Introducing the brain: general (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, February 12, 2022, 16:50 (1013 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The ability to handle new unexpected uses, implies design in anticipation of new uses.

dhw: You’ve got it. We can skip the examples, since you have echoed the following:
dhw: 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: Expansion requires design anticipating future use. The existing neurons can't do that considering all the parts involved from differing individuals.

dhw: If your God exists, then of course he would have designed the mechanisms for complexification and expansion to be used in the future! Once more: you have agreed that the mechanism for complexification works autonomously – i.e. your God does not keep popping in to tell us all what to think, and to fiddle with the neurons to make the necessary connections. And so yet again I ask you why he could not have done the same for expansion. Please don’t just tell me that he couldn’t have done it, or that cells can complexify their connections autonomously but you just happen to know they can’t increase their numbers autonomously.

DAVID: You are forgetting our brain makes few new neurons after infanthood is over. Please use known facts. You know God gave us so many extra neurons with complexification it shrank. No evidence of an intrinsic expansion mechanism. Thickening of areas is part of complexification, nothing more.

dhw: You dodge from one escape route to another. You’ve just agreed that the only so-called preparation for the future consists in the autonomous ability to meet new requirements, and yet again I ask why the ability to add new cells should not also be part of this mechanism. What, then, is your point about infanthood? We inherit the same form of brain as our parents, and after infanthood we will have roughly the same number of neurons. So what? What was the point of your God giving us extra neurons if we didn’t use them? And how often do I have to repeat my explanation of shrinkage: we used the extra neurons until complexification made them redundant. There is no evidence of a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for expansion and for every undabbled development in life’s history, but all the evidence we have tells us that the brain RESPONDS to new requirements, that now instead of expanding, it complexifies and does so autonomously, and there are still tiny examples of enlargement: you wrote: “The advanced use of a new need, like London cabbies results in a thickened complexified area!!! That is a tiny example of enlargement….” I don’t see why you’ve changed your mind – a thickened area would also be an enlargement caused by (not created in anticipation of) a response to a new requirement.

So confused, ignoring my points. Complexification enlarges tiny areas of the existing brain, and does not explain the 200cc jumps in pre-human and then early homo enlargements. Einstein's special area was one tiny fold five millimeters thicker in 1,350 cc of brain. Shrinkage makes room for those enlargements, caused by new uses. You have twisted the mechanism of complexification all out of shape. All previous brains in human evolution had the complexification mechanism. It didn't appear with us.