re: #813 Obdicut

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.

ALL parts didn’t necessarily evolve together throughout our entire lineage. But unless you are trying to say that you have acquired new cognitive functions that your parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc didn’t have you are admitting that these features have evolved together for at least some period of time.

Personally I am finding your argument to be almost exactly like what we hear from the ID camp. You are saying what good is half cognitive suite? A “cdesign proponentsist” might say what good is half an eye. My response is the same. Just as half an eye is better than no eye at all having some cognitive functions is better than having none at all.

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.

That’s because you are looking at the final shape and trying to work backwards. You are trying to untangle the specific cognitive functions in humans from the specific neural architecture in humans, after the fact.

An analogy is removing fingers from a hand. If you removed, or never had, your index finger and thumb the rest of your hand isn’t very good at being a human hand. That’s a big deal for a human living in a human’s niche. But if you are an arboreal herbivore missing those fingers might not be a big deal because your other fingers evolved to do a good job without them, as in 3 toed sloths. Removing fingers from a human hand is not analogous to another animal evolving 3 fingers.

Losing cognitive capacity couldn’t be a beneficial mutation if it means the organism will never have a chance to reproduce. But I take your point. Of course losing some cognitive capacity could be beneficial if there is no longer a selection pressure for it. Such as:
sciencedaily.com

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.

The brain and those processes evolved simultaneously.

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

No, mental processes are not independent. That’s why knocking out part of the brain has an effect on several areas of cognitive functions at once. Try the mental process of problem solving without having access to the mental process of memory.

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

I agree. So what is your point? A pit eye is much different than an image forming eye. But they are still both useful to the organisms that possess them.