In How To Create A Mind by Ray Kurzweil, the importance of the human neocortex is explored. What is important about the human neocortex? How did it evolve in our species? The answer to these questions can shed light on one of the most important evolutionary developments in the history of life on Earth.
Really nice.
I wonder if it might be more correct to say that we can utilize frameworks of increasing complexity by abstraction, while not actually conceptualizing more complex ideas. That is, by encompassing a pattern into a symbol, we can then operate on that pattern in a manner that is as only complex as operating on the symbol, rather than operating on the pattern in its entirety.
I think Douglas Hofstadter is really on to something with the connection between analogy and intelligence. AFAIK he now basically argues that intelligence more or less is operation by analogy. How else can you ratchet culture without biological change?