Introducing the brain: general (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, March 09, 2022, 10:39 (777 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your 'control freak' equals purposeful.

dhw: My creator of a free-for-all equals purposeful.

DAVID: Yes a personal purpose for entertainment.

And your ‘control freak’s’ purpose? To have us admire his work (one of your suggestions), which I could call ‘vanity’ if I wished to find a derogatory way of putting it.

DAVID: 'Admire' and 'relationship' all the result of guessing. The only defense you have is to attack my God. Your desired humanized form of God is not in any way related to my view of a real god.

dhw: Yes, your guesses are just as humanizing as my guesses,...I have no “desired” humanized form, but I appreciate the logic of your confident guess that he enjoys creation and is interested in what he creates. I have no idea what gives you the impression that you know the “real” God, and that none of my alternative versions (e.g. an experimental God, or one who likes to learn new things) can possibly be real.

DAVID: I started with research in how to think about God, as Adler instructed in his book. Based on that discussion and others, what you imagine about God is totally unrecognizable to me.

Then maybe you should extend your research, since your thoughts have led you to a theory of evolution which you yourself find incomprehensible (hence your advice to me to ask God for an explanation), but it’s good to hear that your research has led you to humanizing guesses about your God’s enjoyment, interest, thought patterns, emotions, logic, and even a desire for admiration from and relations with humans. Unrecognizable?

New Study Changes Our Understanding of Human ... - Haaretz.com

dhw: The article suggests that the requirements for new abilities and technologies and enhanced communication (e.g. for hunting) led to changes in the frontal lobe. This is the direct opposite of two of your theories, as above. What is the dichotomy?

DAVID: We always disagree about the ability of a group of existing neurons to form a whole new-sized brain.

What “whole new-sized brain” are you talking about? Existing brains complexified and then expanded in stages. You accept that complexification is autonomous, but you want your God popping in every time to add new cells when, or rather BEFORE they are required. The article refutes your proposal that 1) the complexities of the frontal lobe originated with sapiens, and 2) that the brain changes took place before they were required. What is the dichotomy?

Dampwood termites

DAVID: Yes God MAY HAVE done anything. The 50/50 is my original point that from the outside those are the odds. When the insides are studied, it is all automatic. You totally reject that.

dhw: I reject your authoritative dismissal of a 50/50 possibility, and I remind you above of the two methods you have offered us, each of which stretches my own imagination beyond credulity.

DAVID: Yes, you deny a God exists.

This is your most desperate argument of all, since you know perfectly well that the argument for intelligence allows for your God as the inventor of that intelligence. This is not lip service. I am not an atheist pretending to be an agnostic.

DAVID: See today: Tuesday, March 08, 2022, 21:38 From my comment:
"Seeing something that seems to act intelligently doesn't mean it is intrinsically intelligent in and of itself etc.”

See my response under “cellular intelligence”.

Memory formation

DAVID: It shows our brain is designed with neurons with specific functions for future use.

dhw: I think the article describes how different memories are formed, but of course there would not be much point in forming memories if we didn’t have the means of remembering them in the future!

DAVID: We came with memory ability, without which nothing could be accomplished.

Agreed. The same applies to all life forms. That does not mean that your God operated on pre-sapiens brains in order to give them extra cells that would not be used until some vague future time.