Introducing the brain: general (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, March 18, 2022, 10:06 (771 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: Things are looking up!

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Simple different point of view as you don't believe in God.

I don’t disbelieve in God, and these references to my agnosticism are a very poor response to rational arguments concerning the possible motives and methods of your God. This is especially so when your own arguments are so irrational that you can’t explain the logic behind your point of view.

Memory formation

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

dhw: 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? (I have reinstated this response, as it relates more closely to your own question.)

DAVID: Why must God give off His designing ability?

You just gave us examples of organs that function without God, and then you asked exactly the question I keep asking: why can’t the brain also work without God?

DAVID: I have never understood your insistence on presenting this theory. Does it create a weaker God or stronger in your mind?

I needn’t repeat my answer, as it is irrelevant to the subject we are discussing. Previously, you have agreed that complexification takes place without your God’s intervention, and I keep asking why the same mechanism should not also be capable of adding new cells when needed (= expansion).

DAVID: Answered over and over: a proper designer does not hand off his designing ability to secondhand designers.

And I have answered over and over that if he can give humans the autonomous ability to do their own designing, why should he not give the same ability to other organisms if he wants to? You won’t even allow him to let the weaverbird design its own nest!

DAVID: Elsewhere today I've called you out on cell committees signaling but no evidence of thinking capacity for complex design.

And I answered: I agree that it doesn’t necessarily extend to innovations. That is why we only have a theory and not a fact.

Dementia

DAVID: this is about sensory confusion, not the higher levels of frontal lobe conceptualization abilities. From a materialism standpoint, many areas of the brain have important specific functions that will affect a state of consciousness but disordered consciousness remains. What is amazing is that individuals exist with little brain and normal consciousness as shown here previously. Thus materialism alone cannot explain consciousness.

I really don’t want us to reopen the thread on Dualism versus Materialism, as I‘m sure we covered every aspect of it in our earlier discussions. I agree that nobody can explain consciousness, but as with God’s existence, I can see both points of view. A materialist would certainly argue that dementia provides evidence that since damage to the brain also damages consciousness, the brain must be the source of consciousness. He would also say that in a little brain, the few cells are able to take on the additional functions of those that are missing. But these arguments still don’t explain how consciousness actually works, and they don’t take into account psychic phenomena and NDEs, which suggest that consciousness is NOT dependent on materials.