RE: The wee people

> -----Original Message-----
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu
> [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of jack syme
> Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2004 10:35 PM

> To your last comment it is more like 1/3 of the brain that is
> removed. And of that 1/3 there is some redundancy, and what
> is removed is in a large part diseased, usuallly in the case
> of Rasmussen's Encephalitis , so I dont think it is a valid
> comparison to native encephalization quotients.

Woah. Without the hemisphere removal there is much more redundancy, so
I miss your point here. And it doesn't explain people like this :

        "Well over 500 CT scans were performed on patients, some of
whom were over 20 years of age. These included some who already
occupied responsible positions in life, including senior nurses,
university graduates and members of executive councils. Many
were never suspected of having hydrocephalus, although looking
back on their past history this diagnosis could have been made
much earlier. They obviously had slow progressive hydrocephalus
which did not detectably interfere with their life style. By the
time they had a CT scan, some had such enormously dilated
ventricles there was hardly any brain left above the level of the
tentorium. They retained the midbrain cerebellum and pons but
what was virtually missing was the part of the brain we attribute
to superior intelligence ; the centres for the fin control of
movements and the appreciation of visual and auditory stimuli.
        "The systematic CT scan study showed there were many older
children and adults who had grossly dilated ventricles with very
thin residual brain and yet did not suffer from physical defects
and had normal intelligence. Some were outstandingly intelligent
with IQs well above the 'bright normal' range. I can only
presume hydrocephalus with only moderately raised intracranial
pressure can slowly progress over many years to reach eventually
extreme degrees without ever causing symptoms. It is possible
that specific functions of the brain, such as the motor cortex,
may be relocated elsewhere from early infancy onwards or that we
do not need such a large quantity of brain and only need to use a
very small part of it under normal circumstances." ~ John Lorber,
"Is your Brain really Necessary?", Nursing Mirror, April 30,
1981, p. 20

>
> I admit to not having a well formed arguement one way or the
> other. I
> am just asking questions on both sides.

That's ok, there is a whole body of literature devoted to people who
seem to lack their brain but are otherwise intelligent folk. It is
finding this literature via an article in Science back in 1980 that made
me realize that brain size is not the driving factor in intelligence
and this data could have been accessed by anyone who cared to look and
apply it to the apologetical problem of who is and who isn't human.

>
> But, I guess the bottom line is that I am disagreeing with
> your premise that the Liang Bua people are just like us in a
> spiritual sense ala your Turning Test.

Clearly we don't have evidence of spirituality, but we do have evidence
of the making of stone tools, the hafting of those tools onto wood
(which either means spears or arrows), we have evidence of their making
fire which shows an incredible ability to plan ahead. My argument is
that this planning ahead--planning for consequences is a pre-requisite
for moral accountability. This is from my article Planning Ahead

"Fire has two uses within primitive human cultures: cooking and the
deterrence of predators. Many of the plants eaten by
technologically-primitive man are toxic in the uncooked state. Yams, a
food staple for many peoples, contain toxins that are used to immobilize
monkeys, poison fish and birds and to kill head lice and Macrozamia, a
cycad, must be carefully prepared to remove both a nerve toxin and an
extremely powerful cancer causing agent.5 Yet if cooked, the toxins are
destroyed and a hearty meal can be eaten. If the fire is for the purpose
of deterring predators, it must be placed at the proper location and
continually stoked. "
        "During the use of fire for cooking, one must know the sequence
of steps involved in food preparation which may be many: finding the
plant and processing the material (pounding, soaking, kneading etc.).
Before the food could be cooked, a unique sequence of steps for the
creation of fire must be performed. Prior to the invention of ceramics
there are two likely means of cooking. Vegetables could be impaled on a
stick and roasted marshmallow-style. Alternatively rocks could be
heated, placed in a previously prepared pit after which, the food would
be placed on the rocks and covered with soil. All these procedures must
be maintained in memory as one mentally calculates how long the
previously collected wood will last before it is burned up, remember
where there are excellent sources of wood, which woods burn best (green
or dry), depart at the proper time for gathering the wood, and return
before the fire goes out. He must also understand that the wood must be
put on the fire and that correct distances for optimal burning must be
maintained between large logs. If they didn't know how to make fire,
they had to know and remember another sequence of steps for the
maintenance of the fire. This often involves careful treatment of embers
such as wrapping them in green leaves and carrying them in special
containers. The number of sequential steps above are more than a
chimpanzee is able to accomplish and among animals he is one of the best
at remembering sequential steps.6 Clearly, the use and maintenance of
fire requires essentially modern planning abilities which would also
suffice for enabling the fire user to understand moral commands. "
Morton, G. R. (1999) Planning Ahead: Requirement for Moral
Accountability, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith,
51:3:176-179

Only a creature who could plan for the use of fire could understand the
command "Thou shalt not eat of the fruit of this tree".

>
> If pushed I would have to say that I think that we are
> different than them physically, and our EQ of 7 is some
> evidence of that. I happen to agree that spirtuality is not
> just an epiphenomenon of brain complexity.

My wife had an uncle who had a very small brain--around half the normal
size. His EQ was probably in the 4 range. He was not as smart as the
rest of us but I believe he was fully human and he most assuredly was
spiritual. EQ can not be used as a proxy for spirituality which leads
us right back to the question of the wee people.

>
> So, the next question is, if spirituality is not just an
> epiphenomenon of brain structure, is a complex brain required
> to comprehend the spiritual? It still seems plausable that,
> despite the presence of the Liang Bua 'people", that Adam and
> his progeny were in some physical way different than anything
> that came before.

Plausible maybe but it doesn't follow from the above. If spirituality
is from God then physical appearance means nothing to spirituality.
This is another reason I think it silly to for us to get so snooty about
the talking snake story. Jesus said that he could make the stones cry
out if he wanted. How much easier it would be to make a snake or a
donkey talk. Or maybe we don't believe that Jesus could actually make
the stones speak.
Received on Sun Oct 31 07:59:01 2004