Introducing the brain: why so big? Part two (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, July 28, 2024, 16:54 (128 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: ... But if you say the extra cells were superfluous, it means they were not needed. “Slightly used” tells us nothing. They were used, and it would be totally pointless for the brain to take on additional cells if they were not needed. This applies throughout the history of brain expansion. You agree that your God plays no role in complexification. So it is absurd to argue that your God plonked the new cells into the first sapiens brain in order to prepare them to write, build cities, invent motor cars, fly to the moon, question his existence etc. He would simply have given them the ABILITY to do all these things. And the same principle could apply to the whole of evolution: speciation, lifestyles,strategies, natural wonders etc.

DAVID: You don't want God involved at all.

dhw: I have just said that your God would have given them the ABILITY (assuming he exists), not the detailed instructions. Why don’t you read what I write?

We cannot find any mechanism for speciation in what we know of any genome. Your approach is totally to tout natural mechanisms and IGNORE God or grudgingly mention Him. Of course, the giant sapiens brain finally, after 300,000 years of minor use came into full use in the past 10,000 years.

DAVID: The bold is an invert of my thinking. Tell me what real use those cells were put to before they were snatched up into real useful complexification? You can't. They lived and helped out in minor ways in daily living which was not as complex as is required now for the last 10,000 years. Then they came into complexification use as they were originally prepared for by God. Your view is not agnostic at all.

dhw: What do you mean by “real” use? I have proposed that ALL expansions occurred when the existing capacity for complexification was exhausted and unable to meet new requirements. Nobody knows precisely what those requirements were, but relevant factors would be changes in environment, new inventions (tools, weapons), new discoveries (fire), new concepts of survival (farming instead of hunting). Erectus’s brain capacity increased from 600 cc to very near our own, (about 1300cc). But once our brain had reached its current size, I suggest that further expansion would have demanded major anatomical changes, and so complexification took over. You know all this, so why do you pretend you don’t? Of course the new cells would have been put to “real” use, coping with whatever new requirements had arisen at the time of expansion. And you have agreed that your God “gave our brain the ABILITY to complexify” without his intervention. So what are you arguing about?

The 'use' of all the neurons in the sapiens brain from 300,000 years ago. From minor to major.

DAVID: Neurons are very specialized cells, not equivalent to other cells.

dhw: How does that come to mean that other cells which perform different functions cannot have been given the same autonomous ability to complexify and to process and respond to new information. The brain could hardly perform all its functions if it did not cooperate with other cell communities.

DAVID: The brain is the only organ which can complexify. Everything else is stable.

dhw: So how come that legs can turn into flippers or light-sensitive cells into eyes or gills into ears?

DAVID: God's design, remember as you fight Him. Not agnostic to defend chance evolution. You are a little schizo, aren't you?

dhw: I am not fighting God’s design if I suggest that your God designed cellular intelligence which in turn did its own designing, and this theory is not a defence of chance. You are scraping the barrel with these silly distortions. “Schizo” would be saying that God exists but does not exist, does the designing but does not do the designing, has human attributes but does not have human attributes. There is nothing “schizo” in the theory that if God exists, he may have invented cellular intelligence to design speciation and brain development.

Your same role. Diminish God into a secondhand designer, actually a more complex way of achieving a purpose.

“De novo”

DAVID: A 'real' Cambrian gap makes the animals de novo no matter the cause.

dhw: The gap is real because we cannot fill it. It may remain real if there are no fossils, or if it can be proved that intelligent cells are capable of innovative jumps, or if it can be proved that there is a God who created species de novo. Otherwise, it simply remains an unsolved mystery.

DAVID: Thanks for finally mentioning God.

dhw: All my theories allow for God. This is another of your silly digressions. Do you now accept that the Cambrian gap can be explained by different theories, but none of them – including your own – have been proven?

You are stuck with a real gap. Only a designer can explain it.