re: #812 Prononymous, rogue demon hunter

But again, their brains are missing something that the other parts of their brain had evolved alongside in their ancestors.

No, all parts of the brain did not evolve together simultaneously, and anyway, my point is that the sum is greater than the component parts.

In what way exactly?

Because it seems to imply a final shape, or a directed evolution. There’s no reason why a brain losing some cognitive capacity couldn’t be a beneficial mutation.

The brain.

So, what you meant was:

The brain that developed to support all of these processes is incredibly difficult to untangle after the fact, if possible at all.

And that’s what’s hanging me up— the brain didn’t develop to support those processes. Those processes developed because the brain developed in the directions it did.

That certain cognitive processes aren’t independent from each other in the human brain

They are independent, they’re just different when they’re together than when they’re separate— much like our blood oxygen transport system.

a conclusion that other animals couldn’t evolve a neural architecture to support a subset of those cognitive abilities.

I think they could. I think a subset is much different than the whole.