Introducing the brain: general (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, February 23, 2022, 12:03 (1002 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: As for your distorted discussion of complexification assuming God gave up some sort of control, do you remember your autonomic system that efficiently runs most of your bodily functions? Do you want God to help you defecate each time you feel the need?

dhw: Answered umpteen times, and repeated today on the “cellular intelligence” thread. Most of our established organs have to work automatically. And have you forgotten that you have agreed that complexification takes place without your God intervening? Hence my constantly asking you why, if he designed a mechanism for autonomous complexification, you insist that he could not have done so for enlargement.

DAVID: I'll repeat. Complexification is simply one necessary part of a designed brain and its functions. A designer does his own designing is my constant reply.

I’ll repeat. According to you, the process of complexification operates autonomously without your God’s intervention. If he exists, then that is the way he designed it. And so why should he not also have designed cells to autonomously add to their number as well as to complexify?

Varying unequal synapses

DAVID: as each level of neuron activity is uncovered, the activity within the brain demonstrates its complexity, and shows us why our brain acts as it does. I wish we could see how much complexity existed in preceding hominins and homos. My guess is size isn't the issue but neuronal network complexity created the brain we use, which makes it superior to all preceding brains. Larger size makes room for more complexity but unless the increased
complexity exists just larger size will not matter.

dhw: From my standpoint, this is an excellent summary of the whole process. The autonomous mechanism of complexification would have existed in the brains of all preceding hominins and homos, and whenever requirements necessitated additional cells, there was expansion. The size only matters because it is the increase in the number of cells that enhances the ability to complexify. (But in sapiens, the ability to complexify itself has been so enhanced that not only is expansion unnecessary, but some cells that had been useful in the past have become redundant – hence shrinkage). Since you agree that size only matters in relation to the autonomous ability to complexify, I cannot understand why, in the theistic version of this theory, you think the addition of cells requires your God’s intervention.

DAVID: What makes the extra cells from Habilis to Erectus to Sapiens? God or intelligent neurons?

I propose intelligent neurons and maybe other brain cells as well. I keep asking you why your God has to do it, since you believe he has given the brain cells the intelligence to do their own complexifying. Your only answer seems to be the vague complaint about "secondhand design", but I'd have thought that if he could design autonomous complexification, he could design autonomous expansion too.