Introducing the enlarging brain: human cerebellum different (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, June 16, 2020, 11:20 (1631 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: My method rejects the idea of changes being made in anticipation of new conditions. There is no crystal-ball-gazing. I propose that all the changes are made IN RESPONSE to new conditions.

QUOTE: "I cannot imagine a chimpanzee playing the guitar as dexterously as us, even if they liked to make music," Paxinos pointed out." (David’s bold)

dhw: I don’t suppose any of us can. I don’t know of anyone who claims that chimps’ brains and abilities are the same as ours. Why did you bold it?

DAVID: Bolded Poppycock! What condition caused an adapted brain to appear that allows violin/guitar playing? […] Explain why our soul/brain was given so many new abilities apes don't have and it contained those abilities 315,000 years ago, that we had to learn over lots of time to think of and finally use for our enjoyment, not survival!
And later: Our material brain has advanced abilities for the soul to learn to use to our advancement and enjoyment and not at all adaptations for survival.

Where have I mentioned survival? Did I ever say that the illiterate women, the taxi-drivers and the musicians (including violinists) had to learn for the sake of their survival? Once more you are putting up a straw man of your own. You are right, though, to reprimand me on the use of "conditions". I should have written "requirements" to cover all contexts.

Here yet again is my proposal: once the sapiens brain had expanded to its natural limit, there was a period of comparative stasis (as with all our ancestors). The brain was not given new abilities! Even in your theory, do you think God said to sapiens: “Here’s a new brain. Now you can play the violin, but you won’t think of doing it for another 315,000 years.” The evolution of human society is the history of new ideas, whether there is a soul or not. And every new idea makes new demands on the brain, which complexifies during the process of implementation! Just as the concept of the spear would have demanded changes to the pre-sapiens brain for its implementation, so too did the sapiens’ concept of the violin. Sapiens wants to make music for his enjoyment, and he conceives of a new way to make new sounds. The implementation of the concept requires changes to the brain (= complexification). Pre-sapiens’ brain did not enlarge to sapiens size in anticipation of inventing and playing the violin, and sapiens’ brain did not complexify in anticipation of the concept! The brain changes IN RESPONSE to new requirements, not in anticipation of them.

dhw: Once more: I don’t think any of us need to be told that our brain is more advanced than that of the apes. These surprising new findings make me more unwilling than ever to attribute individual functions to individual parts of the brain. All the cell communities must cooperate to produce our activities. What is far more interesting than the fact that we are more advanced than the apes is the extent to which our material brains are responsible for our cognition, intelligence, behaviour etc. In other words, the clash between materialism and dualism.

QUOTE under “Dopamine”: MIT team found that in addition to the motor cortex, the remote brain area most affected by dopamine is the insular cortex. This region is critical for many cognitive functions related to perception of the body's internal states, including physical and emotional states.

DAVID: Dopamine like hormones markedly affect brain function, and we still do not know how much and how the effect varies in different parts of the brain. Before dhw explodes that this is pure materialism, it is. The brain is material and has certain compartmentalized functions, but its use by the soul/human is at an entirely different immaterial level when the output of thought is observed. It is at that level not understood.

You start out with the assumption that there is a soul. For a neutral, the question arises as to why the thoughts and feelings of an immaterial soul should be directly affected by material substances.

The “brain” and “evolution” threads are overlapping more and more, but I don’t have time now to combine them. My apologies.