Vision and Evolution (A Critique of Dawkins)

[GrandizerII]

At work.


So you are aware of organisms that have a level of environmental reactivity. Cool.

Sorry, it's just that most of your previous posts were entangled with brains and vision.

That organisms function quite well without brains/neural bundles but still react (Interact?) with their environment, such as the Australian box jellyfish, is a step forwards in our conversation at least.

Cheers.

I wouldn't say they're entangled with brain and vision, they're rather focused on it. A jellyfish is able to function the way it does, because its a jellyfish. Its environment and behavioral options are balanced with its internal infrastructure. But if a jellyfish is ever going to evolve anything like the human visual system, it needs to maintain that balance, throughout that process. A Dawkins' account that focuses on one aspect wouldn't work.

Maintaining internal balance is what homeostasis is about. It's what organisms with the better adaptive skills are conditioned to achieve.

As for vision, there's the physical biological aspect of it (handled by the nerve cells in your brain) and possibly there's the subjective aspect to it. Whatever the case may be, evolution operates on the biological aspects. If there does happen to be something about our consciousness that is qualitatively of a different nature or essence, then evolution would probavly operate on it indirectly.

And eyes can function just fine with a basic nervous system to detect and react. A high level perception will require the brain, or something akin to it, and lo and behold thanks to the many millions of years of the evolution of the nervous system, we now have a system that can output such advanced perceptive reactions.