RE: Vision and Evolution (A Critique of Dawkins)
August 4, 2019 at 11:41 pm
(This post was last modified: August 4, 2019 at 11:50 pm by John 6IX Breezy.)
(August 4, 2019 at 11:08 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote: You’re not discussing an evolutionary gap. You have a fantasy. You’d like to fill this fantasy gap with evolutionary biology, but that’s not how evolutionary biology works.
We could wonder how evolutionary biology has come to produce creatures like ourselves, with fantasies and fantasy gaps we’re compelled to fill. That’s likely to be more informative than trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.
Even modern vision science has gaps. Take for example the problem of binding; it is still not fully known how the brain combines the different visual components of an object into one coherent whole. Motion is generally processed by neurons in area MT, whereas color is processed by area V4. Somehow the brain is able to stitch together an otherwise distributed representation of an object. Saccadic suppression is another problem, eyes move rapidly back and forth yet we do not perceive any smear on the retina; perhaps the brain has a suppression mechanism that briefly inhibits vision during the saccade. Or take the phenomenology of vision, why is red experienced as red and not as a high pitched sound? Is there something unique about vision neurons that contain redness, and which auditory neurons do not have? The OP isn't even asking for evolutionary explanation for these things, I know you dont have them. I've kept it simple and asked for an account of the things we already know about vision.
Gaps exist; get comfortable and acquainted with them. Evolution is the Swiss Cheese of theories.
