Brain Expansion (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, May 08, 2020, 11:18 (1658 days ago) @ David Turell

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.