Introducing the brain: general (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, February 10, 2022, 13:34 (805 days ago) @ David Turell

Quotes taken from various threads:

dhw: You keep saying your God provided sapiens with cells that were not used until thousands of years later because he put them there in preparation for future concepts. [...] I don’t believe there were any cells, including cortex cells, that were not used. I propose that our new concepts would have resulted in existing cells complexifying. (And shrinkage happened when complexification made some hitherto useful cells redundant.)

DAVID: Complexification is a new consolidation of existing neurons and connections. So neurons waiting for new conceptualization were certainly alive, somewhat active, but not like when eventually in deep active thought producing a new concept, like Einstein's special thickened area. Complexification is the result of intensive new use.
And:
DAVID: we see our brain came initially prepared to organize itself. What were all these regions doing 315,000 years ago? Some regions were quite active and some not so much. Deny the brain came unprepared for future use.

Thank you for agreeing that the brain organizes itself. That is a step forward. So too is your agreement that all the existing cells were used, though to different degrees, and they complexified in response to new ideas. They did not lie around doing nothing. Every stage of expansion would have been needed for PRESENT use, and was able to cope with later uses through complexification until more cells were needed. In our brain complexification has taken over (apart from minor instances of autonomous expansion which support my theory). And shrinkage was the result of previously useful cells being made redundant by the efficiency of complexification.(See later for your use of “prepared”.) Anything there that seems to you to be illogical?

Memory deposition is scattered

QUOTE: "Like that study, this one seemed to indicate that perception and memory are also deeply entangled. “It doesn’t make sense to think of our memory system as a totally separate workspace,” Baldassano said.

Agreed. The brain is a community of cell communities, all of which work together.

Female sex and complexification

DAVID: another activity shown to induce an area of brain thickness. All these activities handled by our brain without it exploding.
and
Learning new motor skills

QUOTE: "'Besides movement execution," notes Nicolas Morgenstern, "this second excitatory phase mediated by PT neurons could be important for inducing long-lasting changes in the strength of specific connections, via the neurotransmitter ACh. This could be important for behavior, since learning happens when connections between brain cells change'."(DAVID’s bold)

DAVID: the final paragraph is a key point. We know practice makes perfect and this is how the brain does it. Over the years we have invented all sorts of activities our 315,000 years old ancestors had no idea about doing; think sports for example. Our brain came fully prepared for these new activities. But dhw thinks there was no anticipation by God arranged for in our new big brain.

You have agreed that all our cells were used 315,000 years ago. Of course we invented new activities, and both examples vividly illustrate the fact that EXISTING cells change IN RESPONSE to activities. If we fail to learn, they won’t change! The only “preparation” for future use, then, is the mechanism that enables cells to complexify. You agree that complexification takes place autonomously, and so if your God invented the mechanism for past and present autonomous complexification, why should the same mechanism not have led to autonomous expansion in the past and up to and including our own expansion?

DAVID: Previously explained. The complexity of new designs requires an active mind planning it. The whole point of ID. You want secondhand design. If you had a new play in mind, would you outline the plot to a friend and ask him to write it?

Your analogy is apt. According to you, your God designed my brain, but it is my brain that autonomously does its own designing. According to the theistic version of the cellular intelligence theory, your God designs the cells, and the cells autonomously do their own designing. Once more: you agree that our new cells were used from the start, and did not simply lie around waiting to fulfil some vague future requirement, and you agree that the process of complexification takes place autonomously in response to new ideas/requirements, without your God’s intervention. So why shouldn’t expansion do the same? Elsewhere you have told us that ID-ers allow for God as the designer of cellular intelligence, so I’m afraid you can’t foist your beliefs onto them any more.

astrocytes

DAVID: I fully believe everything we find in living material has a reason for its existence. Don't assume anything until we can study it well.

I agree, but I would go further. Whether your God designed every life form, or cells did their own designing, I “fully believe” that nothing new would come into being if it was not useful at the time. Exit the theory that your God designed species in anticipation of later changes in conditions, and that he provided brains with new cells that would lie around doing nothing for tens of thousands of years.