In some ways that's true, though the more recent areas tend to cooperate/elaborate, not replace. E.g., both the superior colliculus in the midbrain and the fro

In some ways that's true, though the more recent areas tend to cooperate/elaborate, not replace. E.g., both the superior colliculus in the midbrain and the frontal eye fields in neocortex are responsible for making eye movements, but the FEF doesn't override the SC. Even in this case, it's not like eye gaze/movement info is dispersed throughout all the cortex, it's limited to a short list. We also know that the receptive fields (which part of a scene a neuron fires in response to) increase in size as you go up the visual hierarchy. V1 neurons will response to tiny parts of a scene, whereas V4/MT and V5 will response to huge swathes of your vision, indicating they become less location-sensitive. Object-identifying neurons may well respond to the object anywhere in your vision, suggesting they're not location-sensitive at all. I guess Hawkins might argue that it's different neurons in association cortex columns that encode location, but frankly, the argument from biology is poor. There are cortical areas mapped out like this... but I can't imagine why Hawkins thinks this is a governing principle for the whole cerebrum.