Introducing the brain: general (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, February 17, 2022, 15:52 (1008 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: 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 [I should have specified brain cell communities here], 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?

Why is the idea of God giving existing cells autonomy for new design so important to you? You theoretically allow God's design and then demand no God in new design. It seems agnosticism is difficult to defend.

DAVID: Please use fact: our brain, as a prime example makes only a few new neurons for memory. Our brain has handled all the new uses thrown at it over 315,000 years of existence. Implies prepared for future use.

dhw: Once any change of any kind – brain expansion, whale flipper, camel nose, giraffe neck – is made and succeeds, then of course it will be used in the future! That doesn’t mean your God popped in and operated on brains, legs, noses and necks before there was any present need for them!

Well, He did it somehow!

DAVID: Complexification is an already existing designed mechanism, with no implication that it can relate in any way to new expansion/design. The process simply reorganizes existing neuron networks for new use, a God-given mechanism not requiring His further intervention.

dhw: New use = new design. Thank you for again confirming that it is autonomous. Earlier brains would have used the same mechanism: the cells responded autonomously to new requirements. But at some point, the cells were unable to cope with new requirements: their capacity for complexification had reached its limit. And so more cells were required. Why do you think cells can autonomously create all the connections necessary to cope with the most complex of requirements now, but in the past they were incapable of adding to their number and needed the intervention of your God?

Simple. I believe in a God who is the creator.

DAVID: Your now bolded phrase is a stretch of fact. Cells can modify slightly as adaptations to impinging changes/challenges.

dhw: See my new parenthesis. The fact is that in your theistic theory, God provides an autonomous mechanism for complexification, but apparently he had to dabble to provide brains with more cells when they didn’t need them.

The additional neurons with new complexity of networks, handled 315,000 thousand years of new mental activity as prepared.