The argument that cognitive structure is as difficult to evolve as a new bodily organ is your personal assertion- it’s not found in the sources you cite. I understand it makes intuitive sense to you, but that doesn’t count for very strong evidence unless you’re better versed in evolutionary biology than all of the evolutionary psychologists.
I hate to repeat myself, but until I see some evidence besides your armchair biologizing, I’m going to consider it more likely that you’re making an error of reasoning than that every evolutionary psychologist is making a catastrophic error and that no evolutionary biologist has caught it. All the more so since you haven’t read any of the evidence in favor of in-born structure (beyond cortical columns) for the human brain, and especially for human language.
Can you be a little bit less meta and provide any reason what so ever why cognitive structures can be a lot (1..2 orders of magnitude) frequent to evolve than organs? No? The meta-beliefs like yours are called a belief in belief.
Also, read the link I gave, in full. It outlines the objections that significantly align with mine:
Can you be a little bit less meta and provide any reason what so ever why cognitive structures can be a lot (1..2 orders of magnitude) frequent to evolve than organs?
My priors start out pretty ignorant on just how complicated, in terms of genes, a re-wiring of the brain would be. Brains have had 500 million years to evolve, which is enough time to evolve plenty of genes that govern brain development at many levels (object and meta). If it was advantageous to be able to create new brain structures in a fairly short evolutionary time, it’s possible for the genome to be structured to enable that. (And in fact, this would account for why the genome doesn’t have to scale with brain size- which is the only claim I found on that website which pertains to your assertion.) Anyway, like I said, I have a fairly ignorant prior there.
But then, when I find evidence for deep structure to the brain, I can update on that evidence rather than be forced to defy the data.
I’m tapping out again, this time because the conversation is really starting to degenerate. I’ll just note that if you think someone believes a claim without reason, it helps to ask them for their reasons before asserting they have none. Less Wrong isn’t about who’s the first to accuse whom of a bias.
Well, you were first to accuse me of ignorance, but whatever.
But it does stand that you haven’t ever linked any data or made a single non-meta argument in our whole discourse up to this post, linking at most the books that are not available online. You just referred to yourself finding evidence for deep structure in the brain, without being in the slightest bit specific as to the argument at hand, which is ideally not which one of us is most biased, but whenever such data does exist.
There is one thing for you to update on: the neocortex is almost everywhere 6 layers thick. There are different regions of brain with different thickness, suited to different functions. That is, naturally, cognitive modules, performing different tasks—there is no dispute over that! (Removal of any such module is not recovered from). There is neocortex that is pretty damn uniform as far as we can see, and to top that off, compensates very well for any early (pre-pruning) injuries, and even post-pruning injuries. edit: And, now what your Occam Razor favoured hypothesis ought to be?
The argument that cognitive structure is as difficult to evolve as a new bodily organ is your personal assertion- it’s not found in the sources you cite. I understand it makes intuitive sense to you, but that doesn’t count for very strong evidence unless you’re better versed in evolutionary biology than all of the evolutionary psychologists.
I hate to repeat myself, but until I see some evidence besides your armchair biologizing, I’m going to consider it more likely that you’re making an error of reasoning than that every evolutionary psychologist is making a catastrophic error and that no evolutionary biologist has caught it. All the more so since you haven’t read any of the evidence in favor of in-born structure (beyond cortical columns) for the human brain, and especially for human language.
Can you be a little bit less meta and provide any reason what so ever why cognitive structures can be a lot (1..2 orders of magnitude) frequent to evolve than organs? No? The meta-beliefs like yours are called a belief in belief.
Also, read the link I gave, in full. It outlines the objections that significantly align with mine:
http://host.uniroma3.it/progetti/kant/field/ep.htm
My priors start out pretty ignorant on just how complicated, in terms of genes, a re-wiring of the brain would be. Brains have had 500 million years to evolve, which is enough time to evolve plenty of genes that govern brain development at many levels (object and meta). If it was advantageous to be able to create new brain structures in a fairly short evolutionary time, it’s possible for the genome to be structured to enable that. (And in fact, this would account for why the genome doesn’t have to scale with brain size- which is the only claim I found on that website which pertains to your assertion.) Anyway, like I said, I have a fairly ignorant prior there.
But then, when I find evidence for deep structure to the brain, I can update on that evidence rather than be forced to defy the data.
I’m tapping out again, this time because the conversation is really starting to degenerate. I’ll just note that if you think someone believes a claim without reason, it helps to ask them for their reasons before asserting they have none. Less Wrong isn’t about who’s the first to accuse whom of a bias.
Well, you were first to accuse me of ignorance, but whatever.
But it does stand that you haven’t ever linked any data or made a single non-meta argument in our whole discourse up to this post, linking at most the books that are not available online. You just referred to yourself finding evidence for deep structure in the brain, without being in the slightest bit specific as to the argument at hand, which is ideally not which one of us is most biased, but whenever such data does exist.
There is one thing for you to update on: the neocortex is almost everywhere 6 layers thick. There are different regions of brain with different thickness, suited to different functions. That is, naturally, cognitive modules, performing different tasks—there is no dispute over that! (Removal of any such module is not recovered from). There is neocortex that is pretty damn uniform as far as we can see, and to top that off, compensates very well for any early (pre-pruning) injuries, and even post-pruning injuries. edit: And, now what your Occam Razor favoured hypothesis ought to be?