Brain Expansion (Evolution)

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?