Yes, it is a relative thing, not a determinative thing. It's hard to talk about this without tripping on ableism - but - Stephen Hawkins started out with such

Yes, it is a relative thing, not a determinative thing. It's hard to talk about this without tripping on ableism - but - Stephen Hawkins started out with such a great cognitive ability that a deficit later in life would have been less noticeable. Life is more than a cognitive experience, it's a human experience. Hawkins' human experience was not great. I've read that he was very hard on the people close to him. Even if exercise 'only' helped with dealing with emotions, that would still show up as a cognitive improvement - it's hard to think straight when you are upset. > I'm not convinced that the opposite is true. I'm not entirely sure what 'the opposite' means. "You are a brain on a stick"? It is evident that the brain does not survive without the body. It is evident that the brain is affected by what the body does. The body is not a stick. The brain does compute, but it is not a computer. A computer does not actively take in information about the world. A computer does not form familial and tribal affiliations. A computer has a very limited experience of the world.