The ferret rewiring experiments, the tongue based vision stuff, the visual regions learning to perform echolocation computations in the blind, this evidence together is decisive against the evolved modularity hypothesis as I’ve defined that hypothesis, at least for the cortex. The EMH posits that the specific cortical regions rely on complex innate circuitry specialized for specific tasks. The evidence disproves that hypothesis.
It seems a little strange to treat this as a triumphant victory for the ULH. At the most, you’ve shown that the “fundamentalist” evolved modularity hypothesis is false. You didn’t really address how the ULH explains this same evidence.
And there are other mysteries in this model, such as the apparent universality of specific cognitive heuristics and biases, or of various behaviours like altruism, deception, sexuality that seems obviously evolved. And, as V_V mentioned, the lateral asymmetry of the brain’s functionality vs the macroscopic symmetry.
Otherwise, the conclusion I would draw from this is that both theories are wrong, or that some halfway combination of them is true (say, “universal” plasticity plus a genetic set of strong priors somehow encoded in the structure).
It seems a little strange to treat this as a triumphant victory for the ULH. At the most, you’ve shown that the “fundamentalist” evolved modularity hypothesis is false. You didn’t really address how the ULH explains this same evidence.
And there are other mysteries in this model, such as the apparent universality of specific cognitive heuristics and biases, or of various behaviours like altruism, deception, sexuality that seems obviously evolved. And, as V_V mentioned, the lateral asymmetry of the brain’s functionality vs the macroscopic symmetry.
Otherwise, the conclusion I would draw from this is that both theories are wrong, or that some halfway combination of them is true (say, “universal” plasticity plus a genetic set of strong priors somehow encoded in the structure).