[From Rick Marken (930505.1230)]
Gary Cziko (just a second ago) --
Controlling perceptions through behavior is clearly not unique to humans.
But I would venture to guess that the ability to control high-level
perceptions such as principles or systems concepts is a uniquely human
capacity.
Well said. In fact, just the other day I was musing about the possibility
that this unique aspect of our humanness (the ability to control for
principles and system concepts) may be responsible for what appears to be
another unique aspect of our humanness -- the uncanny ability to create
internal conflict for ourselves. Animals (non-human) in the wild don't
seem to get internally conflicted -- but this is just my impression.
Animals can certainly be trained to have internal conflicts (a la Pavlov's
dogs), but neurotic (internally conflicted) wild animals seem pretty rare.
Neurotic (internally conflicted) wild people, on the other hand, are pretty
common -- and it seems that many of these conflicts have their origins in
goals that are being sent to the conflicted systems from the principle or
system concept level. I think that even after approximately 3 million years
here, humans still might not have worked out all the bugs in those higher
levels of control.
Best
Rick