Introducing the brain: general (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, February 16, 2022, 11:37 (1009 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Same repeat: a logical God doesn't do secondhand design through others (your cells).

dhw: If your God wants to give autonomy to something, there is nothing illogical about his giving it autonomy! You agree that if he exists, he designed the complexification mechanism to work autonomously without his intervention. Why would it be illogical for him to do the same with expansion?

DAVID: Expansion requires new design, especially our special five-tier frontal lobe cortex design. Complexification is simply a mechanism within a given design. Design works for the future.

Both theories link expansion to new design. Your theory is that your God pops in to add new cells so that the brain will be able to cope with new requirements (= new design) some time in the future. I propose that the brain needs new cells in order to cope with new requirements in the present. Each complexification may be called a new “design”, but clearly most will be on a smaller scale than the new design(s) that led cells to expand the existing cortex. All cell communities are presumably able to complexify, but (a) we do not know of cells complexifying in advance of requirements, and (b) the mechanism works independently of your God’s intervention. Hence my question, repeated ad nauseam: if your God can create a mechanism through which each new design requires and leads to autonomous complexification, why would the same mechanism not autonomously generate new cells when new designs require them?

Anticipation

This whole section has been covered by entries elsewhere.