170 HOW THE BRAIN MAKES POTENTIALlittle agreement among brain scientists about what the brain is really for.
Obviously, those who are in the business of ranking brains should do so
on the basis of a clear understanding of what brains are actually supposed
to do— what they are supposed to be good at in the fi rst place. Believe it
or not, this still is not very clear.
Almost heroic research eff orts have been made, with huge advances
around very specifi c aspects of brain functions. Th ey have produced
mountains of par tic u lar “fi ndings” about nerves and brains. But relatively
little pro gress has been made on integrating them into a global synthetic
view of how the brain works.
Th us investigators like Raquel del Moral and colleagues have com-
plained about “the absence of a consistent central theory in the neuro-
sciences.” Jonathon Roiser explained in the Psychologist (April 2015) how
“we lack a generally accepted neuroscientifi c explanation of how brains
make minds.” In his book, Th e Lives of the Brain, John S. Allen notes
that, “while it would be going too far to say that it is a mystery or an
enigma—we have collected an extraordinary amount of information
about the brain over the years—an accurate rendering of the big picture,
and lots of the little pictures as well, eludes us.”^4
Here I argue that the main reason why the “big picture” eludes us
is the same as the reason there is still no agreed-on theory or model of
human intelligence and potential for it. Th e search, at least with regard
to intelligence, is for individual diff erences in ideological grounded meta-
phors, with little indication of where, in biological evolution, that intelli-
gence came from, or what the diff erences are really diff erences in.
In this chapter, I pres ent the remedy to that defi cit. To do so, I need to
go deeper into the information pro cessing of a real brain in a real world.
I argue that brain functions are extensions of the already- evolved intel-
ligent systems in physiology and its pre de ces sors. Th is also involves a
closer look at the dynamics of changing environments. In doing so,
I emphasize that individual diff erences in brain functions are vastly more
in ter est ing than ones of speed or power. Above all, I argue that a proper
look reveals functional complexity that fl ies in the face of those who
want to, in eff ect, declare a huge portion of humanity to be saddled with
inferior brains.
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