregarding the quotes! Implementation of the new idea CAUSED the expansion! (But nobody knows what new requirements caused any of the expansions. We simply took the spear as a concrete illustration of the process.) AFTER the new-sized brain had come into existence through the implementation of the new “big” concept, for thousands of years there were no new “big” concepts that would have demanded any further changes to the now bigger brain. Hence stasis.
I object specifically to your bold. Sapiens in Morocco appeared 315,000 years ago with NO NEW changes in their lifestyle or artifacts. 50-70,000 years ago language started to appear. Caves were still used until much later. All stasis, no invention of the great idea you propose caused it!!! No evidence of anything new.
dhw: That applies to all the expansions. But when sapiens’ new ideas did come along, they were implemented through complexification (and only minor expansions). The theory is supported by the known fact that the modern brain changes (complexifies and expands on a minor scale) IN RESPONSE to new requirements. It does not complexify or expand in anticipation of new requirements. Now please tell me what has changed in my theory.
Nothing. That is exactly my point. You talk around my objection while changing nothing. Where is the refutation of my point? Where is the sapiens' implementation that cause the expansion?
DAVID (re shrinkage): Your assumption that the extra neurons were never used, is not my theory. My point is that many of them were used in the plastic reorganization of our brain to fit our new uses and needs. I assume old and new neurons were discarded as unnecessary after the reorganization.dhw: No, my assumption is that the extra neurons WERE used to implement whatever caused the initial expansion, but were not needed subsequently, when eventually complexification took over from expansion. I really don’t know why you think the whole brain had to be reorganized. In what way? Do you think the cerebellum became the cerebrum, or what? I would assume that all the different areas remained the same, but some of them simply discarded cells that were no longer needed. Too simple for you?
I don't know where to begin. The folded cortex of the forebrain did lots of changing as we learned to think with it. Language, as it developed required Broca's area to complexify. The occipital cortex had to learn how to read The motor area had to learn how to control lips and tongue and hand if writing. Opera singing involved marked brain changes. And we invented all sort of physical activity: I'll use gymnastic activity and musical instruments such as piano and violin as complex examples. That is a small examples of all I might list. Your bold is pure silliness. No thought involved.
Brain expansion
DAVID: You have never explained the idea that if a new idea drove brain expansion why the long stasis before implementation in the new brain. I view the drive of a new idea should have continues into an immediate action by the new-sized brain. But it doesn't.
dhw: You keep quoting me and then disregarding the quotes! Implementation of the new idea CAUSED the expansion! (But nobody knows what new requirements caused any of the expansions. We simply took the spear as a concrete illustration of the process.) AFTER the new-sized brain had come into existence through the implementation of the new “big” concept, for thousands of years there were no new “big” concepts that would have demanded any further changes to the now bigger brain. Hence stasis.
DAVID: I object specifically to your bold. Sapiens in Morocco appeared 315,000 years ago with NO NEW changes in their lifestyle or artifacts. 50-70,000 years ago language started to appear. Caves were still used until much later. All stasis, no invention of the great idea you propose caused it!!! No evidence of anything new.
Whatever the “great idea” may have been, it would have PRECEDED the expansion, which was caused by IMPLEMENTATION. Stasis FOLLOWED the expansion until new ideas required changes to the brain, as below.
You keep talking as if the Moroccan sapiens meant an overnight change from pre-sapiens to sapiens. This has always seemed absurd to me. The whole human evolutionary process is shrouded in mystery, and the five Moroccans do not solve it, as this article shows:
World’s oldest Homo sapiens fossils found in Morocco ...
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/world-s-oldest-homo-sapiens.
The team doesn’t propose that the Jebel Irhoud people were directly ancestral to all the rest of us. Rather, they suggest that these ancient humans were part of a large, interbreeding population that spread across Africa when the Sahara was green about 300,000 to 330,000 years ago; they later evolved as a group toward modern humans. “H. sapiens evolution happened on a continental scale,” Gunz says.
Support for that picture comes from the tools that Hublin’s team discovered. They include hundreds of stone flakes that had been hammered repeatedly to sharpen them and two cores—the lumps of stone from which the blades were flaked off—characteristic of the Middle Stone Age (MSA). Some researchers thought that archaic humans such as H. heidelbergensis invented these tools. But the new dates suggest that this kind of toolkit, found at sites across Africa, may be a hallmark of H. sapiens.
(dhw: Then maybe one factor in sapiens' brain expansion really was new tools. There is certainly nothing here to damage my theory.)
The finds will help scientists make sense of a handful of tantalizing and poorly dated skulls from across Africa, each with its own combination of modern and primitive traits. […].
The connections among these skulls and the appearance of MSA tools across Africa at this time and possibly earlier shows “a lot of communication across the continent,” Brooks says. “This shows a pan-African phenomenon, with people expanding and contracting across the continent for a long time."
No sudden leap from nowhere. As regards stasis, please explain why, in your own theory, your God stepped in one night 315,000 years ago to give some Moroccans bigger brains (with unnecessary 150 cc), skulls and pelvises, only for them and their descendants to do nothing with them for the next 270,000 years.
dhw: Now please tell me what has changed in my theory.
DAVID: Nothing. That is exactly my point. You talk around my objection while changing nothing. Where is the refutation of my point? Where is the sapiens' implementation that cause the expansion?
You wrote: “your changed theory is consistent…” What change? And NOBODY knows what caused the expansion, but new artefacts might have been a factor.
DAVID (re shrinkage): Your assumption that the extra neurons were never used, is not my theory. My point is that many of them were used in the plastic reorganization of our brain to fit our new uses and needs. […]
dhw: […] I really don’t know why you think the whole brain had to be reorganized. In what way? Do you think the cerebellum became the cerebrum, or what? I would assume that all the different areas remained the same, but some of them simply discarded cells that were no longer needed. Too simple for you?
DAVID: I don't know where to begin. The folded cortex of the forebrain did lots of changing as we learned to think with it. Language, as it developed required Broca's area to complexify. [Followed by more examples of how new requirements changed the relevant sections of the brain.]
My point was that the brain itself was not reorganized. I asked: do you think the cerebellum became the cerebrum. The different sections remained the same, but every new activity required new complexifications, some of which resulted in the superfluity of certain cells, which were discarded. None of this flannel about them being “used in the plastic reorganization of our brain to fit our new uses and needs”. Your list confirms that the brain changes IN RESPONSE to new requirements, and my theory is still that the same process would have applied to earlier brains, whether the changes were complexifications or expansions.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Thursday, July 30, 2020, 22:35 (1575 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Sapiens in Morocco appeared 315,000 years ago with NO NEW changes in their lifestyle or artifacts. 50-70,000 years ago language started to appear. Caves were still used until much later. All stasis, no invention of the great idea you propose caused it!!! No evidence of anything new.
dhw: Whatever the “great idea” may have been, it would have PRECEDED the expansion, which was caused by IMPLEMENTATION. Stasis FOLLOWED the expansion until new ideas required changes to the brain, as below.
You keep talking as if the Moroccan sapiens meant an overnight change from pre-sapiens to sapiens. This has always seemed absurd to me. The whole human evolutionary process is shrouded in mystery, and the five Moroccans do not solve it, as this article shows:World’s oldest Homo sapiens fossils found in Morocco ...
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/world-s-oldest-homo-sapiens.The team doesn’t propose that the Jebel Irhoud people were directly ancestral to all the rest of us. Rather, they suggest that these ancient humans were part of a large, interbreeding population that spread across Africa when the Sahara was green about 300,000 to 330,000 years ago; they later evolved as a group toward modern humans. “H. sapiens evolution happened on a continental scale,” Gunz says.
Support for that picture comes from the tools that Hublin’s team discovered. They include hundreds of stone flakes that had been hammered repeatedly to sharpen them and two cores—the lumps of stone from which the blades were flaked off—characteristic of the Middle Stone Age (MSA). Some researchers thought that archaic humans such as H. heidelbergensis invented these tools. But the new dates suggest that this kind of toolkit, found at sites across Africa, may be a hallmark of H. sapiens.[/i]
(dhw: Then maybe one factor in sapiens' brain expansion really was new tools. There is certainly nothing here to damage my theory.)
The finds will help scientists make sense of a handful of tantalizing and poorly dated skulls from across Africa, each with its own combination of modern and primitive traits. […].
The connections among these skulls and the appearance of MSA tools across Africa at this time and possibly earlier shows “a lot of communication across the continent,” Brooks says. “This shows a pan-African phenomenon, with people expanding and contracting across the continent for a long time."
None of this tells us when the MSA tools first appeared and certainly doesn't tell us that pre-sapiens had the first thought of it which then drove the expansion.
dhw: No sudden leap from nowhere. As regards stasis, please explain why, in your own theory, your God stepped in one night 315,000 years ago to give some Moroccans bigger brains (with unnecessary 150 cc), skulls and pelvises, only for them and their descendants to do nothing with them for the next 270,000 years.
God gave us the big brain, from which stasis shows we took time to learn how to use it.
dhw: You wrote: “your changed theory is consistent…” What change? And NOBODY knows what caused the expansion, but new artefacts might have been a factor.
We do not know the length of time the Moroccan sapiens had been around, when the artifacts were made of or thought of. I agree artifacts are a factor
DAVID (re shrinkage): Your assumption that the extra neurons were never used, is not my theory. My point is that many of them were used in the plastic reorganization of our brain to fit our new uses and needs. […]dhw: […] I really don’t know why you think the whole brain had to be reorganized. In what way? Do you think the cerebellum became the cerebrum, or what? I would assume that all the different areas remained the same, but some of them simply discarded cells that were no longer needed. Too simple for you?
DAVID: I don't know where to begin. The folded cortex of the forebrain did lots of changing as we learned to think with it. Language, as it developed required Broca's area to complexify. [Followed by more examples of how new requirements changed the relevant sections of the brain.]
dhw: My point was that the brain itself was not reorganized. I asked: do you think the cerebellum became the cerebrum. The different sections remained the same, but every new activity required new complexifications, some of which resulted in the superfluity of certain cells, which were discarded. None of this flannel about them being “used in the plastic reorganization of our brain to fit our new uses and needs”. Your list confirms that the brain changes IN RESPONSE to new requirements, and my theory is still that the same process would have applied to earlier brains, whether the changes were complexifications or expansions.
You can reject the 'flannel' as I reject yours, but I described obvious reorganization that had to occur with new uses. You bolded comment was silliness.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Friday, July 31, 2020, 00:52 (1575 days ago) @ David Turell
dhw: You keep talking as if the Moroccan sapiens meant an overnight change from pre-sapiens to sapiens. This has always seemed absurd to me. The whole human evolutionary process is shrouded in mystery, and the five Moroccans do not solve it, as this article shows:
World’s oldest Homo sapiens fossils found in Morocco ...
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/world-s-oldest-homo-sapiens.The team doesn’t propose that the Jebel Irhoud people were directly ancestral to all the rest of us. Rather, they suggest that these ancient humans were part of a large, interbreeding population that spread across Africa when the Sahara was green about 300,000 to 330,000 years ago; they later evolved as a group toward modern humans. “H. sapiens evolution happened on a continental scale,” Gunz says.
Support for that picture comes from the tools that Hublin’s team discovered. They include hundreds of stone flakes that had been hammered repeatedly to sharpen them and two cores—the lumps of stone from which the blades were flaked off—characteristic of the Middle Stone Age (MSA). Some researchers thought that archaic humans such as H. heidelbergensis invented these tools. But the new dates suggest that this kind of toolkit, found at sites across Africa, may be a hallmark of H. sapiens.[/i]
The role of the stone tools and H. sapiens is con fused by this discovery in India:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/31/16955858/stone-tools-attirampakkam-india-hominins-hu...
A new discovery of stone tools from about 385,000 years ago has anthropologists rethinking the history of technology. The stone tools, found at a site in southern India, were sophisticated blades chipped from chunks of quartz, which is a technique that experts previously thought came to India only about 125,000 years ago.
***
Today’s findings reveal that Levallois tools emerged in India roughly 385,000 years ago — right around the same time they started showing up in Africa and Europe. That means “India is part of this network of cultural innovation that included Neanderthals and Africans,” Hawks says.
Over the past 20 years, archaeologists from the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education in India have unearthed a treasure trove of tools from a creekside site in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. There are no bones at the site, so the research team doesn’t know which ancient human species lived there. But these stone tools can provide another window into the lives of ancient hominins during this key period of technological change. “India is often ignored,” says Shanti Pappu, one of the archaeologists who led the study.
***
Then, after a period with few artifacts, there was an abrupt shift: between 449 and 321 thousand years ago, Levallois points and flakes — and the cores they came from — took over, although a few of those earlier, clunky stone tools persisted. Over the next 200,000 or so years, these hominins improved their technique, as they got even better at making Levallois flakes, blades, points, and scrapers.
While the new timeline means the old story about technology isn’t as convincing, it’s not clear what replaces it. One possibility is that there were earlier hominin migrations out of Africa that brought the technology with them. But it’s also possible that the discovery emerged simultaneously in Africa, Europe, and Asia, as hominins riffed on their standard stone tool-making strategies.
Comment: This research tells us we have no idea when the Moroccans learned their skill, since there were places where the skill was already present. We can agree that bigger brains are consistent with better made tools. What caused the bigger brains is our dispute. I'll stick with God running evolution. Proof of your theory requires as much faith as mine as there is no direct evidence. This article of findings 70,000 years before the Moroccans, with no fossil evidence shows the tools were around, and some of our homo ancestors were doing it. We have no proof if this new homo idea created sapiens brains.
Brain expansion
DAVID: Sapiens in Morocco appeared 315,000 years ago with NO NEW changes in their lifestyle or artifacts. 50-70,000 years ago language started to appear. Caves were still used until much later. All stasis, no invention of the great idea you propose caused it!!! No evidence of anything new.
For the sake of brevity, I shall edit this post in order to focus on the salient points under discussion.
dhw: You keep talking as if the Moroccan sapiens meant an overnight change from pre-sapiens to sapiens. This has always seemed absurd to me. The whole human evolutionary process is shrouded in mystery, and the five Moroccans do not solve it, as this article shows:
World’s oldest Homo sapiens fossils found in Morocco ...[/b]
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/world-s-oldest-homo-sapiens.
QUOTE. “H. sapiens evolution happened on a continental scale,” Gunz says. Support for that picture comes from the tools that Hublin’s team discovered. They include hundreds of stone flakes that had been hammered repeatedly to sharpen them and two cores—the lumps of stone from which the blades were flaked off—characteristic of the Middle Stone Age (MSA). Some researchers thought that archaic humans such as H. heidelbergensis invented these tools. But the new dates suggest that this kind of toolkit, found at sites across Africa, may be a hallmark of H. sapiens.
(dhw: Then maybe one factor in sapiens' brain expansion really was new tools. There is certainly nothing here to damage my theory.)
DAVID: None of this tells us when the MSA tools first appeared and certainly doesn't tell us that pre-sapiens had the first thought of it which then drove the expansion.
No, it doesn’t. But it doesn't disprove my theory either. I don’t know how often you want me to repeat that NOBODY knows the cause(s) of expansion.
dhw: No sudden leap from nowhere. As regards stasis, please explain why, in your own theory, your God stepped in one night 315,000 years ago to give some Moroccans bigger brains (with unnecessary 150 cc), skulls and pelvises, only for them and their descendants to do nothing with them for the next 270,000 years.
DAVID: God gave us the big brain, from which stasis shows we took time to learn how to use it.
According to you, there were no advances for 270,000 years! How do you know we were learning to use it if we didn't produce anything new?
dhw: NOBODY knows what caused the expansion, but new artefacts might have been a factor.
DAVID: We do not know the length of time the Moroccan sapiens had been around, when the artifacts were made of or thought of. I agree artifacts are a factor.
So your reference at the head of this post to the Moroccans does not in any way contradict my theory.
DAVID (re shrinkage): Your assumption that the extra neurons were never used, is not my theory. My point is that many of them were used in the plastic reorganization of our brain to fit our new uses and needs.
[…]
dhw: My point was that the brain itself was not reorganized. I asked: do you think the cerebellum became the cerebrum. The different sections remained the same, but every new activity required new complexifications, some of which resulted in the superfluity of certain cells, which were discarded. None of this flannel about them being “used in the plastic reorganization of our brain to fit our new uses and needs”. Your list confirms that the brain changes IN RESPONSE to new requirements, and my theory is still that the same process would have applied to earlier brains, whether the changes were complexifications or expansions.
DAVID: You can reject the 'flannel' as I reject yours, but I described obvious reorganization that had to occur with new uses. You bolded comment was silliness.
I objected to your statement that the brain was “reorganized”. This gives the impression that the sapiens brain was totally different from preceding brains (perhaps part of your attempt to show why your God had to do a dabble?), but all your examples clearly show that the areas of the brain were the same. Complexification of individual areas does not = reorganization of the brain.
David’s second post deals with more finds relating to tools, which further confuses the issue of who did what when.
DAVID: We can agree that bigger brains are consistent with better made tools. What caused the bigger brains is our dispute. I'll stick with God running evolution.
My theory does not exclude God, but if he exists, I propose that his involvement lay in creating the mechanism which “ran” evolution, including brain expansion: instead of every detail being preprogrammed or dabbled, the cells of which all organisms are made were given the intelligence to do their own designing, including brain expansion.
DAVID: Proof of your theory requires as much faith as mine as there is no direct evidence. This article of findings 70,000 years before the Moroccans, with no fossil evidence shows the tools were around, and some of our homo ancestors were doing it. We have no proof if this new homo idea created sapiens brains.
Agreed. If there was proof of either theory, it would now be accepted as fact. But it’s belief in the theory, not proof of the theory, that requires faith.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Friday, July 31, 2020, 19:17 (1574 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: No sudden leap from nowhere. As regards stasis, please explain why, in your own theory, your God stepped in one night 315,000 years ago to give some Moroccans bigger brains (with unnecessary 150 cc), skulls and pelvises, only for them and their descendants to do nothing with them for the next 270,000 years.
DAVID: God gave us the big brain, from which stasis shows we took time to learn how to use it.
dhw: According to you, there were no advances for 270,000 years! How do you know we were learning to use it if we didn't produce anything new?
I'm sure there were minor advances, but the major advances were in the past 50-70,000 years, with resulting shrinkage starting 35,000 years ago.
dhw: NOBODY knows what caused the expansion, but new artefacts might have been a factor.>
DAVID: We do not know the length of time the Moroccan sapiens had been around, when the artifacts were made of or thought of. I agree artifacts are a factor.dhw: So your reference at the head of this post to the Moroccans does not in any way contradict my theory.
It is neutral, not support.
David’s second post deals with more finds relating to tools, which further confuses the issue of who did what when.
I expected you to be confused. It was clear in that post that advanced stone tools predated Moroccan sapiens. The true confusion is no homo fossils to tell us who thought of it. No support for your theory a bright idea drives expansion to a new brain, which is why you have perfunctorily sloughed off the post.
DAVID: We can agree that bigger brains are consistent with better made tools. What caused the bigger brains is our dispute. I'll stick with God running evolution.dhw: My theory does not exclude God, but if he exists, I propose that his involvement lay in creating the mechanism which “ran” evolution, including brain expansion: instead of every detail being preprogrammed or dabbled, the cells of which all organisms are made were given the intelligence to do their own designing, including brain expansion.
As usual your theory lessens God.
DAVID: Proof of your theory requires as much faith as mine as there is no direct evidence. This article of findings 70,000 years before the Moroccans, with no fossil evidence shows the tools were around, and some of our homo ancestors were doing it. We have no proof if this new homo idea created sapiens brains.dhw: Agreed. If there was proof of either theory, it would now be accepted as fact. But it’s belief in the theory, not proof of the theory, that requires faith.
Agreed
Brain expansion: our very large unusual cerebellum
by David Turell , Friday, July 31, 2020, 21:18 (1574 days ago) @ David Turell
New research finds its surface area is 80% of the cerebrum surface size:
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-brain-cerebellum.html
"Sometimes referred to by its Latin translation as the '"little brain"', the cerebellum is located close to the brainstem and sits under the cortex in the hindbrain. New research at San Diego State University, however, calls the "little" terminology into question.
"The cerebellum plays a versatile role, contributing to our five senses as well as pain, movements, thought, and emotion.
"It's essentially a flat sheet with the thickness of a crepe, crinkled into hundreds of folds to make it fit into a compact volume about one-eighth the volume of the cerebral cortex. For this reason, the surface area of the cerebellum was thought to be considerably smaller than that of the cerebral cortex.
"By using an ultra-high-field 9.4 Tesla MRI machine to scan the brain and custom software to process the resulting images, an SDSU neuroimaging expert discovered the tightly packed folds actually contain a surface area equal to 80% of the cerebral cortex's surface area. In comparison, the macaque's cerebellum is about 30% the size of its cortex.
"'The fact that it has such a large surface area speaks to the evolution of distinctively human behaviors and cognition," said Martin Sereno, psychology professor, cognitive neuroscientist and director of the SDSU MRI Imaging Center. "It has expanded so much that the folding patterns are very complex."
***
"Previous research discovered that while there were many similarities between the cortex and the cerebellum, there was one key difference. In the cerebral cortex, regions representing different parts of the body are arranged roughly like they are in the actual body: juxtaposed and orderly. But in the cerebellum, they were placed more randomly.
"'You get a little chunk of the lip, next to a chunk of the shoulder or face, like jumbled puzzle pieces," Sereno explained.
"Those parts of the cerebellum are therefore set up to pull in and coordinate information from disparate parts of the body.
"It is intriguing to think that there might be analogs of '"fractured somatotopy"' in the cognitive parts of the cerebellum that could help support highly complex, sophisticated cognitive functions, such as language or abstract reasoning, Sereno said.
"When you think of the cognition required to write a scientific paper or explain a concept, you have to pull in information from many different sources. And that's just how the cerebellum is set up."
"Until now, the cerebellum was thought to be involved mainly in basic functions like movement, but its expansion over time and its new inputs from cortical areas involved in cognition suggest that it can also process advanced concepts like mathematical equations.
"'Now that we have the first high resolution base map of the human cerebellum, there are many possibilities for researchers to start filling in what is certain to be a complex quilt of inputs, from many different parts of the cerebral cortex in more detail than ever before," Sereno said.
"For instance, there is some recent evidence that people who suffer cerebellum damage have difficulty processing emotion.
"'The 'little brain' is quite the jack of all trades," Sereno said. "Mapping the cerebellum will be an interesting new frontier for the next decade.'"
Comment: This adds more to the amazing expansion of the sapiens brain. Unfortunately we cannot study pre-sapiens cerabellums to understand the evolution, but its ties to the expanded cerebrum could be newly arrived to aide in cognition and abstractions.
Brain expansion: astrocytes drove enlargement
by David Turell , Friday, July 31, 2020, 22:43 (1574 days ago) @ David Turell
A review article which makes some interesting points about astrocytes and enlargement:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306987713005884?dgcid=raven_sd_reco...
"Abstract
Cells within the astroglial lineage are proposed as the origin of human brain evolution. It is now widely accepted that they direct mammalian fetal neurogenesis, gliogenesis, laminar cytoarchitectonics, synaptic connectivity and neuronal network formation. Furthermore, genetic, anatomical and functional studies have recently identified multiple astrocyte exaptations that strongly suggest a direct relation to the increased size and complexity of the human brain.
"The enlargement of the human brain is the prima facie example of punctuated equilibrium. “A progressive enlargement of the hominid brain started by about 2–2.5 million years ago, probably from a bipedal, australopithecine form with a brain size comparable to that of a modern chimpanzee”. (my bold)
"Comprehensive surveys of vertebrate brains fail to explain human cognitive abilities based on relative or absolute brain size. Importantly, these studies focus on the density of neurons, excluding glia, which account for approximately 85% of cells of the human neocortex. Additionally, electrical and histological studies show no significant differences in neuronal electrical properties, neural cell types, or depth of cortical lamination among mammals.
***
"Protoplasmic astrocytes, the predominant cell in mammalian gray matter, are essential for normal synaptic function and maintenance. Additionally, they are instrumental in expression, storage and consolidation of synaptic information from individual synapse to global neuronal networks
"Recent anatomical and functional exaptations and genetic alterations specific to humans strongly support a critical role of astrocytes in human brain evolution. Additionally, a recent in vivo study infers that human astrocytes independently contribute to cognition.
***
"A well demarcated neurogenic zone was recently discovered in the outer subventricular zone of the human fetal neocortex. RGCs in this area “accelerate the expansion of the neuronal population” [28] and contributes to the rapid intrauterine growth of human brains.
***
"The extreme magnocellular exaptation of protoplasmic astrocytes in humans and the appearance of three primate and human-specific astrocytes leads to the conclusion “that this astrocytic complexity has permitted the increased functional competence of the adult human brain”
"A recent in vivo study provides evidence to “strongly support the notion that the evolution of human neural processing, and hence the species-specific aspects of human cognition, in part may reflect the course of astrocytic evolution”
***
"Two human-specific genes are of particular interest relative to the increased size and cognitive abilities of human brains. These are members of the Thrombospondin group of genes
***
"Thrombospondins are astrocyte-secreted extracellular-matrix glycoproteins that control fetal synaptogenesis and neurite outgrowth
***
"This is the “first gene expression changes in human evolution that involve specific brain regions, including portions of the cerebral cortex. Increased expression of thrombospondins in human brain evolution could result in changes in synaptic organization and plasticity, and contribute to the distinctive cognitive abilities of humans …”
***
"RGCs are instrumental in timing and directing corticogenesis. Novel genetic variations in these cells, through the process of natural selection, may profoundly influence brain size and functions [56]. As discussed earlier, empirical data over the past two decades demonstrates that protoplasmic astrocytes in adult mammals are critical for brain information processing and integration essential for higher cognitive functions.
***
"Cells within the astroglial lineage determine the phyletic expression of mammalian brains, including humans. The increased size and complexity of the human brain clearly correlates with astrocyte anatomical and functional exaptations and genetic variations. Furthermore, the earlier concept that neurons and glia are derived from separate progenitor cells has been dispelled. Therefore, there is no compelling evidence supporting a neurocentric role in human brain evolution."
Comment: Our big brain is astroglial driven. "Due to an exaptation". Wow!: exaptations are unexpected changes in function of that which previously existed with a different function. As if God stepped in and added His design. It certainly was 'punctuated equilibrium', although not in the true Gouldian sense. One senses the appearance of a surprising evolutionary event.
Brain expansion
dhw: No sudden leap from nowhere. As regards stasis, please explain why, in your own theory, your God stepped in one night 315,000 years ago to give some Moroccans bigger brains (with unnecessary 150 cc), skulls and pelvises, only for them and their descendants to do nothing with them for the next 270,000 years.
DAVID: God gave us the big brain, from which stasis shows we took time to learn how to use it.
dhw: According to you, there were no advances for 270,000 years! How do you know we were learning to use it if we didn't produce anything new?
DAVID: I'm sure there were minor advances, but the major advances were in the past 50-70,000 years, with resulting shrinkage starting 35,000 years ago.
I agree. So how do you know we were learning to use our big brain during the preceding 270,000 years? Clearly we didn’t start to use it until we had our new “big ideas”, and then complexification proved to be so efficient that the extra cells were redundant. You still haven’t explained why you think your God gave them to us that dark night in Morocco.
dhw: NOBODY knows what caused the expansion, but new artefacts might have been a factor.
DAVID: We do not know the length of time the Moroccan sapiens had been around, when the artifacts were made of or thought of. I agree artifacts are a factor.
dhw: So your reference [...] to the Moroccans does not in any way contradict my theory.
DAVID: It is neutral, not support.
Precisely. So there is no point in harping on about the Moroccans as if somehow their story contradicted my theory.
David’s second post deals with more finds relating to tools, which further confuses the issue of who did what when.
DAVID: I expected you to be confused. It was clear in that post that advanced stone tools predated Moroccan sapiens. The true confusion is no homo fossils to tell us who thought of it. No support for your theory a bright idea drives expansion to a new brain, which is why you have perfunctorily sloughed off the post.
I didn’t slough it off! On the contrary I presented it because it squashed your effort to use the Moroccans as evidence against my theory! Once more: NOBODY knows why the brain expanded. None of these articles provide the slightest support for your theory that one night God stepped in and dabbled with the brains, skulls and pelvises of a few Moroccans! Does that lead you to reject it?
DAVID: We can agree that bigger brains are consistent with better made tools. What caused the bigger brains is our dispute. I'll stick with God running evolution.
dhw: My theory does not exclude God, but if he exists, I propose that his involvement lay in creating the mechanism which “ran” evolution, including brain expansion: instead of every detail being preprogrammed or dabbled, the cells of which all organisms are made were given the intelligence to do their own designing, including brain expansion.
DAVID: As usual your theory lessens God.
What do you mean by “lessens” God? Why is a God who creates autonomous organisms “less” than a God who directs every move? You never complain about a lesser God giving humans free will!
Thank you for all of today’s natural wonders, which do not require any comment from me, and also for the highly technical articles on the brain. I can only comment briefly on your own comments:
DAVID: (on “Our unusual cerebellum”): This adds more to the amazing expansion of the sapiens brain. Unfortunately we cannot study pre-sapiens cerabellums to understand the evolution, but its ties to the expanded cerebrum could be newly arrived to aide in cognition and abstractions.
I’d be happy with “newly expanded cerebrum” rather than “expanded cerebrum newly arrived”. A dualist, in my view, would have to argue that all the complexifications and expansions were in RESPONSE to the soul’s new ideas. A materialist would argue that they caused the new ideas. In my THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE (beginning April 2018) I tried to develop a compromise between the two theories.
DAVID: (on “Astrocytes drove enlargements): Our big brain is astroglial driven. "Due to an exaptation". Wow!: exaptations are unexpected changes in function of that which previously existed with a different function. As if God stepped in and added His design. It certainly was 'punctuated equilibrium', although not in the true Gouldian sense. One senses the appearance of a surprising evolutionary event.
Since there was a long period of stasis before, presumably, different parts of the brain changed their functions, and there were also long periods of stasis between earlier expansions, I reckon “punctuated equilibrium” is a good description. I don’t know why your God would have had to step in, since you have already agreed that complexification is an autonomous process. I would suggest that once major expansion had been discounted for anatomical reasons – part of my theory - intelligent cells (we shouldn’t forget that astrocytes are cells) cooperated in adapting themselves to perform whatever functions were required of them.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Saturday, August 01, 2020, 14:02 (1573 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: We do not know the length of time the Moroccan sapiens had been around, when the artifacts were made of or thought of. I agree artifacts are a factor.
dhw: So your reference [...] to the Moroccans does not in any way contradict my theory.
DAVID: It is neutral, not support.
dhw: Precisely. So there is no point in harping on about the Moroccans as if somehow their story contradicted my theory.
David’s second post deals with more finds relating to tools, which further confuses the issue of who did what when.
DAVID: I expected you to be confused. It was clear in that post that advanced stone tools predated Moroccan sapiens. The true confusion is no homo fossils to tell us who thought of it. No support for your theory a bright idea drives expansion to a new brain, which is why you have perfunctorily sloughed off the post.
dhw: I didn’t slough it off! On the contrary I presented it because it squashed your effort to use the Moroccans as evidence against my theory! Once more: NOBODY knows why the brain expanded. None of these articles provide the slightest support for your theory that one night God stepped in and dabbled with the brains, skulls and pelvises of a few Moroccans! Does that lead you to reject it?
I'll stick with a past comment:
DAVID: We can agree that bigger brains are consistent with better made tools. What caused the bigger brains is our dispute. I'll stick with God running evolution.
Note this article shows in tool making in a lesser brain by H. habilis:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6503/520.4?utm_campaign=ec_sci_2020-07-30&am...
A very rare type of tool made from a hippopotamus bone has been discovered at the Konso Formation in southern Ethiopia. This artifact represents a technological breakthrough achieved 1.75 million years ago. Bone is tricky to shape and requires considerable judgment and skill to form successfully. Sano et al. show how this large (>10 centimeter) fragment was intentionally shaped by a controlled knapping technique and turned into a handaxe. This breakthrough represents a step-change from the conservative thinking of previous tool makers. By analyzing the scarring around the edges of the superbly preserved tool, the authors inferred that the maker, probably Homo erectus, was able to adjust the thickness on both sides of the material by a distinctive flaking technique. This allowed it to be used for precise purposes, such as butchering animal carcasses. (my bold)
Comment: The Moroccan tools were not that advanced in comparison. Itty-bitty advances until very recently. The tools did not drive expansion. The bigger brains allowed the souls to develop new ideas.
DAVID: (on “Our unusual cerebellum”): This adds more to the amazing expansion of the sapiens brain. Unfortunately we cannot study pre-sapiens cerabellums to understand the evolution, but its ties to the expanded cerebrum could be newly arrived to aide in cognition and abstractions.dhw: I’d be happy with “newly expanded cerebrum” rather than “expanded cerebrum newly arrived”. A dualist, in my view, would have to argue that all the complexifications and expansions were in RESPONSE to the soul’s new ideas. A materialist would argue that they caused the new ideas.
You are not my dualist,as my dualism is so different, as you well know.
DAVID: (on “Astrocytes drove enlargements): Our big brain is astroglial driven. "Due to an exaptation". Wow!: exaptations are unexpected changes in function of that which previously existed with a different function. As if God stepped in and added His design. It certainly was 'punctuated equilibrium', although not in the true Gouldian sense. One senses the appearance of a surprising evolutionary event.dhw: Since there was a long period of stasis before, presumably, different parts of the brain changed their functions, and there were also long periods of stasis between earlier expansions, I reckon “punctuated equilibrium” is a good description. I don’t know why your God would have had to step in, since you have already agreed that complexification is an autonomous process. I would suggest that once major expansion had been discounted for anatomical reasons – part of my theory - intelligent cells (we shouldn’t forget that astrocytes are cells) cooperated in adapting themselves to perform whatever functions were required of them.
So confused!! 'Stasis', as we use the term, occurs after enlargement, not before; and complexification is after enlargement and then the brain reorganizes to fit the soul's uses. Habilis brain was used quite actively, as was the erectus larger brain, and then sapiens appeared, with not much different in lifestyle until 70,000 years ago. So 'big' ideas driving expansion has no sense of proof in the facts we have. Our enormous ideas caused shrinkage from complexification.
Brain expansion
DAVID: It was clear in that post that advanced stone tools predated Moroccan sapiens. The true confusion is no homo fossils to tell us who thought of it. No support for your theory a bright idea drives expansion to a new brain, which is why you have perfunctorily sloughed off the post.
dhw: I didn’t slough it off! On the contrary I presented it because it squashed your effort to use the Moroccans as evidence against my theory![…]. None of these articles provide the slightest support for your theory that one night God stepped in and dabbled with the brains, skulls and pelvises of a few Moroccans! Does that lead you to reject it?
DAVID: Note this article shows in tool making in a lesser brain by H. habilis:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6503/520.4?utm_campaign=ec_sci_2020-07-30&am...
QUOTE: A very rare type of tool made from a hippopotamus bone has been discovered at the Konso Formation in southern Ethiopia. This artifact represents a technological breakthrough achieved 1.75 million years ago.BB […] (David’s bold)
The article goes on to explain all the features that were original, and attributes the tool to homo erectus, not habilis.
DAVID: The Moroccan tools were not that advanced in comparison. Itty-bitty advances until very recently. The tools did not drive expansion. […]
Then maybe it was these tools that required the expansion of the erectus brain. But I don’t know why you are fixated on tools. We took the spear as a concrete example of the process, but NOBODY KNOWS what caused expansion. My theory is not based on tools but on the fact that the modern brain responds to new requirements by complexifying or, on a small scale, expanding, and I see no reason why the same process should not have taken place in earlier brains, but with major expansions. You have not yet provided any reason why it shouldn’t.
DAVID: (on “Our unusual cerebellum”): This adds more to the amazing expansion of the sapiens brain. Unfortunately we cannot study pre-sapiens cerabellums to understand the evolution, but its ties to the expanded cerebrum could be newly arrived to aide in cognition and abstractions.
dhw: I’d be happy with “newly expanded cerebrum” rather than “expanded cerebrum newly arrived”. A dualist, in my view, would have to argue that all the complexifications and expansions were in RESPONSE to the soul’s new ideas. A materialist would argue that they caused the new ideas.
DAVID: You are not my dualist, as my dualism is so different, as you well know.
You have often said that the brain causes thought, but when challenged you have claimed that I have misunderstood your shorthand. Do you now disagree that the dualist's brain DOES NOT CAUSE thoughts but complexifies/expands in RESPONSE to the thoughts of the dualist's soul? Please answer without equivocation.
DAVID: (on “Astrocytes drove enlargements"): Our big brain is astroglial driven. "Due to an exaptation". Wow!: exaptations are unexpected changes in function of that which previously existed with a different function. As if God stepped in and added His design. . It certainly was 'punctuated equilibrium', although not in the true Gouldian sense.
dhw: Since there was a long period of stasis before, presumably, different parts of the brain changed their functions, and there were also long periods of stasis between earlier expansions, I reckon “punctuated equilibrium” is a good description. I don’t know why your God would have had to step in, since you have already agreed that complexification is an autonomous process. I would suggest that [...] intelligent cells (we shouldn’t forget that astrocytes are cells) cooperated in adapting themselves to perform whatever functions were required of them.
DAVID: So confused!! 'Stasis', as we use the term, occurs after enlargement, not before…
Stasis occurs before and after enlargement! Here is my sequence: 1) new requirement, 2) brain enlarges through meeting new requirement; 3) followed by stasis = no new ideas, no expansion. 4) Stasis ends with new ideas and new expansion. When I say “long periods of stasis between earlier expansions”, the stasis comes after the original enlargement and before the next one! Sapiens' stasis came between initial expansion and sudden burst of new ideas, resulting in enhanced complexification.
DAVID....and complexification is after enlargement and then the brain reorganizes to fit the soul's uses.
Complexification, as we have agreed, would have preceded all enlargements and followed all enlargements. In sapiens, however, major enlargement ceased and complexification took over. If by “reorganizes” you mean the brain complexifies as it implements the thoughts of the dualist’s soul, we are in agreement.
DAVID: Habilis brain was used quite actively, as was the erectus larger brain, and then sapiens appeared, with not much different in lifestyle until 70,000 years ago. So 'big' ideas driving expansion has no sense of proof in the facts we have. Our enormous ideas caused shrinkage from complexification.
What is a “sense of proof”? NOBODY KNOWS WHAT CAUSED EXPANSION, and the sapiens stasis does not provide any “sense of proof” that your God did an overnight dabble on a group of Moroccans. But yes, our enormous ideas caused shrinkage from complexification, thus proving that the implementation of ideas changes the brain.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Sunday, August 02, 2020, 21:02 (1572 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Note this article shows in tool making in a lesser brain by H. habilis:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6503/520.4?utm_campaign=ec_sci_2020-07-30&am...QUOTE: A very rare type of tool made from a hippopotamus bone has been discovered at the Konso Formation in southern Ethiopia. This artifact represents a technological breakthrough achieved 1.75 million years ago.BB […] (David’s bold)
dhw: The article goes on to explain all the features that were original, and attributes the tool to homo erectus, not habilis.
Sorry for the error. Where was m y mind? Yes erectus, in the age described.
DAVID: The Moroccan tools were not that advanced in comparison. Itty-bitty advances until very recently. The tools did not drive expansion. […]dhw: Then maybe it was these tools that required the expansion of the erectus brain. But I don’t know why you are fixated on tools. We took the spear as a concrete example of the process, but NOBODY KNOWS what caused expansion. My theory is not based on tools but on the fact that the modern brain responds to new requirements by complexifying or, on a small scale, expanding, and I see no reason why the same process should not have taken place in earlier brains, but with major expansions. You have not yet provided any reason why it shouldn’t.
Yes I have. I think God expanded brains and that explains the progression of better artifacts with each new-size brain.
DAVID: You are not my dualist, as my dualism is so different, as you well know.dhw: You have often said that the brain causes thought, but when challenged you have claimed that I have misunderstood your shorthand. Do you now disagree that the dualist's brain DOES NOT CAUSE thoughts but complexifies/expands in RESPONSE to the thoughts of the dualist's soul? Please answer without equivocation.
As usual, as you well know my theory, the soul must use the existing brain complexity to develop the allowed degree of thought complexity.
DAVID: 'Stasis', as we use the term, occurs after enlargement, not before…dhw: Stasis occurs before and after enlargement! Here is my sequence: 1) new requirement, 2) brain enlarges through meeting new requirement; 3) followed by stasis = no new ideas, no expansion. 4) Stasis ends with new ideas and new expansion. When I say “long periods of stasis between earlier expansions”, the stasis comes after the original enlargement and before the next one! Sapiens' stasis came between initial expansion and sudden burst of new ideas, resulting in enhanced complexification.
Sapiens history of stasis does not fit your definition of stasis. Moroccans did not show new artifacts in the discovery of sapiens fossils.
DAVID....and complexification is after enlargement and then the brain reorganizes to fit the soul's uses.dhw: Complexification, as we have agreed, would have preceded all enlargements and followed all enlargements. In sapiens, however, major enlargement ceased and complexification took over. If by “reorganizes” you mean the brain complexifies as it implements the thoughts of the dualist’s soul, we are in agreement.
No, I mean our brain was over-enlarged and then shrunk as reorganized to fit our uses. Whether habilis or erectus complexified is likely, but not proven because of what fossils give us to know.
DAVID: Habilis brain was used quite actively, as was the erectus larger brain, and then sapiens appeared, with not much different in lifestyle until 70,000 years ago. So 'big' ideas driving expansion has no sense of proof in the facts we have. Our enormous ideas caused shrinkage from complexification.dhw: What is a “sense of proof”? NOBODY KNOWS WHAT CAUSED EXPANSION, and the sapiens stasis does not provide any “sense of proof” that your God did an overnight dabble on a group of Moroccans. But yes, our enormous ideas caused shrinkage from complexification, thus proving that the implementation of ideas changes the brain.
All we can know is a bigger brain can shrink under usage. I'll stick with God running evolution as e know it.
Brain expansion
dhw: My theory is not based on tools but on the fact that the modern brain responds to new requirements by complexifying or, on a small scale, expanding, and I see no reason why the same process should not have taken place in earlier brains, but with major expansions. You have not yet provided any reason why it shouldn’t.
DAVID: Yes I have. I think God expanded brains and that explains the progression of better artifacts with each new-size brain.
As on the “abstract thinking” thread, your opinion apparently provides a reason why my opinion must be wrong! But we agree that better artefacts go together with new-size brains. They may even be the cause of new-size brains, since we know brains change in the process of meeting new requirements. We disagree on your insistence that your God must have expanded brains before homos could come up with any new concepts.
dhw: You have often said that the brain causes thought, but when challenged you have claimed that I have misunderstood your shorthand. Do you now disagree that the dualist's brain DOES NOT CAUSE thoughts but complexifies/expands in RESPONSE to the thoughts of the dualist's soul? Please answer without equivocation.
DAVID; As usual, as you well know my theory, the soul must use the existing brain complexity to develop the allowed degree of thought complexity.
And there was me hoping for an unequivocal yes or no! What is the “allowed” degree of thought complexity? I’ll try again. Do you believe (a) that the dualist’s soul cannot think of new concepts until his brain has already undergone new complexifications/expansions, or (b) that the soul thinks of new concepts using the existing brain, and this then undergoes complexification/expansion in the process of developing and implementing the new concept? A clear choice for you.
DAVID: 'Stasis', as we use the term, occurs after enlargement, not before…
dhw: Stasis occurs before and after enlargement! Here is my sequence: 1) new requirement, 2) brain enlarges through meeting new requirement; 3) followed by stasis = no new ideas, no expansion. 4) Stasis ends with new ideas and new expansion. When I say “long periods of stasis between earlier expansions”, the stasis comes after the original enlargement and before the next one! Sapiens' stasis came between initial expansion and sudden burst of new ideas, resulting in enhanced complexification.
DAVID: Sapiens history of stasis does not fit your definition of stasis. Moroccans did not show new artifacts in the discovery of sapiens fossils.
I keep pointing out that NOBODY KNOWS the causes of expansion, and I asked why you were so fixated on artefacts as the only possible cause. My definition of stasis is a period during which there are no changes. We don’t know what caused Moroccan enlargement, but we do know there were no changes for approx. 270,000 years, which = stasis. Now please tell me your definition of stasis, and why my definition does not fit the history.
DAVID....and complexification is after enlargement and then the brain reorganizes to fit the soul's uses.
dhw: Complexification, as we have agreed, would have preceded all enlargements and followed all enlargements. In sapiens, however, major enlargement ceased and complexification took over. If by “reorganizes” you mean the brain complexifies as it implements the thoughts of the dualist’s soul, we are in agreement.
DAVID: No, I mean our brain was over-enlarged and then shrunk as reorganized to fit our uses. Whether habilis or erectus complexified is likely, but not proven because of what fossils give us to know.
What do you mean by “reorganized” if you DON’T mean the brain complexified? What other form of change was there, apart from minor expansions? We agree that pre-sapiens brains were likely to have complexified as well as expanded.
DAVID: All we can know is a bigger brain can shrink under usage. I'll stick with God running evolution as we know it.
We have agreed that it shrank because the excess was not needed thanks to the efficiency of complexification. We also know that the bigger brain changes IN RESPONSE to new requirements. Why do you keep ignoring this proven fact? And why do you assume that the same process could not have applied to pre-sapiens expansion? And why do you keep harping on about “God running evolution”, as if your God could not possibly have run evolution by designing a mechanism that enabled the brain to expand as well as to complexify without his intervention? After all, on the “errors” thread, you have him designing a system in which the molecules “ARE FREE TO MAKE MISTAKES” and some of those “mistakes” are BENEFICIAL, even to the point at which they may have “arranged for our human evolution”. Let’s call them mutations so that we can avoid the bad implications of “mistakes” and “errors”. Then we have a perfectly logical, theistic explanation for the history of evolution as we know it, all the way from single cells via the great higgledy-piggledy bush of comings and goings to humans and their brain expansions. See under “Back to David’s theory of evolution” for the logical theistic choice that is then open to you.
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Monday, August 03, 2020, 18:14 (1571 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: But we agree that better artefacts go together with new-size brains. They may even be the cause of new-size brains, since we know brains change in the process of meeting new requirements. We disagree on your insistence that your God must have expanded brains before homos could come up with any new concepts.
That is our difference
dhw: You have often said that the brain causes thought, but when challenged you have claimed that I have misunderstood your shorthand. Do you now disagree that the dualist's brain DOES NOT CAUSE thoughts but complexifies/expands in RESPONSE to the thoughts of the dualist's soul? Please answer without equivocation.
Repeat, as always. The soul can only work with the brain it is given and its level of complexity which controls the level of thought complexity allowed. The brain will respond by complexification of areas used and may have tiny areas of enlargement with extra neuron networks from intense use. But soul's thought does not cause large expansion as seen in fossils.
DAVID: 'Stasis', as we use the term, occurs after enlargement, not before…dhw: Stasis occurs before and after enlargement! Here is my sequence: 1) new requirement, 2) brain enlarges through meeting new requirement; 3) followed by stasis = no new ideas, no expansion. 4) Stasis ends with new ideas and new expansion. When I say “long periods of stasis between earlier expansions”, the stasis comes after the original enlargement and before the next one! Sapiens' stasis came between initial expansion and sudden burst of new ideas, resulting in enhanced complexification.
DAVID: Sapiens history of stasis does not fit your definition of stasis. Moroccans did not show new artifacts in the discovery of sapiens fossils.
dhw: I keep pointing out that NOBODY KNOWS the causes of expansion, and I asked why you were so fixated on artefacts as the only possible cause. My definition of stasis is a period during which there are no changes. We don’t know what caused Moroccan enlargement, but we do know there were no changes for approx. 270,000 years, which = stasis. Now please tell me your definition of stasis, and why my definition does not fit the history.
You've changed emphasis. Your original theory about expansion was that an earlier brain had a brilliant idea which forced an expansion so it could be implemented. I pointed out that the Moroccans came with no new artifacts, and the long following stasis disproved your theory. That makes sense to me, while your original theory doesn't fit sapiens history..
DAVID: No, I mean our brain was over-enlarged and then shrunk as reorganized to fit our uses. Whether habilis or erectus complexified is likely, but not proven because of what fossils give us to know.dhw: What do you mean by “reorganized” if you DON’T mean the brain complexified? What other form of change was there, apart from minor expansions? We agree that pre-sapiens brains were likely to have complexified as well as expanded.
What don't you understand about the word 'reorganized'? It describes the complexification and helps explain the shrinkage as unnecessary neuron circuits are dropped.
DAVID: All we can know is a bigger brain can shrink under usage. I'll stick with God running evolution as we know it.dhw: We have agreed that it shrank because the excess was not needed thanks to the efficiency of complexification. We also know that the bigger brain changes IN RESPONSE to new requirements. Why do you keep ignoring this proven fact? And why do you assume that the same process could not have applied to pre-sapiens expansion? And why do you keep harping on about “God running evolution”, as if your God could not possibly have run evolution by designing a mechanism that enabled the brain to expand as well as to complexify without his intervention?
See my thoughts about your expansion theory above. If your idea is true under the deluge of ideas we sapiens have had our brain should have expanded, but complexification made it shrink. We agree complexification may have existed in erectus, so the only possibility is slight erectus shrinkage.
dhw: After all, on the “errors” thread, you have him designing a system in which the molecules “ARE FREE TO MAKE MISTAKES” and some of those “mistakes” are BENEFICIAL, even to the point at which they may have “arranged for our human evolution”.
The errors are due to molecular freedom of action even under tight instructions, as discussed
dhw: Let’s call them mutations so that we can avoid the bad implications of “mistakes” and “errors”. Then we have a perfectly logical, theistic explanation for the history of evolution as we know it, all the way from single cells via the great higgledy-piggledy bush of comings and goings to humans and their brain expansions. See under “Back to David’s theory of evolution” for the logical theistic choice that is then open to you.
I've made logical theistic thoughts for me. See in the other threads what I have written that makes perfect sense, if it is finally understood molecules can make mistakes, despite God's powers. You've pounced on errors as a gift from me to denigrate God. But it hasn't worked.
Brain expansion
dhw: But we agree that better artefacts go together with new-size brains. They may even be the cause of new-size brains, since we know brains change in the process of meeting new requirements. We disagree on your insistence that your God must have expanded brains before homos could come up with any new concepts.
DAVID: That is our difference
dhw: You have often said that the brain causes thought, but when challenged you have claimed that I have misunderstood your shorthand. Do you now disagree that the dualist's brain DOES NOT CAUSE thoughts but complexifies/expands in RESPONSE to the thoughts of the dualist's soul? Please answer without equivocation.
DAVID: Repeat, as always. The soul can only work with the brain it is given and its level of complexity which controls the level of thought complexity allowed. The brain will respond by complexification of areas used and may have tiny areas of enlargement with extra neuron networks from intense use. But soul's thought does not cause large expansion as seen in fossils.
A bit of wool here, but the key part is your agreement that the dualist’s brain RESPONDS to the thoughts of the dualist’s soul. Your final sentence is another way of saying that the same process of brain responding to thought did not apply when larger expansion was required. You do not and cannot give any reason for this authoritative declaration.
DAVID: Sapiens history of stasis does not fit your definition of stasis. Moroccans did not show new artifacts in the discovery of sapiens fossils.
dhw: I keep pointing out that NOBODY KNOWS the causes of expansion, and I asked why you were so fixated on artefacts as the only possible cause. My definition of stasis is a period during which there are no changes. We don’t know what caused Moroccan enlargement, but we do know there were no changes for approx. 270,000 years, which = stasis. Now please tell me your definition of stasis, and why my definition does not fit the history.
DAVID: You've changed emphasis. Your original theory about expansion was that an earlier brain had a brilliant idea which forced an expansion so it could be implemented. I pointed out that the Moroccans came with no new artifacts, and the long following stasis disproved your theory. That makes sense to me, while your original theory doesn't fit sapiens history.
How have I changed emphasis? I have never said that the only possible brilliant idea was a new artefact!!! Once more: NOBODY KNOWS the cause of expansion, but we both took the spear as a concrete illustration of the process. Out of interest, I’ve looked at the early stages of this discussion, under “Introducing the brain: half a brain is just fine.” On February 19 I bolded the following: “pre-sapiens brains expanded when the capacity was too small to meet new requirements (e.g. the implementation and usage of new means of survival). The expanded brain would suffice for so many thousands of years until it could no longer cope with more advances, and so it expanded again.” What part of my theory has changed? As for the Moroccans, yet again: we don’t know what caused the expansion, but whatever the cause, once again there was a long period when there were no further new ideas or experiences or changes in conditions that required any major change in the brain. This is entirely consistent with my theory.
DAVID: What don't you understand about the word 'reorganized'? It describes the complexification and helps explain the shrinkage as unnecessary neuron circuits are dropped.
Then we agree. You claim that your God had to dabble in order to "reorganize" the sapiens brain, but complexification and minor expansion can be explained as part of the ongoing development from one brain to the next. The basic structure remains the same. (Shrinkage was simply the natural result of complexification making certain cells redundant – no dabble required there either.)
DAVID: I'll stick with God running evolution as we know it.
dhw: […] why do you keep harping on about “God running evolution”, as if your God could not possibly have run evolution by designing a mechanism that enabled the brain to expand as well as to complexify without his intervention?
DAVID: See my thoughts about your expansion theory above. If your idea is true under the deluge of ideas we sapiens have had our brain should have expanded, but complexification made it shrink.
And that is why I have emphasized the fact that if our brains had continued to expand, we would have finished up with elephant-sized heads. And so it had to stop expanding. You couldn’t and clearly still can’t grasp that obvious fact. Complexification took over, and was so efficient that the brain shrank.
(On the subject of errors, see the posts on God’s errors and your theory.)
Brain expansion
by David Turell , Tuesday, August 04, 2020, 20:01 (1570 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Repeat, as always. The soul can only work with the brain it is given and its level of complexity which controls the level of thought complexity allowed. The brain will respond by complexification of areas used and may have tiny areas of enlargement with extra neuron networks from intense use. But soul's thought does not cause large expansion as seen in fossils.
dhw: A bit of wool here, but the key part is your agreement that the dualist’s brain RESPONDS to the thoughts of the dualist’s soul. Your final sentence is another way of saying that the same process of brain responding to thought did not apply when larger expansion was required. You do not and cannot give any reason for this authoritative declaration.
Crossing the theory boundaries, I am with God as engineer, and you wish for natural causes. I see no natural support in sapiens history.
DAVID: You've changed emphasis. Your original theory about expansion was that an earlier brain had a brilliant idea which forced an expansion so it could be implemented. I pointed out that the Moroccans came with no new artifacts, and the long following stasis disproved your theory. That makes sense to me, while your original theory doesn't fit sapiens history.dhw:How have I changed emphasis? I have never said that the only possible brilliant idea was a new artefact!!!
I know what I remember was your original theory; artifact or not, what you wrote was an important new idea that had to be implemented so it caused an enlargement to occur for the actual implementation.
dhw: Once more: NOBODY KNOWS the cause of expansion, but we both took the spear as a concrete illustration of the process. Out of interest, I’ve looked at the early stages of this discussion, under “Introducing the brain: half a brain is just fine.” On February 19 I bolded the following: “pre-sapiens brains expanded when the capacity was too small to meet new requirements (e.g. the implementation and usage of new means of survival). The expanded brain would suffice for so many thousands of years until it could no longer cope with more advances, and so it expanded again.” What part of my theory has changed?
In different words you have quoted exactly my impression of your theory was/is. Talk of woolliness!!!
dhw: As for the Moroccans, yet again: we don’t know what caused the expansion, but whatever the cause, once again there was a long period when there were no further new ideas or experiences or changes in conditions that required any major change in the brain. This is entirely consistent with my theory.
No it isn't. Your theory requires a new event activity (style of life) or article to appear with them. It doesn't.
DAVID: What don't you understand about the word 'reorganized'? It describes the complexification and helps explain the shrinkage as unnecessary neuron circuits are dropped.dhw: Then we agree. You claim that your God had to dabble in order to "reorganize" the sapiens brain, but complexification and minor expansion can be explained as part of the ongoing development from one brain to the next. The basic structure remains the same. (Shrinkage was simply the natural result of complexification making certain cells redundant – no dabble required there either.)
Complexification is a process God gave early homo brains as part of brain enlargement. Not a dabble. What is your point?
DAVID: I'll stick with God running evolution as we know it.dhw: […] why do you keep harping on about “God running evolution”, as if your God could not possibly have run evolution by designing a mechanism that enabled the brain to expand as well as to complexify without his intervention?
DAVID: See my thoughts about your expansion theory above. If your idea is true under the deluge of ideas we sapiens have had our brain should have expanded, but complexification made it shrink.
dhw: And that is why I have emphasized the fact that if our brains had continued to expand, we would have finished up with elephant-sized heads. And so it had to stop expanding. You couldn’t and clearly still can’t grasp that obvious fact. Complexification took over, and was so efficient that the brain shrank.'
As I've stated over and over, God ran and designed everything in homo evolution. We are obviously brilliant without ever reaching elephant head size. We didn't ever need to. Elephants have much bigger brains, are bright animals, but their neuron networks are not equal to ours. It is complexity, not expansion that is the important concept. As a result, only slight expansion is ever necessary.