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Message:

> > DAVID: [i]The new cells popped up 315,000 years ago, and little used until recently, as in language theoretically 70,000 years ago. I view 'acquired' in your statement, should be 'required'.[/i]
> > 
> > dhw: No. The new cells are acquired as the brain “tailors itself”, because the existing quantity of cells is not sufficient to meet the new requirement. You simply cannot grasp the process I keep trying to describe: 1) new idea, 2) implementation of new idea requires new cells, 3)[b]new cells continue to perform the function for which they were needed in the first place[/b]. 
> 
> The only evidence we have about the first sapiens brain is that it was much larger than previous brains and as it tailored itself to new uses it shrunk 150 cc taking excess neurons with it. I will grant you that all neurons until discarded had some useful activity. Discarded neurons means the brain came with an excess for future need.
> 
> > dhw: We don’t actually know which ones – they may NOT have been the cells that had been newly acquired by sapiens.
> 
> You have forgotten only the hippocampus has the ability to add new neurons.  And I view God  has the lone ability to enlarge whole brains in new species.
> 
> > dhw: You don’t understand the concept of cells RESPONDING to new requirements (as demonstrated in the modern brain). What do you count as “abstract” thought? Designing something that has never existed before has to begin with “abstract” thought (in pre-sapiens as well as in sapiens). If you mean philosophy, how the heck do you know what our predecessors thought? What concrete relics do you expect to find of philosophical thoughts that existed before the inventions of painting and writing?
> 
> Do you think early sapiens discussed general relativity theory? The original cells of sapiens new brain complexified by a God-given mechanism as they learned to use their new big brain. That is the "concept of cells RESPONDING to new requirements (as demonstrated in the modern brain)".  We are in full agreement here.
> > 
> > dhw:  So please stop making definitive statements about your God giving us “excess” cells at the start. What were then new cells could be hard at work today.
> 
> So what happened to the missing 150 cc ???
> > 
> > dhw: [i]And what is the way he set it up for us, if it is not by endowing the cells with the intelligence to do their own thinking? I don’t smoke.[/i]
> > 
> > DAVID: [i]Yes, the cells had intelligent instructions as to how to complexify according to new needs.[/i]
> > 
> > dhw: I don’t know why instructions have to be called “intelligent”, but you are simply using different terms to describe what I have been proposing all along with my theistic version: your God designed the mechanism that enables cells to add to their number (expansion) or to create new connections between themselves (complexification). It is the cells themselves that autonomously register the new requirements and autonomously decide how to respond to them, i.e. your God does not do it for them. Being aware of new requirements and deciding how to meet them requires intelligence, which is what I propose (theistic version) would have been an integral part of your God’s original design of the first cells.
> 
> I don't accept your theory. God speciates is my belief. Please note our current brain can only add hippocampus cells. Other enlargements are rearrangements of existing neurons through complexification for heavy new use