Brain expansion (Evolution)

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.