Brain Expansion (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, May 16, 2020, 10:52 (1650 days ago) @ David Turell

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.