[From Dag Forssell (941224 2355)]
Rick, your post on levels of perception gave a very good perspective, but
you mixed up the levels a bit. Lars just got my book and in it
illustrations of the levels and references to Plooij. For my part, I see
no reason to think that Chimps have fewer levels than we do. The systems
concept level may not be as fully developed and diverse as ours, but I
would think that Chimps develop a sense of self, just like human babies
do (at age 70-75 weeks). To judge animals and guess the number of
levels, don't compare human adults with the animal, but human babies at
18 months of age. There is a thread of posts on levels of perception in
the PCTDOCS directory on the PCTDEMOS disk, avaliable from me or from the
BIOME listserver (see INTROCSG.NET).
I passed my third article by the Plooij's in October. Here is an excerpt
from their comments to me which I think is interesting.
Initially, babies only order sequences in a very rigid way. No wonder,
the level of control of principles is still not operational and the
reference values to the program level cannot be varied yet. Mothers
describe the programs of babies of 12 months as robot like.
Only when the perception and control of principles has emerged at the
age of 14+ months, do programs become flexible.
Tom's comment on insects having about six levels would suggest a certain
"robot like" feature of their behavior, if you extrapolate backwards from
Frans Plooij's comment above. It seems to make sense to me.
Best, Dag