Human evolution; savannah theory fading (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, August 11, 2022, 12:03 (624 days ago) @ David Turell

Brain expansion

dhw: […] you have definitely accepted that your God (if he exists) would have designed the complexification process which autonomously (i.e. without his intervention) enables cells to design their own improvements. So please tell me why you think he could not have designed an autonomous mechanism enabling cells to add to their numbers when necessary.

DAVID: I view complexification as a requirement to allow the individual to use his brain and develop the proper neurologic networks to support new uses, but it does not apply to new neurons appearing except in the hippocampus. This is all fact. We have to accept what God provided. No cell or committee of them knows how to design a new step. It is your theory, nothing more.

Yes, it is a fact that we use our brains, and you have accepted that the complexification mechanism through which “cells design their own improvements”, is autonomous – i.e. God does not pop in every time a new step results in complexification. Don’t you think new steps are an improvement? Now please tell us why you think that although your God created the mechanism enabling cells to complexify autonomously, he could not possibly have created the mechanism enabling them to add to their number.

dhw: Don’t you think enhancement means improvement?

DAVID: No, it means new networks for new uses with existing neurons which is an obvious improvement.

Enhancement means new networks for new uses with existing neurons which is an obvious improvement, but apparently that means it is not an improvement.

dhw: We now have him designing a mechanism for complexification. The improvements are carried out autonomously by the cells themselves. So when you say “God designed all previous hominin/homo brains”, what else do you think he designed apart from the mechanisms for complexification (which is autonomous) and expansion (which you say he engineered individually, but which I propose would also have been autonomous). My point is that these mechanisms would have been there from the earliest hominin/homo brain onwards, in which case the improvements from the very first brain onwards would have been made autonomously by the cells themselves. Even if he individually inserted each set of additional cells, they would still have created improvements through the autonomous process of complexification. So what was left for him to “design”?

DAVID: He must design the enlargement of skull brain pan and enlargement of the new bigger brain with more neurons, with which complexification could work to handle new activities, etc.

That is the mechanism for enlargement/expansion!

DAVID: And obviously design the right sized pelvis for mommy to handle the bigger sized baby skull.

We have already switched from the savannah theory to brain expansion, and now you want to switch to the pelvis. We’ve been over that problem. Please stick to the subject. You keep harping on about God designing all previous brains (as well as our own), and I am asking what part of each new brain he designed, apart from the mechanisms for enlargement and complexification – the latter being autonomously responsible for improvements.