Escobar tries out his theory on vision, assuming the ideas can be extended to other types of qualia. He sees groups of neurons at a first stage he calls V1, V2, V3 that perceive red, green, and blue, for instance. Then higher-level groupings of neurons (V4, V5, etc.) moderate these inputs, yielding the infinite variety of colors we experience. Result: qualia, from simple building blocks.
* Aside from sharing the same problems with evolutionary theories of other complex systems, Escobar's bottom-up theory of consciousness suffers setbacks peculiar to consciousness. For one, it assumes what it needs to prove: that consciousness supervenes on matter. You can watch neurons firing between themselves for ages, and never see the conscious experience of qualia.
* Another setback is that his system provides no confidence that one person's qualia are similar to another person's. He might point to natural selection and common ancestry to support this, but then one would expect humans from one side of the planet to develop completely different qualia from those on the other. When Europeans met Native Americans who had crossed the Bering Strait long ages before, they were able to relate to one another as if their perceptions of nature were very similar, language differences notwithstanding.
* A third difficulty is that Escobar doesn't solve the "zombie" problem discussed by Chalmers. Evolutionary theory might account for sensory organs that can react to red or green, or loud or soft sounds, without ever leading to consciousness, thus resulting in "zombies."
Conscious experience is above and beyond what is necessary for survival. Each of us knows that we are not merely reacting to stimuli; we are experiencing the world in a deep, personal way.
We're being as charitable to Escobar as possible so far, because all the problems with Darwinian evolution as a creative process apply with a vengeance to consciousness.
We're being as charitable to Escobar as possible so far, because all the problems with Darwinian evolution as a creative process apply with a vengeance to consciousness.
--His theory is merely a restatement of Darwinism as applied to the mind.
The mutation/selection process
cannot account for
irreducibly complex systems that are characterized by complex, specified information."
EN&V
--In other words, IF evolution were true, and our bodies evolved the same worldwide---WHY are our CONSCIOUSNESSES UNIQUE? Shouldn't we all have the same consciousnesses and likes, dislikes, opinions, etc.?
Q: IF evolution were true shouldn't we all be Zombies?
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
and man became a living soul.
Genesis 2:7
