re: #817 Obdicut

I’m sorry you feel that way, but I think that the way you’re talking about processes evolving AND the brain evolving is a mistake. The processes are a phenomenon of the brain.

The mental processes and the brain aren’t separate things. In our ancestors as the brain evolved the ability to support specific problem solving capabilities, for example, it didn’t do it in the absence of other already existing features such as memory. Certain problem solving skills depend on memory. Therefore that type of problem solving is not independent of other cognitive features, within humans.

They are obviously independent of each other, because they did not all arise simultaneously, and we have human beings who lack specific cognitive functions.

What does arising simultaneously have to do with it?

Yes, we do have humans that lack certain cognitive functions. For example, some people have lost their short term memory. Subsequently they are able to perform some tasks normally but are unable to perform other tasks such as certain kinds of problem solving. Therefore your contention that cognitive functions are independent of each other is directly contradicted. Some cognitive functions obviously do depend on each other.

Yep. That’s what I’ve very clearly said. The sum total of things we’ve got going on in our brain makes our consciousness qualitatively different even from our very close cousins.

Okay, sure. The sum total of the things in our brain is different than the sum total of the things in other creatures brains. What I reject is that any one of the summands and their emergent phenomenon is necessarily unique to humans. If being able to display kindness is favored by selective pressures within a social species’ niche then I see no reason that the animal would first have to evolve a brain that is equivalent to ours. Kindness can arise from emotional or intellectual roots.