I think that a big brain evolved with rudimentary culture, language, tool making and meat eating. Once H. erectus had a big brain cognitive ability accelerated not by evolution but by culture, language, and tool making. H. Sapiens, H. Neanderthals of 100,000 years ago are much more cognitively advance than H. Erectus ever was. Look at their tools, clothing, and art. H. Erectus tools stayed the same for a million years. H. Sapians added art, and advanced tool making technology. But 12,000 years ago the long human species H. Sapiens cognitive abilities exploded with agriculture and animal husbandry and continues to advance to this day. Our cognitive abilities today are much more advanced than 100 years ago.
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There are a couple of ideas that come to my mind.
First, there were groups of humans in modern times who didn’t have written languages, organized agriculture, advanced civilization, and the like. I don’t think they were any less intelligent than you or I. Jared Diamnond’s book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” covers this subject. I haven’t read the book, but the TV documentary was really fascinating.
Second, we have to be careful of using strict adaptionist approaches. Not all features have been positively selected for. For example, the human nose did not evolve to hold eye glasses. These are called spandrels which are features that evolved through neutral evolution or piggy backed on features that were selected for. It could be that our intelligence evolved because it allowed us to survive in hunter-gatherer groups, such as figuring out migration patterns or hunting strategies. It just so happens that these adaptations can also perform other tasks, such as writing music or making sculptures.
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Seems like the cart is before the horse in a big way, here.
Take this first and then we’ll talk… 
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I agree. No less intelligent, just less educated. Still having the ability to learn, but not the opportunity. I was really asking about the ability, though. The capacity for language, culture, music, etc. All of these human cultures possess these three… even if they had no written language.
I’ll never agree with you more than right here and now!!
So you can see this mind as advancing from the above? I have watched the pilot whales and spinner dolphins exhibit their hunting strategies (fishing, actually…) They are amazing and brilliant. But it seems to me that with music and language, there’s a real quantum leap forward. It’s hard for me to imagine such creativity and brilliance coming about on its own. Really, that may be one of the biggest issues for me, personally, is that I try to imagine these aspects (body plans, body parts, behaviors, cognitive functions, etc.) coming about in a step-wise manner. It’s difficult to envision.
Very interesting. You and Mark Moore (@anon46279830) had an interesting dialog going there. He asked some very interesting questions, but the conversation seemed to drop. It would be interesting to know where you end up on his questions / comments. Tag me if you get back to them, as I’d love to learn. Thanks very much for this!
The materialist viewpoint is that we are matter in motion governed by our brains, a wetware operating system of three pounds of grey and white matter. Our identity is packed into our brains and if they die, so do we. There is no soul, and consciousness is an illusion. Is that what we are?
Why does the ID movement needs the soul?
I can’t wrap my head around it…
I don’t think so. Enlargement of the brain went hand-in-hand with cooperative hunting, meat eating, cooking food, tool making, rudimentary language and culture. Once brain size got big enough brain growth stopped at about a half million years ago. It was then culture that lead the cognitive advance. Cognitive advances are going faster and faster to this day. Brian enlargement stopped a half a million years ago. We have more than enough brain capacity to do just about anything.
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That test has nothing to do with intelligence or cognitive ability. Try making this
:
Cognitive ability and intelligence is all about coming up with novel ways to solve survival problems.
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I read on another post (that Joshua linked me to earlier in this thread) that brain size was not correlated to intelligence… neuron count was. I’m curious what caused the neuron count to increase at such a great rate fairly recently. I still disagree with you, though, regarding the cart and the horse. You have cognitive ability being accelerated not by evolution but by culture, language, and tool making. It seems that the ability or capacity would need to be in place first, and the evidences would follow.
Right. I don’t believe that I’ve evolved far enough yet.
And I didn’t really expect you to take the eighth grade test from 1912, but I sure appreciate you doing so! I’ll post your scores by the end of class today. 
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I agree that is it neuron count and more importantly synapse connections (more neurons connected to more neurons) It is experiences that increase the number of synapses. The big brain was there first and then culture, language and tool making accelerated neuron count and synaptic connections. We see this in children, and how they learn. They are much more cognitively advanced at an earlier age now.
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I don’t suppose that the ID movement has any particular claim on the soul. It is merely an aspect that is recognized by any group of people who perceive a higher power as a creator, as well as some who don’t see monism as sufficiently explanatory for who we are.
(Monism: Thanks @T_aquaticus !!)
8 posts were split to a new topic: The DI’s Soul Argument Against Materialism
I am going to posit something you are not ready for and will not like. But of the four forces of evolution
–Natural selection, Genetic drift, Gene flow, Mutations–
…only one may in fact be the single and authentic force – namely, natural selection. Simplistically speaking, as environment impinges on the sensory areas of the brain (or neuron cluster depending the organism), the brain continually processes new information received and directly drives any and all changes to DNA, gene variation, migration, destruction, survival, etc.
With the brain in control, neuro-commands to DNA are deliberate based on outside information received. Nothing is random or left to chance. As well, with the brain as the driving force of organism survival and change, one would have to prove that it is the brain that is able to “macro-evolve” before macroevolution could even be remotely viable.
In short, this would mean that evolutionists are looking in the wrong place to validate their hypotheses. In focusing on DNA and genes, they are looking at the end product of information flow rather than the source – that is, the brain.
(edit: changed “authenticate their hypotheses” to “validate their hypotheses” in 2nd to last sentence)
Ok, that sounds like a testable hypothesis. Now tell us how to go about testing it. How does the brain know what genetic changes to make in order to get its consciously decided upon morphological results?
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I don’t think it would not know or decide on morphology ahead of time. It would only send impulses with information it received from the senses.
How would a brain be able to determine which mutations a genome has, and then select for them?
I think we all agree that sexual selection exists, but I don’t think it goes down to the level of DNA sequence.
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I think the brain would be the driver of mutations and mutation selection. That mutations are deleterious or neutral for the most part may only indicate lapses in neural function or limitations in energy supply. Based on a continuous reception of enormous amounts of sensory data, the brain would work within its limitations to inform genes of changes needed*.
*It can’t be ruled out that the brain may be sending beneficial change information to DNA, but what elapses at the local genetic level ends up being deleterious instead.