I believe that optic fallacy has been debunked sometime in the next-to-last century. Is it not in fact the first metaphor employed for the design argument?
quote:
It can be reasonably asserted that it was a relative certainty from the start of the universe that there would be organisms with eyes at some future point.
rest of post snipped for brevity.
I don't regard this as a serious problem, approaching it as I do from an information science perspective.
Lets take the claim that, at some point, it is reasonable to expect the developement of the eye. I accept this - seeing as we can identify ambient light, it is indeed reasonable to expect that organisms would evolve, sooner or later, to take advantage of this ambient phenomenon. This IMO is uncontroversial.
Why can this argument not be extended to the brain? I believe it can - in fact there is a certain coincidence here becuase both the brain and the eye are SIGNALS PROCESSING devices. Data and information have their own dynamics; for one thing, you can only derive as much benefit from incoming data as you have capacity to process. Any more data has to overflow and be lost.
So I would suggest, Syamsu, that in acknowledging the developement of the eye as arising from physical phenomenon of which the organism can advatange, you have also explained the development of the brain. The brain exists to add value to the signals processed by the eye (and other sensory organs) and thus render them into fiteness-beneficial behaviours and responses.
Intelligence at this level is not useful to everyone, of course. We are at the point that signals processing requires fully one third of our energy budget, if I recall correctly. And that is why we rule the planet and have inflicted the most profound changes on it of any organism since cyanobacteria.
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