Introducing the brain: general (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, March 17, 2022, 09:32 (769 days ago) @ David Turell

Yet again, my apologies. I thought I’d posted this yesterday, and I have no idea why I didn’t! I do have one or two theories, but I’ll keep them discreetly to myself.

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

DAVID: Broca's area was there long before language. I'll bet Erectus had it.

dhw: That was made clear by the article, and it therefore categorically refutes your earlier statements that the complexities of the frontal lobe are unique to sapiens. Now you are betting that this complexity was not unique to sapiens.

DAVID: My point is simply erectus' brain had a degree of complexity lesser than sapiens. habilis even less

dhw: Then we are in agreement. It is inevitable that if new cells are added, there will be an increase in complexity. But that doesn’t mean that sapiens frontal lobe is totally different from earlier frontal lobes, or that your God added all the new cells thousands of years before they were needed.

DAVID: We agree in gradual complexity from hominin to homo.

Things are looking up!

DAVID: You can't deny the huge frontal lobes of sapiens was finally fully used 315.000 years after arrival.

Of course I deny it. I believe the frontal lobes of sapiens (which did not suddenly appear out of the blue but evolved gradually) will continue to be used in new ways so long as sapiens survives. And I must repeat that I do not believe your God inserted them into a few pre-sapiens heads thousands of years before they were needed.

Memory formation

DAVID: Brains before sapiens undoubtedly complexified using God-given instructions.

dhw: But you have previously agreed that complexification takes place without God’s intervention! Are you telling us that God whispered in the ear of a pre-sapiens: “Now you’re gonna invent a weapon to kill your prey from a distance, and I’ll give you the extra cells to help you design it, make it an’ use it”?

DAVID: Kidneys, lungs, livers, etc. work without God. Why can't the brain?

Exactly. So why do you go on insisting that past brains could only complexify if God gave them instructions, and could only expand if he operated on them?

DAVID: Our God-given cells came with the ability to conceptualize on our command. You have your neuron cell committees brilliantly doing their own designing. With no known natural source of designing intelligence.

dhw: I don’t want to reopen the dualism versus materialism debate, which will require a definition of what “we” means. The point here is that you agree that the mechanism which gives us our ability to design is autonomous. You believe your God designed it, so why can’t you believe that he could have designed this autonomous mechanism to add cells as well as complexify them?

DAVID: Why must God give off His designing ability? I have never understood your insistence on presenting this theory. Does it create a weaker God or stronger in your mind?

The usual dodge of answering a question with a question. This website grew out of my typically human sense of curiosity. I want to know (even if I can’t) how we got here, what is the origin of consciousness, is there a God, and if there is, what might he be like? And so I look at what we do know, and I try to form some kind of explanatory pattern out of it. You have helped enormously in expanding my actual knowledge, but I find some of your conclusions extremely unconvincing, and I look for alternatives. Hence our discussions concerning the intelligent cell theory. I couldn’t care less whether you think this means a weaker or stronger God. The question is whether it might explain some of the mysteries of evolution. Would you now please answer my own bolded question.